Ever
Page 16
“Not that. In June the guilds abolished ten-year apprenticeships. Now everyone must pay to learn a trade.”
I turned to her. Her face was serious. It was true.
The boat pitched, but my stomach steadied while a rock formed there.
CHAPTER TWO
What will you do?” the goodwife asked.
“I will think of something.” I sounded dignified. Dignity had always eluded me before. I excused myself from the goodwife’s company and found a spot on the deck closer to the cows than to the human passengers. My curiosity about them had faded. I removed my cloak from my satchel, spread it out, and sat.
If our farm weren’t so out of the way, we’d have learned the apprenticeship rules had changed and I would still be home. I’d probably have stayed on Lahnt forever.
Word might reach Mother and Father in a few months or a few years. When they found out, they would be wild with worry.
I hadn’t enough money for passage back, nor did I want to return. I would send word as soon as I was settled. No matter what, I would still be a mansioner.
Perhaps a mansioner master or mistress would take me as a fifteen-year apprentice. No one but me would give free labor for fifteen years. Who could say no? I conjured up an imaginary mansioner mistress, in middle age but straight and tall as a youth, with a round, echoing voice. She would recognize her younger self in me. My determination would move her, and she would grant me my fifteen-year apprenticeship.
My mood improved. Curiosity returned, and I watched the people on deck. The rowers rested their oars when the cog master’s attention was elsewhere. The oddly clothed mother and daughter were squabbling. The goodwife had recovered from her nausea and joined her husband. I liked best to watch the two of them. Sometimes she leaned into his shoulder, and he encircled her with his arm. Her expression showed peace, eagerness, and patience combined. If I were ever to play a wife, I would remember this goodwife’s face.
Night came. I curled up, hugged my satchel close, and wished desperately for home. But why wish? I mansioned myself there, under my woolen blanket in my pallet bed on a floor that didn’t roll, with Albin only a few feet away and Mother and Father in their sleeping loft over my head. Yes, that was their bed groaning, not the mast.
Soon I was asleep. In the morning I felt myself a seasoned mariner.
At intervals the animal owner walked his beasts around the deck. “Come with Dess,” he’d say in his sweet voice. “In Two Castles Dess will buy you fine hay, feed you fine grass. How happy you will be.”
I decided that he and the goodwife were the most worthy passengers on the cog.
Master Dess’s heavy basket turned out to contain kittens. He’d reach in for one at a time, stroke it from head to tail, and speak softly to it. Early in the afternoon of the second day, when even the gentle breeze died away, the cog master let Master Dess release them all.
The seven kittens, each striped black and white, burst out to chase one another between legs, around the mast, up and down the deck. A kitten played with the end of a coil of rope, batting it to and fro. The tiniest one climbed the rigging to the top of the mast and perched there for half an hour, lord of the sea. My heart rose into my throat to see it, so tiny and so high.
On its way down, it lost its balance and hung upside down. Frantically I looked around for something to help it with—a pole, anything. No one else was watching, except Master Dess and the goodwife, whose hands were pressed to her chest.
An oar might reach the kitten. I rushed toward the rowers just as the kitten scrambled upright and minced down the mast with a satisfied air. I returned to my cloak. Soon after, Master Dess collected that kitten and its mates.
When they were all in their basket, the goodwife came to me, bearing a small package wrapped in rough hemp. I jumped up.
“May I sit with you?”
I made room for her and she sat, tucking her legs under her. She placed the package in her lap.
What a pleasure to have her company!
“May I know your name, dear?”
I could think of no harm in telling her. “Lodie. I mean, Elodie.”
“And I am Goodwife Celeste. My goodman is Twah.”
“Pleased to meet you.” I rummaged in my satchel. One must show hospitality to a visitor, even a visitor to a cloak on the deck of a cog.
She was saying, “You and I both feared for that brave kitten.” She paused, then added, “Have you heard of the cats of Two Castles?”
I shook my head, while drawing bread and cheese and a pear out of my satchel. With the little knife from my purse, I cut her chunks of the bread and cheese and half the pear.
“Thank you.” She tasted. “Excellent goat cheese.” She unwrapped her own package.
“Cats in Two Castles?” I said to remind her.
“The townspeople believe cats protect them from the ogre. There are many.”
“Many cats or ogres?” How could a cat save anyone from an ogre?
She laughed. “Cats.” Her package held bread and cheese, too, and a handful of radishes.
