The Last Sin Eater by Francine Rivers Read Free Book Online Page B

heard of a man once who was running for home and got struck dead in the meadow just below his house. Granny said she reckoned he had done something real bad to rile up God like that.
    Another jagged shaft of light struck in the distance, and I thought sure it was coming for me. A wind came up as the thunder rolled again. Closer and closer it came. Granny had told me God’s voice was like the thunder, and he lived in the dark clouds. She had learned all this when she was very young in Wales and had attended services every Sunday with her mother and father. “He is fire and wind,” she’d said.
    “Is God speaking to us, ma’am?”
    “Shouting more like it,” Gervase Odara said as the thunder rolled again, so heavy and loud now the hair stood up on my head. “Stay to the trees, Cadi, and move along. The skies’ll open afore we can make shelter the way ye’re dawdling.”
    As the lightning flashed, I thought I saw someone standing in the trees above us. The light blazed hot, and there he was in his tattered clothes and hood.
    “Sin eater!” I cried out and then the light dimmed and so did he.
    “Hush now!” Gervase Odara snapped, having glanced sharply up the hill. “Thar’s nothing there.” She caught hold of my hand and pulled me back and along with her through the woods. When I looked back over my shoulder, he was gone.
    Mama sent me for firewood as soon as we arrived home.
    Lilybet was waiting beside the pile of oak Papa had chopped.
    “The healer says you’re not all ye seem to be,” I told her. “And she told me I shudna open my heart to ye.”
    She smiled sadly. “Do ye think I mean ye harm, Katrina Anice?”
    “No.”
    Her eyes softened and she came closer. “You must trust your heart in this. Heed what it tells you.”
    My heart ached within me, ached for something I could not define. Looking into her eyes, I believed she knew what it was I longed to have, and if I but trusted her, she would show me the path to finding it. I thought the sin eater was the key. I wanted to tarry longer and tell her about my visit with Elda Kendric.
    “Go back for now, Katrina Anice,” she said. “We’ve time to talk tomorrow when you’re out and about in the sunshine and the meadow.”
    I stacked one last piece of firewood on my arm. Glancing up again, I saw she was already gone. Straining under the burden I carried, I returned to the house.
    Gervase Odara was leaving as I came in, the rain having already stopped. She tipped my chin and told me to remember what she’d told me.
    Mama was making preparations for supper when I dumped my heavy load into the woodbin. “Put another log on the fire, Cadi,” she said dully. She didn’t say another word to me for the rest of the afternoon.
    Papa and Iwan washed up outside and came in near dusk for supper. Plowing, tilling, and cultivating the fields had been done in Aries. Now that the fruitful sign of Taurus was upon us, planting had begun. Papa always said crops planted in Taurus and Cancer would stand drought.
    “What’ve ye been doing all day, little sister?” Iwan said to me, ladling out another helping of Mama’s stew.
    “I went to Elda Kendric’s with the healer.”
    “And how’s the old soul?”
    “She’s in terrible pain, but doesn’t reckon she’ll be dying soon.”
    Iwan grimaced and said nothing more. I saw by his expression that I had said too much already. Mama ate slowly without speaking to anyone. Papa looked at her several times, like he was waiting for something from her. After a while his face hardened, and he didn’t look at her again. He finished eating in silence, pushed his plate away, and stood. “I got work in the barn.” He went out the door.
    Iwan went outside and sat on the porch while I cleared and washed the dishes. Mama left me to it, sitting at her spinning wheel again, retreating into her solitude. When I finished, I went outside to be near my brother. He was the only one who had not been undone by our tragedy. I sat