Raising The Stones Read Online Free

beside his small ones on the soil, the very sack she had set down, the one that held their clothes and Sal’s doll and his own carved warriors, Ire and Iron and Voorstod, though Mam had not let him bring his whip. The sack had been threadbare and stained, with a leather drawstring, and Mam had carried it all the way from the town of Scaery, in Voorstod upon Ahabar.
    After that, during his childhood, Sam thought of legends as things Mam had left behind; not valueless things, like worn out shoes, but things difficult and awkward to transport, things that were quite heavy perhaps, with odd knobs on them, or even wheels, difficult but fascinating things. Without ever saying so in words to himself, and certainly without ever asking Maire, he assumed that one of he difficult things Mam had left behind had been Sam’s dad, Phaed Girat. Sam was never sure from day to day whether he could forgive Mam for that or whether maybe he had forgiven her for it already, without knowing.
    Maire had offered Sam his choice, back in Voorstod upon Ahabar, in the kitchen at Scaery, where the fire made shadows in the corners and the smell of the smoke was in everything. Sam could not remember that time without smelling smoke and the earthy scent of the pallid things that grew along damp walls. “Sal and I are going away,” Mam had said. “You can stay with your dad or go with us. I know you’re too young to make that decision, but it’s the only choice I can give you, Sam. Sal and I can’t stay here. Voorstod is no place for womenfolk and children.”
    He had wanted to stay with Dad. Those were the words crowding at his throat when she gave him the choice, but they had stuck there. Sam had been born with a quality which some might have thought mere shyness but was in fact an unchildlike prudence. He often did not say what came to mind. What he thought at the time was that he wanted to stay with Dad but it might be difficult to survive if he did so. Dad was unlikely to help him with his reading, or cook his dinner, or wash his clothes. Dad didn’t do things like that. Dad threw him high in the air and caught him, almost always. Dad gave him a whip and taught him to make it crack and to knock bottles over with it. Dad called him “My strong little Voorstoder” and taught him to shout, “Ire, Iron, and Voorstod” when the prophets went by and all the women had to hide in their rooms. But there were other times Dad scarcely seemed to notice him, times when Dad growled and snarled like one of the sniffers, chained out behind the house, times when Sam thought this big man was really someone else, someone wearing a mask of Dad’s face.
    Besides, with Sam’s brother Maechy dead—Mam said he was dead and would never come back—wouldn’t Mam need a son to take care of her? Dad needed nobody, so he said. Men of the Cause needed nobody but themselves and Almighty God, whether they had been men of Ire or of Iron or of Voorstod to start with.
    So Sam, prudently and dutifully, had said he would go with Mam and Sal. Even when Maire had told him he would have to leave his whip behind, Sam had figured out it was his duty to go, but he wasn’t sure then or later he had made the right choice. As he got older, he still wasn’t sure. Sometimes he dreamed of Dad. At least, when he wakened, that’s who he thought he’d been dreaming of. He also dreamed of hands over his eyes and a voice whispering to him, “You don’t see them, Sammy. They aren’t there. You don’t see them.” He woke angry from those dreams, angry that he’d been kept from seeing something important, or that he’d chosen to come to Hobbs Land, or that Dad hadn’t come along.
    Remembering what he could of Dad, however, he could imagine why Maire had left him behind with the rest of the legends. Dad had been much too heavy to move. When Sam remembered Phaed Girat, he remembered him that way: a ponderous and brooding shape with no handles a person could catch hold of. The thought