Read Dust and Water: A Song For The Stained Novella (A MAGICAL SAGA) for Free Online Page A

is Ash’s poor effort, and this is my record.” He points out two other lines.
    They’ve used the side of the barn and the sun and shadows to record the time it has taken each of them to ride the distance and back, plus picking black berries.
    I smile at the challenge, but inside my lungs are having trouble working. Horse riding is new to me, even though I’ve been riding their odd horse to chase sheep, or getting out to the fields, for two weeks.
    “So, are you in or are you too chicken?” Dom says.
    I shrug, like it’s no big deal. “If this is what you farm folk do for fun, I’ll try not to smash your records too far into the dirt.”
    A few minutes later Ash hoists me up onto his horse and points towards the gate.
    “Good luck,” he says.
    A loud slap echoes from somewhere behind me, the sound bouncing off the stables and the house several times; but I’m already being carried away by a horse that might as well have been given fire vinegar!
    Horse riding is a rush. Not dawdling along like a fancy lady, but really riding. Vermin quick, hunter stealth, street-cat wild. And, I feel some of my usual wild attitude come back as I hold onto Ash’s brown boy and whop with excitement.
    Blackberries, blackberries, blackberries… there!
    I land on my knees; the horse is walking off and snorting in that horsey kind of way. My fingers rush along the branches, being cut by thorns, but my heart is hammering so hard that I don’t care.
    My shoulder bag full I run for the horse. Just as I have my foot in the metal thing, it walks forward. Almost knocking me onto my bum.
    “Stay still you mule.”
    I throw my weight up onto his back and land with a painful thud into the saddle. It must have been painful for him too because he rushes off in the wrong direction shaking his head and throwing his back end around.
    “Turn around,” I say, pulling on the leather and grunting with the effort. “Go, go.”
    He runs, and I hold on. I know there is a better term for horses running, but I am not a horse person… not yet.
    If they can all move this fast, I might become a one. Wonder what it would take to trick Ash out of his mount? If I beat him in a game of cards? Dice?
    Almost there. A few corners, the Meadowsblade’s place, then home.
    My breath stops.
    Home?
    It’s not home.
    Somehow, I’ve managed to pull the horse to a stop too, and with both our hearts still dancing he refuses to stand still; turning in an impatient circle.
    Home? I’m still not sure of the word, or why I thought it.
    “Ha, ha!” someone shouts, and the sound of a cart echoes down the road. “Move it, they’re on our tails.”
    I move to the side of the road and wait for them to round the corner. Whoever it is they’re in a hurry.
    Through the trees a flash of red moves towards me. A red sash means slave traders.
    I urge Ash’s horse off the road and deeper into the trees. I might have a dozen blades, and a horse, but if slavers see me out here on my own, I’m a goner.
    “Shhh,” I whisper, slipping from the horses back and tying his reins to a tree.
    Sneaking towards the road, belly down in the dirt, I wait for a full view.
    There’s a cart, four horses that I can see, and they’re in a rush.
    “Help!” someone shouts from the back of the cart.
    They’ve already kidnapped someone. But from where? Around here, there’s not a lot of the type of street kids, or poor farmers kids, to go nabbing.
    Jenny?
    No, but then, maybe. She’s been out in the fields all day; I haven’t seen her since breakfast. I have to get a closer look.

Dirty Tricks.

    My hand moves, slowly and silently, away from the branches and towards my hip where the easiest of my knives is hidden. There’s four slave traders on horseback still coming down the road and the cart behind them. The fact that they’ve ridden off ahead of the cart says that there is something of greater value than slaves on their minds – like the traders lives.
    The cart has my attention if those