Into the Free by Julie Cantrell Read Free Book Online Page B

kids are free to play. They all follow the old gypsy woman, skipping and clapping and singing. A children’s song about birds and mothers and learning to fly. It’s like a scene in a fairy tale. Nothing like anything that happens in real life. Especially at my house, where doors slam and glass breaks and adults never skip or clap or laugh. I scan the faces, looking for the boy’s deep eyes, crooked smile. He’s not here.
    For years I have watched the travelers trail through town, but I’ve never seen locals join them, and they’ve never taken this route, in front of our cabin.
    The woman waves to me with fingers that curl the air. I smile shyly, embarrassed to be caught staring. She motions for me to join the parade, but I slide behind the peeling porch column and try to disappear. The woman walks my way, leaving the children to wait for her in the thin edges of our gravel lane, giggling and whispering about the strange girl who thinks they can’t see her on the porch.
    “You know,” says the woman. “Gypsy see invisible.”
    I want her to keep talking to me.
    “You want zheltaya?” she asks. “Yellow?” She is reading my mind. I’ve heard they can do that sort of thing. I shrug and look down at my dirty feet.
    “Oh, I see,” she says. “Too old for nonsense? What this make me?”
    I smile so she won’t think I am rude, but I can’t think of a single thing to say. Except to ask about the boy. I don’t dare.
    “Never too old to parade,” the woman says. Then she wraps a bright-yellow scarf around my head, repeats the word “zheltaya,” and pulls me toward the crowd. I let the woman take me anywhere she wants to lead me. I worry for a second about Mama shouting, “Millie, stop! You can’t just run off with the gypsies.”
    But she doesn’t even notice I am gone.

CHAPTER 8
     
    At first I walk in silence, taking it all in. The singing, the skipping, the laughing. The gypsies parade through town every year, but I can’t figure out why local children are joining this year’s march to the cemetery. The woman holds my hand, and now we are leading the way. All through town, folks follow us. I’m sure they’re worrying, trying to decide whether they should pluck the children back from the witch’s spell. Some do, clinging tightly to their children’s shoulders. Others give their kids a gentle nudge and encourage them to join the fun.
    Along the route, the woman gathers more and more children, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who played his flute and led all the kids from town. So this is it, I think, remembering Sloth and the long black train that runs through Mr. Sutton’s fields. This is how I get into the free.
    We follow a familiar path, the same one I walked at age ten when I first tracked the sounds of laughter to the cemetery. But this time, the walk doesn’t feel far. In fact, it ends much too soon.
    When we reach the grave site, other gypsies greet the old woman with hugs and kisses and friendly words. I let go of her hand and reach up to feel my yellow scarf. I am glowing. A ray of light is shining out of me, straight and bright. I practice her word for yellow, letting the tip of my tongue dance the way hers had done. “Zheltaya.” She hears me and smiles.
    We sit in the grass around the graves and a bearded man asks me a question in a language I don’t understand. A swarm of gypsy children works the locals, gathering coins in their ragged hats and stuffing their tattered pockets with change. The dark, bearded man wears a purple vest. He pulls a long peacock feather from a bundle tucked into his green cap, and he hands it to me before sitting to strum his round guitar.
    And then I see him, the boy from my dreams. He wears a loose white shirt and a string of coins around his waist. His long dark hair falls over his face. He holds a shiny harmonica to his lips and taps his toes as he tunes the wind.
    Like Jack, he makes me think of fire. But unlike Jack’s flames, which burn up my insides