The Moorchild Read Free Page B

bird as the Folk shrieked for her to try what she was already trying, warned her needlessly that it was a Man .
    Then the shepherd’s dog rose among the grasses and began to bark, and the voices ceased amid a sudden clapping of wings. The crows flapped aloft, the few chickens stretched out their necks and ran helter-skelter. Moql could not see whether Els’nk was still behind the berry bush, or Zmr and Tinkwa on the outcrop. She could not see any Folk at all, twist how she would, because her captor had turned her to face him and was holding her, still by a handful of jacket, to look her over.
    Fearfully she raised her eyes to meet his astonished gaze.
    “A pixie, all right enough,” he muttered. “Mebbe a Dark Elf. What are you, little one? Can you talk a Christian tongue?”
    Moql’s lips clamped shut. The dog trotted closer, barking until the man silenced it.
    “Can’t or won’t,” said the shepherd. “Be y’ full grown? Shouldn’t think so. Near the size of my five year old, but skinnier, no more weight to you than a kitten.” He turned her this way and that, lifted her higher to study her long, arched feet. “Eh, how my little Davvy ’ud like a peek at you! But you might do ’im a mischief, so you might. There’s tales of your kind.” He scrutinized her a moment longer, then burst into a gleeful laugh. “So I went and caught one, sure enough! I never held with them stories. Eh, they’ll call me a liar, over t’moor in my village.” He paused. “Less’n I bring you back with me.”
    Moql squirmed desperately—she couldn’t help it. The man’s eyes narrowed. “By gorrikins, I think you do know what I’m sayin’.” He peered at her, frowning a little. “Here, now. I mean you no harm, pixie.” (Moql squirmed again, this time with annoyance. The Folk did not care to be confused with distant, possibly lowborn cousins.) “Here, we’ll strike a bargain. They say your kind has got stores of gold hid all around these hills. Is it so, then?”
    Moql went still. If you muff it and get caught, remember about the gold. “It is,” she said—her voice so shaky and squeaky she could barely hear it herself.
    The man said, “Eh?” and held her up to his hairy ear. She gathered her strength and shrilled “It is! ” straight into it, so that he held her away hastily.
    “Right, then! Just show me where, you see? And I’ll let you go, I will.”
    Moql knew what to do next—but the dog, a terrible shaggy creature with bright, intent eyes, was sitting just below her, with a tongue as long as her forearm lolling out between his wicked teeth. “I’m afeard of him, ” she said.
    “Ah, never you mind about Trusty, he’ll do as he’s bid and naught else. Here, off with you, boy, round up your stragglers!” The shepherd waved his crook, and the dog loped away as if the gesture had flung him. “Now—no tricks, little ’un—where’s the treasure hid?”
    “Let me loose and I’ll take you there.” It was worth a try.
    He only laughed at her. “Think I’m a noddikins? You’d be off afore I could blink! Just tell me straight.”
    “Well, gold’s down in the woods yonder, buried. You find the fifth tree west of the red fox’s hole. Then you walk a snake length’s south and find old Twilligard’s sign on a fallen log—less’n the moss has covered it—then you go where it says, and—”
    “Here, hold on! Where’s this red fox’s hole? How’ll I find that?”
    Moql shrugged as well as she could for one suspended in midair. “ I know where ’tis. You’ll have to hunt.”
    “Nay, then. You’ll have to show me,” the shepherd retorted. He gave her a hitch and shifted his grasp to her middle, tucking her under his arm like a parcel as he strode down toward the woods.
    There wasn’t any fox’s hole, red or otherwise, but Moql pointed to something and he took her word for it, then they struggled along what she told him was a snake’s lengthsouth, which led him through nettles and