Free A Waltz for Matilda by Jackie French

smiled — the first time she had seen him smile — then took the handles of his cart. She watched him trot back the way they’d come, moving faster now that the cart was empty and going downhill.
    He was a stranger, but a kind one. And at least he was another person. Suddenly she was aware that she was the only human left among these shadowed cliffs.
    She turned toward the house.

Chapter 9
    Matilda’s footsteps sounded hollow on the floorboards as she trod up onto the verandah. She pushed at the door — a proper door, even if it was swung from loops of leather, instead of hinges.
    The room inside was half kitchen, half sitting room. A horsehair sofa — the room’s only ‘real’ furniture — sat to one side of a hearth made of slabs of rocks carefully fitted together. A large metal pot with a hooped handle sat on the other side. A slab table and three rough-hewn chairs … three, she thought. For Dad, Mum and me. The only light came from the door, but there were two windows, covered with wooden shutters instead of glass. She opened them. Suddenly the room seemed less gloomy, almost welcoming.
    Two smaller rooms opened from the main one. The first had a double bed, leather plaited between stumps of legs to make a base, and covered with what looked like the hide of a cow. The other room had a single bed. The only other furniture was two big wooden chests, one in each room, and a chest of drawers made from old kerosene tins. She pulled out the drawers one byone. Folded sheepskins, soft and woolly, almost as white as the sheep in her picture book, stitched together to make a sort of mattress; two blankets, tattered at the edges.
    She shut the drawers, staring around at the carefully smoothed walls, the wooden planks so carefully fitted together for the floor. It was like the story, but totally unlike it too. Here was the house he had been building, with a bedroom for her. Here was the farm. But there were no woolly sheep, and no cow or pink pig, like the farm book at Aunt Ann’s. Most importantly, no father.
    She put her bundle down in the room she supposed had been meant for her, and opened its shutters too, fastening them against the wall with a leather thong to stop them banging in the wind.
    The vegetables were still on the verandah. She carried them in, then looked on the work bench. Yes, a box of matches.
    There was no newspaper to make a fire, but at one end of the verandah she found a box of dried leaves and kindling. She brought in an armful, then went outside again to fetch wood from the heap. The bird had stopped calling now. The valley breathed silence.
    She reached for the top bit of wood, neatly sawn from a tree trunk. Something black slithered from under the heap into the rocks behind.
    Snake! She felt her heart leap. If it had bitten her there was no one here to suck out the poison. She’d have to be careful where she trod and put her hands. At least that had looked like a red-belly, not as vicious, or as deadly, as the occasional brown that had hidden in the gardens at Aunt Ann’s.
    It took two matches before the leaves caught, and then the twigs. For a moment she thought the fireplace wouldn’t draw, assmoke puffed into the room. And then the fire flared properly and the air cleared.
    She peered into the pot. It had been scoured clean and there was no dust in it either. Which meant that someone (she hoped her father) had been here lately. She carried the pot out to the stream — or pool rather, for the water ran no more than a few feet before it vanished into the stones. She bent and drank, scooping the water with her hands. It was surprisingly cold, with a tang like tin.
    A shadow swung above her. She looked up. A cage hung from a branch wedged into the rocks. It looked like the fly-proof cool safe at Aunt Ann’s, but bigger, and made of canvas instead of tin. She opened the door.
    Food — proper food. A hunk of cheese, a bit dry around the edges. A can of golden syrup, safe from the ants. She