Free The Truth-Teller's Tale by Sharon Shinn Page A

taking her coat, and me, as I bent to pick up her luggage. “What about you girls?” she asked. “You’re old enough to have some dreams and wishes.”
    â€œOld enough to know better than to talk about them aloud,” Adele said with a laugh.
    â€œOld enough to know which ones are never going to come true, even with years’ worth of wishing,” I added.
    Melinda’s perfect eyebrows rose. “Old enough to be true cynics,” she said. “Give yourselves time. One day you’ll have dreams that are bigger than you are.”
    Adele and I helped get her settled in her room, then carried up hot water so she could clean and dress for the party. When she came downstairs, attired in a lovely rose-pink gown that made her white hair seem to glow, we exclaimed over her elegance and beauty.
    â€œWell, I thought if it was good enough for dinner at the palace, it was good enough for dinner at Karro’s,” Melinda said, pulling on long, fine gloves. “I don’t plan to stay late, though. I’d rather celebrate the bonfire here. When will you be throwing your wreath into the flames?”
    â€œWe’ll wait till you get back,” promised my father, who was ready to drive her to Karro’s in our little gig. “We’ll be up all night, of course. We don’t need to burn it at midnight.”
    â€œGoodness! I hope I’m back before then.”
    â€œShould I send Bob to fetch you?” my mother asked.
    Melinda grinned rather wickedly. “No. I’ll make Karro find someone who wants a favor. I would think any number of people would be happy to drive the Dream-Maker anywhere she wishes on Wintermoon night.”
    We all laughed, and the two of them left. Mother and Adele and I busied ourselves in the kitchen, cooking all our favorite foods and relishing the simplicity of making a meal for four instead of for the ten or twenty who might ordinarily be staying at the inn. After Father returned and we’d all eaten, Mother cleaned the kitchen while Father and Adele and I went outside to start the fire.
    By this time it was completely dark and quite cold. Father had stacked cords and cords of wood in a cleared space behind the inn—an area between the toolshed and the vegetable garden. It was far enough from the two trees to be certain no stray sparks would catch the bare limbs on fire, but close enough to the house to allow us to run back inside if we got too chilly. Father carefully built the piles of kindling and put the bigger logs on top, then started the fire with a coal brought from the kitchen. So small, at first—a flicker, a tendril of yellow, a fugitive lick of untamed gold—and then a fire, and then a blaze, and then, as more logs were added, a true inferno. Its heat sent us scampering back toward the house until cold beat us back toward the fire’s hungry embrace. My face and my hands were hot enough to seem fevered, but my feet were numb against the icy winter ground.
    â€œThat’s pretty, that is,” my father said, admiring the leaping, twisting flames. “That’ll last all night.”
    I turned to view what I could of the neighboring buildings. A few of the merchants situated nearby had houses in other parts of town, but most of them lived in quarters above their businesses. So up and down our street I could see an almost unbroken string of similar fires, scarlet and saffron against the velvet night. Once I had climbed to the roof of the inn to look out over the Wintermoon landscape, and counted nearly fifty separate bonfires before I lost track.
    Father yawned hugely. It was only eight or nine o’clock, and we would be up till dawn—and the next day’s customers would probably start arriving by noon. “I think I’ll go in and sleep for a bit,” he said. “Will you girls keep the fire going?” We gave quick assents. “Wake me up when Melinda gets back,” he said,