Avian (The Dragonrider Chronicles) Read Online Free Page B

known Ulric was a craftsman, from a family of craftsmen, but I had never seen anything like that before. There were tools for boring holes, saws of all shapes and sizes, files, chisels, a hatchet, and a hammer. I held each one, and wondered how you could use such simple instruments to make things like tables and chairs. Something about it made me want to give it a try, just to see what I could do.
    After emptying the loftroom and moving my new housewares onto the front porch, I went to close all the windows and doors again. I brought some firewood from the stack behind the barn and started a fire in the downstairs hearth, and in the kitchen stove. Using one of the big iron pots I’d found, I melted down buckets full of snow and used an old shirt as a rag to start washing the down windows, floors, and walls. I washed away months of dust, years of bad memories, and all my anger.
    When everything was clean, I started moving the old pieces of furniture in. There hadn’t been much, but it was enough to get me by for three months. There was a rocking chair that must have been for a nursery because it was made from the same color of wood as an old baby crib I’d also found in the loftroom. I’d left the crib up there, but the chair I put in the parlor near the fireplace.
    I put an old washstand up in my new room, and stacked the iron cooking ware in the kitchen cupboards. It took me almost all afternoon to push Roland’s big armoire from his bedroom, down the hall, to my new room. I stripped down the sheets, blankets, and pillows from his bed and put them on mine. Then I took his trunk, too, and put it at the end of the bed. Among the knickknacks left behind in the loftroom were a few old oil lamps that I put in my bedroom and down in the kitchen.
    By the time I finished arranging everything, it was already dark outside, and I was absolutely starving. I finally sat down on the floor in the parlor, warming myself in the light of the fire, and unwrapped the food Mrs. Crookin had sent. She had packed up a big wedge of cheese, roasted meat, fresh loaves of bread, and some dried fruit in paper packages—enough to last me a few days if I rationed it. So I ate all I dared, and put the rest away in the kitchen.
    When I went back out to check on Mavrik, he was gone. He had squeezed himself out of the barn door somehow. Under the moonlight I could see faint silhouettes of dragon-shaped footprints in the snow. I wondered where he went. I had been so busy all day; I hadn’t even stopped to check up on him.
    The image of Mavrik chopping happily on the leg of a freshly killed deer flashed into my mind. It made me gag a little, hearing the sounds of bones crunching between his teeth in my mind like that. I glared up at the sky and called out to him, knowing he’d hear me no matter how far away he was, “Keep that kind of stuff to yourself next time, will you?”
    I left the barn door open for him whenever he decided to come back, and stomped through the snow back to the house. It was warm inside now, and even though there wasn’t much in the way of furnishings, it still felt cozy to me. I took the liberty of barring the front door with the big wooden beam Ulric had left leaning in its usual place. When I locked myself inside, I finally felt safe.
    I shoveled some logs and embers out of the parlor hearth into the iron pot, and carried them upstairs to start another fire in my bedroom hearth. It was strange to be alone in an empty house, and yet at the same time it made me feel calm. It was a lot better than sleeping in the barn or the loftroom. It was actually the nicest place I’d slept in so far.
    I settled down under the mound of old quilts I’d borrowed from Roland’s bed, and watched the fire cast flickering shadows on the ceiling. There was still a lot left to do. I had to find some way to feed myself. It would have been a whole lot simpler if the garden weren’t frozen solid. My mother had taught me a lot about how to grow all