hem ourselves, and spread them as widely as we could to make certain that we would have few visitors." He smiled proudly with his hollow jaws.Schmendrick propped his chin on his knuckles and regarded Drinn with a sagging smile. "What about your own children?" he asked. "How can you keep one of them from growing up to fulfill the curse, http://www.geoide.ulaval.ca/toms.aspx - buy toms shoes ?" He looked around the inn, sleepily studying every wrinkled face that looked back at him. "Come to think of it," he said slowly, "are there no young people in this town? How early do you send children to bed in Hagsgate?"No one answered him. Molly could hear blood creaking in ears and eyes, and skin twitching like water plucked by the wind. Then Drinn said, "We have no children. We have had none since the day that the curse was laid upon us." He coughed into his fist and added, "It seemed the most obvious way of foiling the witch."Schmendrick threw back his head and laughed without making a sound, laughed to make the torches dance. Molly realized that the magician was quite drunk. Drinn's mouth disappeared, and his eyes hardened into cracked porcelain. "I see no humor in our plight," he said softly. "None at all.""None," Schmendrick gurgled, bowing over the table and spilling his wine. "None, pardon me, none, none at all." Under the angry gaze of two hundred eyes, he managed to recover himself and reply seriously to Drinn. "Then it would seem to me that you have no worries. None that would worry you, anyway." A small whee of laughter sneaked out between his lips, like steam from a teakettle."So it would seem." Drinn leaned forward and touched Schmendrick's wrist with two ringers. "But I have not told you all the truth. Twenty-one years ago, a child was born in Hagsgate. Whose child it was, we never knew. I found it myself, as I was crossing the marketplace one winter's night. It was lying on a butcher's block, not crying, although there was snow, but warm and chuckling under a comforter of stray cats. They were all purring together, and the sound was heavy with knowledge. I stood by the strange cradle for a long time, pondering while the snow fell and the cats purred prophecy."He stopped, and Molly Grue said eagerly, http://www.cheaptomsshoessalei.com - toms outlet , "You took the child home with you, of course, and raised it as your own." Drinn laid his hands palm up on the table."I chased the cats away," he said, "and went home alone." Molly's face turned the color of mist. Drinn shrugged slightly. "I know the birth of a hero when I see it," he said. "Omens and portents, snakes in the nursery. Had it not been for the cats, http://www.tomsoutletsalecheap.com - buy toms shoes , I might have chanced the child, but they made it so obvious, so mythological. What was I to do—knowingly harbor Hagsgate's doom?" His lip twitched, as though a hook had set in it. "As it happens, I erred, but it was on the side of tenderness. When I returned at sunrise, the baby had vanished."Schmendrick was drawing pictures with his finger in a puddle of wine, and might have heard nothing at all. Drinn went on. "Naturally, no one ever admitted to leaving the child in the marketplace, and though we searched everyRelated articles:
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