Song of the Gargoyle by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Read Free Book Online

toward the well when he heard something that made him stop in midstep and strain his ears to listen. The conversation went on, and although he could not make out the whispered words of the woman, he heard clearly enough her husband’s answering bellow.
    “What horsemen? I saw no horsemen today.” And then after a pause in which his wife again whispered urgently, “An escaped fugitive? Three silver pieces? A reward of three silver pieces for a half-grown boy? You are dreaming, woman.” There was more whispering and then the man whirled around, bellowing more loudly still. “Boy. Where are you? Come back here, lad.”
    But Tymmon was already off and running, around the corner of the cottage, across the stableyard, over a rail fence and out across the pasture toward the west. Toward the west, where the Sombrous was now a silhouette of black velvet domes and spires against a bloodred sky.
    He reached the edge of the forest at twilight and stumbled in among the first tall trees, shaking with fear and exhaustion. He had been running in panic for what seemed an eternity, running and falling, leaping up to run again, stopping only from time to time to listen desperately for the sound of pursuit—for the shouts of the farmer and the baying of his ferocious dog. But each time the painful rasp of his own breathing drowned out all other sound. And so he had run again and again until at last he reached the forest.
    Beneath the light-blocking canopy, he moved more slowly, working his way around tree trunks and clumps of yew and elderberry, telling himself the farmer would not follow him here—at least not until daylight. No one would risk the blinding darkness and the demons that haunted... A whimper interrupted Tymmon’s musings, a pitiful, timorous sound that had somehow arisen from his own throat. Clamping his teeth against another such unmanly utterance, he sank to a crouch and began to creep backwards. He had retreated for several yards before he stopped—overtaken by a sudden promising idea.
    A fire. He would build a fire. It was said that a bright blaze would frighten away wild beasts. And perhaps its revealing light might even hold at bay other, more dreadful, things. Or at least make it possible to see what was approaching before its teeth were fastened in his throat. But it would have to be done quickly before the dim red-tinged twilight died away to complete darkness.
    Back among the tall trees he cast about until he found a small clearing, where he quickly collected a large heap of fallen branches. After preparing a pile of leaves and twigs, he opened the tinderbox and began to strike the flint and steel. A spark flew into the waiting tinder and flared into a flame, which he hastily fed with twigs. Next came branches, and soon Tymmon was sitting beside a roaring fire.
    Warmth. The first since he had fled Austerneve. In the comforting glow Tymmon found that he was able, at least for brief moments, to forget that outside the range of his firelight the dark forest night was all around him. Taking off his soggy shoes and clammy cloak, he hung them on a drying rack fashioned from a broken branch. Then he opened his pack and arranged its contents, too, around the fire.
    His food was almost gone. Having eaten a few crumbs of bread, a sliver of dried meat, and the last of the cheese, he fed the fire once more before he wrapped himself in his blanket and curled up as near to the flames as he dared. He would not sleep, he told himself, and he did not, or at least not deeply nor for long.
    Lying motionless, swaddled in his blanket like a moth in a cocoon, he began to make an astonishing discovery. His body and everything connected to it, the pain of hunger and tired, chilled muscles, seemed to have faded away into a dreamlike distance—still there, but without real significance. Much more urgent and important realities seemed to be taking place elsewhere. But in an elsewhere that he could somehow see and experience.
    He could