The Daughter of Odren Read Online Free Page A

apron and went out into the house yard, hushing the dogs. As she walked toward the men at the gate she looked at them with a direct gaze, her head up and her face expressionless. Her look changed.
    â€œHovy?” she said, her eyes on the older man.
    Then she looked again at the younger man, and cried out in such a voice that the girl behind her stopped short in terror—“Clay! O Clay!” She tore the gate open and flung her arms round him, sobbing his name and saying, “Brother, brother!”
    â€œThen it’s you, it’s you indeed, Lily,” the young man said, trying to hold her away a little, half laughing and half in tears himself.
    â€œYou haven’t been there?” she demanded suddenly, pushing him to arm’s length and gripping his shoulders. “He’d know you—”
    â€œNo, no, I haven’t been there yet. But this is a sorry place to find you, sister!”
    She looked around as if she did not know what place he meant. “You’re back,” she said. “You’re here. You kept the promise! Oh, I have longed for you, longed for you!” And she leaned away from him a little again to look at him with pride and amazement. “A man grown,” she said, exulting, and held him and kissed him again. Then taking his hand she led him into the house.
    Hovy followed them to the doorway, where he stopped and waited. Clover, a stocky, round-faced girl, stood at the corner of the house. She stared at Hovy with patient curiosity, and he endured her stare with patient indifference.
    Inside the house, Weed took her brother’s hands again, still radiant with the joy of seeing him and touching him, but speaking urgently. “Hovy must go away,” she said. “People will know you through him. You, they’d never know. Only
he’d
know you. How you’ve changed! Oh, what a little boy you were! A little squirrel! Remember I called you Squirrel? And you called me Mountain, because I used to sit on you when we played?”
    He smiled, shaking his head.
    â€œAnd look at you now. As tall as Father—and you have his shoulders—Oh, Clay! The last time I was happy was the day I saw the ship sail in! All these years—there’s never been a day I didn’t think of him and you, of you and him. Never an hour. But now you’re here, my ship, my sword, my brother! You kept the promise! Now we can make it right! I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it alone. With you I can do what we must. And you came for that. I know you came for that. To set it right.”
    â€œI did,” he said. “And I can do it.”
    They were alike as they stood face to face in the dark, low-beamed room. She was not as tall as he, but as strongly built. He was handsome, with arched eyebrows and bright dark eyes. Her face was heavy, her brows drawn straight across, and the flash of her eyes was somber. But in mouth and nose and turn of the head they were alike. As he held her hands in his he looked at them and laughed again—“Which are yours and which are mine?”
    â€œMine are the hard rough ones,” she said, and stroked his hands, and then turned her palms up to show the calluses. “See? That’s the sickle, the churn, the plow, the washtub. My life.”
    â€œYou’ve lived here all this time?”
    â€œI’m Bay’s wife.”
    â€œHis wife?”
    â€œHow else could I stay here? Where was I to go?”
    â€œIt can’t be. I thought—It’s wrong. You are the daughter of Odren!”
    â€œThat I am. Wherever I live.”
    â€œAnd I’m his son. I never forgot. Never a day I didn’t say the words you said to me.” Her eyes flashed brighter at that. “I know what to do, Lily. I can do it. I have the gift, Lily, do you understand? I took the jewels you gave me and went to O-Tokne where there was a Roke wizard, a grey-cloak. Four years I spent with him, learning