Read The Moorchild for Free Online Page A

strangeling! ” More titters. “Freaky-odd.”
    Old Bess, now spying unseen from the tangle of hawthorn around their little clearing, saw Saaski standing motionless within the ragged circle half a dozen children had formed around her. They probed, got no answers, fell to squabbling among themselves. Saaski merely watched, her fingers and toes at their chubbiest, her sharp glance moving from one face to another. A bold demand to know if she could truly run straight up a wall was met with apparent deafness. A taunt that the cat must have got her tongue provoked a brief bright-green glare and the tongue thrust out as far as it would go. A chant of “Creepy, daffy, killed the calfy!” brought swift action, not really to Old Bess’s surprise. Saaski could move quick as a lizard, and plainly could pinch hard where it hurt worst. The taunts turned to squeals orstartled tears; the circle turned into a few subdued small children scattering to their tasks.
    Saaski did not stir until the others had wandered farther among the trees in search of twigs and broken branches. Then she faded so suddenly behind a hazel clump that Old Bess nearly missed the movement. Wondering if she would flee home—and what she would tell Yanno if she did—Old Bess followed, only to see her turn away from the village and head across a glade of open woodland used as winter pasture. She made directly for a shallow hollow on the far side, and Old Bess eased through the shielding thickets to the hollow’s bottom, where there was a spring-fed pond. Merely thirsty, she decided. She found a peephole and peered through.
    Saaski was kneeling at the pond’s edge, leaning over the water like a winged thing just alighted, long fingers braced on the grassy rim, hair like a strange cloud floating about her head. She had never looked less human, despite her apron and dress. Now, said a voice suddenly in Old Bess’s mind, I could do it now and it would all be over. The pond was deep, one could simply tip the creature in, push her under—in a twinkling she would burst out with a shriek and fly away to her elfland, and Anwara would find her own dear child back in its cot. . . .
    Then Old Bess saw that the wide, tilted eyes were staring fixedly into the pond, and realized Saaski was not drinking, had not come to drink. She was trying to see her reflection—a hopeless task in water constantly stirred by the underground springs.
    No doubt she had little notion what she looked like.Well, who did? thought Old Bess. The only mirror in the village—a scratched disk of polished bronze—had been stolen by the gypsies years ago. When the light was right, one could see one’s silhouette far down on the well’s surface, or get a blurry glimpse of color and shape in the bottom of a tin pan—if one owned a pan of tin and kept it polished. Mainly, one looked at other folk and had no real reason to wonder about oneself.
    Saaski now had good reason, but that pond with its moving surface would never answer her questions. After a moment she lifted a hand and pressed her hair as if trying to flatten it, sniffled angrily and pulled a crinkly lock around to peer at it cross-eyed. Finally she sat back on her heels and gazed past Old Bess’s hiding place, her eyes fading to grayish mauve and her odd little face forlorn. Old Bess found herself curiously shaken, her thoughts in a tangle.
    Poor unblessed creature, it may be she has no more wish to be here than we have to have her. . . . Does she yearn, as one of us might, for her heathenish home? Does she even remember a place where she once belonged? Did she never belong, even there?
    Saaski stirred, took a long breath. She leaned over the pool once more, and this time drank deep. It would have been even easier now to tip her in before she could save herself, but Old Bess could no longer imagine doing so. In a moment Saaski stood up, brushed vaguely at the mud on her apron, and set off toward the woods and her task. Old Bess