Shroud of Shadow by Gael Baudino Read Free Book Online Page B

the doors wide, and beckoned him in with a smile.
    And as he crested a ridge and started down a slope, George suddenly felt it. It was spring. New, reborn, spring had come to this hidden valley, had cupped it in a strong hand, was reaching out now to George and drawing him into its mansion like a friend, coaxing him to gun the engine a little more, to take the curves a little faster.
    Come on. Come on in. Get your ass in here, boy.
    George came, got his ass in there. Looking for a real spring, suddenly and inexplicably receptive to the potentials of openness—there was nothing behind him, after all, and as he had only a vague supposition that there was anything ahead, he would accept whatever came—he had suddenly found it, found its beginnings, found the first few syllables of its language. He was seeing the spring, hearing it; and he was starting to believe that, maybe . . .
    The van crunched to a stop where the road ended in a puddle of gravel and rock that seemed to have been poured into the middle of a forest clearing like a ladle of pancake butter. George shut off the engine and let a different kind of silence backwash into the van, into his heart. Birdsong. The sigh of pines. A flicker boinged somewhere nearby, flashed red wings at him. A sparrow hawk appeared with a flutter and perched on a branch a few feet away.
    Private property, I guess , George thought. It always is. But it was not private property. Or rather, it was the most private property of all, for it could not be owned, could not be touched or even be seen save by those few who were open enough, who listened, who had come to believe—desperately or not, despairingly or not—in spring.
    ***
    Haec dies, quam fecit dominus: exsultemus . . .
    Omelda struggled up out of sleep as she struggled through everything: plodding heavily along, surrounded by the voices of nuns. They had escorted her into sleep with compline, befuddled her dreams with matins and lauds. Now, with prime, they were lifting her up to greet the new day.
    Deus, qui hodierna die . . .
    She opened her eyes. Dawn. But something was wrong: there was no roof above her, only gray sky. Her father had committed her to the cloister with the understanding that she would be entombed alive as a bride of Christ, and since then, whether it was of wood, or plaster, or figured with intricate vaulting, a roof had always been over her head, and walls—stone or stained glass—had always surrounded her.
    But here there was no roof, there were no walls, and she cringed at the terrible openness, fearful that the heavens might suddenly swing open like vast shutters to reveal the face of God leaning down towards her—white brow, hooked nose, gray beard, eyes piercing as stars—transfixing her in the field like a bug on a carpet.
    Domine Deus omnipotens, qui ad principium . . .
    A murmur from close by. Omelda gasped, turned her head. A few feet away, Natil was curled up in her fantastic cloak of patchwork and feathers. The harper was asleep, and she must surely have been dreaming, for her brow was furrowed, and her delicate face wore an expression of deep concentration.
    Then—slowly, laboriously, plodding through the voices that continued to intone the chant in her mind—Omelda remembered. She was not in the convent, she was not in Maris, she was not in any of the hundred towns and cities through which she had passed in the course of two years. She was sleeping in the open, with Natil, and Natil was . . .
    . . . Natil could . . .
    Omelda prodded herself to her hands and knees, crawled to the harper's side. “Natil!”
    . . . Jesum Christum Filium tuum . . .
    No response. But the idea that her head could suddenly be silent spurred Omelda into actually shaking hercompanion, picking up her carefully wrapped harp, thrusting it into her limp hands.
    “Natil!”
    “What . . .?” Natil opened her eyes, blinked at the graying sky. “What is it, child?”
    “Can you play . . . something, please?”
    Natil