Enchanted by Alethea Kontis Read Free Book Online Page A

him back to the world of men. His legs burned. His chest ached. Rivulets of blood wept from scratches in his skin and cracks in his desiccated lips. Without the trees to buffer the plain, the wind swept freely across it, bending the high grass in waves and whipping his long hair about his head.
    He came upon the high rock wall surrounding the towerhouse, followed it back to where a woman hurriedly unpinned sheets from the drying lines. They flipped and snapped to the beat of the oncoming storm. With deft hands, she kept a firm grip on the laundry without letting it fall, tossing garments one by one into the large basket she carried at her side. Her hair and eyes were the same intense gray as the threatening clouds.
    “It’s about time,” she called over the lines to where he stood. “Don’t just stand there. Come help your mother.”
    Clearly she had mistaken him for someone else, but he opened the gate and walked up to aid her.
    “Are you going to...” She looked at him then, finally, her storm-mirrored eyes taking him in from head to toe. In all his pain, it had not occurred to him to be ashamed of his nakedness, and he thanked the gods that it did not occur to her to scream. There was a measure of surprise in her countenance; pity, perhaps; a dash of confusion; and then a stern control washed them all away.
    “Gave the gods a stomachache and they spat you back out, did they?” She ripped more fresh clothes off the line and pushed them at him. “Put these on. My son’s about your age. Not quite so tall and scrawny as you, but they’ll do.”
    He stared at the bundle she’d shoved into his arms: rough, homespun material either brown faded with too many washings or white darkened by too many wearings. “Thank you,” he meant to say, but his reattached tongue refused to get around the words, and he spouted only a single, wretched gasp.
    “You look like a man, but you sound like a crow, what with all you’ve come begging on my doorstep. Go on, dress yourself, if you can manage it. I’ll fetch some water.”
    The manner in which she barked her orders brooked no opposition. Awkwardly he tugged the shirt over his head and then pulled on the too-large trousers. The woman returned with a cup and a length of twine. She thrust the cup at him, and he lamented the few precious drops of liquid escaping down the sides. “Drink,” she ordered. The cool water stung his lips and froze his throat, but he welcomed it. She knotted the twine around his waist while he drained the cup, and then she fetched more water. “Now sit while I finish up.”
    He shuffled to the bench she indicated while gently sipping the water. He watched as she worked, plucking the wild laundry out of the wind. Her gruff manners were curiously at odds with her kindness. There were animals in the Wood that acted this way when they were trying to protect themselves. Or their young. He wondered where her children were.
    Something rustled on the bench. He looked down to see a familiar friend waving at him, its proud pages fluttering about. He picked it up, reveling at how small it now seemed, this little book that once had lain like a giant beside him. He wanted to hold it to his heart smell it and see if her scent lingered there. He wanted to keep it, but that would have made her sad, and he could not bear to cause her pain. The wind turned the pages to the last words penned there. He allowed himself to remember her joy as she’d read the brief passage to him. When the words echoed in his mind, they did so in her voice:
     
Sunday was nothing until she met Grumble—a beautiful man, with the soul of a poet. He was her best friend in the whole wide world, and she loved him with all her heart.
     
    She loved him.
Reading those words refreshed him more than a million glasses of water ever could. She loved him, and the declaration of that love had saved him. She loved him, and it gave him the strength to do what he needed to do. She loved him. He only hoped