Read Willow for Free Online Page B

friends. She paused to listen, her eyes suddenly apprehensive, her head turning back and forth across the breeze from the north. No one noticed her. Each time she herself decided she had imagined something, and was soon back shouting happily among her friends.
    At noon, Willow’s turn came on the magicians’ stage. All candidates for Apprentice to the High Aldwin had drawn lots to perform, and Willow was last. By that time, the crowd had thinned considerably. The acts had not been very good, there were many other distractions, and wonderful fragrances were luring people to the dining tents. Besides, the tug-of-war combat between miners and farmers had just begun in the adjoining field. Willow’s name, when it was announced, was drowned out by the roars of loyalists urging on their teams.
    But Willow had his own cheering-section, and they were so enthusiastic that they even drew some curious spectators away from the tug-of-war. Willow’s boyhood friend, Meegosh. stood solidly in his leather miner’s apron, one arm around Ranon and the other around Mims. All three wildly applauded every trick, even the old pull-the-feathers-out-of-nowhere maneuver, which Willow actually did quite well. Meegosh slapped his apron and yelled, “Bravo! Bravo!” so lustily that he attracted the attention of Burglekutt. The Prefect watched disdainfully from across the fairgrounds, pudgy hands spread on his stomach.
    “And for my final amazing feat,” Willow shouted, “I will make an entire . . . pig . . . disappear !”
    “Bravo!”
    “Hurray!” Ranon and Mims shouted.
    “Humph!” Burglekutt grunted.
    Ranon and Mims lugged a wriggling piglet onto the stage, and Willow held it with one hand while spreading his cloak with the other. The piglet nipped him on the hand and twisted free, scurrying around the stage, much to Burglekutt’s delight.
    Meegosh covered his face.
    Willow scampered after it. “Whuppity bairn! Whuppity bairn!” he chanted, spreading his cloak so that he looked like a small bat. “Deru! Deru!”
    The pig vanished.
    The crowd gasped.
    Willow lifted his arms calmly and triumphantly. But the cloak thrashed and churned. Muffled squealing issued from it, and a second later the pig thumped back onto the stage and scrambled away. Burglekutt roared. The crowd hissed and booed. In the field beside the stage, a mighty cheer arose as the miners triumphed in the tug-of-war, pulling the farmers face-first into the dirt.
    “Never mind, Dada.” Ranon reached up to put his arm around his father’s waist. “It wasn’t your fault.”
    Mims nodded. “Next year we’ll get a better pig.”
    “Good show!” Meegosh said, clapping his friend on the back as Willow came off the stage. “Much better than last year. Just needs a little . . . refining. Come on, Willow, cheer up!”
    “Quite a spectacle!” Burglekutt snorted. “Made a fool of yourself again, eh, Ufgood? Disappearing pig! The only thing you’ll see disappear is your farm!” Laughing, he headed for the food tent.
    “Round the bend!” Meegosh grinned, poking Willow.
    “Meegosh, I don’t feel like that just now. And besides, we’re getting too old for . . .”
    “Round the bend!”
    “All right. Round the bend!”
    “Fat rear end!” Meegosh shouted after Burglekutt, cupping his hands.
    “He’s a donkey . . .”
    “And I’m your friend!”
    The two old friends chuckled at their own childishness, and Willow immediately felt better. The children laughed with them, although Mims suddenly paused and lifted her head as if she had heard a faint sound from far away. The men moved off, not noticing her distraction, and soon she ran after them.
    “Never mind Burglekutt,” Meegosh was saying. “When the High Aldwin picks you as his apprentice this afternoon, you won’t have to worry about Burglekutt anymore, ever again.”
    “I hope you’re right.”
    “Of course, I’m right. Wait and see.”
    They shared a good meal and enjoyed the rest of the fair until