The Crowstarver Read Online Free Page B

reply ‘Good un!’
    But these were no longer his only words. A stranger listening to the boy talking would realize immediately – as everyone in the village did – that this was no ordinary child. But all the same Spider now had a rudimentary vocabulary of his own. Tom was ‘Dada’, and Kathie was ‘Mum’, andhe used a number of other words, chiefly the names of the creatures around him. ‘Molly’ had been the first new word that he had spoken, and, appropriately, ‘sheep’ and ‘lamb’ soon followed.
    Tom and Kathie played on his interest in animals and would repeat their names to him. Once he had connected name and creature, he never forgot them, though sometimes his version differed from the normal. A blackbird, for example, was a ‘birdblack’, a crow was a ‘croak’, and rabbits were ‘barrits’, but one name he always pronounced correctly was ‘sparrow’. He knew his own name now, though this in itself was a little confusing for him so that sometimes he called sparrows spiders and sometimes he would come upon a spider and say,‘Sparrow!’
    Now, as he walked up the drove with his mother, a large flock of lapwings or green plover that had been standing in a field rose as one and lifted away with mournful cries. Spider knew them by the name that was locally used, and he pointed and cried ‘Peewit! Peewit!’
    They reached the lambing-pens just in time to see the shepherd in the act of drawing a lamb from a ewe. He was holding the baby’s forelegs, and he pulled, gently but strongly, in concert with the mother’s contractions, till, with a slippery run,out upon the straw came the newborn lamb, limp and wet and stained with birth fluid. Quickly Tom cleared its mouth and pumped its forelegs around till he was satisfied that it was taking its first gulps of air. Then he placed the lamb by the head of the ewe and she began to lick at it.
    â€˜He’s a big one, isn’t he, Tom?’ Kathie said.
    â€˜He is,’ said Tom, ‘and awkward too. He had his head turned back and I had a bit of a job with him. Just as well there wasn’t a twin behind him or it might have been in trouble.’
    Spider was watching the ewe as she worked on the lamb, blatting softly at it while it shook its head about and sneezed and struggled to rise. He pointed at it. ‘Good un, Dada,’ he said.
    â€˜You’re right, Spider my son,’ said the shepherd. ‘Got the same birthday as you too. Tell Dada how old you are today.’
    His age was one of the things Spider had learned over the past year. Now he grinned his lopsided grin and proudly held up his right hand, fingers and thumb extended.
    â€˜That’s five, love,’ said Kathie. ‘That’s what you were yesterday. Today you’re six.’
    Spider looked from one to the other, puzzled.
    â€˜One more, son,’ said Tom and he held up his own left thumb.
    Spider copied him. Then he looked at his hands, at the four fingers and, now, the two thumbs. ‘Spider six?’ he said on a note of query.
    They nodded, smiling.
    So Spider set off down the line of pens with his splayfooted walk. In some there were ewes with twins, in others one with a single lamb, while in two pens there were ewes that had not yet given birth, one actually straining in the first stage of labour. To each and all in turn the boy cried in a loud excited voice ‘Spider six!’
    â€˜Once lambing’s done,’ said Tom,‘we’re going to have to see about getting him into school.’
    â€˜If they’ll have him,’ Kathie said.
    â€˜Mister might help,’ said Tom.
    One day, admittedly a long time after Major Yorke had said that he would drop in and take a look at the shepherd’s adopted son, he did so, and realized immediately that the child was abnormal. To Kathie of course he only said ‘A dear little chap,’ but at