Watersmeet Read Online Free

had a head of hair as black as your father’s and skin that I knew would darken. I brought you to Theckis and showed him.
    “Though he is an Elder now, Theckis had been a follower of Filian, his right hand. But like so many, Theckis believed that our settlement had been cursed for straying from Vran’s laws. Or that’s what he said. As our dreams fell to tatters, he may simply have decided to save himself by professing the beliefs of those now in power. He turned to the way of Vran.
    “I threatened to expose his support for Filian if he didn’t save you. I had saved him from the fever, and he owed me his life! So when the Elder from Vranhurst arrived, Theckis told him that some had strayed, and the raid and the fever were Vran’s punishment. He had decided to let you live as a reminder of Vran’s curse on us for our weak loyalty. The Elder believed him. You were saved—but outcast.”
    Sina stopped speaking as Abisina absorbed her words. She had been saved by Theckis when hundreds of other babies had died. The women had always been particularly cruel. Abisina had been spared when their own children had perished, their cries getting weaker and weaker from the other side of the wall.
    But is life as an outcast really better than the release of death? Especially death as an infant? In the rituals, in the ceremonies, in the talk along the lanes and in the storehouse lines, Abisina had learned that the world was divided between the Children of Vran and the creatures who hated Vran. Centaurs, dwarves, the devils beyond the mountains—they were man’s enemies: unnatural and evil. Like her. I might have been better off with those other babies. . . .
    No! I did not deserve to die, any more than they did. I’m not a demon! Didn’t Mama say that my father, who is dark like me, is beautiful? That beyond the mountains I would not be outcast?
    A new thought came to her. “Why—why did my father leave us?”
    The fire, sunk now to a bed of coals, cast shadows on Sina’s wasted face. Her words were dragged from deep inside her: “I made him. I was sure that Filian would accept your father as I did. But when I told him about your father, Filian flew into a rage. He said I was putting all that we had worked for at risk. That the people would turn against us, and drive us from Vranille. He forbade me to meet your father again. But I had to say good-bye. So one night, I slipped out. Your father was waiting for me at the edge of the trees. He knew. Without my saying a word.
    “ ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘You will be welcome in my home.’ But we both knew I wouldn’t go.”
    “He asked you to go with him? To leave Vranille?”
    Sina nodded, eyes on her daughter’s anguished face.
    “And you said no?”
    “I couldn’t leave, Abisina! I still believed in Filian’s vision. And I couldn’t leave the people here without a healer.”
    “We could have lived where I would not be outcast! I could have been accepted! I might have had friends !”
    “I did what I thought was best, Abisina! You must believe—”
    “You don’t know what it’s like for me here, Mama. You say you’re like an outcast—but people talk to you! Touch you! You can go into their houses and walk the streets without wondering when you will be hit or kicked or spit on!” She was yelling now, not caring who heard her. Let the Elders come! So what if it was the Eve of Penance! What more could they do to her? There was the door right in front of her, and every instinct in Abisina wanted to fly out of it. To run into the night and away to this place beyond the mountains that offered her a future.
    “Abisina!” her mother pleaded. “When I told him to go—I didn’t know about you. I realized a few days after he left—when it was too late. For a while I hoped he would come for me. But he had been so angry. He swore he never would.” She stopped and her next words were barely audible. “And he didn’t.”
    Silence stretched between them until