Mercurial by Naomi Hughes (ebook reader with built in dictionary .txt) 📕

teeth that lurked in the dark, but now he could see that it was actually quite small and jarringly pretty. It was as neat as the garden was wild: whitewashed bricks, a sensible red-tile roof, and painted window boxes for flowers—though the plants spilled out of their containers in every which direction, as if in protest against all the orderliness.

His eyes lingered on the nearest window box. One of the cursed flowers that grow under her window, his sister had specified, and although he couldn’t tell if these particular blooms were cursed or not, they were definitely under a window. He tried to measure the distance between himself and the box. He would have to leave the shadowy garden and slip across open ground to get there, and he was trying to decide which method would be best: quick, or quiet.

He was not quick enough to escape the witch if she spotted him. He decided on quiet, and crept out of the rosebushes.

The window before him glowed with honeyed light. He could make out the interior of the room beyond the rippled glass. There was a table, and a crackling hearth, and a floor swept clean except for the three immense hauler dogs who were splayed across it. At the table sat a man. He looked about the age of Theon’s father. But unlike Theon’s father he was tall and lean, with a soldier’s corded muscles visible on his forearms as he lifted a writing quill to tuck it behind one ear. His hair was longish and dark and rumpled and he wore round, silver-rimmed spectacles. He was saying something to a little green-eyed girl who was nested in his lap, and the devotion in his gaze said she was his daughter. As Theon watched, the girl reached up and plucked the quill out from behind his ear with a triumphant giggle, then scribbled down something on a sheet of parchment before them. Theon twisted his neck to try to read it: Alaya. Her name, he guessed. Her father laughed gently and made a half-hearted grab for the quill, but Alaya squealed and curled herself into a ball around it, nearly knocking them both to the floor.

Theon edged closer, craning his neck, breathing shallow breaths as he searched for any sign of the witch in this eerily domestic scene. As he neared the window, he spotted another girl crouched on the floor nearby. She was a mirror image to the first, with a pile of wavy, tangled hair as wild as the gardens, but her expression was much sterner and her eyes were gray rather than green. She seemed to be carving a design of some sort into the wooden floor with a butter knife as one of the hauler dogs at her side looked benevolently on. The man at the table glanced up at her and said something, and the fond exasperation in his voice meant she was his daughter, too. The girl waved him off impatiently and continued in her carving.

Nowhere was there any sign of the witch.

A cautious hope welled up in Theon. Maybe he had gotten lucky. Maybe the witch was out. He had heard rumors that her husband could be dangerous in his own right, though—the man was a metal-worker now, spending his days restoring old temples, but according to the rumors he was still a formidable bodyguard employed by the Council of Delegates when they traveled beyond the borders of the empire for their democracy-building work. Theon searched for the man’s weapons, a pair of twin short swords. They were leaned up against the wall next to a stack of firewood and a woodsman’s axe, as if they had been dropped there weeks ago and then forgotten.

Theon took another step closer, and his shoe scuffed against a paving stone with a sound softer than a whisper—and when Theon froze and looked up, the man’s head was lifted and his bright green eyes were locked on him.

Theon quivered, right down to his bones. His heart tried again to leap out of his chest. His knees went shaky, and he could already picture his mad dash back to the village—but he needed a flower. He would not leave without a flower.

His gaze dropped to the window box to judge the distance between him and it again. It would take him perhaps three seconds to reach it, snatch a flower, and run, but he had lost any hope now of escaping undetected. The best he could wish for was to go unrecognized, and to get away without being caught. He looked back up to see if the man was going to the swords or straight to the door, but to his surprise saw instead that the man’s head was once again bowed, and he was now tickling the girl in his lap as he tried to retrieve the quill, as if he had never even seen Theon at all.

Was it a reprieve, or a trick? It didn’t matter. Theon’s already-small reserves of courage were nearly drained in either case. He took two long strides to the window box and reached for a dainty blue flower, intending to run the second he laid hands on it.

Something sharp poked him in the chest. “If you’ve come to throw rocks at our window, you had better think again,” said a young but very imperious voice.

The boy froze. The tip of a sword—one of the short swords that had a moment ago been leaning against the wall inside—rested now against his breastbone. On its other end was the girl with the wild hair and the gray eyes who’d been carving into the floor. She glared at him as if she were deciding whether or not to run him through here and now.

She was the witch’s daughter. Perhaps she was a witch herself. Perhaps Theon would never emerge from this garden, and no one but his sister would ever guess his fate.

Theon tried to say something. His mouth wouldn’t work. His legs