Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) by Vera Nazarian Read Free Book Online Page A

replied.
    Lizabette’s brows went up archly. “I thought there weren’t any more pies left!”
    Grial snorted. “I certainly beg to differ! Let’s go down and look in those baskets!”
     
     
    T hey got back to Rollins Way by the time the moon was high up in the partially overcast sky, and everyone was more than ready for bed.
    As Betsy and the cart pulled up to the corner near the little alley and the house, Niosta was still wiping her mouth and her pie-stained sticky hands against her dingy coat, and smacking her lips. “Oh, that was darn good! Best apple pie ever!”
    She was so busy picking her teeth with a wood splinter that she never looked to see who was waiting for them at the door of Grial’s house.
    One of the two small shadows leaning near the doorway separated from the wall. And then, “Sis!” cried Catrine. “Jupiter’s balls an’ entrails! You’re alive, Niosta! An’ so am I!”
    It was indeed Catrine, and next to her, somewhat shyly silent, Faeline.
    “Grial!” Catrine exclaimed next, while her sister whooped and came hurtling down the cart to hug her.
    “Oh, goodness!” Grial said, halting Betsy and grabbing on to her brimmed hat with one hand in a slap of surprise. “Is that another of my favorite Cobweb Brides? So glad to see you, girlie! And I see you’ve brought a friend!”
    “I’m Faeline, Ma’am,” said the blond girl bashfully, stepping away from the wall, and wiping the back of her nose with a mitten. “I’m from Chidair Keep and town. We’ve escaped the dungeons, and floated on the magic river with lords and ladies, and then got to see Death Himself!”
    “Well, gracious be!” Grial smiled, giving her an intent look-over. Meanwhile Lizabette and Marie waved and everyone exchanged greetings and jumbled chatter.
    Catrine told them the whole story in a breathless torrent. Grial listened thoughtfully at the same time as she guided Betsy into the pitch-black alley around the corner and the back yard, with only the two torches on the cart to light the way, and the girls walked alongside in excitement, everyone having forgotten sleep.
    Betsy was unhitched, rubbed down and placed in her warm stall, and still Catrine was talking, occasionally interrupted by Niosta and the others.
    At last they made it indoors, and were in the cheerful front parlor of Grial’s house, seated on the sofa and the chairs.
    “. . . An’ so, there was this nasty-creepy disappearin’ water from the River Lethe that makes you forget stuff worse’n a drunken sailor with a bashed-in head, an’ turns out everyone’s drank it, even some damn fool Gods!” Catrine was saying. “And then the blasted fools drank it again, or should I say the Ladyship who thought she was the Cobweb Bride drank it again, and suddenly, smack as anything, there she was! She remembered she was this big ol’ golden Goddess, by the name of Dimmeeter! An’ then she told stink-for-brains Death to drink, an’ he did—good thing too, since all he remembered was no better than a steamin’ bowl of poo—and so he went all black as soot and became this big ol’ God of the Underworld, none other than Hades himself! And then, and then—oh, oh! And then there was all this stuff about another rotted Goddess by the name of Persephone, who’s none other ’an the blasted Sovereign of the Domain! And then, Percy Ayren was there too, and the Black Knight, who, it turns out, is not all that bad, an’ not too bad lookin’ if you know what I mean—”
    Niosta and Lizabette and Marie all exclaimed variously at the mentions of the latter.
    “—and finally, Hades told us he’ll take us anywhere we wanted, so Sybil an’ Regata an’ Faeline an’ me all decided, what the hell, to come here to Letheburg! So we tell the ol’ goat where we wanna go, close our eyes, an’ next thing we know, we’re on a street in Letheburg! Sybil an’ Regata took off home to see their folks, and me an’ Faeline, we just came here! An’ so, here we