Kendra Kandlestar and the Crack in Kazah by Lee Edward Födi Read Free Book Online

found herself stretched out on one of the big wooden chairs in the kitchen of the yew tree house. Near her, on the hearth, a small cauldron was bubbling. It offered a comforting, familiar smell. Countless times Kendra had leaned over that cauldron, preparing dinner for her and Uncle Griffinskitch, and for a moment she managed to convince herself that everything that had happened that day was just a muddled dream.
    Somehow I fell out of the cloud ship and banged my head, she thought. And now, here I am, safe inside my own house. I didn’t really meet . . . .
    Then Gayla leaned over her. “Hmph,” she snorted. “You’re alive after all. I told Eeks you’d be okay.” She dabbed at Kendra’s forehead with a ball of cloth—and instinctively Kendra jerked away. She couldn’t help it—meeting this young version of her mother was all too strange. It was like encountering a ghost.

     

    “Don’t worry, Braids,” Gayla said hotly. “I’m not going to hurt you. Who do you think carried you all the way in here?”
    Kendra’s mind was buzzing. She found herself wanting to do one of two things. The first was to hug Gayla and tell her that she was her daughter. The second was to just run out the door and try to forget any of this had ever happened. But in truth, Kendra was too stunned to do either.
    “Besides,” Gayla continued, completely oblivious to Kendra’s swirling vortex of emotions, “you’re not going to get any nursing from Beards. Or sympathy.”
    “Uncle Griffinskitch?” Kendra murmured.
    “He’s not my uncle,” the Teenling said. “I told you, he’s my brother.”
    Kendra’s eyes flickered. Everything was so confusing! “Oki?” Kendra murmured.
    “He’s out picking carrots for the soup,” Gayla replied. “But he wouldn’t say what’s going on with you two. I guess that’s your job.” She crossed her arms and looked at Kendra expectantly.
    “Well, er . . .” Kendra stammered. She had no idea what to say. Instead she just stared at the floor.
    “Let me guess,” Gayla finally said. “You have an ornery old master who treats you like kitchen scraps. So you filched his ring and ran for the hills. And then you bump into me and now you have no place to go.”
    “That . . . er, sounds about right,” Kendra said. At least the part about having no place to go, she added in her head.
    “You can stay here for now,” Gayla said, turning to stir the soup on the hearth. “Beards won’t like it—but he doesn’t like anything. What happened to your folks anyway?”
    “They were lost,” Kendra said, tugging nervously on one braid. “Outside the curtain.”
    “Oh,” Gayla said matter-of-factly. “Did you know them?”
    “N-no,” Kendra said. “I was just a baby.”
    “Yeah, never knew my parents either,” Gayla declared. “My mom died when I was born—she was pretty old, you know. Then my dad died right afterwards. Broken heart, Beards says. Whatever. Now it’s just me and him.”
    Kendra was in shock. She had spent her whole life without parents, but it had never occurred to her that her own mother had grown up the same way.
    “But Unc—Beards, I mean, your brother, that is,” Kendra sputtered. “He’s your brother. He cares about you.”
    “Hmph,” Gayla muttered with a roll of her eyes. “You’ve obviously never met him! He was thirty years old when I was born. Sure most Een siblings have large gaps between them—but not that large. My brother never expected to have a sister, especially one he’d have to take care of.”
    Kendra tugged a braid. This story sounded all too familiar.
    “The only thing Beards cares about is becoming an elder,” Gayla continued. “That’s why we have to always act like model citizens. Set the right example. Een forbid we ever damage his reputation—or his chance of becoming an elder.”
    At that moment, as if to catch Gayla in the act of speaking ill of him, the door flew open and there stood Uncle Griffinskitch himself. Or at least