The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw Read Free Book Online

that morning, unexpected and unwelcome. Indeed, the whole day had started out poorly. She had neglected to turn the bread on the hearth while Anwara was at the well, and four of the six loaves had burned—one worse than the others. Therefore that one, Yanno decreed when he came in from stirring up the coals in his forge, should be her breakfast.
    Anwara hurried to her defense, tried to hustle the burnt loaf into the fire and out of the argument. Yanno retrieved it, lifted Saaski in his big, calloused hands, and set her firmly down in front of it at the table. “ ’Tis only right. Because she was careless we eat burnt bread. She shall eat the burntest.”
    Anwara, tight-lipped, immediately broke the best piece off her loaf and slid it over to Saaski.
    Saaski pushed it back to her with a shrug. “I was careless,” she said, and began to eat the burnt loaf. She saw Anwara’s face stiffen and realized with a familiar sinking feeling that she had again said the wrong thing—done the wrong thing. But why? Burnt bread did not seem a matter for emotion. And she had not been watching the loaves. She had been outside in the dooryard staring at the splintery wooden wall of the lean-to where Yanno and his brother-in-law Siward kept their cow and its yearling calf. At dusk yestereve she thought she had glimpsed an odd mark on that wall. This morning she had looked again, and there it was—faint and slightly glimmering in the early light, half lost in the roughness of the wood, but there, all the same. She’d stood squinting at it while the loaves behind her in the kitchen burned.
    The burntest was her fair portion.
    It was also bitter and hard as rock. She hid most of it in her apron to give to the birds, and escaped to her morning duty, which was to milk the cow and drive it to pasture in the Highfield.
    The mark was gone from the shed wall when she hurried outside lugging the heavy wooden pail by its rope handle, pulling up her hood against the light rain. Or else she had forgotten where to look. She stood searching the splintery surface until Anwara came to the doorway to shoo one of the hens out, and spoke to her sharply. Then she made haste into the shed.
    The calf was loose from its tie and standing spraddle-legged beside its mother, nuzzling her bag.
    “Here, then! Stop it, y’ great gawk,” cried Saaski, droppingthe pail and grabbing the calf around the neck, yanking its head aside. She did not think it had been sucking; it had grown so lanky that it could scarcely stoop low enough to reach the teats. But it had slipped its head yoke, which still hung from the iron bar Yanno had fixed to the opposite wall. Leading it there by its ear, Saaski reached for the yoke and stopped in midmotion. The hook was loose from the ring.
    “Now, then,” Saaski muttered to her captive. “If you’re not the first beast I ever saw could undo its own tie.”
    The calf bawled and tried to shake free. Saaski tugged it into place and gingerly hooked the chains around its neck, shivering a little and scrubbing her hands against her skirt to wipe off the smarting sting of iron. She peered closely at hook and ring; they were sound as ever.
    This was her cousins’ doing. The cow alone was her task; its calf was the charge of Morgan and Eluna, twin daughters of Yanno’s sister Ebba and her husband. Siward and Yanno had fixed the children’s duties the moment the calf was born.
    So it’s Morgan’ll be ticked off, not me, thought Saaski, and went over to milk the cow, catching up the one-legged stool on her way. She settled the wooden pail between her knees and her head in the cow’s flank as Anwara had taught her, and reached for the teats. At the first touch she knew she was too late. The calf had suckled after all—or the cow had been milked.
    But how could that be? The stubborn beast was just holding back. Trying to cozen me because I’m new at this, thought Saaski, who had learned to milk only a month before.“Give over, now,