Cobweb Bride (Cobweb Bride Trilogy, Book 1)

Chapter 5

In the first bluish glimmer of dawn, Percy walked slowly down the narrow rutted street of Oarclaven, past neighbor houses. Her bulky well-wrapped feet crunched against the fresh powder of snow that covered the road with a deceptive blanket of smoothness. The basket of food made an uncomfortable weight in her mittened hand.

There were a number of neighbors who were also up and about at this early hour. She could hear voices coming from the shuttered windows and see thin slivers of light between the wood planks from breakfast hearth fires being lit. Smoking chimneys filled the cold air with pungency.

And then, as she turned the corner and approached the Doneil house where the worst of yesterday's excitement had taken place, there was Jenna Doneil. She was coming down their porch, wrapped up in many layers against the cold, carrying a small travel sack.

Percy paused momentarily, then raised her hand to wave at the girl.

Jenna looked up, froze for an instant, then hurried down their snow-covered front walkway to meet her on the road.

"Morning," Percy said, pausing to stand before the Doneil house. "You heading where I think you're heading?"

"Yeah . . ." Jenna nodded. "Pa and Ma say I have to go and be a Cobweb Bride, if he takes me. . . ."

"Yes, same here."

"I don't want to."

"Neither do I," said Percy. And then, added. "But, are you sure you're of an age to be a bride? How come you have to go? I thought you're a whole year younger than my little sis Patty."

Jenna raised her swaddled white face and there was a fierce expression in her eyes. "I am old enough," she said in a defiant twelve-year-old whisper, as though anyone from the house could hear her. "I got breasts already. Well, some. . . . And anyway, my parents think I'm old enough, cause Pa was gonna have me be promised to Jack Rosten's second son by spring so that they could get the bull and the two sheep."

"Oh, now that's a shame." Percy started walking again, and Jenna trailed after her, matching her strides. "The Rosten boys are trouble, aren't they? And the second son, what's his name?"

"Jules."

"Right, Jules. He's not that much older than you."

"He's gross. . . . And he has crooked buckteeth and he pulls my skirt and always pinches me here an' there. I'd rather die than go with him. But Pa says I have to. . . . And besides, I am afraid to stay in our house now, after yesterday—you know."

"I see," Percy said, thinking of the poor squealing pig from the night before and whatever happened to it, and indeed not daring to take that path of imagination any further. As they passed the main street there seemed to be a number of other girls and young women headed variously up the roads.

"Do you think they are all going to be Cobweb Brides?" Jenna said.

"I don't know. It's possible many of them are."

"Are you . . . I mean, do you know where . . ." Jenna began, then grew silent momentarily. "Do you know where you're supposed to, well . . . go?"

Percy turned her head to look at the girl at her side. She pursed her winter-chapped lips, licked them to warm against the unrelenting dryness of the ice air. "We're supposed to head north, is what we're told. Into the Northern Forests. And then we look around for Death's Keep."

"How are we supposed to do that? What's it look like?"

Percy moved her basket over from one hand to the other to free up her hand closest to Jenna. She then took the younger girl's smaller mittened hand and gave it a squeeze. "I have no blasted idea," she said. "But how about you and I go looking together? You can walk along with me all the way, and we won't get lost."