By These Ten Bones by Clare B. Dunkle Read Free Book Online

leather holder. I hate not having them. I need them. I need to carve.”
    â€œI’ll fetch them,” promised the girl, “but you can’t carve yet. Look at you! You can barely hold a spoon.”
    The young man’s eyes were beseeching. “But I do carve when I’m like this,” he whispered earnestly. “I have to, it’s the only thing I like to do.”
    Maddie took a long look at that suffering face and felt profoundly sad. “I’ll go get your knives,” she said, “and I’ll ask my ma. Maybe she’ll let you carve.”
    Fair Sarah was shocked at the idea. “He still needs rest,” she told her daughter. “He doesn’t need to worry about working yet.”
    â€œI don’t think he’s worried about working,” mused Maddie. “I think he’s worried about resting.”
    Maddie’s mother soon found this out for herself. That evening she shook wood shavings out of her silent patient’s blankets and looked around the bare room in astonishment. One knob on the back of the wooden settle had blossomed into a pale, many-petaled rose.
    The family ate their meals sitting on low stools by the hearth, and before too many days, Carver was well enough to join them. Wrapped in his blanket, eyes on his bowl, he listened to the banter that went on around him. He still wouldn’t speak to anyone but Maddie, his voice low and cautious, so Maddie began to speak for him, as if he were a very small child.
    â€œCarver wants more porridge,” she would announce when his bowl was empty.
    â€œOf course he can have it,” her mother would reply, and the young man would hold out his bowl for another spoonful.
    One day, Maddie hit upon the ingenious device of lying about his wishes. “Carver hates this soup,” she declared matter-of-factly. “He won’t eat it.”
    â€œThat’s—that’s not true,” stammered the wood-carver, caught off-guard. “I think—I think it’s very good.” He shot Maddie a reproachful glance, and she gave him a triumphant grin.
    Maddie’s mother spent as much time as she could spare tending to her patient, and she spent more time than that worrying about him. Concerned over his obsessive carving, she asked Maddie to borrow Lady Mary’s beautiful playing cards. Maddie spent a few minutes teaching the invalid how to play and left him busy with the cards as she went about her duties. But when she returned, she found he had abandoned the game. He was back at his carving.
    â€œWhat happened?” she demanded. “Did you forget how it went?”
    â€œNo,” muttered the young man without looking up. “The cards don’t like me.”
    â€œThey don’t like you?” exclaimed Maddie, laughing. “Are you upset that you lost?”
    Carver was nettled. “It’s not that I lost. I’ll show you,” he said, setting aside his tools and looking around to make sure no one else was there. He shuffled the deck as well as he could and laid out the first four cards.
    They were the King and Knave of Swords, followed by the King and Knave of Clubs. Maddie stared at the armed figures in surprise.
    â€œSee how angry they are,” said the wood-carver in a low voice. “They’d come at me if they could. Don’t ask me to play that game anymore. The cards know things.”
    But if the mysterious young man didn’t like card games, he soon developed an interest in chess. Father Mac and the weaver often had a game after sundown, bending over Father Mac’s chessboard in the flickering light of a rush lamp. As long as he was bedridden, Carver pretended to sleep through the visits. He told Maddie that he didn’t trust priests.
    â€œThere weren’t any priests in my town,” he said, “and my mother said that was a good thing. She came from fisher folk, and they know priests are dangerous. They hex the