Thing With Feathers (9781616634704) Read Online Free Page A

sunlight and gulped in the fresh spring air. He had to find a way to help Blair Bowman.

Chapter 4
    T here was a small lean-to at the backside of the tiny cottage, the roof of which sloped so drastically low that occasionally, the goats would use the wood pile to climb atop it. Blair liked to climb to the roof as well. It was a hideout where she gained some sense of privacy and could submit to her pain-free fantasy world. She ran from the church to the top of the lean-to, and as she picked at the fir needles, she hugged herself with protectiveness and began the almost-ritualistic habit of talking to herself. The self she spoke to was much stronger and far more sensible than the Blair on the outside, she thought. The Blair inside, she knew instinctively, was the only reason she survived. She decided to give herself an inner name which she would protect from the world.
    He wasn’t looking at you the same way Father does, her inner-self told her. It was different…it was like…he cared about you.
    She picked up a handful of needles and threw them off the roof, watching them cascade down to the ground. No. I should know better than that. Father’s always said the day would come when tempting him would no longer be enough for me, when I would begin seducing other men. And that’s what I must have done. Why would Sean Marshall care about me? she returned.
    But you didn’t do anything. You didn’t even look at him. He approached you and said you looked pretty, argued the inner self.
    It was my fault. I should not look pretty. I should not tempt. I must be a demon, as Father says. She hugged herself tighter and began to sob.
    I know you didn’t mean to, the inner-self reassured her. Good gravy, Blair. You dress stranger than a two-headed cow!
    Blair could not suppress a small smile to herself.
    Why must it be a sin to be pretty anyway? Why can’t a boy be interested in you without it being evil? Why don’t you get to have a life that is normal? the inner-self asked desperately.
    Blair fumbled for the worn folded paper she kept next to her heart. Pulling the paper free, she unfolded it carefully and her slender fingers smoothed it out against her skirt-draped knees. She found it soothing to recite the words from the now-faded penmanship of a favorite teacher—how Miss Joseph knew Blair would treasure the poem by Emily Dickinson, she could not fathom. Her mouth moved soundlessly as her eyes followed the lines:
    “Hope” is the thing with feathers
    That perches in the soul
    And sings the tune without the words
    And never stops–at all
    And sweetest–in the Gale–is heard
    And sore must be the storm
    That could abash the little Bird
    That kept so many warm
    I’ve heard it in the chillest land
    And on the strangest Sea
    Yet–never–in Extremity,
    It asked a crumb–of me.
     
    Her shoulders slumped farther. Her suffering was silent.
    After a long while, Blair heard the sounds of her father’s wagon pulling up to the house. He would be furious with her for not having started Sunday dinner. Surely it must be nearing two o’clock. She scrambled from the roof and into the summer kitchen, grabbing flour and leavening from the shelf and pulling potatoes, carrots, and onions from the drawer. She tried to look as though she’d been busy with dinner preparations for some time by scattering flour here and there and pumping cool water over the chicken and placing it in the enamel roasting pan. Her trembling hands were well onto the peeling of a third potato when her father walked in.
    “I did not see you inside the church, child. Where did you go?” Her father wanted to know where she was and who she was with all of that time.
    Blair concentrated hard on peeling the potato without taking too much of the potato away.
    I went to hell for a short holiday, the inner self whispered to Blair.
    But what Blair said aloud was, “Sean Marshall started talking to me just outside the door, Father, and—”
    “Ah!” the preacher yelled