The Battle for the Castle by Elizabeth Winthrop

voice.
    â€œListen, my mother’s a doctor too,” he said. “I hear about this stuff all the time.”

    â€œYou’ve found your seat,” she said one morning as they pulled up to open a gate. She was looking into the distance the way she did when she said something nice.
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œYou and the horse move as if you are one.”
    â€œYes,” he said. “That’s just the way it feels.”
    â€œDoes it ever happen with the bicycle?”
    William leaned over to undo the gate and backed Mandrake away to let her through. “You’ll have to ask Jason that. It never happened to me with the bicycle. Only with gymnastics.”
    â€œGymnastics?”
    â€œTumbling, I mean.”
    â€œOh yes. I remember. I saw you following Deegan around the courtyard.”
    Did she think he was good? he wondered, but he didn’t dare ask. He kicked the gate closed with his foot and she fastened it. “Come on,” she called as she dug her heels into Sorrel. “Today we’ll go all the way to the harbor and back.”
    It was a wild and wonderful ride. The sun lay warm on William’s shoulders and the wind streamed through his hair and the sea of blue cornflowers stretched away as far as the eye could see. He urged Mandrake up nextto Sorrel, and the two horses matched stride. Gudrin glanced over at him, then threw her head back and laughed wildly in a way he had never seen her do before. For the first time, she looked carefree and playful but also a little crazy, and he was reminded of Calendar and the look in her eye the day she turned Alastor to lead. He was scared suddenly at how far he had come from home. He felt as if he were riding away from everything that he knew before, from everything that was familiar. His parents and the attic and school and gymnastics, they all felt like some hazy dream that he had dreamed in another life and that he might never be able to dream again.
    Gudrin reined in above the small curve in the shoreline that she called the harbor. They slid off their horses and led them down to the little strip of beach where the fishermen pulled up their dories to sort the day’s catch.
    All the boats had put to sea except for one. An old man sat on its gunwale mending his nets.
    â€œGood day to you, sir,” said Gudrin.
    â€œAnd to you, miss,” he said without looking up. There was a surly tone to his voice. “If the day is good to you, then you would do well to move away from this place.”
    â€œThe day is not good for you, sir?” William asked.
    â€œLady Luck has turned against me. My nets rip, theboat leaks. It’s been that way for some days now. Ever since that death ship floated in on the tide.”
    Gudrin and William looked at each other.
    â€œBut that was some time ago,” William said quickly. “Sir Simon had it towed away.”
    â€œYes, well, my good boy, he did not tow it far enough. It’s come back. Two nights ago. On the high tide.”
    William scanned the horizon.
    â€œIt’s down east a league or two and it’s getting closer every day. The tide that brought it in will not take it out again. And the ship is not beached. It floats in the deepest water close into shore. Just around there,” he muttered with a nod over his shoulder. “It’s from the headlands you see it. Ever since the nasty thing came back, the nets come up empty. We are fishing much farther out to sea than we usually do but it does no good. And some of the men never come back at all. I do believe the very ocean has been poisoned.”
    Gudrin led William back the way they had come and then took a left through a thick stand of gorse bushes. From there they followed the steep rocky path that climbed the headlands.
    â€œYou brought the binoculars?” Gudrin called over her shoulder as she reached the top of the rise.
    He patted his belt pack.
    â€œBetter get them out,”