Blaze (The High-Born Epic) Read Online Free Page B

eat in front of others?  Cooper, stop smacking.  Ollie, don’t talk with your mouth full.”             
                  “Well,” Harold said as he pushed some turnips up on this fork with his cornbread, “I tell you what.  Why don’t the two of you go ask Sarah at her pa’s shop tomorrow before lunch?  If he says that her and her brother can go, then, sure, they can come with us.”
                  “I’m sure you wouldn’t mind if Sarah went too?” Aunt Nean smiled knowingly at Harold.
                  “It wouldn’t bother me,” Harold shrugged with a sly smile.
                  “They held hands last time we went,” Ollie giggled.
                  Harold’s faced turned slightly red and Aunt Nean grinned as she eyed him and took a bite.
                  “She even put her arms around his neck,” Cooper said and Ollie was nearly squealing with laughter.
                  “Cooper,” Harold stammered.  “That was...  only... because she needed help getting across that muddy part and didn’t want to mess up her shoes.”
                  “She don’t never wear shoes to the river,” Cooper giggled.
                  Aunt Nean was smirking, and Ollie started singing, “Harold and Sarah sittin’ in a tree--”
                  Her mother lightly popped the back of Ollie’s hand, and pointed as she said, “Young lady.”
                  Ollie continued giggling and lip-synced another line before she took her next bite.  Cooper grinned widely as he looked at Harold’s blushing face.
                  “Well,” Aunt Nean said.  “Make sure you’re back in time for Colonel Foxx’s speech tomorrow night.  We also have to watch the Vista tomorrow night.”
                  “Already?” Harold said.  “It doesn’t seem like it has been a month.”
                  “I’m afraid so,” Aunt Nean replied.  “We may be able to get some fresh bread.”
                  “Maybe,” Harold said as he chewed, and looked solemnly at his nearly empty plate.
                  After supper, Harold went to his room.  He was lucky enough to have a mattress, but only because he’d made a good trade a few years ago.  He turned on his lamp, and the halogen bulb emitted its glow throughout the room.  Colonel Foxx authorized electricity from 4:30 p.m. until 9:30 p.m. every night for the entire village, but on speech night, power was left on until midnight to show how much the High-Born cared about them.  The other times electricity was allowed was from 5:00 a.m. until 7:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.  If you hadn’t finished cooking by then, you had to use a wood stove, but most people had one of those just in case.
                  Harold pulled out his book, but before he opened it, he looked at the picture of his parents on his night stand.  Harold looked at his mother.  She had pretty brown eyes and blond hair.  His father had blue eyes and dark hair.  They looked very happy.  Aunt Nean said it had been made on their wedding day.  The only thing behind them was a gray wall with a strange shape in the top right corner.  It was a curved bar and what looked to be the tip of a spear.  It looked like the spear and curved bar were a part of some larger piece outside of the picture.
                  He didn’t remember them because they had died when he was just a baby and he had come to live with his Aunt Nean.  She was his father’s sister and Harold thought that he was lucky to have her.  His Uncle Joe had passed away six years earlier from a bad fever.  Back then, Harold had only been ten years old, and it had been especially hard on him.  At that time, Ollie wasn’t even a year old, and Cooper had just turned four.   His Uncle Joe had been the only father