Read Ozark Trilogy 1: Twelve Fair Kingdoms for Free Online

defined as more than three. It looked to be hot work, and I fanned my face with my blank program in sympathy.
    “Young people!” I said, ducking the bow. “They do amaze me.”
    Anne gave me a sharp look, and I looked her right back and waited. Whatever she had to say, she’d say it; she’d said enough about my blue-and-silver party dress, which was even more preposterous in the way of gewgaws and lollydaddles than the one I’d arrived in. And my high-heeded silver slippers with the pointed toes.
    “My daughter, Silverweb,” she said to me, and I noticed that she was talking with her teeth clenched, and spitting out the syllables like she couldn’t spare them, “Silverweb, my dear cousin, is a ‘young people.’”
    “And a fine one,” I agreed. “That’s a likely young woman, and I plan to keep my eye on her in future. I wager she’ll go a considerable distance in this world.”
    “ Sil verweb,” Anne said again, “is fifteen years old. And you, Responsible of Brightwater, you remarking on the habits of these ‘young people’ like a blasted Granny, have had precisely fourteen birthdays, and the fourteenth not more than six weeks ago!”
    It wasn’t often I stood rebuked lately, not since we’d finally managed to pack my sister off where she couldn’t do any harm to speak of or leave me holding the bag if she was bound and determined to live up to her name. But this was one of the times, and I had it coming. Not that we are given to considering only the calendar years on Ozark, we know many other things more worth considering. But my speech had not been genteel. It was the sort of thing my mother would of said, and I wished, not for me first time, that I had the skill of blushing. That, like the ability not to fall over my own big feet, had been left out of my equipment. And the more ashamed of myself I was, the more I looked like I didn’t care atall—I knew that. I only wished I knew what to do about it.
    Anne of Brightwater was not as tall as I was, and she had a usual habit of gathering herself in that made her seem even smaller, but she was making me feel mighty puny now, there mid the music and the boom of thunder. A trick like a cat does, puffing herself up to be more impressive.
    “It is hard for Silverweb,” said my kinswoman, spitting sparks now along with the syllables, “seeing you come here, dressed like a young queen and treated like one, off on a Quest before all the world and it taken seriously —oh, they are, don’t you worry, they are taking it very seriously! While she stands aside and must hear herself called ‘one of the McDaniels children.’ Had you thought of that?”
    I had not thought of it, obvious though it surely should have been. I looked at the tall grave girl who was a year my senior, moving easily through the squares in a simple dress of gray silk sprigged with pale green rosebuds, and her only ornament a shawl of dark gray wool in a Love-in-the-Mist knotting, with a pearl fringe ... and perhaps the single wild rose in her yellow hair. I remembered the way I had sat that afternoon, “watching the children,” with a pretty fair estimate of the expression that must of been on my face at that time, and I felt a fool. Had I called her “one of the children” in her hearing? Surely not ... but supper had been boring, as expected, and I’d not paid a great deal of mind to curbing my tongue.
    “The mother lion defends her young,” I said lamely, and the nearest Fiddler got me back of the ear, making me jump.
    “And a stitch in time saves nine!”
    I winced and stared at the floor, and Anne drew her skirts around her with a swish like ribbon tearing and went off and left me standing there all alone as she headed for the ballroom door; managing to tangle herself up with two couples in a reel before she sailed out into the corridor and slammed the door behind her.
    She would be back later to apologize. After all, I had not chosen to be Responsible of Brightwater.