We traded slices and chunks, observing custom, according to the saying, Share well, fare well. Share ill, fare ill.
Goodwife Celeste’s cheese wasn’t as tasty as mine, but the bread was softer, baker’s bread. I wondered where my future meals would come from, once my food and my single copper ran out.
Goodwife Celeste returned to telling me about cats. “You know that ogres shift shape sometimes?”
“Yes.”
“Cats know they do, too. The cats sense that an ogre can become a fox or a wolf, but they’re not afraid.”
Our cat at home, Belliss, who weighed less than a pail of milk, feared nothing.
“They’re aware that an ogre can also turn into a mouse.” She finished eating. “More?” She held out her food.
“No, thank you.” I offered her more of mine, too, and she said no.
As I wrapped my food and she wrapped hers, her sleeve slid back. A bracelet of twine circled her left wrist. Were twine bracelets the fashion in Two Castles? She probably wouldn’t have minded if I’d asked, but I didn’t want to reveal my ignorance.
“Can an ogre shift into any kind of animal?” I said. “A spider or an elephant?”
“I believe so.”
“Can an ogre shift into a human?”
Her eyebrows went up. “I doubt it.” She returned to the subject of cats. “A cat will stare at an ogre and wish him—will him—to become a mouse. They say one cat isn’t enough, but several yearning at him, and the ogre can’t resist.”
I pitied the ogre. “Is that true?”
“Many believe it. What’s more, people train their cats. They don’t train them to try to make an ogre become a mouse. It is in the cats’ nature to do that, and the ogre must cooperate by giving in. But folks train cats to perform tricks and to stalk anything, including an ogre. Some make a living at cat teaching. With the flick of a wrist . . .”
She showed me, and I imitated her—nothing to it.
“With this gesture, anyone can set a cat to stalking.”
“If there were no cats, what would the ogre do?”
“Nothing, perhaps. Or dine on townsfolk.”
Chapter Two continues . . .
BACK ADS
OTHER BOOKS
Also by Gail Carson Levine
Dave at Night
Ella Enchanted
Fairest
A Tale of Two Castles
The Two Princesses of Bamarre
The Wish
THE PRINCESS TALES
The Fairy’s Return and Other Princess Tales
The Fairy’s Mistake
The Princess Test
Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep
Cinderellis and the Glass Hill
For Biddle’s Sake
The Fairy’s Return
Betsy Red Hoodie
Betsy Who Cried Wolf
Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly
&nbs
p; Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg
Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GAIL CARSON LEVINE grew up in New York City and has been writing all her life. Her first novel, ELLA ENCHANTED, was a Newbery Honor Book. Levine’s other books include FAIREST, a New York Times bestseller, Publishers Weekly Best Book, and School Library Journal Best Book; DAVE AT NIGHT, an ALA Notable Book and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults; THE WISH; THE TWO PRINCESSES OF BAMARRE; A TALE OF TWO CASTLES; and the six Princess Tales books. She is also the author of the nonfiction book WRITING MAGIC: Creating Stories That Fly, the poetry collection FORGIVE ME, I MEANT TO DO IT: False Apology Poems, and the picture books BETSY WHO CRIED WOLF and BETSY RED HOODIE, illustrated by Scott Nash. Gail and her husband, David, live in a two-centuries-old farmhouse in New York’s Hudson Valley. You can visit her online at www.gailcarsonlevinebooks.com and at www.gailcarsonlevine.blogspot.com.
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COPYRIGHT
Cover art © 2011 by Greg Call
EVER.
Copyright © 2008 by Gail Carson Levine.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Levine, Gail Carson.
Ever / Gail Carson Levine.— 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Teenaged Kezi is to be sacrificed to the Hyte god because of a rash promise made by her father, but young Olus, Akkan god of the winds, falls in love with her and together they try to change her fate through a series of quests.
ISBN 978-0-06-122964-0
EPub Edition February 2013 ISBN 9780062253491
[1. Fate and fatalism—Fiction. 2. Gods—Fiction. 3. Winds—Fiction. 4. Immortality—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L578345Eve 2008
2007032289
[Fic]—dc22
CIP
AC
* * *
11 12 13 14 15 LP/CW 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
REVISED EDITION, 2011
The quote about Jephthah is from the New Revised Standard Version (Anglicized Edition) of the Bible, copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
The quote about Ishtar is from Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, translated by Stephanie Dalley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
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