Words Like Coins Read Free Page A

no pecksies near their beds. Nasty, vindictive wretches.” Jami took a long drink from her cooling tea. When she set her cup down, she looked directly at Mirrifen. “My father always blamed the pecksies for my mother’s death.”
    “What?”
    “He found her in the barn, at the bottom of the hay loft ladder. Her neck was broken. She was covered all over in pecksie dust.” Jami’s voice deepened. “They probably swarmed her and knocked her off the ladder.”
    “I see,” Mirrifen said faintly.
    After breakfast, she set a chair outside in the shade, brought Jami her yarn and needles and slipped quickly away to her own room. The pecksie was gone. She’d taken the little charm against infection. Well. Perhaps it was all solved and for the best. She wondered if pecksies were as treacherous as Jami believed, and hoped she would never find out.
    The day passed slowly, as every day had since the men had left. Time was measured in what she could not do; no weeds to pull, no vegetables to harvest, no fruit to thin on the parched trees. Idleness today in exchange for want later; a bad bargain all around. She couldn’t find any hole in the chicken coop, but when she cleaned it out, three rats boiled up from under the soiled straw. She swept them out with her broom and shut the door tight.
    Twice she thought she’d glimpsed the pecksie, but each time, when she turned, nothing was there. She blamed it on Jami’s horrid tale and her own imagination and tried to stay busy.
    After the evening meal, she washed the dishes and watered the withered kitchen garden with the used wash water. She drew one bucket of water and gave the poor cows their second drink of the day before shutting them in their stall. She shooed the chickens into the cleaned coop and shut their door tightly. Finally, she broke her news to Jami.
    “I have to sit up tonight by the well and keep the rats away.”
    Jami argued, she wept, and then she argued again. “I can’t sleep alone in that empty house, with rats rustling in the corners. And pecksies. You saw the pecksie dust on the bucket.”
    “Well, you can’t stay awake outside with me, either. Jami, be sensible. Neither of us have any choice in this.”
    Jami surrendered, but not with grace. Mirrifen ascribed her sulk to her pregnancy and tried not to mind it. It was hard. After all, she was the one who had to spend the night outside with a club and a lantern. She took a blanket against the night chill and went to take up her vigil.
    The moon had grown one slice closer to full. Its thin light was watery, and the lantern’s shifting glow denied it existed at all. Jamie sat down on the lid of the well and waited. Night cooled and thickened around her. She pulled the blanket around her shoulders. The night song of insects in the dry fields rose into a chorus. Her eyes grew heavy. Jami blew out her candle in the bedroom, completing the darkness. Outside the circle of her lamplight, creatures moved or perhaps her eyes played tricks on her. Her club rested across her lap. She tapped it with her fingernails, playing a rhythm.  She knuckled her eyes and then vigorously scratched her head, trying to stay awake. She sang softly to herself, old songs. Wasn’t there a third verse to that song? How had it begun?

    She jolted awake.
    She didn’t remember reclining. The club that had been under her hand had been moved. Crouched at the edge of the well lid, staring at her with lambent green eyes, was the pecksie. One of her long-fingered hands rested on the club. Her silvery gray skin gleamed in the moonlight. “What do you do now?” the creature asked her.
    Mirrifen sat up cautiously. She gathered her feet under her, ready to flee. “I’m guarding the well. The rats have been trying to gnaw through the cover. But if they do and fall in the well, they’ll drown and foul the water.”
    “Not that!” the pecksie exclaimed with disdain. “You not guard. You sleep! But what you do now? You say, “Go away!” to