The Castle Behind Thorns by Merrie Haskell Read Free Book Online

when he’d been so thirsty—just in case his first linen sheet-ball had likewise been too heavy and snapped his line.
    His father, though—if he had been the one to supervise this whole experiment, he wouldn’t have warned him about the rope. He would have said, “Do you think there is anything you are forgetting?” and if Sand had said, “No,” he would have just nodded and let Sand proceed, watching from under his heavy brows. He would have let the rope snap, yes; and afterward, he would have shrugged, saying, “And what sort of caution would you have learned if I had stopped you?”
    And then his father would have had Sand make a better rope while he went to look for a hook, and together, they would have tried to fish the bucket out of the well.
    He missed his father then, keenly, so keenly it was like a hundred knives pierced him. In spite of all the arguments, in spite of his father’s ridiculous ambitions for Sand that made no sense . . . he wished he could be home.
    Sand crossed himself and prayed to Saint Eloi and his name saint and to the Seven Founder Saints of Bertaèyn: “If the Lord grants me the gift of leaving this place, if I ever rejoin my family, I will not gainsay Papa again. I’ll go to university, as he wants. I will obey him in all things.”
    The feeling of the knives didn’t go away entirely—in that moment, he missed his grandfather and Agnote. He missed his little sisters, too; they were such pains at times, but right now, all he could think about was the way they blinked at him with their large blue eyes, so adoring and fond, as if he could do anything.
    He pushed the feelings away. He didn’t really have time to mope, did he? He’d better go about fishing that bucket out of the well.
    Unfortunately, there were no hooks to be had—but the castle housed plenty of metal, and a half-functioning smithy, so he would make his own hook. After he reworked his bedsheets. Having no rope jack or a ropewalk to twist linen into rope, he decided that a double-thick braid was the wisest course. He settled in, thinking that he would work on the rope until sunset.
    But Sand finished no rope that day. That day, everything changed.

7
    Stone
    A CRACK IN THE CEILING DIVIDED THE CRYPT IN half, Perrotte noticed. The crack crossed above her, in line with her waist, and her creeping fingertips discovered that the line crossed beneath her as well—a hairline in the stone under her, though much wider above. Light came from the crack in the ceiling, she decided, the dimmest, faintest of lights through the slenderest of cracks, but it kept her from total blindness here in the dark.
    She imagined climbing out of her niche and walking upward into the light. She would come to the surface, and oh, how surprised people would be! She imagined her father’s and her nurse’s happiness at seeing her alive again, and imagined her father’s wife’s shock and perhaps dismay.
    Slowly, Perrotte pulled herself to sitting. Even slower, she put a hesitant foot to the floor. She half stood, a false start, and sat back down. She waited, then tried again. This time she stayed on her feet, and started forward in the dim dark, hands outstretched for balance and to ensure she did not run into something in the shadows. Odd piles of rubble lay about, piles she did not remember.
    She reached the stairs out of the crypt and ascended them, stumbling slightly over broken stones. In the chapel, sunlight poured through the colored glass windows depicting the strange life of Saint Melor and his metal foot and hand. She noted without understanding that the glass was cracked.
    She wandered out to the courtyard, squinting into the brightness of the sun. She tried to make sense of what had once been her home and was now a shattered ruin. Confusion gave way to bewilderment, which in turn gave way to astonishment. This was Boisblanc, the castle where she’d