Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt (best ebook reader under 100 .TXT) 📖
- Author: Fletcher Pratt
Book online «The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt (best ebook reader under 100 .TXT) 📖». Author Fletcher Pratt
(The angry shame had run off Lalette now, she could only see that he was truly unhappy.) After a little while she ran across the room, put her arms around his shoulder and kissed the side of his face. “Rodvard,” she said, “I really meant it all. If you want me, you may have me any time you wish.”
He swung her down to his lap, but (now afraid of interruption) would go no farther than kissing her and holding her close, so for a long time they remained thus lip to lip, speaking a little to exchange memories of things pleasant in their few meetings and not noticing they had missed a meal, until they heard Mme. Kaja’s step outside the door, which this time she made firm enough to give them warning. The singer began to talk at once about the Service and how as the chanters intoned the celestial melody and the violet vestments fluttered among the flowers that fell from the galleries to crush fragrantly beneath the worshipers’ knees, she could feel every power of evil roll from her mind—“though the second baritone was flat in the musanna. Oh, if only the court would have religion in its heart, as the poor people do, who sat with tears in their eyes.” She smiled suddenly on Lalette:
“I spoke to my own priest, too, for you. I know you must have a confession to make by now—” she held up outspread fingers before her face and tittered through them “—so I made up a story for you, about a jealous husband, and he will hear you after dark, when all’s safe, and you won’t have to pay but a copper or two.”
Lalette looked up. “But there’s no confession to make. . . . Did you find out about my mother?”
Rodvard saw Mme. Kaja’s eyes open wide, and felt the cold stone (she was not believing Lalette at all, and for some reason was desperately frightened that the girl should lie). “Oh, you poooor child,” she said. “It was so unthinking of me to forget to tell you. I did not find out much, but I know the provosts have not taken her, and Count Cleudi is not as ill as pretended, that is only a story.”
She set down packages of food, a dish of lentils with bread and wine; began to make ready the table, keeping her eyes averted, so Rodvard could not read her thinking (it came to him that he would not be the first Star-bearer she had met) as she talked rapidly, about the Service once more. The priest had said that when anyone admitted evil to his heart, peril lay upon all persons approaching the lost one. “For these powers of evil increase like mice in a granary, running from one soul to another, and as farmers will often burn an old grain-bin to keep the vermin from spreading, so it is lawful and even necessary to destroy the body of one infected by the powers of evil. He was talking about this poor child here, it was easy to see.”
Rodvard (to whom this was interesting, if somewhat questionable discourse) would have inquired more as she paused for breath, but Lalette (who found it more than tiresome) broke in to ask what of the city? what of the hunt for her?
“Oh, they have opened the gates again, though I did not go to see, and put guards everywhere. But it will be all right. Have I ever recounted to you, friend Rodvard, that I was in arrest once myself? It was because of that Oronari, who was so jealous because I could carry the high note in ‘The Mayern Lovers’ while she could not, and had me accused of stealing some of the jewels that were loaned for the spring festival performance. I felt very badly about it, because she was a friend of mine, but it’s just as the priest said, the power of evil had gained control over her, and there was nothing I could do but complain to the Baron Coespel, who was my protector then, and he had her banished the . . .”
She stuffed food into her mouth, masticating noisily as she babbled. Rodvard caught a flash of Lalette’s eye (and knew she was thinking how thin the veneer of half a lifetime around the court was over someone with a peasant’s background). To change things he asked; “Madame, is there any word of the doctor?”
“He did not send the fruiterer from his street?” She sighed and turned to Lalette. “Then it is likely that he has no money as yet. He is so good and kind and works for so little that it is often so. Dear child, have you no funds at all?”
Said Lalette; “Only two spadas. But I took all the money in the house when I left, and my mother—”
“Dear child, of course we all love our parents and do all we can for them, but after all, they are only our relatives by accident and not the choice of the heart—” she smote her breast in the gesture Rodvard remembered “—and when the heart speaks, God dwells in us to drive out the powers of evil. Then we are grateful to those who speak to us through the heart, and if we have anything we give it to them. I denied the heart once—”
“Your pardon,” said Lalette, and stood up to leave the table. Her face was a little white.
Mme. Kaja finished the last of the wine and wiped her mouth. “I know it is hard for you, being of the witch-families, dear child,” she said. “But Uncle Tutul, who is the priest we are going to see tonight, says that even a witch may save herself if she gives up everything to those she loves, and oh, my dear, I really do not mind missing my pupils, but—”
Lalette’s mouth strained. She stood up and plucked from her waist the tiny purse. “Here,” she cried, “are the spadas,” and flung them ringing silvernly against the plates. “Take them; I am going to the provosts myself. To be seduced, I will, it was my fault. But I will owe no obligation for it.” She turned to the door so fast that Rodvard barely barred the way before her.
“No,” said he, as she tried to push him from the way. “You shall not go like this.” Their hands caught and she struggled for a moment. “Or if you’ll say you do not love and never will, go; and I will join you before the Deacons’ court. But it was another tale that you told lately.”
