The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [17]
It was a special day. Though the usual Candlemas celebration was cancelled, Emer knew that her father would come home early and they would have a small celebration themselves, because it was also her birthday. She nursed her sick chickens and fed the lambs and returned to the empty house to see what else she could do to help her mother. Padraig’s maturity had rubbed off in a way, and Emer felt a lot older than six, which was the age she would turn that day.
After tidying the fireplace and the dinner table, she set to work on her secret project. She pulled out her half-made emergency bag, a project she’d started to keep her worried mind busy. In her daydreams about the dragon coming, she always had this bag over her shoulder, filled with food to tide her over and an extra pair of stockings.
In ten short minutes, she finished the seam, tied a knot, and bit it with her teeth. Turning it right-side-out and smoothing it, she leaned back and squinted. “It’s perfect,” she said to herself, and pulled out a long, thick plait from her pocket. She began to sew it on as a strap, but heard someone coming and hid the whole lot under her thin tick mattress.
“Emer?” Mairead called.
“Yes?” Emer answered, smoothing the mattress back to its position on the bed frame.
“Where are you?”
“I’m here,” she said, and walked into the kitchen.
“Happy birthday!” her mother said. “How does it feel to be six?”
“It feels old.”
Mairead laughed. “It only gets worse, Emer, the older you get.” She picked her daughter up and squeezed her. “Have you fed the lambs yet?”
“Aye.”
“Well then, we’re off to get your gift from Mrs. Tobin.”
“Mrs. Tobin?” Emer wondered why a decrepit, gnarled-up lady like mean old Mrs. Tobin would have anything to do with her birthday.
“You’ll see, Emer. Just get ready. I want you to wear your other dress, the longer one. Do you know where it is?”
Emer nodded.
“Good girl. Hurry now.”
Emer was ready in a very short time, still wondering about her gift and not thinking about the lookout or Oliver and his dragon for the first time in weeks.
They walked past the church to the cross in the road and continued down toward the mill, where Mrs. Tobin lived with her son and his wife, Katherine. The day was damp and cold and Emer found it difficult to breathe through her nose without sniffling and snorting. It wasn’t raining, which was a relief after three weeks of solid downpour, but it wasn’t sunny either. A gray mist seemed to swallow the valley from the sky down, and Emer felt it touch her toes inside the thin leather. In the distance, the hedgerows were painted just dark enough to make out the taller trees that grew within them. There wasn’t a bird in the sky, Emer noticed, not even a rook.
They met several men who were on their way to relieve other men on watch, like her father, who had been working since an hour before daybreak. The road had been filled with traffic of this sort every day since the cannons arrived—armed men heading this way or that way.
By the time they reached the old thatched mill house, Emer was tired.
“Come in Mairead, come in,” Katherine said from the door. Old Mrs. Tobin sat by the blazing fire, twisting her hands into each other, warming herself.
“And hello Emer! Happy birthday!”
“Thank you, Mrs. Tobin.”
“I’m afraid we can’t stay too long. It looks like rain. Paudie will be needing some dinner soon, as well,” Mairead said.
Old Mrs. Tobin gestured to Emer to sit at her side, while Katherine and Mairead stood and talked at the door.
“You know, I’ve kept my sewing things many years, hoping to grasp a needle again,” the old woman said. Then she looked at Emer and laughed. “But we all know that God can only work miracles when he wants to, and these old hands of mine are far too tired. Your mother tells me you have great