Passager Read Online Free

while the two serving women clicked and clacked just like hens around the great tub. When at last they had emptied enough water in it and were satisfied with the temperature, Mag nodded and Master Robin dropped the boy in.
    The boy had no fear of water, but it was not at all what he had expected. It was hot.
Hot!
River water, whatever the season, was always cold. Even in the lower pools—the ones he had dammed up for fishing—the water below the sun-warmed surface was cold enough to make his ankles ache if he stayed in too long.
    He wanted to howl but he would not give his captors the satisfaction. He wanted to leap out of the bath, but the Robin-man’s great hand was still on him. He didn’t know what to do and indecision, in the end, made up his mind for him, for the fear and the warmth of the water together conspired to paralyze him. And the man kept speaking to him in that soft, steady, cozening voice.
    The boy thought about the fawns in the forest, how they could disappear. How
he
had disappeared before when the man had stared at him. He closed his eyes to slits and willed himself to be gone, away from the man and his voice, away from the women and their hot water, away from the house.
    But he had not slept well the last night, his dreams had prevented that. He was hungry, he was frightened, and he was—after all—only eight years old.
    He closed his eyes and disappeared instead into a new dream.
    In the new dream he was warm and safe and his stomach was full. He was cradled and rocked and sung sweet songs to by women in comforting black robes. They sang something he could remember just parts of:
    Â 
Lullay, lullay, thou tiny child,

Be sheltered from the wet and wild...
    Â 
    But,
he thought within the dream angrily,
I am wet and I am wild.
He made himself wake up by crossing his fingers, and found himself in a closed-in room.
    Alone.

9. NAMES
    UNTANGLING HIMSELF FROM THE COVERINGS , the boy crept to the floor and looked around cautiously. The room was low-ceilinged, heavily beamed. A grey stone hearth with a large fireplace was on the north wall. A pair of heavy iron tongs hung from an iron hook by the hearth. The fire that sat comfortably within the hearth had glowing red ember eyes that stared wickedly at him.

    Suddenly something leaped from the red coals and landed, smoking, on the stones.
    The boy jumped back onto the bed, amongst the tangle of covers, shaking.
    The thing on the hearth exploded with a pop that split its smooth skin, like a newborn chick coming out of an egg. A sweet, tantalizing, familiar smell came from the thing. The boy watched as it grew cool, lost its live look. When nothing further happened, and even the red eyes of the fire seemed to sleep, he ran over, plucked up the hazelnut from the stones, and peeled it. His mouth remembered the hot, sweet, mealy taste even before he did.
    He ran back to the bed and waited for something more to be flung out to him from the fire. Nothing more came.
    But the nut had rekindled his hunger, and with it, his curiosity. He raised his head and sniffed. Besides the smell of roasted nut, beyond the heavy scent of the fire itself, was another, softer smell. The first part of it was like dry grass. He looked over the side of the bed and saw the rushes and verbena on the floor. That and the bed matting of heather supplied the grassy smell. But there was something more.
    He scrambled across the wide bed and looked over the side. There, on a wooden tray, was food. Not mushrooms and berries, not nuts and silvery fish. But
food.
He bent over the food, as if guarding it, and looked around, his teeth bared.
    He was alone.
    He breathed in the smell of the warm loaf.
    Bread,
he thought. Then he spoke the name aloud.
    â€œBread!”
    He remembered how he had loved it. Loved it covered with something. A pale slab next to the loaf had little smell.
    Butter.
That was it.
    â€œBut-ter.” He said it aloud and loved the sound of it.