1416934715(FY) Read Online Free Page B

It has an unhealthy sound.”
    “Old Mathilde will know what to do,” Raoul said.
    Hand in hand, pumpkins and weeds both forgotten, we turned, and raced for the great stone house.

F OUR
    By the time Raoul and I reached the house, Mathilde was gathering each and every living thing and shooing it inside. The rabbits were put into their hutches, the chickens onto their nests, the dogs summoned from the courtyard. Being out in such a wind could do strange things to living beings, Old Mathilde called over its unnatural voice. The wind blowing backward can make you forget yourself.
    Once we were all safely indoors, I worked with Old Mathilde and Susanne, who ran the kitchen, to make a fine dinner of chowder and cornbread from the last of our fresh ears of corn. All the rest had already been dried, in preparation for the winter. By the time the meal was ready, the sun was setting. We gathered around the great trestle table in the kitchen for supper—all but Raoul, who took his out to the stables, announcing his intention to stay with the horses until the wind died down.
    As if to make up for the fact that he was not always comfortable with people, Raoul was good with animals of all kinds. Perhaps because it had been a horse which had carried him to us in the first place, he loved the horses best of all.
    Well into the night the wind blew, until I longedto stuff cotton into my ears to shut out the sound. None of us went to bed. Instead, we stayed in the kitchen, our chairs arranged in a semicircle around the kitchen fire. Old Mathilde worked on her knitting, her needles flashing in the light of the coals. Susanne polished the silver, as if there might yet come a day when someone would arrive who would want to use it. Her daughter, Charlotte, darned socks. Joseph and Robert, the father and son who helped with the orchards and grounds, mended rope. I sorted seeds for next year’s planting, wondering what might actually come up.
    The clocks struck ten, and then eleven, and still we heard the winds voice. As the hands of the clock inched up toward midnight, a great tension seemed to fill the kitchen, causing all the air to back up inside our lungs. Midnight is an important hour in general, but it was considered particularly significant in our house. But it was only as the clock actually began to count up to midnight,
one, two, three, four,
that I remembered what the voice of the wind blowing in the wrong direction had pushed to the back of my mind.
    When the clocks finished striking twelve, it would be my birthday, and I would learn whether what I wished had come true or not.
    Seven,
the clocks chimed on their way to midnight.
Eight. Nine. Ten.
And suddenly, I was praying with all my might, with all my heart.
Please,
I thought.
Let the wind stop. Don’t let it blow backward on the day of my birth.
    Eleven,
the clocks sang throughout the house. And then, in the heartbeat between that chime and the next, the wind died down.
    Old Mathilde lifted her head; the hands on her knitting needles paused. Susanne placed the final piece of silver back into its chest with a soft
chink
of metal.
It is just before midnight,
I thought.
    Twelve,
the clocks struck. And, in that very moment, the wind returned, passing over us in its usual direction, making A sound like a lullaby.
    “Oh, but I am tired,” Susanne said, as she gave a great stretch. One by one, the others said their good nights and departed. Within a very few moments, old Mathilde and I were left: alone.
    “I should go and get Raoul,” I said.
    Old Mathilde began to bundle up her knitting. “Raoul is fine. He sleeps in the stable half the time anyway. But you may go and get him, if you like. That way, you can both go together.”
    “How did you . . .” I began, but at precisely that instant, Raoul burst through the kitchen door. In one hand, he held the lantern he had taken out to the stable.
    “Why are you still just standing there?” he asked. “Are we going or not?”
    By way