The Moorchild Read Online Free

brambles straight up to a dense thicket, with not a fallen log in sight. Here he balked—to her relief, since she was sore and breathless from the jolting. He held her up again and glowered at her.
    “Think me a muggins, do you? I’ll go no farther. You tell me straight now, or I’ll give you to me dog!”
    “It’s just yonder,” she said hastily, pointing at random. “ ’Twixt the roots of that big oak. You’ll have to dig.”
    “ You’ll dig, pixie!” He stalked over to the oak and swung her down among the ancient roots, keeping a fast hold on her jacket.
    Gladly she burrowed into the soft mold of earth and last year’s leaves, and in a moment twisted toward him, offering a little handful of golden coins with the dirt still clinging to them.
    His eyes bulged. Slowly he took them, letting his crook fall. He bit one. “By m’faith they’re real!” he whispered. “By jings, and I never believed it.”
    “Plenty more,” Moql told him.
    “Here, move aside, pixie, let me there,” he said, suddenly brisk. “I can dig faster nor you.”
    He swept her away and fell to work. She didn’t tarry to watch. One jubilant leap and she was among the branches, already leaf color. Next moment she was safe in a high crotch, hugging the mossy trunk and fading to gray green to match it—or trying to. She peered anxiously at her doubled-up legs, her hands. Yes, gray green as moss, as lichen. It was all right, she knew how, the other was some kind of mistake that would never happen again. From here and therein neighboring trees came birdlike giggles, in which she joined with relief and delight, her heart still pounding but her self-esteem swelling like a bubble. She had served that great gorm a turn, she had! Now she would have something to boast of!
    “Clumsy youngling!” said a caustic voice from a branch above her.
    The bubble burst. She looked up into Pittittiskin’s disdainful countenance. “I did it right!” she protested.
    “The gold trick, aye. Everything else wrong. Slow. Bad. Risky. You never winked out at all.”
    Before she could argue there came an outraged bellow from the foot of the tree, followed by “ Pixie! Here, where’d you get to? Ahhh . . . that hoaxing creetur! I mighta known . . . !”
    She glanced down through the leaves at the shepherd’s head and burly shoulders. The gold would have turned back into leaf mold by now. She no longer relished the joke. Stonily she watched as he turned this way and that, calling her several words she’d never heard before, then stomped off up the hill to his sheep.
    “Back to the Mound!” Pittittiskin ordered.
    “At midday? But we barely—You mean all of us? But we’ll learn, we’re only beginners—”
    “Nay, just you. The others are beginners. You’re a blunderhead.” Pittittiskin landed on her branch, seized her hand and leaped, half floating, to the ground, taking her along willy-nilly.
    She wailed and tugged to free her hand. “Let me try again, I’ll do better . . . ”
    “Give over, now!” He silenced her with a yank, headed swiftly for the nearest Folk-path. “You maybe can’t. There’s something amiss with you, youngling, I dunno what. We’ll have to see the Prince. I suspicion you’re a menace to the Band.”

3
    They found the Prince on his rock ledge a quarter way up the wall of the Gathering, where he liked to lounge on one elbow among his leafy cushions, head propped on one long-fingered hand, watching the antics and comings and goings of his Folk below. He was old, the Prince, and seldom went out onto the moor anymore, except on May Day, or the Harvest Dancing, or Midsummer’s Eve. His hair had grown white under its jaunty red cap, and his beard long. But his tilted eyes were as bright and knowing as ever.
    He was already watching as Pittittiskin climbed nimbly up the rough-hewn wall toward him, pulling the reluctant Moql behind, and he spoke first as they reached the ledge.
    “So, Pittittiskin? A bit of