Cat in Glass by Nancy Etchemendy Read Free Book Online Page A

warm and the songs of the robins so bright that she made up her mind to be friendly in return.
    “Hello,” she said. “What brings you to the creek today?”
    “Cobbler’s reeds,” he said, standing still before her with the sun in his hair. “Old Bot sent me to see if there will be enough cobbler’s reeds this year to make shoes for those who can’t afford leather.”
    Jacinth dropped the mustard flowers into her basket, and she and Joth wandered toward the waiting dye pot. “And what will you tell him? Will there be enough reeds?”
    Joth nodded. “A sizable crop. And what brings you to the creek?”
    “Yellow dye.” Jacinth motioned toward the flowers that lay in her basket like a mound of captured sunlight, bees whirring above them in a single-minded search for pollen.
    When they reached the dye pot, Jacinth shooed the bees away and tipped the basket up. Joth, with his crutches tucked under his arms, scooped the fragrant harvest into the boiling water for her. He lay down in the grass and, chewing on a single leafy blade, watched her stir the dye with a stick and carefully add unspun flax to it. The water hissed and bubbled.
    In the drowsy afternoon, Joth began to talk, slowly and idly, laughing now and then, about leather and lasts and awls, and about his childhood in the house of Bot the cobbler. Much to her astonishment, Jacinth found herself speaking in return. She told him about the little round beetles from which she made her best blue dye, and about the long winter of weaving and the light that came through her window.
    Shadows were thin and the air had grown chilly when Joth looked down at his hands and said, “I’m sorry. You must think I’m a silly fool to lie in the grass all day and bother you when you are busy with your work.”
    Jacinth glanced at him and smiled, for his solemn frown looked out of place beside the foxtails that rode here and there among the strands of his shining hair.
    “Not at all,” she said. “No one has ever spoken to me that way before. And I’ve never spoken to anyone as I have to you just now, except perhaps in dreams.” She felt her cheeks redden and she brushed her face with the full sleeve of her blouse, as if to wipe away steam from the dye pot.
    Joth reached for his crutches and began the slow process of standing up. Jacinth offered him her arm, and he leaned against her as he rose. She felt the warmth of his strong hands on her shoulder and remembered how gently he had cleaned the gravel from her elbows when they were children.
    “I’ll be back a week from today,” he said, “to check the reeds again. Perhaps I’ll see you.”
    “Perhaps,” said Jacinth, and she waved to him as he started across the field toward Aranho. When he had dwindled to a small, limping figure in the distance, she sat down by the fire and picked up a stick. Staring after him, she stirred the ruddy embers beneath the dye pot into a confusion of hungry flames.
    They met many times in the field beside the creek that spring. Joth came more and more often to check the reeds, and Jacinth found reasons, no matter how small, to gather whatever flowers were blooming in the meadow. In the long afternoons, only the birds and the buzzing insects heard the murmur of two human voices in the glens and linden groves. As spring turned into summer, Joth and Jacinth spoke to each other first like gregarious children, then like old friends. By and by, they spoke almost without words.
    The first month of summer was nearly through when Jacinth recognized the longing that welled up in them both. They lay beside the creek, propped on their elbows, facing each other. Joth tickled her lips with a long blade of timothy. Then softly, with his fingertips, he stroked her hair and her cheek and the smooth hollow above it, which no one but Jacinth had ever touched before. She closed her eye and felt the large wetness of tears forming there and did not know whether joy brought them, or confusion, or knowledge