Spirit of Lost Angels Read Online Free Page B

was waiting for him — a scarlet, horned creature surrounded by great flames. The devil’s fangs drooling spittle, it gobbled the boy up, and he disappeared into everlasting darkness.
    A small girl with tangled hair appeared beside us, and startled me from my thoughts of the devil.
    ‘Madame Charpentier, the baby is coming.’ She was tugging my mother’s skirt. ‘Maman sent me to fetch you.’
    ‘Grégoire, Victoire, go straight home,’ Maman said. ‘No wandering off in the woods. Those beggar people are so wild and poor they will steal your clothes and clogs one day, and remember, no going near that dangerous river.’
    We nodded. ‘Yes, Maman.’
    ‘Prepare the soup, Victoire, and Grégoire, light the fire under the pot please. This is her fifth babe, I shan’t be gone long.’
    Our village had no physician, so my mother alone cared for the people. She looked serious with her hair pulled back like that, in a chignon sitting low under her cap, but I understood Maman had to look serious when she was birthing babies and healing the sick of Lucie.
    Our mother was not always serious though. She often smiled when we were alone in the evenings, reading a funny tale together, except when something reminded her of The Day of the Storm. Then Maman would stop smiling, and shadows darkened her green eyes as if she was seeing right up to Heaven to check on Félicité and Félix.
    ***
    ‘Let’s go?’ Grégoire said.
    I nodded, glad to get away from the boy’s body swaying in the breeze like someone’s forgotten scarecrow.
    We hurried from la place de l’Eglise, out across the fields, through corn and wheat as tall as me, the green already speckled with gold. Cherry and pear blossoms floated from branches like snowflakes, as we flew past. Fat crows circled and squawked overhead, as if eyeing us as prey. We reached the woods and slowed down, breathing fast.
    ‘We’re safe,’ Grégoire said. ‘Nobody will see us here — no tale spinners to tell Maman we didn’t go straight home.’
    ‘There she is, the mad witch!’ I pointed through the trees to an old wooden hut, so well hidden between the large oaks that you could easily mistake it for some tangle of branches, leaves and ivy.
    ‘Not too close, Grégoire, she’ll see you and cast spells on us.’
    But I was certain the witch-woman had already spotted us. A dark eye, rimmed in red, stared from around the open doorway.
    ‘No such thing as witches.’ Grégoire rolled his eyes. ‘That’s only another stupid peasant story. You’ll learn, Victoire, when you’re as old as me.’
    Witch or no witch, I was glad we hurried on, breathing more easily when we left the woods, on the side near Monsieur Armand Bruyère’s grapevines.
    Léon Bruyère, bent over the vines, was seventeen now, and when I’d watched him weed and plough the earth, this spring, I saw he was as strong as a man.
    Léon smiled as we waved, the sun shining off his skin the same bronze colour as the King’s statue on la place de l’Eglise. Léon stuck his thumb up, which meant he could sneak away and meet us on the riverbank.
    Grégoire and I continued on, past the Bruyère farm perched on the ridge like a king surveying his great domain. We somersaulted down the grassy slope, shrieking all the way to the riverbank. Fingers of sun tickled my cheeks, my nostrils flared with the scent of spring grass and damp earth, and the Vionne River twisted like a green serpent through the valley of the Monts du Lyonnais.
    We walked the opposite way from where our cottage had stood. Since The Day of the Storm, Grégoire and I avoided the pyramid of stones and rotting beams that had been our home. Even if I caught a glimpse of the fireplace, the only thing left standing, my belly heaved and I felt sick.
    ‘A hearth without a home is worse than a home without a hearth,’ Maman had said.
    We rounded a bend, to where a group of women were washing clothes and sheets in the river.
    ‘Quick!’ Grégoire pulled me