The Red Abbey Chronicles by Maria Turtschaninoff Read Free Book Online Page B

the men could no longer see, the seven giant women picked up huge boulders and hurled them down upon them. The rocks missed the Abbey buildings but hit the men and swept them down into the ocean.”
    We all went quiet for a while.
    “They say that the ground where the men were standing ran red with blood.” I glanced over at Jai. She was ghostly pale but calm. “The rocks which did not roll into the ocean became the foundation of the outer wall.”
    “Where did the giant women come from? The Sisters were in Knowledge House, weren’t they?”
    “I don’t know, Heo. Maybe they were summoned by the island itself. Maybe the First Sisters were capable of more than we know. It happened too long ago to know for sure.”
    Heo and Ismi scampered down the path, kicking at pebbles and shouting that they were giant women made of moonlight. Jai looked at me with a grave expression.
    “Do you think the birds would still wake us? If somebody came?”
    * * *
    We reached the beach soon after midday. The sun was at her highest point in the sky, shining straight down on us. The south coast of the island is the only place without steep, plunging cliffs between mountain and sea, where White Lady’s lowest slopes level off into rolling layers of rock which stretch down towards the water. The beach is shallow and perfect for snail-harvesting. We sat down under a clump of harn trees to eat the bread and cheese Sister Ers and Joem shared out. Cissil, Sister Ers’s other novice, went around with a stone jug of spring water that they had kept cool under the yarn skeins in the donkey carts.
    Then Sister Loeni called for our attention.
    “Most of you know what to do. Jai and Ismi, watch the others. Fill your baskets with snails and then bring them up here to me and Toulan so we can show you how to do the dyeing. And be careful with the snails! They must not come to harm.”
    We all waded out into the cool ocean. The junior novices were jumping and laughing and the sisters were watchful and calm. Jai kept close to me and I showed her how to find where the bloodsnails live in small clusters stuck fast to the rocks, and how to carefully prise them loose and put them in the basket. The snails cling to the rocks with amazing strength, so it takes a long time to detach them without harming them.
    “I thought they were red,” said Jai, successfully lifting off her first snail. “They look as white as mother-of-pearl.”
    “The red is inside,” I answered and laid the snail in my basket. “You will see.”
    When our baskets were full we carried them up to the tree where Sister Loeni and Toulan had constructed a makeshift table of four long planks laid across the two donkey carts. The donkeys were grazing under the trees close by.
    Toulan showed us where to put down the baskets, and then unrolled a spool of silk thread until the thread ran the length of the table three times. When the bloodsnails get scared they emit the precious red pigment which gives the snail its name. Sister Loeni handed Jai a snail and showed her how to frighten it by tapping on the shell with her nail and then wiping it along the threads immediately. As soon as the snail had emitted all of its colour, we laid it in an empty basket and picked up the next one.
    It is a slow way to dye thread. If we did it by the old Vallerian method, leaving the snails to die and rot in big barrels to extract the colour, we could dye much more and earn much more silver. But then our bloodsnails would soon die out. Besides, the Abbey does not need so much silver.
    When we had no snails left we carried the baskets and used snails a little farther up the beach. Then we tipped them carefully back into the sea. Our hands and arms were already tinged with red, and they were going to get redder still. After the dyeing a large part of the beach is always stained blood-red, and under the trees where Sister Loeni and Toulan hang up the threads and yarn to dry, the grass looks as if it is made of