Said Mme. Kaja; “Oh, dear child, you must not resist such love.” She tittered (and the nerves of both the others jangled).
Lalette sat down. “I am at the mercy of you two,” she said.
“Mercy? Mercy?” The singer’s bracelets clanked. “Ah, no, we are at yours, and seek to help you at our own risk. Not so, friend Rodvard?” She swung to face him for an unguarded moment (and he was staggered till he must grip the table-edge at the blast of hate for Lalette behind her eyes. There was a strange mother-thought in it too, he could not make out the detail.) Kaja’s glance went restlessly on across the room. She stood up in her turn, saving; “I do not know the hour, my watch is being repaired, but I am sure by the dimness outside it must be late, and Uncle Tutul is waiting. Demoiselle Asterhax—no, I shall call you Lalette, it is so much more friendly—will you come?”
(Rodvard thought; if I let her go, everything will arrange itself to my utmost advantage.) “Maritzl,” he said, “do not go out this evening. There’s no—”
Mme. Kaja tittered once more. “Ah, friend Rodvard,” she said, “if you’d have women kind to you, you must remember their names. Will you come, Demoiselle Lalette? Even if there’s no confession, it will be a joy to hear Uncle Tutul’s discourse.”
Rodvard; “Lalette, I beg you, by all you have said this day and all we hope for in the future, do not go out now. I have a reason.” He reached one hand and took hers, as she looked at him (wondering why he was so vehement in such a small matter); a child’s look, with trust in it.
“Well, then,” and she sat down again. A glassy smile appeared on Mme. Kaja’s face, and she shook one finger at Lalette as she hurried to the door. “You naughty Rodvard; she will certainly have a confession to make before I return,” and her steps were audible, going down.
Lalette’s hands lay listless in her lap. For a minute there was silence, in which she rose, walking slowly to the window to gaze out and down, not turning around. “What is your reason and who is Maritzl?”
He had begun to make up his bundle with quick fingers, the volume of Iren Dostal inside. “We must leave here forthwith. The Blue Star—she will do you a terrible harm if she can.”
“You have told me nothing I did not know without that bit of witchery. A pattern would be useless against her, though, she is too close to the Church. . . . Rodvard.”
“What will you have?” He pulled the edge of the cloak tight.
“I am sorry I said what lately I did . . . about being seduced. Will you forgive? I do not wish to be a shrew, as my mother said, and I will say that I do not regret—what we did.”
He dropped the knot half-made and ran over to her, but she shifted in his grasp, pointing. “Rodvard!”
Down the line of her finger he saw hurrying figures pass the lantern at the gate of the Street Cossao. Impossible to miss Mme. Kaja or the priest, or the provost with bare alerted sword. Said Rodvard; “I did not think her so quick in her grimness. Is there another stair?”
“Not that I know. I am sure not. No escape. Oh—”
“That cannot be true. Life is to those who struggle for it, says Dr. Remigorius.” He threw the latch and pushed the window outward; not a foot down lay a broad rain-gutter, which being proved solid by foot-weight test, he went three rapid steps across the room to sling his bundle over one shoulder, stepped out cautiously, caught a grip at the edge of the dormer with his right hand (not daring to look down into the dizzy dark), and stretched the other to Lalette. “Come.”
“Oh, I—”
“Come!”
He could feel her shiver dreadfully as she took the step, she almost tripped over her dress on the sill, but once out, it was she who stretched to the limit of his restraining hand to swing the window closed. By good fortune it was a suave spring night; Rodvard could see stars past the rim of the house as they edged rightward, free hands pressed against the slates of the mansard, until contact was made with the second dormer, the one in the dressing room. He gripped at that edge, sliding foot against foot, the bundle almost pulling him off balance where he came against the projection. “Hurry,” whispered Lalette. “I can hear them.”
Ahead and beyond the roof turned; one might work round that backslope but it would only lead to the opposite side of Mme. Kaja’s garret. Rodvard halted his sliding progress and looked over his shoulder to see the loom of the house at the back of the court, fortunately of the same height. A glance down showed another gutter, with something more than a thigh-length of black space in separation. He turned again, face brushing slates, to make out that Lalette had seen it, too.
“Shall we try it?” he whispered, and then, incontinently, “I love you” (which was for that enchanted moment true). For answer she disengaged her hand from his and began to tuck up her skirt, leaning with cheek against the roofslope. He swung and tossed the bundle to the other gutter; set foot on the edge where they were, teetered, and with perspiring palms, pushed himself into the long step, almost going down when the lip of the opposite gutter proved higher. But it was wider as well, it held, he was able to reach a hand out and pull her across.
There were no windows on this side of the other house, they found it easy to slide along leftward to the corner, and by the especial grace of heaven, there was a drain at the angle, in which Rodvard’s foot caught to keep them from tumbling where the gutter ended suddenly, with the back of the building going down sheer. They both stood breathless as a window in the building they had just left cracked open, a voice said; “No, not along the
Comments (0)