Chance by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online Page A

was no loved one waiting by his cold hearth.
    He splashed into fen. No matter, still; already he was wet to the skin. Though never before, even in Wirral, had he met with such a bog. Thick mud oozed up to his thighs, almost up to his crotch, slowing him to a snail’s pace.
    â€œHow much farther?” he called into the dusk.
    A babble of laughter sounded instead of an answer, and Chance stiffened: something large was bestirring the fen, rising luminous into the dusk.
    The laughter of the denizens rippled and warbled from the forest all around. There must have been hundreds of them watching, as dense as a flock of starlings.
    And Chance shouted with terror, falling back into the muck.
    Looming over him, a sort of a snake of single eye, a dragon—but no, the thing was too stubby to be called a snake, too formless and squalid for a dragon. More like a huge worm or a maggot, fungus-colored, with the glistening soft skin of a catfish. Slimy fen water dripped down from it, and the single eye deepset in the center of its head peered toward him.
    Chance floundered back from it, thrashing for balance and footing, and the Denizens shook the small tree limbs with their laughter. Gleeful voices shouted.
    â€œDon’t hurt it, Chance!”
    â€œIt only wants to dance!”
    â€œWirralworm, we call it!”
    Above them all the voice of the young prince carried.
    â€œChance, there is no cullion tree. But see, we’ve found a phallus for ye!”
    If I had a sword , he thought grimly, if I had a nobleman’s weapon .… But what would be the use, indeed, of doing battle with the nodding monster? It had not moved from its place amidst the muck, and even as he crawled at last onto solid ground and stood, streaming bogwater and greenish slime, to face it, the thing went limp and collapsed beneath the surface. There was a faint glow as of something rotten, and it was gone.
    â€œBut it’s always there,” said a voice close by his ear, “hidden deep yet not asleep. Just like the manhood in you, Chance.”
    He turned, sluggish with disgust, to face the copper-brown prince of the Denizens, barely visible in the nightfall darkness.
    â€œVery well,” said Chance, “you’ve had your play. Now which way to my home?”
    The handspan youth chuckled in delight at the happenstance rhyme. “The sun will show you the way, come day,” he sang. “Sleep well!” Within the moment he and all the others were gone. Their laughing farewells echoed away into Wirral.
    Chance did not wait for day. He blundered off, on the move to keep his chilled blood from pooling in his veins, and roamed all night though he could see nothing beneath cloud gloom that shut out the moon and stars. He did not mind the darkness; it matched his wakeful rage.
    Halimeda’s babe was born as the first snow fell thick and cold on turrets and trees. It was a girl. A hard labor, but the lady would be well enough after a ten of days, if she did not weaken with fever. This much Chance learned from the talk of the alehouse—he went often to the alehouse, those days, and made friends with those who muttered there in the evenings after a day of wearisome toil in the lord’s service. He inquired of Halimeda also from Roddarc’s steward, to whom he made his reports. The lord himself he had not seen since the night he had ordered Roddarc out of his lodge. Nor was Chance admitted to see Halimeda.
    The talk had it, after several days, that she was on the mend and the infant thriving. But the tenth day came and passed, and there was no courtly gathering, no ceremony of welcome for the little one, no bestowal of a name.
    Near Chance’s cottage lay a broad, hollow log of apple, the most auspicious of woods. When that day had passed he worked the evening by lantern light and cut a section of it, took it in by his hearth. There in days that followed he cleaned and shaped it, polished it with wax, fitted ends to