The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw Read Free Book Online Page A

Moll!” she said, and tried again, pulling strongly at the teats.
    But old Moll had something to say to that, swinging her horns and aiming a kick at the pail that spilled the cupful Saaski had managed to get. Her bag was limp and empty.
    Nothing to do but go tell Anwara what had happened.
    So then there was an argle-bargle sure enough, the kind Saaski hated most, with Anwara wanting to make cheese, and no milk to make it, and stalking across to Ebba’s house dragging Saaski with her to confront Morgan and Eluna—and Morgan hotly defending herself and Eluna wailing and Ebba saying Saaski had lied, and had likely unhooked the calf herself in the night, just to plague her cousins, as she was always doing.
    At that point Anwara squared off for battle and Saaski slipped away back to the cowshed, leaving the others to shout each other down. Loosing Moll’s tie, she hurried her past the bawling calf and out of the shed. When they’d finished their brangling, Morgan and Eluna would mind the calf; meanwhile, let it bawl. Saaski prodded Moll into an indignant trot that set her empty bag swinging, up the crooked trail past the last village shed and the old apple orchard, around the fringe of the wood above Moor Water. With the apple trees between her and the village, she allowed the cow to fall back to a walk and go at her own pace up the winding hillside trail to the pasture.
    The other village cows were there already. Robin and Jankin, oldest sons of Guin the miller, were just coming back through the gap in the stone wall, preparing to replace the peeled log that barred the animals’ way. They droppedit and watched as Moll made much ado of stepping over it before ambling along to join her sisters. Ignoring her audience, Saaski wrestled the log into its socket and walked on across the tilted, daisy-strewn pasture, zigzagging elusively among the grazing animals until the two boys had turned downhill and she was alone.
    Over the wall again on the far side of the pasture, she pushed between the thickets that edged the foaming, noisy little brook and jumped into it, shivering with pleasure at the shock of icy water on her bare feet, then waded upstream, beyond the hayfields and the wasteland, past the crumbling remains of the old wall that marked the end of village land, and onto the moor proper.
    Here she was at home, and comfortable—and hard to find, as she knew from her other stolen flights. There would be no churning today anyway, and she could gather the cow’s bedding on her way home. Perched on a boulder to let the gentle air dry her feet and the draggled hems of her dress and apron, she pulled in a deep breath of heather and broom, gazing out over the rough, wild terrain and the fields and village below. It was still raining in the valley; she could see the curtain of dark gray blurring the crooked line of roofs beyond the woods. Uphill from her rock, where the moor lifted into its high uplands, the sunlight flamed golden in the broom flowers—the only yellow flowers she did not shrink from. Here, between heights and valley, it was something between rain and shine, a pearly May morning. Curling up on her boulder, she blinked drowsily at the sky until her eyes closed.
    A deep-voiced exclamation made them fly open. For aninstant she stared into the face of the man gaping down at her, then she was off the boulder and behind it, peering warily at his astonished scowl, his crook made from a trimmed branch, the long-haired, draggled shapes of the sheep scattered behind him—and the dog tethered to his rope belt by a thong. A shepherd. One she had never seen in the village. Yet somewhere she had seen him. And his dog.
    “Pixie?” the man said, squinting.
    She stared at him blankly, but her heart had begun to pound. He took a step forward; she took one back.
    “I’m Saaski, the smith’s child,” she told him.
    “Nay, you’re that pixie,” he said, edging closer. “You’ll not diddle me again, you little varmint. I’m