Heaven's Net Is Wide by Lian Hearn (good books to read for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

stepfather’s gloomy predictions; though he did not often show it, Shimon loved the boy almost as much as Sara did and certainly equally with his own children, the two girls, Maruta and Madaren.

Shimon and Sara did not speak of Tomasu’s real father, the stranger who was murdered, and Tomasu did not grow up to look the way they remembered him. He did not really resemble anyone they knew but had a look all his own, thin and fine-featured. The only similarity his mother noticed was in the curious lines across his palms: she knew his father had had the same hands.

Tomasu was not exactly unpopular with the other boys of the village; they sought him out for his skill in games and for his knowledge of the forest, but he seemed always to be fighting with them.

“What happened to you this time,” his mother wailed when he came home late one afternoon in his eleventh year, dripping blood from a head wound. “Come here. Let me do that.”

Tomasu was trying to wash the blood from his eyes and staunch the flow. “Just a stone I got in the way of,” he replied.

“But why were you fighting?”

“I don’t know,” he said cheerfully. “It was a stone fight. No particular reason.”

Sara had moistened an old rag and pressed it firmly against his temple. He rested against her for a moment, wincing slightly. Usually he wrestled with her embraces and struggled away from her.

“My wild boy,” she murmured. “My little hawk. What will become of you?”

“Were the other boys teasing you?” Shimon asked. It was well known that Tomasu lost his temper easily and that the other boys reveled in provoking him.

“Maybe. A bit. They say I have sorcerer’s hands.”Tomasu looked at his long-fingered hands, marked by the straight line. “I was just showing them how a sorcerer throws stones!”

“You must not fight back,” Shimon said quietly.

“They always start it,” Tomasu retorted.

“What they start is not up to you to finish. Leave it to the Secret One to defend you.”

The suggestion of sorcery disturbed Shimon. He watched the boy carefully, alert to any sign of real difference in him or of demonic possession. He kept Tomasu near him as often as he could, forbade him to wander alone in the forest where strange beings might enchant him, prayed day and night that the Secret One might protect him, not only from all the perils of the world but also from his own strange inner nature.

The wound left a scar that faded to silver against the honey-colored skin like a three-day moon.

ONE DAY in early spring a few years later they were working together by the river, cutting alder saplings whose bark would be stripped to make cloth. The river was swollen from the thaw; it swirled over the coppiced base of the alders and raced across the rocks in its bed, deafening them with a noise like many men shouting. Shimon had already had to speak severely to Tomasu; first the boy had wanted to pursue a fawn and its mother that had been drinking from the pool; then he had been distracted by a pair of kingfishers. Shimon bent to gather the saplings already cut, tied them into a bundle, and carried them up the slope so they would not get washed away. He left Tomasu alone for only a moment, but when he turned to look back, he saw his stepson disappearing downstream in the direction of the village.

“You worthless boy,” he yelled futilely after him, torn between continuing the work and pursuing him to punish him. His rage got the better of him; he grabbed one of the saplings and set off downstream. “I’ll thrash him properly for once! We’re too soft with him! It’ll do him no good in the long run.”

He was still muttering to himself when he came round the bend in the river and saw his youngest daughter, Madaren, struggling in the muddy water. She must have tried to cross the river by the stepping-stones, had slipped into one of the deep pools, and was trying to save herself by grasping at the exposed roots in the bank.

Tomasu had already reached her. The little girl was shrieking, but Shimon could barely hear her above the roar of the water. He dropped the stick he was carrying and saw the river whisk it away. Tomasu was only just able to stand in the spot where Madaren had fallen in. He peeled her fingers back from the root she was clutching, and she threw herself at him, clinging like a baby monkey to its mother. He held her tightly against his shoulder and, half swimming, half scrambling, brought her to the shore where Shimon took her from him.

Sara came running, giving thanks that the child was safe, scolding Maruta for not looking after her, praising Tomasu.

Shimon looked at his stepson as Tomasu leaped onto the bank, shaking the water from his hair like a dog. “What made you take off like that? You got to her just in time!”

“I thought I heard her calling me,” Tomasu replied. He was frowning. “But I couldn’t have…” The noise of the river rose around them, drowning all other sound.

“The Secret One must have warned you,” Shimon said in awe, and taking the boy’s hand traced the sign of the Hidden on his palm. He felt Tomasu had been chosen in some way, to become a leader of the Hidden, perhaps, to take over eventually from Isao. He began to speak more seriously to him at night about spiritual matters and to lead him more deeply into the beliefs of the Hidden. Despite Tomasu’s hot temper and restlessness, Shimon thought the boy had a natural gentleness and an aversion to cruelty, which both his parents did their best to foster.

IT WAS RARE for strangers or travelers to come to Mino. The village lay hidden in the mountains; no roads came near it, only the tracks over the mountain and along the river