Shadows by E. C. Blake Page A

flat-chested than usual.
    I could pass for a boy
, she thought.
    â€œI’ll need to wash the blood out of your clothes,” Filia said. She frowned. “I’ve got mint tea brewing in the kitchen,” she said, “and that’s where we’ll want to hear your story. But you’ll need something to wear . . .” She got up and went to the chest, opening it to reveal neatly folded clothes. “You’re about the same size as my son . . . was.” Her voice caught before the last word. She pulled out a brown shirt and held it up. “You can wear this.”
    Mara pulled it on, grateful for the warmth, then followed Filia into the kitchen, where Jess already waited at a well-made table of dark wood. The fire had been stoked and blazed cheerfully in the hearth, and a kettle hanging over it issued a steady stream of vapor. A tub in the corner steamed, and Mara, glancing in, saw her jacket and shirt in the pink-tinged water. “I’ll pull those out to dry,” Filia said. “Jess managed to rub most of the blood out of them, I think. You just sit at the table.”
    Mara sat. Filia pulled the dripping jacket, blouse, and undertunic from the tub. “Don’t just sit there like a frog on a log,” she said to her husband. “Work the pump. I need to give these a rinse.”
    Jess, as obedient to his wife as the big black dog had been to him, got up and began cranking the wooden pump handle. Water poured into a wooden trough that guided it out through the wall. Filia worked the clothes under the clean water for a few moments, then said to Jess, “That’s enough. Now you pour the tea while I hang these up, and then we’ll talk.”
    While Filia draped the clothes on a rope strung across the kitchen in front of the fire, where they hung, dripping onto the stones of the hearth, Jess took the kettle from the fire and poured clear green tea into three clay mugs already sitting on the table. Mara wrapped her hands around her mug to warm them, and took a long sip of the blessedly hot liquid, trying to look unconcerned and at home, while all the while her heart fluttered. What could she tell them? What
should
she tell them?
    Filia sat down next to her husband. He looked far less frightening in the light than he had as a dark shadow in the farmyard. His bald head glowed in the firelight and his gray-bearded, bushy-browed face was as lined and kindly as his wife’s. “Now, then, child,” said Filia gently. “What’s your name?”
    â€œP . . . Prella,” Mara said. The real Prella, far away in the Secret City, surely wouldn’t mind.
    â€œPrella,” said Filia. “And how old are you?”
    â€œFourteen,” Mara said, thankful once again to Ethelda, who had been present at her Masking on her fifteenth birthday and had healed her torn face so well after the Mask failed that no scars remained.
    â€œNot long until your Masking?”
    â€œNot long,” Mara said. “Two months. Fourteenth of Waterspring.” That was her mother’s birthday.
    â€œWhere do you live?” Jess rumbled. “You’re not a local girl.”
    â€œRiverwash,” Mara said. It was the only village name she could be sure of; one of her classmates had had an aunt there and had told tales, after returning from a midwinter visit, of how impossibly dull a place it was. Located on the river, just as the name implied, it lay a few miles north of Tamita. She hoped it was still far enough away that neither Jess nor Filia knew its inhabitants well.
    â€œRiverwash?” said Jess, frowning. “That’s a long walk from here, girl.”
    â€œI wasn’t walking, I was riding,” Mara said. “When your dog came charging out, my horse threw me. Then she galloped off.”
    â€œRiding? At night? Through the woods?” Jess shook his head. “Of all the fool . . . why weren’t