Reading the Wind (Silver Ship) Read Online Free

light brown stripes that gave the hebra her name. Stripes bugled a soft greeting to her, and immediately nudged her for the treat. Greedy beast. Sasha fed her the berry delicately and then led her back. She had helped train Stripes to the wagon, and she and I had spent many days gathering pongaberries and twintree fruit and wild onion.
    As we each picked up one end of the shoulder and chest strap to drop it over Stripes’s head, she asked, “Where do you go? You always leave on this day and come back sometime the following morning. Is it so you and Liam can have quiet time together?” There was a hint of mischief in her voice. “I bet you two can run fast enough to get to a lake cabin in less than a day.”
    I laughed, saved from answering by Liam’s enthusiastic, “Good morning!”
    It took us a few more moments to extract ourselves. The morning shadows were still long when we started off, purposely heading inthe wrong direction. After about ten minutes of easy loping, warming and stretching our bodies in the cool air, we turned up, still angling wrong, increasing our speed, racing each other. Redberry bushes and grasses slapped my legs. Spiky trip-vine and stinging ivy threatened to tangle our feet. Where the trees thinned to scrub, we turned almost back on ourselves, heading for the top of the ridge that separated the High Road from Little Lace Lake. We stopped at the high point, breathing hard from the long run and scramble.
    He put an arm around me, holding me close, his breath only a little hard. “I love being out here, with just you and the wild.”
    I laughed at him, my face warm from more than just the run. “We’re always in the wild.”
    He shook his head. “Maybe it’s leaving Artistos. I’ve never liked town.”
    A pair of knotted twintrees—one taller than the other—twined around each other like lovers below us. Liam leaned down and kissed me, and I returned the kiss, fiery and hard. A tempting distraction.
    But the cave called. I pulled away gently and gazed up at him. “Let’s go.”
    We approached the cave from the top, dropping down, my feet stinging as I landed on the smooth floor. I reached up for the shelf we kept our flashlight on.
    My hand came back empty.
    “I have it.”
    Kayleen stood just inside the shadowed darkness of the cave’s mouth, sunlight touching her face and darkness filling the void behind her. Her legs were spread wide and stiff, her dark hair combed neatly around her face. The dark blue of her eyes glowed nearly black, glittering and feral, a contrast to her unusually neat appearance. Her voice went with her hair rather than her eyes, too sweet for Kayleen, as if she were speaking a line she’d practiced over and over: “Hi. I knew you’d come here. I wanted time to talk to you. I’m sorry for being rude last night.”
    Liam sat cross-legged on the floor, like he sometimes did when talking to a misbehaving child. Kayleen responded the same way children responded to the gesture, sitting herself, fairly close to him but opposite. I sat, too, so we made an uneasy triangle on the cave floor.I blinked at her, unsure what to say. I finally just said, “I’m sorry. I care about you, and I came looking because I hadn’t seen you.”
    Only then did she look directly at me. “Do you really miss me?” she asked.
    “Of course I do.” How could she question that?
    Her voice was even and sweet, cool. “I bet you don’t. You didn’t even look for me the first day you came down this time.”
    “I had to help set up for Trading Day. I watched for you all day.”
    “You’re in love. I see it in your eyes.” She glanced at Liam, the wildness in her eyes shaded with longing. For a moment she looked as vulnerable as a baby hebra before it stands the first time. I fought back a stab of hot jealousy.
    This was Kayleen, and I loved her. But I would not give up my happiness for her.
    Her eyes fell away from Liam and her gaze stuck itself to the smooth and nearly featureless