Free The Hidden Land by PAMELA DEAN

training.”
    “Maybe she was his nurse, too,” said Ellen, looking after Matthew and Agatha.
    “She’s not old enough,” said Ruth.
    A hand came down on Laura’s head, gently, but she jumped. She looked up; it was at Randolph.
    “It’s time, I fear,” he said.
    He looked, in his black clothes, as if he had been bleached, and there were lines around his eyes that had not been there the last time she saw him. Laura had once tripped over her mother’s sprained ankle, and her mother had looked like that for a few seconds. But Randolph went on looking like that as he spoke again. Laura felt a desperate and foolish desire to give him some aspirin.
    “Those closest to him must gather around the grave,” said Randolph.
    “I never even talked to him,” said Laura, following him nonetheless.
    Randolph turned around so suddenly that she almost fell into him, and took her by the hands. “It is too late for many things,” he said, bewildering her; and he kept hold of one of the hands and took her along with him.
    “He means by blood,” said Ellen in Laura’s ear.
    Randolph made room for them between Fence and Matthew. Across the gaping grave Laura saw Ted and Patrick; Ted looked miserable, and Patrick disgusted. Both of them were wet, and very red in the face. The coffin must have been heavy.
    Laura had intended not to look at the coffin, but it was so unlike what she expected that she looked at it before she knew what it was. It was a sturdy box of pale wood, spattered with rain, the running fox inlaid on the top, and a scroll of flowers, and the peculiar animals they had seen before. It was, even to someone who had been living among the beautiful things of High Castle for two months, a lovely object: Laura found herself wanting it for a moment, and then shivered.
    “Will you look at that!” hissed Ellen.
    “I did,” said Laura.
    “Look at the side, not the top.”
    Laura did. There, once more, in greater detail and richer color, was the story of the young man, the wizard, and the animals that they had seen on the tapestry, on Fence’s dishes, and on various doors. Only the first four panels of the tapestry were on this side of the coffin. On the far right the cat and the young man with decided eyebrows were, respectively, washing and feeding the dog.
    “Why couldn’t we have been on the other side?” raged Ellen under her breath.
    “I thought you were tired of that story.”
    “I want to see which last panel it is, the hole or the sun.”
    “Ted and Patrick can see it.”
    “Only if they have the sense to look.”
    “Stare at them,” said Laura, hopefully.
    She and Ellen opened their eyes as wide as they could and gazed earnestly through the misty rain at Ted and Patrick.
    Randolph came around behind Ted and began talking to him. Laura forgot what she was supposed to be doing. Ted kept shaking his head, and Randolph looked as if he would have liked to shake Ted. This argument eventually attracted Patrick’s attention, and at Laura’s side Ellen gave a martyred sigh.
    “Maybe I could find whoever made the thing,” she said.
    “I wonder what Randolph wants?” said Laura.
    “Milady Laura,” said Fence over Ellen’s head, “of your courtesy, hold your tongue.”
    Laura looked up at him reproachfully. It was Ellen’s fault they were talking, but no grown-up, even Fence, would ever bother to find out something like that before he yelled at you. Fence’s mouth quirked.
    “’Tis not the speech, but its substance, that I pray thee keep thy tongue from,” he said.
    Laura, having puzzled this out, was too astonished even to smile at him.
    “Hush,” said Fence, looking over her head and across the grave at Randolph. “We begin.
    Randolph, standing with his hands in the sleeves of his black robe and his hair dripping into his eyes, had managed by merely looking the crowd over to make them be quiet and watch him.
    “Servants, friends, and lovers,” he said; and like the King’s, his voice carried