Free The Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland Page A

never missed dinner before.
    â€œWhy did he take her?” wailed Sian.
    â€œHer white fur,” said my father.
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œThat’ll make a pair of mittens.”
    Then Sian banged her forehead on the table and howled.
    â€œThat’s quite enough, Sian,” said my father. But my mother put an arm around her, and Sian buried her face in my mother’s lap.
    After dinner, Sian and Tanwen hunted for Spitfire everywhere, even in the stables. I kept hearing them calling for her, and Sian went right round the village asking if anyone had seen her.
    â€œPointless!” said Serle.
    â€œNo,” said my mother, “she may not find her, but it’s not pointless, Serle.”
    When we were alone, I asked my mother about Merlin.
    â€œHe came to live here soon after you were born,” she said. “Twelve years ago now. Your father made an agreement with him, and rented him his cottage and croft.”
    â€œWhere did he come from?”
    â€œMerlin keeps himself to himself,” my mother said, and she shook her head.
    â€œWhat about his family?”
    My mother shook her head again. “I don’t know much of his story,” she said.
    â€œOliver hates him,” I said. “He says Merlin may be the son of his own sister. Or a nun and an incubus!”
    My mother screwed up her eyes. “Shame on him! That’s dangerous talk, and he doesn’t know anything about it.”
    â€œYou like Merlin,” I said.
    â€œSo do your father and Nain. Merlin’s Welsh and wise, and he makes me laugh.”
    â€œAnd me,” I said.
    â€œHe has always cared for you,” my mother said.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI don’t know. You’re always asking questions and they’re as hard as nutshells.”
    â€œMother,” I began, “do you know what my father’s plans are? For me? He does want me to be a knight, doesn’t he? He will let me go away into service…”
    My mother gave her quick little nod which doesn’t mean yes and doesn’t mean no, but means she is listening very carefully. Then she spread her right hand like a comb and ran it backwards through my hair.
    â€œHe hasn’t got another plan, has he?”
    â€œArthur!” said my mother, and gently, quite firmly, she pressed her warm hand down on the top of my head.
    â€œWill you ask him to talk to me?” I said. “Please will you?”

29
LUKE
    T HE MOST PRECIOUS GIFT IN OUR LIVES,” LADY Alice said once, “is good health.”
    She told me she used to have stiff fingers and stiff toes, but now she always keeps a hare’s foot in one pocket, and each day she rubs it along the joints.
    So when Merlin gave me my ice-and-fire stone and said it’s the most precious thing I will ever own, was he giving me good health?
    If so, I wish I could share it with Luke. Today is his name day but he blew bubbles and whimpered all morning. Saint Luke was a physician, and he must have had good health himself because Oliver says he lived for eighty-four years, but he doesn’t seem to be able to hear our prayers for my brother.

30
POOR STUPID
    I ’LL HELP YOU,” I TOLD GATTY. “I DON’T MIND.”
    I do mind, though. I mind Serle’s hot words and my father’s cold silences. I mind the way my father doesn’t understand me. I mind how a pig’s eyelashes go on twitching.
    But I think it’s unfair of Hum to make Gatty do all the mucky work, like debloating the cows and shoveling up the afterbirths and digging out the latrines, so that is why I sometimes offer to help her.
    First, our pig-man Dutton tied a rope to one of Stupid’s back legs, and Stupid snuffled and snorted because he thought Dutton was taking him to root for beech mast. Dutton always puts the pigs on long tethers because otherwise they might stray too far into the forest.
    But when Dutton and Giles took hold of his collar and led him in