The City in the Lake by Rachel Neumeier Read Free Book Online

litters and weak piglets, and everyone knows that pigs are hard to touch with any spell or curse. By then Timou’s mind was entirely occupied by the new urgency to understand this common trouble.
    At first few people in the village understood that what afflicted their stock afflicted everyone’s. Then they all understood, and began to be afraid. The midwife made charm after charm for the ewes and the goats, the apothecary made infusions of partridgeberry and milk thistle. But the animals continued to deliver stillborn young.
    The village magistrate was the one who came finally to Timou’s father. Timou let him in wordlessly and stepped around him to pull the door to when the magistrate left it a little ajar. She explained to the question in his gaze, “A door open is welcome, a door closed is denial, but a latch that does not quite catch is perilous,” and saw another kind of question grow behind his earnest eyes.
    Timou smiled and took the magistrate to the parlor and offered him tea, which he accepted a little warily, and went to fetch her father.
    “Now, Kapoen—” said the magistrate nervously when Timou’s father came into the parlor.
    “I am aware,” said Timou’s father. “The lambing.” He was frowning, an expression that made him look severe, although Timou knew he was only thoughtful.
    “Yes,” said the magistrate. “The lambing.”
    “It is not only the sheep,” said Timou’s father.
    “I know. The goats, the pigs—”
    “The eggs in the nest,” Timou said softly. “The foxes in the den.”
    “Oh,” said the magistrate faintly. He looked at Timou. “You are . . . you are growing up, aren’t you, Timou?”
    Kapoen gave his daughter a thoughtful smile, and the magistrate a thoughtful frown. “We are aware of the matter, Master Renn.”
    The magistrate twisted the tail of his coat between his fingers, quite unconsciously. “What are you . . . Are you doing something to make it . . . right, Kapoen? If there is . . . Is there something you can do to make it right?”
    “We are waiting,” said Timou’s father softly. “We are watching to see the shape of this curse, if curse there is; we are looking for the pattern that lies behind what happens and does not happen.”
    The magistrate blinked. “What does not happen?”
    “The trees have budded out,” Timou explained, and the magistrate’s eyes slid to her, surprised. She said, taking no notice of his surprise, “The spring breeze has warmed; the snow has melted; the flowers have come. But the squirrels in their nests have no blind young to nurse, and the owls hunt only for themselves and not for nestlings. The peas and radishes do not sprout. The early flowers set no seed.”
    “I see,” said the magistrate. Timou was not certain he did, but her father said, tranquil and calm, “When there is something we know to do, you may be sure we will do it,” and the magistrate seemed to find this reassuring. He finished his tea with evident relief and left quickly, not like a busy man, but like a man trying to look busy and not nervous. The magistrate had always been nervous of Timou’s father, who was dark and quiet and rarely explained what he was thinking. Now, Timou saw, he was nervous of her, too.
    Timou let him out and closed the door behind him, since he had not quite let the latch catch this time either. Then she went back to the parlor and looked with faint interest at the pattern the tea leaves had left in his cup. She said to her father, her eyes still on the leaves, “Ness is pregnant, you know.”
    “Yes,” agreed her father.
    “So you will put this right before she comes to her time?”
    “Be calm,” advised her father, and handed Timou a cup of tea out of the air. She took it after a moment, wrapping her fingers around the delicate cup, and breathed in the fragrant steam. It was valerian and mint, meant to soothe.
    “The disturbed mind perceives nothing,” said her father, and produced a cup of tea for himself.