Free The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw Page B

villagersshifted in confusion, then parted to admit Anwara, and after her, Old Bess. Anwara hurried across the room toward Yanno and like him, froze, staring up at the rafter. Old Bess took one long, astonished, comprehending look, then began firmly herding the gaping visitors out of the cottage. She latched the door and placed her own tall person in front of the window as Saaski, giddy with excitement, began an earsplitting fanfare.
    When it was finished, she paused for breath. The silence was almost as stunning as the noise had been.
    The first to recover, Yanno gasped, “Come down, you imp!” His voice shook, and he paused to swallow. “Put those pipes back, d’you hear me? And come you down from there!”
    The glorious, wondrous, joyful afternoon shattered around Saaski. She focused at last on his outraged face, glimpsed Anwara’s dazed one beside him, and realized there was going to be another argle-bargle. Maybe the worst yet, because she knew already she was not going to obey. She did not move, except to tighten her clutch on the pipes. The silence rang in her ears.
    Into it, Anwara spoke, her eyes dark with a bewilderment that, like Yanno’s, seemed close to fright. “Child, how in God’s earth did you learn to play the pipes?”
    Relaxing a bit with her own surprise, Saaski transferred her gaze to Anwara. She could not comprehend the question. “Learn?” she repeated.
    “Aye, learn! It’s plain enough you have learned, somehow or other! Who was’t taught you?”
    Saaski could only shake her head in confusion andgrowing anxiety. Again, she had done something that seemed to her perfectly natural, but to others, strange. “Nobody taught me.”
    “But you were playing them!”
    No use denying that. “I was. They were made for playing. Can you not play them yourself?” Saaski ventured.
    “I?” Anwara laughed sharply. “No more than I can breathe underwater! And it’s the same for your da’!”
    “But the pipes were here —in the put-away cupboard just yonder—” Saaski let go the chanter long enough to point an exasperated finger. Where there were pipes there was surely someone to play them; anything else was witless.
    Yanno spoke heavily. “The pipes were my da’s. He was a champion piper, he was. But I’ll have no young one fidget-in’ about with my da’s pipes, and mebbe leavin’ ’em out in the wet, or—”
    “I’d never do so!” Saaski exclaimed.
    “Nonetheless—,” said Yanno, overriding her. “You’ll put ’em back now where they belong and climb down from there!”
    Saaski only folded her arms tighter about the pipes. This time she was not going to be scared, and she was not going to be obedient. She was going to stay on this rafter until she starved and fell off it, rather than put the pipes back in that cupboard. They did not belong there. They belonged here, in her hands, under her arm, pressing into her left shoulder. And here they would stay.
    “Saaski—!” roared Yanno.
    Anwara spoke up. “Hold your peace, husband. She’s nothurting the pipes. Did you not hear how she can play? And without teaching.” She hesitated, then declared, “ ’Tis a gift from God.”
    “Or from the Devil,” Yanno retorted.
    “Blather!” retorted Anwara—a little too swiftly. Their eyes held a moment, then she turned away. Wearily, she added, “Let the child have them. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile in a fortnight.”
    “She’ll make more mischief!” Yanno protested.
    Old Bess spoke suddenly from her post near the window. “More likely, the pipes will keep her from it. Come, Yanno—of what use to anyone are they in that cupboard?”
    Outnumbered and beginning to be out-argued, Yanno clutched at a final straw. “But they’re my da’s own pipes!”
    “Aye, but your da’ can’t play them, can he?” Anwara flung at him. “He’s gone to his reward—that’s if the good Lord saw fit to reward him for a life spent three-quarters drunken! And you can’t