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Back Heir to Sevenwaters Save as PDF
Chapters (22)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. CHAPTER 1
  6. CHAPTER 2
  7. CHAPTER 3
  8. CHAPTER 4
  9. CHAPTER 5
  10. CHAPTER 6
  11. CHAPTER 7
  12. CHAPTER 8
  13. CHAPTER 9
  14. CHAPTER 10
  15. CHAPTER 11
  16. CHAPTER 12
  17. CHAPTER 13
  18. CHAPTER 14
  19. CHAPTER 15
  20. CHAPTER 16
  21. CHAPTER 17
  22. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The sound began once more, a plaintive, scratchy crying like a mockery of a baby’s voice. And the sticks and stones were . . . They were . . . My gorge rose. I made myself go on looking, and saw mossy lids opening over pebble eyes, a little mouth shaped from twigs stretching to reveal brown, barky gums, a pair of hands with skinny sticks for fingers reaching up toward me as if begging for the comfort of my embrace. The thing was crying; it was hungry. It kicked the blankets away—my baby brother’s soft blankets—to show its form as that of a newborn infant, but bizarrely made of the debris of the forest, here a stick of rowan, there a brown leaf, here a crust of moss, there a polished stone in mottled black and white. Its head was covered, not with thick fine hair like Finbar’s, but with a random patching of what looked like the breast feathers of a crow. Its voice was crowlike, too, rasping a louder and louder demand for attention. I pinched myself on the arm, hard, but all that happened was an escalation of the squawking cries. I was awake, and it was true. Someone had taken my brother, the long-desired son of Sevenwaters, my mother’s gift from the gods, and in his place had left us the ugliest changeling in the world.

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 6

I locked the little chamber behind me and ran downstairs. Father was in the hall with Johnny and Aidan. The moment they caught sight of me the three of them fell silent.

“Father, something terrible has happened. It’s Finbar. He’s . . . he’s been taken.” I saw him flinch as if struck. He got up, his face ashen. I made myself go on. “Switched. I don’t know how it happened, I was there the whole time, but—”

He was already racing up the stairs. I picked up my skirts and ran after him. “Father, wait! I need to tell you . . . Father, there’s a . . . a sort of changeling in the cradle . . .”

He wasn’t listening. We passed the closed doorway to Mother’s chamber. When we reached the nursery, my hands were shaking so hard that Father grabbed the keys from me and unlocked the door himself.

The signs of my futile, frantic search were everywhere, cloths strewn over the floor, stools upturned, vessels on their sides. Father strode to the cradle, lifted away the blanket, took one look at what lay there and turned to seize me by the shoulders, so hard it hurt. “What happened? Tell me quickly!”

By now Johnny was in the doorway with Aidan behind him. The scratchy sobs of the sticks-and-stones baby filled the chamber.