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

“It’s little enough I have now.”
    Maddie looked at the elegant furniture in the corner of that great, gloomy hall and felt in her heart that Lady Mary was right. Once, the new lord’s wife had visited her every few months, bringing presents and sweetmeats. Later, she had sent her servants to the old woman with those comforts that the rich needed to have: new embroidery canvas and thread, furs and muffs, and pieces of lovely cloth.
    But no one had been to see Lady Mary in almost a year. She sat day after day in her dark castle room with nothing new to think of. She couldn’t just come down to the houses now and sit with the other old crones to spin thread. She had lived like a stranger among them for fifteen years, and it was too late to do anything about it.
    Maddie walked back from the castle, thinking sad thoughts. She spied the wood-carver sitting on his favorite boulder, his head bent over a small figure that he was shaping with a knife. Maddie walked up quietly, remembering the day a few weeks ago when he had sat on that same rock and she had pointed out the hills to him. Then he hadn’t spoken a word to her. Now he spoke to her all the time, although he rarely spoke to the others.
    She stopped, as she had before, to watch him turn the carving. He was so clever, so much more interesting than everyone else. His shadow stretched out before him, long and faint. She remembered her dream about the shadow that hissed, and smiled to herself.
    But his shadow was darker, surely, than her own shadow beside it. Maddie blinked and looked again. Darker still, changing color by the minute, like night falling over the world. It lay on the ground, dense and black, wavering and feeling about. Then, like a man crawling on his elbows, it began to move toward her.
    â€œHey!” cried Maddie. Caught unaware, the carver jumped, and knife and wood went flying. He spun, leaping from the rock like a man facing attack. Then he saw who was there, and his hostile expression eased.
    â€œWhat happened?” he demanded.
    â€œYour shadow!” she stammered, pointing to the ground behind him. “It moved! Moved by itself. I saw it.”
    He turned to look, and she looked, too. His shadow was exactly like hers, long and thin and gray in the overcast evening. Maddie blushed hotly, waiting for him to laugh at her.
    But the young man didn’t laugh. He just watched his shadow for a minute. When he straightened up and faced her again, his green eyes were wary.
    â€œAre you going to tell the others?” he wanted to know.
    Maddie’s blush deepened. “They’d think I was daft.”
    She watched him turn away and hunt for his knife and block of wood. “I had a dream about it,” she explained. “Your shadow, I mean. It was black, and it hissed at me, and it killed all the grass it touched.”
    Carver found his knife and stowed it back in the leather holder. “That’s silly, Madeleine,” he said. “A shadow can’t kill things. It needs flesh and bones for that.”
    â€œOh,” said the girl, feeling shaky and thoroughly foolish.
    â€œIt can’t hurt you,” he went on seriously. “It just wants to, that’s all. But I won’t let it. You know that, don’t you? You know I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
    Maddie stopped feeling foolish. She felt her skin crawl. She stared at the long, harmless shadow on the grass and the strange young man who cast it.
    â€œDon’t tell the others,” repeated the carver. Maddie managed a smile. He was so handsome and clever, and he cared for her. He wanted her to be safe and well.
    â€œI won’t,” she promised. “They’d laugh at me.” But she knew in her heart that they wouldn’t.

6
    By day, Ned puffed along behind Mad Angus, herding the cattle, and he was locked up with the giant in his stall at night. The old Traveler was the only one who minded. Maddie