Free The Humming of Numbers by Joni Sensel Page A

couldn’t move. Glad for his dingy gray robe in the branches and wishing Lana’s purple mantle was also colored more like a tree, he watched in horrified silence as six or eight hulking men trotted below.
    Aidan blocked all numbers from his ears and his mind. That blankness calmed a sudden, irrational fear that if he heard the humming of those passing below, they would
somehow hear him in return. The raiders crossed at an angle to the direction Lana had been leading, presumably hurrying back toward the river from somewhere in the heights. The tree’s leaves and branches revealed only glimpses: leather short-coats and helmets, a flash of bright breeches, thick snarls of dark hair. A bulging sack of some booty clunked against calves in tightly wrapped leggings. A blood-splattered battle-ax rested on a blood-splattered shoulder. Close behind it, one shrouded head declared a captive bound for slavery. Aidan stared, unable to shift his eyes, until the invaders had passed. Afraid his frozen muscles would fail and he’d slide out of the tree with a thump loud enough to turn them around, he pressed his forehead into the bark near his face. He could still hear the creaking of leather armor and the rattle of swords against brush.
    The oak sheltered the pair, immobile, for long minutes until a ruffled squirrel chattered his irritation in the raiders’ wake. Thawing at that familiar sound, Aidan looked over to Lana. She still had her eyes closed.
    â€œI think we’re okay,” he whispered. “They must have come from Donagh’s stronghold, above. Good thing we didn’t try for that. You should have told me we’d have to cross between it and the abbey to get to your hiding place.” In fact, he realized now, she had said something like that, but in his agitation he hadn’t considered what it might mean.

    She opened her eyes but only stared, her gaze far off and vacant.
    â€œLana?” he asked, worried.
    â€œYou didn’t believe me,” she said, after a moment. “I could see you dead in my mind because you wouldn’t listen.”
    Aidan shivered. “I believe you now.”
    He’d passed too many long, silent seconds with only the sound of his pulse beating in his ears, echoing the tramping of feet. His mind had been working. Now he bit his lip.
    â€œAre you a witch, Lana?”
    She blinked at him, her dazed expression falling away. A closed caution replaced it.
    â€œFather Niall says witchcraft does not exist,” she told him. “He says it is a sin to believe that it does.”
    Aidan’s eyes narrowed. She hadn’t exactly answered his question. And despite what the Father might say, everyone Aidan knew believed that evil could find humans to work through. Maybe that explained her eleven hum. The moment that idea flashed in his mind, he had to dismiss it, again. Lana’s radiant, singing eleven couldn’t be evil.
    â€œI’m not accusing you,” he murmured. “You probably just saved our lives.”
    â€œStop looking at me like that, then.”
    â€œI just wondered where you learned that trick with the
hazel rod. I thought divining was only for water.” When she didn’t answer, he added, “Lana? Tell me. Are you?”
    She pressed her lips tight, set her jaw, and started climbing down from the tree.
    â€œI’ve never seen the Devil and I wouldn’t want to, if that’s what you mean,” she snapped, brushing past him with little care that she might jostle them both out of the tree.
    â€œWould you do his work, though?” He didn’t want to inflame her resentment, but he couldn’t stop his tongue. The dread of the last few moments seemed to be shaking out of him in petty spite. Perhaps it was just another color of fear.
    â€œI don’t even know what his work is!” She whirled her face up toward him. “But my mother is a midwife, and I’m not ashamed of anything she