The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare [31]
Mr. Kimberley fastened upon her the look that was well known in his classroom. "Most assuredly you are dismissed, young lady," he said coldly. "We will have to consider seriously whether or not Mercy is responsible enough to continue such a position."
When the men had gone neither girl spoke a word. Mercy pulled herself about the room, righting an overturned chair, straightening out the scuffed primers. Two great tears ran slowly down her cheeks.
The sight of Mercy's tears was more than Kit could endure. If she looked at them for another instant she would fly into a thousand pieces. In a panic she fled, out the door and down the roadway, running, blind to reason or decorum, past the Meeting House, past the loiterers near the town pump, past the houses where her pupils lived. She scarcely knew where her feet were taking her, but something deep within her had chosen a destination. She did not stop until she reached the Great Meadow. There, without thinking, she left the pathway, plunged into a field, and fell face down in the grass, her whole body wrenched with sobs. The tall grass rustled over her head and hid her from sight, and the Meadows closed silently around her and took her in.
When Kit had sobbed herself out, she lay for a long time too exhausted to move or to think. Perhaps she slept a little, but presently she opened her eyes and became aware of the smell of the warm earth and the rough grass against her face. She rolled over and stretched, blinking up at the blue sky. The tips of the long grasses swished gently in the breeze. The hot sun pressed down on her so that her body felt light and empty. Slowly, the meadow began to fulfill its promise.
All at once, with an instinctive quickening of her senses, Kit knew that she was not alone, that someone was very close. She started up. Only a few feet away a woman was sitting watching her, a very old woman with short-cropped white hair and faded, almost colorless eyes set deep in an incredibly wrinkled face. As Kit stared at her she spoke in a rusty murmuring voice.
"Thee did well, child, to come to the Meadow. There is always a cure here when the heart is troubled."
For a moment Kit was too dumbfounded to move.
"I know," the murmuring voice went on. "Many's the time I've found it here myself. That is why I live here."
Kit stiffened with a cold prickle against her spine. Those thin stooped shoulders, that tattered gray shawl—this was the queer woman from Blackbird Pond—Hannah Tupper, the witch! The girl stared, horror-struck, at the odd-shaped scar on the woman's fore head. Was it the devil's mark?
"Folks wonder why I want to live here so close to the swamp," the soft husky voice continued. "But I think thee knows why. I could see it in thy face a moment back. The Meadow has spoken to thee, too, hasn't it?"
The cold feeling began to pass away. In some unexplainable way this strange little creature seemed to belong here, so much a part of this quiet lonely place that her voice might have been the voice of the Meadow itself.
"I didn't really intend to come here," Kit found herself explaining. "I always meant to come back, but this morning I just seemed to get here by accident."
Hannah Tupper shook her head, as though she knew better. "Thee must be hungry," she said, more briskly. "Come, and I'll give thee a bite to eat." She hitched herself awkwardly to her feet. Reminded of the time. Kit leaped up and shook out her skirts.
"I must go back," she said hastily. "I must have been gone for hours."
The woman peered up at her. Her eyes, almost lost in the folds of leathery wrinkles, had a humorous gleam. A toothless smile crinkled her cheeks.
"Thee better not go back looking so," she advised. "Whatever it is, thee can stand up to it better with a bit of food inside. Come along, 'tis no distance at all."
Kit wavered. She was suddenly ravenous, but more than that, she was curious. Whatever this queer little woman might be, she was certainly harmless, and unexpectedly appealing. Like the school children, she had accepted Kit without a question or