The Returning Read Free

Edord dropped his snail down the back of Hughar’s shirt. Hughar yelled, fished the snail out, and came up to Pin. “Yum, yum.”
    Pin screamed and ran, Hughar right behind her, until she cried.
    â€œBed for you, my maid,” said Mam. She tried to hug Pin good night, but Pin wriggled free.
    Da walked her back to the cottage. He stopped to show her the pictures in the stars. “There’s the arrow, can you see it? Shooting its way to the warrior, there.”
    Pin could not see the star pictures, but she so liked this quiet time with Da that she nodded and looked where he pointed.
    â€œCam,” said Da. “You mustn’t mind him.”
    Pin didn’t mind him, not one bit.
    â€œIt is different for him. He was the only child we had, ha! Thought we’d never have another, but every year your mam, she gave to the Goddess, and the Goddess heard her at last, for the twins came along. Then you, the surprise baby and a girl to boot, coming three years after the twins. Well, he on his own all the time, it was different for him. And then what happens but he ups and leaves us for the war. He’s come back not whole, not our Cam. What do we do with him, eh, do you see?”
    Pin nodded, though she did not see.
    In bed, she thought about the stars, heeling in the black wheel of the sky, and dreamed of them. And a dress of green lettuce. And the new Lord of Dorn-Lannet’s snails.

Graceful Fenister

    B ROWN AND GOLD, that was how the valley was colored, this end of the summer. The streams had dried to brown water holes, and the hills pitched blond flanks at the sky. Graceful hung over the fence, looking. At the line of trees that marked the road, and hid Cam Attling’s holding.
    Graceful was twelve, and she knew whom she was going to marry. She knew when she would marry him and where and how. She knew that he would come to live here, at Fenister Fort Farm, take her name, as did any who married a firstborn Fenister, and die here, as she would.
    She knew, oh, that every summer she would cut the flax with the women of the house; that every winter she would weave it; the names of her children (firstborn son after Father, second-born after her husband, third after his father, firstborn daughter after Mother, second-born daughter after Stepmother, third after herself).
    The course of her life was laid out like the Highway was laid through the valley. It entered through the pass in the hills to the north, and vanished in the forest to the south. If the Highway was her life, then she was about there, not quite at Castle Cross, but still coming downhill from the pass.
    There were two things Graceful did not know about her life: how many children she would have, and when she would die. If she thought about not knowing these two huge things, her stomach went tight. It was fear and it was joy, that tightness, all at once and all mixed up.
    She took one last look, then pushed herself off the fence. “I cannot see the messenger yet.”
    Father wasn’t listening. “It will be a colt,” he said. Down in the paddock the bay mare cropped gold grass. Her sides bulged.
    â€œFilly,” said Garrad, who was Father’s leading hand. “Do you look how it sits wide, rather than deep.”
    â€œThat’s right, a colt.”
    â€œI had much rather a filly,” said Graceful. “It will be a filly. I am sure of it.”
    â€œWhat will you stake, Daughter?”
    Graceful thought about it. “A filly and it’s mine; a colt and it’s yours.” She put her hand out.
    Father grasped it—“That sure are you?”—and that was the wager sealed.
    Graceful caught Garrad’s eye; he was watching them, sucking his cheeks in and a grin with it.
    â€œMaster,” said Garrad.
    There was a rider on the valley floor.
    â€œWell.” Father let Graceful’s hand go. “Best we get to the house yard.”
    The flat top of Fenister Fort Hill was