The Mage and the Magpie Read Online Free Page B

The Mage and the Magpie
Book: The Mage and the Magpie Read Online Free
Author: Austin J. Bailey
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world. She had left her window open the previous night to listen to the rain as it pitter pattered down from the clouds. There was no way she would be able to fall back asleep. All she could think about was the sound of the bell. Saturday was still three days away. Her father had worked a double shift yesterday, so she knew he would be sleeping in. She was supposed to do chores today. She was supposed to weed the garden and clean the bathroom, but she could do that later. Her father didn’t mind when she did her chores, as long as they got done. That was one of the greatest things about him. He trusted her. She got up, threw her hair in a bun, stuck a couple of her favorite drawing pencils in it, and left for Morley.
    Morley was an old abandoned mining town on the side of the mountain. Over the years it had become one of her favorite places to draw. Today would be unlike any other trip to Morley. She would sketch the sun rising against the face of the broken church, and the birds, and the empty mine shafts, but this time she wasn’t going just to draw. This time she was looking for answers.
    It was a long walk to Morley. Usually she didn’t mind, but today she wanted to get there as quickly as she could. Briefly, she entertained the idea of taking one of the four-wheelers. It would be faster, but it would be loud. She imagined rocketing through the streets, waking the neighbors, and cutting the journey down to fifteen minutes. She wrinkled her nose at the idea. She would walk. It was better to stay invisible, but she would have to walk fast if she was going to make it by sunrise.
    She always liked walking the old trail to Morley; in certain places it was the very same Santa Fe Trail that the old pioneers came west on. Stories and pictures of their lives flew through her imagination as she glided along the trail, the cool morning wind invigorating her
    When she arrived an hour later, the sun was on the verge of rising. She grinned. Apart from the question of the bell, Morley held a special meaning for her, and it was always exciting to visit‌—‌especially early in the morning (ghost towns are always best in the strangeness of the early morning hours). She wasn’t afraid. She had grown up around the town and was used to its strange emptiness. The emptiness was actually one of her favorite things about it. It wasn’t that she didn’t like other people; she liked them well enough. But she was different from them somehow. She felt different. Not because she had an imagination so wild that she often got lost in it (though she did). And not because of her shyness, which was so severe that she sometimes wished people really couldn’t see her. Those weren’t the main reasons anyway. Brinley felt different because of Morley. She was different because she didn’t have a mother.
    Almost all children have a mother at some point, she knew. Her cousin Veronica said that she didn’t have a mother, but she really did. Veronica’s mother had split up with her dad and now she hardly ever saw her. Her friend Marshal had a mother who died giving birth to him. So in a way, he didn’t have a mother either, but at least he used to, and he had a picture or two of her, and he knew that his mother had once known him. Brinley didn’t have those things. Her father had found her right on the steps of Morley Church. She supposed her mother must have left her there, a baby in a basket, for her father to find. But how could any mother do such a thing? She didn’t understand.
    “I will have to be your father and your mother,” her dad would say on the days when he could tell that she was sad. She knew he meant well, but it didn’t always help. She knew it was silly, hated herself for it sometimes, but no matter how she tried, she didn’t feel normal. When she was younger, whenever she got tired of feeling that way, she would pretend to be invisible and wander off to be alone. She surprised herself with how happy she could be, how content

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