Read Sunshaker's War for Free Online

me,” Big Billy drawled. He sat down on the swing and scratched his belly absently. Davy had finally got him to running, and he looked as good as he had in years. He seemed to have dropped another couple of pounds, too, JoAnne noted, trying desperately to shift her train of thought and thus defuse the potentially explosive tension. It was hard, though; good looks didn’t help her husband’s tongue or his temper, which were no great shakes at the best of times.
    “Minniebelle brought us some strawberry jelly,” she managed finally, reaching down to pick up the tomcat that had arrived along with her spouse.
    “Strawberries, huh?” Big Billy grunted, casting a distrustful blue eye toward Minniebelle, whom he was a little afraid of. “Surprised you got any. Everything we’ve got’s under water.” He swept his hand in an arc before him indicating the flooded bottoms. “Might as well hire Chinese and raise rice.”
    “I got me a greenhouse,” Minniebelle beamed. “Don’t rain in there ’less I want it to.”
    “Good jelly too,” JoAnne observed, relieved at the slackening of the previous moment’s hostility.
    “Have to try some,” Big Billy replied, and fell silent.
    “Least it’s not rainin’,” JoAnne added warily, checking her watch. “Uh, Minniebelle, I hate to do this, but I really need to start gettin’ ready for graduation.” She winked at Big Billy over the old lady’s head. “Bill’ll run you home, won’t you, Bill?”
    “I reckon,” Big Billy mumbled sourly, starting to rise. “If you don’t mind ridin’ in a muddy pickup. ’Course I gotta go get it first. Left it over at Dale’s.”
    “Can’t keep nothin’ clean round here,” JoAnne offered.
    Minniebelle stood up so abruptly JoAnne started, sloshing tea into her lap. “Well I never!” the old lady shrilled, like a cat whose tail had been rocked on. “Why don’t you just come out and say it, ’stead of pussyfootin’ around?”
    JoAnne gasped incredulously. What in the world had brought this on? Minniebelle was a pretty straight shooter, but she wasn’t usually rude—and JoAnne thought she had a thicker hide than to get huffy over honest talk.
    “Say what ?” she finally choked.
    “That I ain’t wanted here! You can keep the damned jelly,” she added. “But don’t ’spect nothin’ else this summer!” Suddenly she was shaking, her wrinkled face red with rage.
    The last bonds on JoAnne’s control unraveled. “I don’t want nothin’ !” she shouted back before she could stop. Big Billy’s eyebrows nearly intercepted his receding hairline.
    “You ain’t gonna get it, neither!” Minniebelle raged on, heading for the front steps.
    “Well, I…” Jo Anne broke off as she saw the gasp of realization that suddenly rounded the old woman’s lips, the sudden horrified brightening of her eyes before they filled with tears.
    “Why…I…I don’t know what made me say that,” Minniebelle sobbed. “I didn’t mean it, none of it. I just got real mad of a sudden, and wanted to…to hurt somebody.”
    “Yeah,” JoAnne whispered shakily, taking her in her arms. “I felt it too.”
    Big Billy looked puzzled but went back inside to begin the trek back to Dale’s. “Foolishness,” he muttered, as he slammed the door behind him.
    The tomcat scratched JoAnne for no obvious reason.

Chapter II: … Prophesying War
    (a tower—no place—no time)
    Silver —and gray, and crumbling stone, and the persistent clink of the Iron chains that bound him: these filled Fionchadd mac Ailill’s days.
    How long had he stared at the ill-made walls of his prison? How many risings of sun and moon had passed him by? Except that he was not certain there was a sun or moon in this strange shattered place, at least not as there was in Ethlinn’s obsidian tower from which he had lately been spirited—though of his time there he remembered little because he had spent all his Power keeping the pain at bay. Here there was only a sporadic