Hammer & Air by Amy Lane Read Free Book Online Page B

dark.
    “Oh… oh gods… I take it all back. Keep moving, Hammer. I see a house!”
    “A what?” He were groggy and surprised, and I really didn’t blame him.
    “I swear it’s a cottage. I can see it from here. Can’t you see it?”
    “Are those roses?”
    He were right to sound doubtful. We were well into the beginning of winter; there were snow on the ground to our shins, and the bare branches of the trees were black against the dazzling white. But there… it were far enough away for us to doubt our sanity, and almost close enough to touch. It were a cottage on the green. The lawn were a little brown—like a lawn in late fall—and the trees around it were brilliantly colored. They were even the different sorts of trees: fruitless mulberry trees, maple trees, poplars, and honey locusts instead of pines and redwoods. The cottage itself had a millwheel and a stream running to power it, and yes, rose trees. A red one so dark and purple it were the color of blood, and a tree with blooms so purely white they were nearly blue. Each tree twined the boards supporting the awning on the side of the porch.
    “That’s odd,” I mumbled, conscious of the idea that everything about it were odd, but fixating on this one thing because I could not seem to leave it be.
    “That we’re both having the same dream?” Hammer asked, his grin a little loopy, and I hastened him toward the vision, because if we were going to die, this place looked decidedly warmer than the woods we’d been lost in for nearly a month.
    “That the roses haven’t turned colors,” I said, and it were true. Rose bushes that old and that fully grown would have long ago met and melded, become cross-pollinated, sporting blooms the color of a bloody dawn.
    Of course, that were the least of the oddities of the cottage, but since the thing were looking more and more solid and more and more welcoming as we drew near, I simply gave a whole and unfettered thanks from my heart for the little dwelling in the first place.
    Together, Hammer and I trundled up the porch stairs and to the door, and I pounded on it and prayed for mercy.
    No one answered, but the door swung open slowly, revealing a snug and warm kitchen, glowing with golden lamplight.
    Were it enchanted? No doubt about it. Were it dangerous? Very probably.
    But Hammer were dying, even as he giggled on my shoulder about the damned bloody roses, disobeying my precious laws of science, and I vowed that I would be the one to pay the price for any magic welcome we received.

Part IV Wishes in the Hearth
     
    The place were empty. It were small—only two rooms and a privy besides the kitchen, currently lit with two lamps hanging from either far corner as we walked in. There were a sitting room, with big stuffed chairs and benches, and a chesterfield, all with cushions and blankets strewn about, as well as a great carpet of furs, stitched together in any order, but tanned and cared for, soft and warm. A fire blazed on the sitting room hearth, hot enough to keep the entire house cozy.
    Next to the sitting room were a bedroom, with a great bed, big enough to sleep four hale men, easy, and softly woven blankets and great, fluffy quilts hanging over the end and folded neatly at the foot. The pillows were thick and soft, and it were here that I stripped Hammer to his skivvies and made him lay down on those pristine white sheets.
    “Gonna get them dirty,” he muttered. “Nobody to clean them but us. I never learned laundry, did you?”
    “No,” I muttered. “They showed girls how to do laundry, which were stupid…”
    “Because it’s not like we don’t like our clothes clean, is it, Eirn? I know you like your clothes clean, and your sheets. I made sure, you know, to wash myself every night, so I didn’t have to see your nose wrinkle. You wrinkled your nose at the other boys, going to sleep dirty in soiled sheets. Didn’t want to see your nose wrinkle. It’s a nice nose. A little small, but that makes