Free The Castle Behind Thorns by Merrie Haskell Page A

else was sleeping here—they must have moved all my things out. How long—how long between when I died and the castle was sundered?”
    â€œI’ve never been sure about that, myself. More than days, less than years?”
    â€œAnd they gave my room over to . . . ?” Perrotte looked around, picking up bits of torn fabric and investigating them. “I don’t know who. Some cousin, maybe. Some relative of my father’s wife. Blech.”
    Sand shook his head.
    â€œWell, I won’t have this room! It’s not mine anymore.”
    â€œDo you want the Countess’s room?” Sand suggested, then almost bit his tongue. Of course Perrotte wouldn’t want to sleep there.
    But she just shook her head.
    â€œLook, you take your father’s room,” Sand said. “I really will find somewhere else. Maybe this room. It’s quite nice.” The castle’s silver swans and golden phoenixes were painted on the walls here too, though most were scratched through.
    â€œThank you, Sand,” Perrotte said quietly.
    Â 
    P ERROTTE HAD WALKED INTO her father’s room and lain down in Sand’s former bed with the weariness of someone who had been awake for days.
    Sand left her, returning to her old bedroom and putting it in some sort of order for his night’s sleep. He pulled the mattress off the broken bedframe and stuffed the feathers back inside. He sewed the mattress, using a nail from his purse as an awl and strips of old sheets for thread, tying each of his stitches like Agnote would knot a quilt.
    He wandered back to the kitchen to check on the stew. The turnips were beginning to mush up, but the venison was still tough and dry. He ate dried apples and crumbles of cheese instead, then raised the stew off the fire so it wouldn’t burn in the night.
    Back in Perrotte’s old room, he bedded down. The lonely ache in his chest—it hurt worse with Perrotte here. While he felt relieved to have company, she was strange to him. He didn’t understand her, nor she him, and he missed his family intensely.
    He curled on his side, trying to force himself to sleep. He must have dozed—but then he heard a scrape and a shuffle, smelled the scent of burning beeswax, and sat bolt upright.
    Perrotte stood in his doorway—the door needed to be repaired along with everything else in the room—holding a candle. “Sand.”
    â€œWhat?” He clutched at his chest, trying to still his racing heart.
    â€œWill you—will you stand up?”
    Confused, he stood.
    She walked over and picked up a corner of his mattress with a grunt, then started to drag it awkwardly toward the door.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    She didn’t say anything, just continued to drag the mattress along. It was a smaller mattress, which was the only reason she could shift it at all, and while his mending job might have been good enough to sleep on, it hadn’t been meant to hold together through this treatment. The mattress leaked a trail of feathers behind.
    â€œPerrotte? Just tell me what you’re doing and maybe I can help!”
    She continued to pull the mattress along, bent nearly in half and breathing heavily. For the sake of not losing all the feathers, Sand picked up two of the other corners and lifted, helping her to maneuver through the door. He carried the mattress along behind her, feeling like an attendant carrying the end of a robe in a coronation ceremony.
    She led him into the Count’s room, then placed the mattress at a right angle to her own—head to head, but perpendicular, so that just a corner of each mattress touched.
    Immediately, she crawled under her blankets and snuggled in.
    â€œGet your covers,” she said, yawning. “I’m tired.”
    â€œWhat are you—”
    â€œPlease, Sand.”
    He jogged off to the other room, returning with half-blankets piled high in his arms.
    â€œLie down,