Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,71

no, Rhea says no, she’s not to have the keeping of it.”

“And if Thorin wants it?”

Rhea shrugged dismissively. “Let him keep it or burn it or wipe his bum with it, for all of me. It’s nothing to you, either, for you knew you were honest all along, so you did. True?”

Susan nodded. Once, walking home after a dance, she had let a boy slip his hand inside her shirt for a moment or two, but what of that? She was honest. And in more ways than this nasty creature meant.

“But don’t lose that paper. Unless you’d see me again, that is, and go through the same business a second time.”

Gods perish even the thought, Susan thought, and managed not to shudder. She put the paper in her pocket, where the drawstring bag had been.

“Now, come to the door, missy.” She looked as if she wanted to grasp Susan’s arm, then thought better of it. The two of them walked side by side to the door, not touching in such a careful way that it made them look awkward. Once there, Rhea did grip Susan’s arm. Then, with her other hand, she pointed to the bright silver disc hanging over the top of the Cöos.

“The Kissing Moon,” Rhea said. “ ’Tis midsummer.”

“Yes.”

“Tell Thorin he’s not to have you in his bed—or in a haystack, or on the scullery floor, or anywhere else—until Demon Moon rises full in the sky.”

“Not until Reaping?” That was three months—a lifetime, it seemed to her. Susan tried not to show her delight at this reprieve. She’d thought Thorin would put an end to her virginity by moonrise the next night. She wasn’t blind to the way he looked at her.

Rhea, meanwhile, was looking at the moon, seeming to calculate. Her hand went to the long tail of Susan’s hair and stroked it. Susan bore this as well as she could, and just when she felt she could bear it no longer, Rhea dropped her hand back to her side and nodded. “Aye, not just Reaping, but true fin de año—Fair-Night, tell him. Say that he may have you after the bonfire. You understand?”

“True fin de año, yes.” She could barely contain her joy.

“When the fire in Green Heart burns low and the last of the red-handed men are ashes,” Rhea said. “Then and not until then. You must tell him so.”

“I will.”

The hand came out and began to stroke her hair again. Susan bore it. After such good news, she thought, it would have been mean-spirited to do otherwise. “The time between now and Reaping you will use to meditate, and to gather your forces to produce the male child the Mayor wants . . . or mayhap just to ride along the Drop and gather the last flowers of your maidenhood. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She dropped a curtsey. “Thankee-sai.”

Rhea waved this off as if it were a flattery. “Speak not of what passed between us, mind. ’Tis no one’s affair but our own.”

“I won’t. And our business is done?”

“Well . . . mayhap there’s one more small thing . . .” Rhea smiled to show it was indeed small, then raised her left hand in front of Susan’s eyes with three fingers together and one apart. Glimmering in the fork between was a silver medallion, seemingly produced from nowhere. The girl’s eyes fastened on it at once. Until Rhea spoke a single guttural word, that was.

Then they closed.

5

Rhea looked at the girl who stood asleep on her stoop in the moonlight. As she replaced the medallion within her sleeve (her fingers were old and bunchy, but they moved dextrously enough when it was required, oh, aye), the businesslike expression fell from her face, and was replaced by a look of squint-eyed fury. Kick me into the fire, would you, you trull? Tattle to Thorin? But her threats and impudence weren’t the worst. The worst had been the expression of revulsion on her face when she had pulled back from Rhea’s touch.

Too good for Rhea, she was! And thought herself too good for Thorin as well, no doubt, she with sixteen years’ worth of fine blonde hair hanging down from her head, hair Thorin no doubt dreamed of plunging his hands into even as he plunged and reared and plowed down below.

She couldn’t hurt the girl, much as she wanted to and much as the girl deserved it; if nothing else, Thorin might take the glass ball away from her, and Rhea couldn’t bear that.