Young Warriors by Tamora Pierce Read Free Book Online Page A

to get your parents right now!” Eli threatened.
    She stopped and looked at him with a sneer, her features contorted, mouth twisted into a grimace of hate. “Parents?” she spat. “What parents? Those two pious lumps of lard in that dirt-floored hut back there? Those aren’t my parents! My parents are long gone, and serves them right!” Then she laughed, a long, maniacal laugh.
    The laughter suddenly stopped, and he seemed to hear another voice entirely come from her mouth, one that sounded a bit like the old Leah. “Help! Help!” it cried, and he didn’t know what to do, because right away her upper teeth came down on her lip, drawing blood, and her mouth twisted back into a sneer. The change was terrifying to see.
    Noticing his shocked expression, Leah composed her face, and for a moment Eli thought it had all been a trick of the sun—the cruel mouth, the furious eyes and narrowed lips. But then she shook her hips at him, darting her tongue out in the air, and the movement was so not Leah that for a moment he felt faint. She kept coming toward him, though, and now survival became paramount. His brain snapped back into gear with an awful clarity as it slowly assembled, then reassembled, all he’d just seen.
    This was not Leah! This could not be Leah! Therefore it must be . . .
    The thought was too horrible to contemplate. But contemplate it he must, because there it was in front of him. He was a man. He had to stand his ground.
    He stopped trying to get away then and turned to confront her, trembling with a fear greater than anything he’d ever known.
    â€œYou’re not Leah, are you?” he whispered.
    She tossed her head, and the unbound hair seemed to have a life of its own as it settled around her face. “Don’t be silly, Eli, you’ve known me all your life. Of course I’m Leah!”
    â€œNo,” he stammered, “no, you’re not. You’re not Leah. You’re not even human. . . . I know what you are.”
    She stopped moving forward then and rebuttoned the blouse. “Oh? And what exactly am I, then?” she asked, looking down at her fingers as they worked the buttons. “Exactly
what
do you think I am?”
    Her tone, at that moment, was more threatening to him than her exposed bodice had been, and Eli took a step backward in terror. But then he remembered that one day he’d be a soldier and soldiers were brave, even in the face of supernatural danger.
    â€œYou’re a dybbuk!” he spat with all the force he could muster. There, he’d said it.
    â€œA dybbuk?” She laughed, smoothing her hair back into place. “You foolish little boy, you don’t even know what a dybbuk is!”
    That was it. The real Leah would never have made fun of him like that. She was the gentlest of souls. This had to be a dybbuk. He tried frantically to remember what he’d read about them. Dybbuks were dead souls who’d been too evil in this life to enter heaven. Instead, they wandered the earth until they could find another body to inhabit. A fierce war would take place between the evil soul and the body’s rightful owner as each fought for possession. That would explain why she’d bitten through her lip when the real Leah tried to call for help.
    Sometimes, he remembered, a dybbuk could be exorcised, but only by a rabbi skilled and experienced in such things. Their little
shtetl
had no one like that. He took a deep breath and studied her face. Leah’s appearance, while not beautiful, was kind and gentle. This face had no softness in it. The thought of Leah and this
. . . thing . . .
fighting for Leah’s body made him sick to his stomach.
    She seemed to sense his thoughts. “So,” she sneered, “you would rush back to town, alert the entire village, have me caught and caged like a wild animal?” She began to advance again, her arm upraised to strike him, but she suddenly stopped as