Northshore Read Online Free Page A

continue this perambulation, spreading the light. Dawn will mean a bite of breakfast, then pulling the shades down, hiding in the dark. No one knows why, but he’s been that way since childhood. No trouble to anyone. Just see him decent dressed and let him go. So says Peasimy’s mama, the widow Flot. So says her kin and kith. Let him alone. He doesn’t hurt anything. Poor little fellow. Lucky when he can remember his name.
    Peasimy … well, Peasimy remembers a lot of things. Peasimy remembers catching his mama putting Candy Seeds on his bed when it was supposed to be the Candy Tree growing there that did it. Peasimy remembers things Haranjus Pandel said in Temple. Peasimy remembers every lie ever told and some he only suspects. Peasimy can recognize true things when he sees them.
    Lanterns, now, they are true things. Water is true, and the widow Flot. The lantern man is true, and the crier. Daylight is so true he needn’t even stay awake to watch it. All light is true. Dark is a false thing, full of lies, making youthink a thing is one way when it’s actually another. That’s why Peasimy splashes the light. Have to fight the dark. Can’t just let it overcome.
    There’s an image Peasimy sees sometimes in the dusk, maybe only in the dusk, maybe only in his head, he’s not sure always where things are. But the image is there, somewhere, shining. A glowing thing. Looking at him. Looking at him and shining with its own light. Truth. Shining. He doesn’t know what it is, but he expects to find it. Somewhere. Along this alley, perhaps, between splashes of his boots. Along that street.
    And until then, he goes along.
    ‘Aiiiih uhmmmms,’ calls the crier.
    ‘Night comes,’ whispers Peasimy. ‘Light comes.’

3

    It was six days before Thrasne was left alone and could look at the drowned woman again. Under a grove of enormous frag trees, tied up at the Riverside past Shabber, he was able to lift the net once more. He stood on the owner-house roof, staring at her in lantern light where she swayed in the net. She was dry now. Her hair had fluffed out like fine pamet fiber, a warm, lovely brown. Though he had thought her eyes open when he brought her aboard, they were closed now, the lashes lying softly upon her cheeks as she seemed to sleep. His eyes marked her, measured her, trembled over every part of her, fascinated and aroused. He had to hold his hands behind him to keep from touching her. At last he could stand it no longer. He went below and took a live fish from the cook’s cage where it hung over the side. Carrying this squirming burden, he went back to her to thrust the wriggling thing against her, careful not to touch the part of it that touched her. He laid it on the roof, watching closely, and within moments the front part of it stopped thrashing and began to bump against the roof, moved by the tail, which was still alive. The blight lived in her still. He brought the sprayer up and covered her with a powdery, golden shower before lowering her into the shaft once more. The fish was still bumping, and he shoved it overside with a pole.
    ‘Suspirra,’ he whispered down to her. ‘It’s all right, Suspirra. A few more days’ drying, the good powder will do its work, then you can come out of there …’ Except, he told himself, she could not. Where would he put her? How would he explain?
    ‘Blint, sir, would you mind making me a small payment on my wages?’
    ‘How small, Thrasne? And what do you suddenly find yourself so needy of? Isn’t wife Blint seeing well enough to your food and clothing?’
    ‘It isn’t that, sir. I have a mind to make a large carving, and I’d like to purchase a block of wood from a frag merchant…’
    Which block of wood was not easily come by. Some were too crooked and others too straight. Some had harsh graining that would spoil the features, others were too dark. Thrasne found one eventually, at the bottom of the pile, and paid for it with good coin. He put it in one