Stony River by Ciarra Montanna Read Free Book Online Page A

leaping comically in the air—that they skittered heedlessly down the slope almost out of sight before Joel gave a shout that stopped them short. “Hawthorn! Blazingstar!”
    They came running back up, snatched a few mouthfuls of grass, and went back to playing.
    Sevana laughed in merriment, her eyes dancing with a light new to them. The lambs’ cavortings mirrored the feelings she had in that carefree place: she wanted to run and join in the fun. “Could you tell me their names?” she asked, irresistibly on her feet.
    Joel obliged her, taking her through the flock to introduce her to Glacier, the bellwether, and the other fifteen or so bucks and ewes. The lambs he saved for last, for they were off playing by themselves—the frolicking pair he had just called back, along with Thistle, Goldthread, and the cunning Gyrfalcon who measured the newcomer to the meadow with a calculating stare. It was a lot to learn, he knew. But Glacier and Goldthread were easy—the biggest and smallest respectively. Woodrush had a notch in his ear from a dispute with Hemlock. Arrow had a scar on her muzzle from a dispute with a thornbush. She would get them all in time.
    Wandering there on the slope, Sevana tried to miss nothing that magical place had to offer. The mountains were beautiful, astonishingly so, and the meadow was so clean and sweeping and open that it gave her a feeling of freedom—even, curiously, of peace. As they returned to their sitting spot, she was already plotting how best to immortalize it on canvas. “Would it be all right if I came up here to paint?” she asked.
    “Anytime you wish.”
    “Thank you. I’ve never painted outdoors before, nor used a real-life subject, so this will be quite a challenge,” she said, wishing she could start that very second. “Having this to paint will almost make up for—” She stopped with an odd look, and made no attempt to finish her sentence.
    But she didn’t have to say the words, for Joel studied her face with keen perception. “You don’t want to be here?”
    “Not exactly—out here in the sticks.” She shook her head with a disbelieving little laugh. “Fenn doesn’t even have running water.” Then it occurred to her that Joel probably didn’t, either. But it was too late to make pretense of her true opinions, and the words tumbled on recklessly, “And he eats bear meat .”
    Joel was gentleman enough not to smile as he inquired: “Do you mind if I ask why you’re here then, Sevana, if you’d rather not be?”
    “Because my father wanted me to stay with Fenn after I graduated.” She plucked a fragile yellow glacier lily from the grass. “I’m not sure why it made such a difference to him, whether I moved to Lethbridge now or in the fall. But to his way of thinking, being four months closer to eighteen mattered a great deal as far as me living on my own.”
    Joel nodded as if he might agree with such fatherly logic, but only remarked, “So it’s Lethbridge you’re off to. That’s where I bought my sheep when I was first starting out, from a breeder over there. And I have a friend who moved there from Cragmont about five years ago.”
    She was interested that he knew of it. “What’s the town like?”
    “It’s a good-sized city on the plain. It’s not bad, if you like open country.” The inference was there, ever so slightly, that he did not. “Do you have friends or relatives there?”
    “No, I just chose it for the art school.”
    “Where does your father live?”
    “He’s on a restricted military base in London. He’s a special intelligence analyst and goes from place to place—and I have been in boarding school until now.”
    “What about your mother?” he asked, if a bit hesitantly.
    “She left my father when I was very young. She married again soon after and broke all ties with us.” There was no pain in Sevana’s clear eyes as she spoke, for to her it was merely a fact to be related. “My father never remarried. He’s always