Free The Enchantress (Book 1 of The Enchantress Saga) by Nicola Thorne

earth. They would take the prickles out with their fingers and divide the succulent flesh before cramming it into their mouths. More often than not, however, it was a rabbit or pigeon, or sometimes it was no meat at all but a soup made from berries and herbs in the gypsy way.
    The other thing they did to pass their time on the road was to tell stories, and here Benjamin the dreamer excelled. They would gather around the little cart in which he rode and listen as he told tales about gypsy lore, or invented new ones himself about those far off days when the gypsies had come from the east and dispersed all over Europe. There were so many legends about the Romany folk handed down from generation to generation that no one knew whether they were true or false. The true ones were embellished in the telling and the false ones came, in time, to be regarded as true.
    They skirted the town of Penrith and its surrounding hamlets and villages, moving all the time across that flat plain to the hills that proclaimed Ullswater and the range of lakes, valleys and mountains that stretched to the sea. At times hills appeared out of a haze, as though floating on cloud, and then they reminded Analee of some enchanted land such as she had heard her grandmother talk of in her far-off childhood. When the sun rose or set behind the hills and the sky was streaked with reds, purples and many shades of gold, Analee would be spellbound by the sheer beauty of it and yearn to be among the peaks, clambering along the narrow passes, roaming through the bracken and short wiry grass or sleeping in some sheltering cave.
    At the head of Lake Ullswater they played in the tavern of the tiny village of Pooley and the next morning Analee crept out of the tent she shared with Selinda just as dawn was breaking. She stood by the side of the lake which, it seemed to her, was so large it must lead to the sea for it disappeared out of sight hidden behind the high fells on one side and the thick woods on the other.
    There were one or two tiny islands on the lake, and the calm water with scarcely a ripple disturbing its surface was so enticing that impulsively Analee stepped into it wading out until it was almost up to her knees. She held up her skirts and nearly cried at the bitter cold of the water which came from high in the ice-bound hills.
    All that day the troupe wandered along by the side of the lake with its wooded bays and rocky inlets, through the tiny villages nestling on its shores and across the broad valley of Patterdale with truly gigantic peaks towering on either side. One or two remote farmhouses were tucked in the folds of the steep fells upon which the hardy Herdwick sheep incredibly found purchase with their nimble feet.
    The valley seemed to be the limit of their journey and when they came to the small lake at the end of it they bathed their weary feet and gazed upwards seeking a way out. Although beautiful and fertile, it was an empty desolate place with no more hamlets with taverns to play in.
    A crofter, passing the time of day with this curious group, told them that there was a bridle path over the mountains to Ambleside and Windermere but he shook his head at the pony and cart and the sight of the cripple and the pale weary girl. Selinda tired easily and sat on a stone shivering, her arms pressed to her chest for warmth.
    ‘Them mountains terrify me,’ she said. ‘If you go on, I go back.’
    ‘Aye and me too,’ Benjy said, remembering the crofter’s piteous glance. ‘You cannot get the cart over there and I cannot go without it.’
    Analee held her hand over her eyes and looked towards the massive mountain range which hemmed them in. They didn’t terrify her; they thrilled her. Were she alone she would take off along that narrow winding path that soon disappeared out of sight among the jutting crags. It was a ravaged, harsh wilderness with the individual alone among the elements.
    ‘We could perish in the mountains and none be the