The Humming of Numbers by Joni Sensel Read Free Book Online Page A

agitation was almost insulting. The senior monks were giving Aidan chances to fail, perhaps, but also to prove himself. If he could satisfy Brother Nathan, the scriptorium would move that much nearer his reach. He resolved to show only devotion. As long as he did what he was told, and stopped thinking of Lana as anything but a burden to bear, he’d be fine.
    When the monks were dismissed from supper, he tried to send Rory a reassuring smile. He completely ignored the signals his friend sent in return, a request to meet at the privy. Instead Aidan headed directly for the abbey’s back gate, which stood nearer the woods. He was worried about running out of time and returning either empty-handed or late.
    Emerging through the high embankment that circled the compound, Aidan felt curiously naked. Even the autumn sun seemed to recognize a monk out of place. It peeped at him from behind one cloud, came out to stare directly, then ducked away behind another.
    He walked tentatively past a few huts and noisy craftsmen’s sheds, soon passing into the fields. Then Aidan jerked up the hem of his robe and ran. He needed to go fast to be sure he got back on time, but more than that he needed to feel his muscles doing work other than plowing
and weeding and scraping calfskin. He sprinted until his lungs hurt and sweat tickled him under his robe.
    He’d dropped back to a walk before it occurred to him that he hadn’t been gone for ten minutes and he’d already succumbed to a distraction unbecoming a monk. For Aidan, the monks’ insistence on thoughtful, unhurried movement was harder to abide than unquestioning obedience or silent meals or nearly anything else. He told himself speed had been necessary, not frivolous, if he was to obey Brother Nathan and be back before the next worship.
    Bent figures cut and bundled oats in the distance. The harvesting monks took no notice of Aidan as he ducked into the woods, relieved not to have met anyone else. The smell of sun-warmed bark and molding leaves enveloped him. Good memories welled up inside him in response. As a boy he’d spent long afternoons playing in the woods with his brother Gabriel, climbing trees and pretending to be warriors. Now Aidan was struck by how much he missed not only his family but the hillsides and vales and creeks. The flickering forest was a welcome change from the constraints of the abbey. He wandered amid the crackling autumn leaves, a smile on his face belying the pinch in his heart.
    He soon found a cluster of oaks, not as far from the abbey as he’d feared. The oak apples were plentiful on the ground or still clinging to branches within reach, and
the small wasp that had grown within each had left long ago. Pulling up a fold of his robe, Aidan dropped the green and brown lumps into the makeshift pouch. He enjoyed picking out their number, twenty-seven, which whispered to him amid the chorus of birdsong and wind’s sigh and other numbers, most in the twenties and thirties, that swirled through the forest.
    When Aidan could no longer add oak apples to his cache without the same quantity spilling back out, he straightened and adjusted the load against his belly, wondering if he had enough.
    â€œI hope you’re not planning to eat those.”
    Aidan whirled. Standing behind him, having watched for who knew how long, was Lana.

VII
    A idan stared. It took several long seconds for him to overcome his surprise enough to speak. He had been so focused on the sound of twenty-seven that he had not heard the whir of her eleven behind him. Certainly he heard it now, verifying the tale his eyes told.
    â€œWhat are you doing here?”
    Lana moved closer. “I saw you running. So I followed.”
    â€œYou fol—You’re supposed to be in the kitchen!” Rory’s words came back to him, and his astonishment rolled into suspicion. He cast his gaze into the shadowy trees, looking for spies.
    â€œDid they send you after