The Shadow and Night Read Free Page B

vibrated, down in the lower parts you could feel as safe and snug as if you were inside the roots of a giant tree.
    â€œBut it was a meteor?” His uncle’s face had appeared again round the door. Merral sat upright suddenly, his tired back muscles signaling their presence.
    â€œMust have been. But the biggest I’ve ever seen. It was heading northward. I suppose it probably landed over the Rim Ranges somewhere in the crater.”
    â€œOh, it’ll do no harm there. End up as a handful of dust.”
    There was amusement in his gray eyes. “Anyway, you have ten minutes, assuming this new recipe behaves itself. Your usual room. Just time for a shower.”
    â€œA quick shower it is.” And with that, Merral picked up his pack and climbed up the stairs to the guest room.

    Some minutes later, Merral was combing his hair and wondering why a shower and clean clothes made so much difference when there was a soft knock on his door.
    â€œCome in!” he called out. In the mirror, he saw a face peer round the door—an oval face with pale blue eyes overhung by an untidy fringe of curly blonde hair. Merral turned round. “Elana! How are you?”
    Elana, the oldest and blondest of the three Antalfer girls, was something of a favorite of Merral’s. He had a private opinion that she was also the deepest and most thoughtful of them. Although she wasn’t fourteen until next month, Merral had felt even on his last visit in high summer that she already had one foot beyond childhood. Now she came into the narrow room and stood under a curving wood beam. She stretched delicately upright on tiptoe and gave him a beaming smile. “I’m fine, Cousin. And you are well?”
    Merral looked at her carefully, recognizing in those modifications of her physique the woman so imminent in the girl. “Praise our Lord. I have gained a few more scratches and bruises since I last saw you. And some aches from riding over hard ground. But I am well.”
    â€œYou rode here just to see us?”
    â€œSorry! No, I need to talk to your father about his quarry, so my trip here is part of work.”
    She stared at him, amused puzzlement in her eyes. “I thought you were a forester!”
    â€œI still am. But there’s no point in us planting a forest if your dad is going to dig a big hole in it, is there now?”
    â€œNo, I suppose not.” Elana smiled. “Actually, Merral, I came to say that food is nearly served.”
    â€œLead the way.”
    He followed Elana to the dining hall, noting a new painting on a wall above a stairway. He reminded himself that he must make time to look at his aunt’s latest work. He might ask her to do something for his parents’ thirty-fifth wedding anniversary next year. He made a mental note that when it came to planning what to do with his stipend next year, he needed to include the cost of the painting.
    The dining hall lay in the deepest part of the house, and although it was the largest room, it seemed already full as he entered. Merral tried to identify everybody. On one side were his aunt, the two younger daughters—Lenia and Debora—and, of course, Thomas. On the other were Barrand’s parents, Imanos and Irena, and a young couple from the next house.
    Merral made his way to the seat offered to him at one end of the table. As he did, Barrand came in bearing a great pot and the chattering ceased. Quietly, everybody stood up and stepped back behind their chairs. Thomas, too short to see over the solid back of his, peered round instead at Merral.
    There was silence. Barrand raised his big, gnarled hands to the heavens. “For your love and presence with us, O Lord, our protector and mighty one, and for your kindness to us, we thank you now. In the name of the Prince, the Messiah, our Savior.”
    A second’s solemn silence was ended abruptly with a chorus of “Amen,” and then the scraping and clattering