Free The Time Tutor by Bee Ridgway Page A

of that Alva thought she would never sleep, would never again close her eyes and find peace in this house.
    But somehow she slept.
    Bagpipe music. That’s what that must be. Her dreaming mind, having decided that it was bagpipe music, also decided that it must be Egil playing the pipes, but far away. Why? He was leading the procession. It was the Feast of Saint Martin, and the town was driving the geese—bedecked with flowers—to the slaughter. How could she have forgotten? Her mother’s geese were the fattest. She could hear the wild sound of the bagpipes from far away over the fields. Why was she here, in the vegetable garden, lying in the parsley? She should be there, cheering and laughing with everyone else. But instead she was here . . . she was here because she was dying . . . the mad knight’s terrible, calm face was above her now. There was a beautiful, towering cloud in the sky, behind his head . . . no, it was Hannelore, standing above her, and that was her wig. Hannelore, sucking the power from her, using it against Susan . . .
    Alva woke with her own hand at her throat, but the music was still there, reedy but close, not far away . . . she blinked her eyes open.
    Someone was whistling. Whistling in her bedroom. A horrible, off-key, slow tune she recognized as a mangled version of the song everyone was singing in the streets this month, “Sweet Mog the Brunette.”
    Alva bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming. She didn’t want to die, any more at midnight than she had at that long-ago midday. The whistling continued, like a dirge. She opened her mouth to say, “Who’s there?” but once her breath was freed, she found that she was screaming after all, and scrambling up and back against the headboard of her bed. Immediately the whistler was by her bed, whispering fiercely: “Shut up, woman! Do you want to bring them down on us like a plague of bloody locusts?” Then she felt his hand fumbling to cover her mouth, so she grabbed his arm and bit down on his hand as hard as she could.
    â€œShit!” The man ripped his hand away, and Alva took the opportunity to scream again.
    To good effect. When she paused for breath, she could hear loud voices outside the door, and the knob was turning. “In here!” Alva called, but the man threw himself full length over her, and hugged her to him hard, pinning her arms to her sides. “Get off! Help!” Alva struggled against him.
    â€œHold on, sweet chuck,” he whispered fiercely in her ear.
    And then the world melted away, like sugar.
    Alva was free-falling through time. Her desperate efforts to push the man away changed into a desperate effort to hold him close; she squeezed her eyes shut and her scream died in her throat and every element of herself was bent simply on clutching hold, keeping him pressed as tightly to her as possible, until suddenly there was air around them again and they were falling not through time but through space. It was a quick drop and they hit the ground hard, the man underneath her now.
    He lay perfectly still. Alva opened her eyes slowly and saw him stretched beneath her in gray dawn light, a tall man in a linen smock, his dark hair almost long enough to curl, his lean cheeks shadowed by stubble.
    The time tutor.
    It was the djävulen angripna time tutor again, in another ridiculous costume, and this time he hadn’t merely enticed her across the city to some dusty storefront—he had invaded her bedroom and then dragged her across the centuries, only to reemerge when her bedroom wasn’t even there to hold them up.
    Alva scrambled up, hitching her shift high so that she was sitting astride his prostrate form. “Fan ta dig!” She hauled an arm back and slapped him as hard as she could across the face. His head jerked to one side from the force of the blow, then rolled back again. His eyes