The Farwalker's Quest by Joni Sensel Read Free Book Online

Ariel sideways.
    She banged on the door across the lane. It opened, but not by the hand of either Fisher who lived there. Ariel faced the crow man instead. She gasped. Out of his black flapping coat, he looked thinner and not quite so frightening—until he tilted his head like a bird watching an insect it would shortly snap up in its beak.
    Jumping back, Ariel struggled to snatch a lungful of air from the wind.
    â€œYes?” he asked mildly.
    Her breath returned. She remembered her errand. “The Fishers. Did they hear the bell?”
    Burlingam Fisher stepped up behind the crow fellow, grabbing a storm coat and hat. “We have now. Rouse them next door, too, Ariel. It’s hard to hear in this wind.”
    Ariel threw a last look at the stranger and fled. The clanging bell followed. Her heart couldn’t quite separate the alarm from the stranger.
    After banging doors at the two nearest houses, Ariel ducked back home out of the gale. Antsy, she busied herself with finding a ribbon to hold her new bead. Her mother returned not long after she’d strung it.
    â€œIt’s a good thing the Storian dismissed you,” said Ariel’s mother, running her fingers through her wind-tangled hair. “His roof caught a spark.”
    â€œStorian’s house is afire?” Ariel cried. Most of the building was stone, of course. But Storian’s house was larger than usual to make room for his students. Smaller homes like her own were lidded with slate, but Storian’s roof had been thatched.
    â€œHe’s not hurt,” Luna assured her. “The men will have the burning out soon. But someone could have been injured if students had been there and panicked.”
    Staring at the fire in the hearth, Ariel imagined it over her head. The back of her neck crawled, and she couldn’t resist the urge to look up. Their dark beams sat silent and firm.
    â€œWait. How’d it catch after all that rain?” she wondered.
    â€œThis wind, that’s always the danger,” her mother replied. “Only bad thatch soaks through. A chimney spark must have blown up underneath.”
    Silently Ariel knotted her ribbon around her neck. The glass bead fell at her throat. Fingering it, Ariel wondered what the Storian had been doing when flames began eating his roof.Quite possibly he’d been bent over the telling dart. That idea led too quickly to the stranger across the lane. Were the newcomers helping to put out the fire?
    Despite Luna’s explanation, a darker question rumbled in Ariel’s mind: had one of them started it?

CHAPTER
5
    Two things were on tongues in the morning: the fire and the Finders. The grim weather had blown away during the night, luring everyone outdoors to admire the blue sky and catch up on gossip. Once their trade became known, the strangers were offered more beds and meals than they could possibly use. Canberra Docks had gone a long time without a Finder to trade with, and the two men were kept busy. They located lost tools and fishing nets, wandering sheep, and the gold nugget that somebody’s grandpa had hidden too deftly. The village needed a second well, too. Men dug where the Finders suggested and hit water before lunchtime. That prompted talk of a hunt for sea pearls. Their success was frightening for someone like Ariel, who had never seen a Finder at work—or who didn’t want something found. Secretly, she feared that last night’s fire might have been meant to scare Bellam Storian into turning over the telling dart.
    His classes had been canceled until his roof could be fixed, so a troop of kids soon trailed the Finders, trying to spy the magic by which they worked. Ariel overheard someone usingtheir names. The bear man was Elbert. The other was Scarl. That name sounded enough like the cry of a crow, she decided, to suit him. None too eager to know more, she spent the afternoon in her mother’s workroom, fidgeting over tomorrow’s