Free The Bone Doll's Twin by Lynn Flewelling Page B

ghost Tobin could see. She was thin and pale, with nervous hands that fluttered about like dying birds when she wasn’t sewing the pretty rag dolls, or clutching the ugly old one she was never without. It was tucked under her arm just now and seemed to be staring at him, even though it had no face.
    He was as surprised to find her here as he was to see her free. When Tobin’s father was home, she always kept to herself and avoided him. Tobin liked it better when she did.
    It was second nature for him now to steal a quick look into his mama’s eyes; Tobin had learned young to gauge the moods of those around him, especially his mother’s. Usually she simply looked at him like a stranger, cold and distant. When the demon threw things or pinched him, she would just hug her ugly old doll and look away. She almost never hugged Tobin, though on the very bad days, she spoke to him as if he were still a baby, or as if he were a girl. On those days Father would shut her up in her chamber and Nari would make the special teas for her to drink.
    But her eyes were clear now, he saw. She was almost smiling as she held out a hand to him. “Come, little love.”
    She’d never spoken to him like that before. Tobin glanced nervously at his father’s door, but she bent and captured his hand in hers. Her grip was just a little too tight as she drew him to the locked door at the end of the corridor, the one that led upstairs.
    “I’m not allowed up there,” Tobin told her, his voice hardly more than a squeak. Nari said the floors were unsound up there, and that there were rats and spiders big as his fist.
    “You may come up with me,” she said, producing a large key from her skirts and opening the forbidden door.
    Stairs led up to a corridor that looked very much like the one below, with doors on either side, but this one was dusty and dank-smelling, and the small, high-set windows were tightly shuttered.
    Tobin glanced through an open door as they passed and saw a sagging bed with tattered hangings, but no rats. At the end of the corridor his mother opened a smaller door and led him up a very steep, narrow stairway lit by afew arrow slits in the walls. There was hardly enough light to make out the worn steps, but Tobin knew where they were.
    They were in the watchtower.
    He pressed one hand to the wall for balance, but pulled it away again when his fingers found patches of something rough that scaled away at his touch. He was scared now, and wanted to run back down to the bright, safe part of the house, but his mother still held his hand.
    As they climbed higher, something suddenly flittered in the shadows overhead—the demon, no doubt, or some worse terror. Tobin tried to pull free, but she held him fast and smiled at him over her shoulder as she led him up to a narrow door at the top.
    “Those are just my birds. They have their nests here and I have mine, but they can fly in and out whenever they wish.”
    She opened the narrow door and sunlight flooded out. It made him blink as he stumbled over the threshold.
    He’d always thought the tower was empty, abandoned, except perhaps for the demon, but here was a pretty little sitting room furnished more nicely than any of the rooms downstairs. He gazed around in amazement, never imagining his mother had such a delightful secret place.
    Faded tapestries covered the windows on three sides, but the west wall was bare and the heavy shutters open. Tobin could see sunlight shining on the snow-covered peaks in the distance, and hear the rush of the river below.
    “Come, Tobin,” she urged, going to a table by the window. “Sit with me a while on your name day.”
    A little spark of hope flared up in Tobin’s heart and he edged further into the room. She’d never remembered his birthday before.
    The room was very cozy and comfortable. A long table stood against the far wall, piled with doll-making goods. On another table, finished dolls—dark-haired and mouthless asalways, but dressed in