Like Father by Nick Gifford Read Free Book Online

course for a while.
    Farther up the hill it ran between two fields, lined on one bank by a barbed wire fence and on the other by another row of willows. When the going became harder, Cassie kicked off her shoes and went ankle-deep in the water. “Come on,” she said. “It’s bleeding cold, but it’s okay.”
    Reluctant, Danny untied his trainers and removed them, and then his socks. He stepped into the water and yelped. It was like ice, and the stones were hard and bit into his feet like rounded teeth. He danced onto his other foot, and instantly the sensations were repeated.
    He backed out of the water.
    Cassie came laughing after him, and they sat on the crumbling grassy bank, drying their feet in the sun.
    “Know what my name means?”
    “Hnh?” Danny had been lying back, eyes closed against the bright light. He turned his head and squinted at Cassie.
    She had produced some wraparound shades from somewhere and was just putting them on. “My name,” she prompted him.
    “I thought they were calling you ‘Kathy’ at first,” said Danny.
    She laughed. “Yeah. And everyone had a lithp, mithter Thmith.”
    “Cassie. Cassandra? Greek, isn’t it? Or Roman.”
    “Very good. Cassandra Jeanette Lomax. Daughter of the king of Troy. Cassandra was, that is. She’s like, the most drop-down gorgeous of all his daughters. Okay. You don’t have to say anything at this point, Smith. Okay? The god Apollo, he gave her the power of prophecy if she’d like, you know, give him a quick tumble in return. But she was a tease, was Cassandra. Once she had what she wanted, she dumped the guy, but you don’t want to be doing that to a god, so he turned his gift into a curse. He made it so that no-one would believe her when she told them something was going to happen, even though she was always right. So she went through her life with no-one believing her. She even foretold her own death, but they didn’t believe that, either. Damned gloomy name to give your first-born, if you ask me.”
    Danny shifted on the grass, but said nothing.
    “So. Aren’t you going to ask me to look into the future? That’s what people usually do when I tell them the Cassandra story. You say you’re just like everyone else, but you’re not asking the obvious question.”
    “Maybe I don’t want to know the future,” said Danny. It was like the astrology: nonsense. But he liked her talking, even so.
    “You know what I think? I think maybe someone’s put a spell on you. Maybe even Apollo himself. He’s taken your tongue, cursed you to talk in as few words as possible. One day someone will break that spell and you’ll start to talk and you’ll never stop.”
    She had done it again! Another innocent choice of phrase that cut right to the dark depths of his secret past. I’ll have their tongues , his father’s journal had said. He had wanted to stop people talking, stop the voices that plagued him, and so he had removed his victims’ tongues.
    “You okay?”
    “I’m okay. Just some things I’d rather not think about.”
    “Okay. You want to kiss me?”
    She was looking down at him, leaning on her elbow. She looked nervous, suddenly.
    Danny nodded.
    “No tongues, mind.” She leaned down and her lips pressed against Danny’s.
    He didn’t know whether to close his eyes or not, so he narrowed them. He saw his own eyes in her shades when she was close. He didn’t know whether to breathe or not, but then it was over, and she had pulled back.
    “Did it work?” she asked.
    He looked at her. This was another one of her questions he didn’t understand.
    “The kiss breaks the spell. Or at least, it does in the stories. It turns the frog into the handsome prince. It wakens the sleeping princess.”
    Another one of her games.
    “You’re supposed to start talking now that your spell has been broken.”
    He shook his head, grinning. He couldn’t keep up. “You know what my name means?” he asked. “Do you know what’s special about