Tale of Birle Read online

  “Then I am also a slave.”

  She knew the true answer to that. “The one slave who escaped from the mines.”

  His face was shadowed, but she could see the smile growing there; she didn’t need to see his face to see his heart. “Shall I make a story out of that too? Even that? Shall I turn it all into stories for the puppets to tell? A man could spend his life at that work, Birle.”

  The wind blew around them, where they stood together. This night wind might blow in a storm, or it might blow in a clear morrow; there was no way for Birle to know. She could know only that a dark wind was blowing around them, and it was time to go into the safety of the house.

  Orien seemed to think the same, for he took her hand and pulled her toward the open door. “You didn’t tell me what kind of child we had.”

  “I had,” she corrected him.

  He ignored her, shutting the door behind them and—for all that he spoke of the baby—his bellflower eyes hungry only for her face.

  “A girl,” she said. “We have a daughter. We’ve named her Lyss, after my mother.” She put her hand against his mouth, to quiet his laughter. “She has her father’s eyes,” Birle told him, “but she’s asleep for now.”

  He held her hand and spoke softly against her fingers. “And should not be awakened, I think. But may I not waken her, Birle?”

  “If you do that, she’ll stay awake.”

  “Then we’ll watch the night through with her,” he argued, “all three together. There are worse fortunes to be had, and few better, as I think. What do you say, Birle, do you say yes? Lady, my heart, when you smile like that—let the child sleep, morning will come soon enough, all of the mornings to come will come in their time and for now—”

  But Lyss stirred in her cradle, disturbed by the voices. Birle turned to pick the baby up, her heart glad to put Lyss into Orien’s arms even while she wished Lyss might have slept on and left the two of them undisturbed. “When I’ve fed her she’ll sleep again,” she promised Orien, giving his child into his hands. For just a moment, their arms encircled Lyss, as if they were dancers at the fair, or themselves the wheel that turned.

  Cynthia Voigt won the Newbery Medal for Dicey’s Song, the Newbery Honor for A Solitary Blue, and was a National Book Award Finalist for Homecoming—all part of the beloved Tillerman Cycle. She is also the author of many other celebrated books for middle-grade and teen readers, including the Tales of the Kingdom series and Izzy, Willy-Nilly. She received the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1995 and the Katahdin Award in 2003 for her work in literature. She lives in Maine. Visit her online at CynthiaVoigt.com.

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  Also by Cynthia Voigt

  The Tale of Gwyn

  The Tale of Oriel

  The Tale of Elske

  THE TILLERMAN CYCLE

  Homecoming

  Dicey’s Song

  A Solitary Blue

  The Runner

  Come a Stranger

  Sons from Afar

  Seventeen Against the Dealer

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 1990 by Cynthia Voigt

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2015 by Alejandro Colucci

  Spine illustration copyright © 2015 by Adam S. Doyle

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  Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover

  The text for this book is set in Dolly.

  This Athenuem Books for Young Readers hardcover edition May 2015

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Voigt, Cynthia, author.

  [On fortune's wheel]

  The tale of Birle / Cynthia Voigt.

  pages cm. — (Tales of the kingdom ; 2)

  Originally published as On fortune's wheel. New York : Atheneum, 1990.

  ISBN 978-1-4424-8356-9 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-2204-8 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-4566-5 (eBook)

  1. Voyages and travels—Juvenile fiction. 2. Slavery—Juvenile fiction. 3. Adventure stories. [1. Runaways—Fiction. 2. Slavery—Fiction. 3. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.V874Tal 2015

  813.54—dc23

  [Fic] 2014044151