Golden by Cameron Dokey Read Free Book Online Page A

favorites.”
    â€œAnd yours?” I asked.
    He nodded. “And mine.”
    â€œSo we’d be even then,” I said.
    â€œWe might be,” he acknowledged. “Can I sleep in the hayloft? Mr. Jones snores.”
    â€œSo does the cat,” I said. And had the pleasure of hearing his quick laugh ring out.
    â€œI can carry that,” he said, extending a hand for the basket in which I’d carefully been placing lettuce leaves. I’d forgotten that I still had it over my arm. I held it back. I didn’t need some boy carrying my things.
    â€œSo can I.”
    â€œI can do it better, though. I’m bigger and stronger. And I’ve seen more of the world than you have.”
    â€œWhat does that have to do with anything?”
    â€œParsley.”
    â€œTinker’s boy.”
    â€œAh, so the two of you are making friends,” a new voice said.
    I turned to see Mr. Jones standing at the back door.
    â€œActually, we’re already friends,” I said, and was rewarded by the sound of Harry sucking in his breath. “We met once before.”
    â€œIs that so?” the tinker asked. His face stayed perfectly straight, but I could see the twinkle in the back of his eyes.
He’s known all along about that first meeting,
I thought. And the only wonder was that Harry hadn’t realized this long ago.
    â€œMelisande says if you’re quite finished, she would be pleased to have the lettuce you’re supposed to be fetching in for supper.”
    â€œHere it is,” Harry said. And, before I could prevent him, he snatched the basket right off my arm, then made a dash for the back door. With a laugh,Mr. Jones scooted over quickly to avoid being flattened. That was when I saw it. Perhaps Melisande was right, and I had a gift for sorcery after all. For I’m sure that what I saw then was a quick and sudden glimpse into the tinker’s heart.
    I could see Harry, green eyes alight with mischief. And I thought I saw a girl as well. But she seemed far away, as if her place in Mr. Jones’s heart was older than Harry’s was. No less present, just not in front. For some reason I could neither see nor understand, she had been relegated to the background. I could not see her features clearly, but around her face, I thought I caught a glimpse of summer gold.
    Not me, then,
I thought.
    And at the unexpected pang my own heart felt, my vision faltered, and Mr. Jones was just a man with graying ginger whiskers standing in an open door.
    â€œCome in to dinner, Rapunzel,” he said.
    And so I did, and did not speak of what I had seen. For he had not asked me to look, and that which lies in another’s heart, even if glimpsed out of turn, should never be told out of turn, if it can be helped.

Six
    I thought about it, though, from time to time. Who was the girl Mr. Jones kept at the back of his heart? Just as I wondered about the identity of the person Melisande kept hidden inside hers but never spoke of.
I made room for you inside my heart,
she’d told me on the day we first met Mr Jones. But who had she asked to scoot over so that I might have a place?
    I did not ask either of these questions, though.
    There are some subjects that, no matter how much your brain may tell you it would like an explanation, your heart and tongue refuse to touch. And so the question of who shared the sorceress’s heart with me remained unanswered, because I could not bring myself to ask it.
    And then it was forgotten, at least for a while.
    For something changed the year I turned sixteen. A thing that at first seemed to have nothing to do with either Melisande or me, though it turned out to have a great deal to do with both of us.
    It started out simply, with the weather. That summer was the hottest I could remember, the hottest I had ever known. For many weeks, too many, in fact, there had been no rain at all. Each day, early in themorning before the sun rose too high, Melisande