Free The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw Page A

to bring down a pot of honey she had laid by there, and Saaski decided to explore it.
    She got right side up on the rafter and scampered along it, until she could drop onto the loft and edge her way between the baskets holding straw rope and torch reeds, the spare sheepskins for winter bedding, a broken-legged stool, Anwara’s soap-making cauldron. No doubt there would be only more such oddments in the cupboard, but Saaski meant to find out. Crouched on the rough boards in front of it and brushing spiderwebs away from her face, she fumbled gingerly with the latch, using a handful of her apron toprotect her fingers as she tugged the iron pin out. At last the hasp grated free of its staple and the cupboard door creaked open. Sucking her fingers, which tingled in spite of the apron, Saaski peered inside.
    A linen sack, beeswaxed at the seams, turned out to be half full of the goose down Anwara was storing for new pillows. Behind it, a stiffened sheep-hide pouch held nothing but a broken knife. There were the winter togs, and a pot of red earth for Anwara’s dyes—no honey crocks, though. In fact, nothing else, except—far back in the gloom—a dim bundle of something wrapped carefully in sheepskin, fleece side in. Saaski stretched an arm to its longest, tugged the bundle into reach and began to lay back its coverings, sneezing from the dust. Inside the fleece was some other kind of sheep-hide pouch, empty and flat but feeling still supple under an exploring finger, and on top of it—indeed, attached to it, she could see now—were several long, thin, gangly, jointed, black, nickle-trimmed, ivory-capped, tubular, tasseled . . .
    It was a set of bagpipes.
    Joy swept like a gale through Saaski. Breathless and bubble light, she pounced on the pipes and scrambled backward along the loft, dragging them with her, heedless of the baskets she upset or the clatter she made. Perched like a bird on the rafter again, with feet braced wide, she located the blowpipe and puffed vigorously into it until her eyes felt crossed, with little effect on the bag, which hung at her side, still maddeningly slim and sleeping—though not quite flat. She rested a moment, then drew in a prodigious breath and blew again, at the same time giving the bag a clout that helped itawake and swell, and drew the first startled sob from the drones. Tucking the inflated bag firmly under her arm, and blowing steadily, she swung the three drones over her shoulder. Her hands found the chanter and her fingers the holes along its sides with only a little fumbling, and settled into a position they already knew. Then the shrill, shrieking cry of the chanter shattered the quiet of the afternoon, running up and down and around the scale in a wild little air soon accompanied, as the drones warmed up, by a three-voiced groaning, high and low, on a single sonorous note. The tune had not ended before it swerved into another, more frenzied and clamorous than the first, which rollicked and frolicked around the little house and out over the village with a noise to wake the dead.
    Yanno’s was the first shocked face to appear in the doorway. He stared frantically around, then up. Stumbling into the room, he stood motionless, his wide, disbelieving gaze fixed on the rafter. At his heels several children crowded into the open door; behind them old Fiach blinked; Helsa the wife of Alun craned and hopped trying to see around Fiach. Saaski paid no heed, only finished her rigadoon to start a pibroch of a high, piercing sweetness that had her listeners clutching their ears in pain. It was one thing to hear bagpipes wailing and groaning across the moor; in the confines of a little room it was quite another.
    Yanno regained his power of speech. “Come down from there! Stop that and come down!” he roared, but could not be heard over the racket. Several more faces appeared at the doorway and one or two peered through the tiny window. Saaski was ending her pibroch when the cluster of