In The Beginning by Gail Daley (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📕

and went outside. When she approached the fire, she found the Tobias family had gone to bed in their wagon.

"When did they leave?" she asked.

"Just after you went for water," Owen responded.

"Good," she told the three men. "I don’t want them to hear this."

"How is she?" asked Lewys.

Rebecca held out her hands to the dying fire. "She has been whipped and beaten, starved, and I think an attempt was made to rape her."

Lewys gave a hiss of dismay.

"We heard something about the Magi Proctor," interjected Andre. "Is she a Magi?"

"Yes," Rebecca said.

"Then she landed with the right family," Owen stated.

Andre’s eyebrows rose. "Oh, yes? And when were you going to tell me about this?"

Owen looked at him in surprise. "I thought you knew. Didn’t Rebecca show you the flyer?"

"That doesn't prove much," Andre retorted. "An accusation doesn't prove guilt. Of course, I had already figured out Owen here has some special skill at reading people since Lewys always asks him for an opinion on how much of a threat someone is."

Rebecca lifted a hand. "Gentlemen please! We need to get our stories straight. Now, Sorson and Sarsee Tobias only met us two days ago at the Trader Station, so I think we can simply tell them our younger sister Selene has been ill—spotted fever, I think—and we kept her in the wagon so that’s why she wasn’t introduced to them."

Lewys stroked his chin. "With the storm, I think it will work. We wouldn’t let a sick child out in the rain. Ah—how old is my granddaughter?"

He focused on the pendant lying outside Rebecca's shirt. The stone resting on Rebecca's breast was quiescent.

"It's her?" he said, incredulously.

Rebecca nodded, smiling with tears in her eyes. "Yes, I think so. She is the right age, and—she looks like grandmother."

"Is someone looking for her?" inquired Andre. "When we found her, she said something about ‘not letting him find her’."

"It's possible. She said she was being kept by the Proctor’s man before she escaped."

The three men exchanged glances.

"Are you alright with this?" Lewys asked Andre.

"At least the ground is going to be soft enough to bury a body," he answered, and Lewys laughed, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Go to bed Rebecca," her grandfather told her. "We'll keep—?"

"Selene, is her name."

"We'll keep Selene safe."

Andre walked her back to the wagon. "Don’t worry about anything. One of us will stay on watch tonight."

She laid her hand against his face, giving him a tremulous smile. "Thank You," she said softly. "You always make me feel safe."

It hadn't exactly been a declaration of love, he reflected, but it gave him a warm feeling all the same. A man's presence should make his woman feel safe. He turned his head and pressed a kiss into her palm.

Strangely enough, what she said was true. He had been with them for several weeks before Rebecca realized the hovering fear afflicting her since the attack had disappeared. It took a little longer for her to associate its disappearance with Andre.

They left the next day with the rain still pouring down. Catrin mentioned casually at breakfast that morning she thought they had better continue to keep Selene in bed and Rebecca agreed. Andre and Lewys both asked how she was doing, and Owen prepared a plate for her. Anja and Jerlyn Tobias accepted their story of a sick child without question.

Selene was a little harder to convince. When Rebecca took her breakfast in to her, she looked up warily.

"Who are you?" the child asked.

"I am Draconi Rebecca Mabinogion, and I believe you are the child we have been looking for. You see, our mother was with child when the Proctor's took her. We were told she had smuggled the newborn baby out of the Proctor headquarters. We have been searching for that child for many years. She would be about your age.”

"Why do you think I'm her?"

Rebecca took out a hand mirror from the drawer where she and Catrin kept their toiletries. She handed it to Selene, who looked at it in wonder.

"Look at your face in the mirror and look at mine," Rebecca instructed.

The child had the same pale skin, grey eyes with up-tilted brows and black hair. Recent privations had thinned her face of any remaining childhood plumpness, so the resemblance to Rebecca was very obvious.

"What do you remember about your life before the Proctors found you?" Rebecca asked her. "Do you remember your parents?"

"I never knew anything about my father. The woman who raised me wasn't my mother, and she didn't tell me much. We moved around a lot. She told me if we got separated, I was supposed to go to a place called Ironlyn and they would help me," Selene said slowly, "when I was older, Sara told me my mother was a great lady, but I wasn't to talk about it. She caught the wasting fever in Wintermere. She had taken a job in a nursing home there. The family we were boarding with discovered I was Magi and reported me to the Proctor."

Rebecca smiled at her. "We are on our way to Ironlyn, and I believe we are who this Sara was trying to reach. You are safe now. The family traveling with us have just come into our service, and won't think it strange they haven't met you yet because we said you have been ill. You are staying inside the wagon until the weather clears so you don't get sick again. As far as they are concerned, you have always been our little sister."

"Why would anyone believe I'm your sister?"

"They will believe because they will be able to see how much you look like me and our Grandmother. Now, eat your breakfast, and don't let the cats trick you—they've been fed."

"What about someone who knows you?" the girl asked sensibly.

"For them, it is the same story; most of our friends know we have been looking for our parent's fourth child. We simply say we have found you at last. Because of them taking our mother