Red Spikes Read Online Free Page B

as His fancy takes Him. I keep well away from Him yet.
    Food! Food is the thing now. From here I reckon I can smell the fruits being chopped in our servants’ houses. I can hear the juice drip to board and floor, and the breads and cakes swelling in their cookers. The sawing of knife through rooty is like an itch all over me. Our servants bring us broad platters crowded with coloured smells. We run to meet them, farther from the House than I’ve ever been.
    All us dotties, we’re all running, we’re all grabbing more than we can hold, we’re all eating like mad, each enough for two.

I loved Annie Stork and she loved me. We never done the dancy-dancy, but I most certainly thought we would end up wed. I were looking babies into that girl’s eyes, even if I weren’t putting them into her below.
    So smack yourself, Arlen Michaels, smack yourself in the head and get out of this bush and away from here. What do you want to cause yourself such pain for? You ought try always, don’t Nanna say, to add to the tally of happi-nesses in the world and good works, in everything you do. You ought be trying for no one’s harm .
    Well, I aren’t. No one’s harm at all. Or at least no one’s but my own, and what should that matter?
    Ooh, there sounds the horn, off among the trees. Soon they’ll be here, and I won’t have the choice to run off. I dither, bunching my shirt-neck with my nervous hands. The white ribands loll down from the trees all round the clearing. How can I bear to walk away from them? How can I bear to stay? All those small evidences of the Lord-son’s riches are like this, like watching Baker Marten pull from his oven some vast cake I will never get a piece of.
    Now it’s voices. Some of them still sing the song that swept the happy pair out of town. Some call and laugh over the music. The footfalls of the two horses thud uneven and slow through the whole hill. Now it is too late; now I must stay put or I’ll be seen. Fool. Knot-head.
    What are you doing, hiding, peeping, like Dotty Cinders through women’s winders? Why aren’t you off fishing or dogging or being of some useful help to someone?
    There’s movement, the colour on something, the Lord-son’s sleeve, maybe, or that cloth around the horse that is like a broidered tent. Hup, here they come.
    The leaves wag in front of my face, in front of my great sad sigh. Here come the two splendid lord’s beasts in their tents, and borne upon their backs the Lord-son in his robes and Annie Stork in her bride-raiment, oh my gracious, white as a waterfall and with that yellow cloak over all, stiff with gold-thread embroidery. Don’t know why you’re so surprised, Arlen. You saw all this down in the square before you took flight up here. Don’t know why your heart is choosing now to split, tube from chamber and all your blood pour out the opening.
    The servants help the bride down. The picture comes to me of Annie when she were little, sitting on her step, her white aproned lap full of pine-seeds; she were pinching the skins off them one by one like you do, chattering like she’d never stop. She’s another creature now, in that dress and bearing. She’ll never be back on her step and simply dressed, shining with her own beauty alone and unbejewelled. Likely I’ll never speak to her again – or she to me except as a high to a lowling, thanking me for some service – holding the gate, maybe, for her to pass through on a grand horse such as this – for they have plenty of horses, the Lord and his son. Likely she’ll call me Mister Michaels then, not Arlen , not you great puddin-head as she did when I tickled her that time, not darlin as she said once, very low and growly and daring, and quite near her parents’ ears.
    Now they have all sailed into the clearing like ships into harbour, the whole party. Horses are tethered, cloths are spread, baskets are swung down from shoulders. The clean faces of the High House, with their ornamental collars below and