Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 14
‘Those are ugly ideas for children to have in their heads.’ The juggler picked up his bag.
Nona stood, watching the apple in her hand but not seeing it. The memory held her. Her mother, in the dimness of their hut, noticing the blood on her hands for the first time. What’s that? Did they hurt you? Nona had hung her head and shook it. Billem Smithson tried to hurt me. This was inside him.
‘Best get along home to your ma and pa.’ Amondo turned slowly, scanning the huts, the trees, the barns.
‘My da’s dead. The ice took him.’
‘Well then.’ A smile, only half-sad. ‘I’d best take you home.’ He pushed back the length of his hair and offered his hand. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’
Nona’s mother let Amondo sleep in their barn, though it wasn’t really more than a shed for the sheep to hide in when the snows came. She said people would talk but that she didn’t care. Nona didn’t understand why anyone would care about talk. It was just noise.
On the night Amondo left, Nona went to see him in the barn. He had spread the contents of his bag before him on the dirt floor, where the red light of the moon spilled in through the doorway.
‘Show me how to juggle,’ she said.
He looked up from his knives and grinned, dark hair swept down across his face, dark eyes behind. ‘It’s difficult. How old are you?’
Nona shrugged. ‘Little.’ They didn’t count years in the village. You were a baby, then little, then big, then old, then dead.
‘Little is quite small.’ He pursed his lips. ‘I’ve two years and twenty. I guess I’m supposed to be big.’ He smiled but with more worry in it than joy, as if the world made no more sense and offered no more comfort to bigs than littles. ‘Let’s have a go.’
Amondo picked up three of the leather balls. The moonlight made it difficult to see their colours but with focus approaching it was bright enough to throw and catch. He yawned and rolled his shoulders. A quick flurry of hands and the three balls were dancing in their interlaced arcs. ‘There.’ He caught them. ‘You try.’