Amber and Clay by Laura Schlitz (easy books to read TXT) 📗

the doll. She imagined the poor doll falling head over heels down the stairs and tightened her grip on it. “Father!” she cried.

Her father’s shape appeared below, thickset and powerful. In an instant he mounted the stairs and stood beside her. “Melisto, what are you doing out of bed?”

“I was thirsty and there was no one to wait on me. Thratta’s at the fountain house.” She lifted her elbow, showing the bandaged arm. “I fell down the steps this morning. No, yesterday. My arm broke, but it didn’t come off. And I bled,” she added proudly. Now that her father was there, she was not frightened. “I bled a lot.”

Arkadios laid his fingers against her cheek. “Your mother told me. I spoke to her last night, before I went out. I looked in on you, but you were asleep.”

Melisto leaned toward him, sniffing. “Were you at a drinking party?” She always sniffed him when he came home late. It was their joke, the way she could detect the slightest trace of alcohol on his breath.

“Yes, but the wine was mostly water. My friends and I had politics to discuss.”

“The Spartans,” Melisto said, hoping to impress him with her grasp of state affairs. “Have you thought of a way to kill them and sink their ships?”

“Not yet. That’s a nasty bruise on your face. Does your arm hurt much?”

“Yes, but not as bad as before. When the doctor bandaged it, it hurt.” Melisto rolled her eyes at the memory. “And when I fell down. Mother said, ‘I’ve killed her!’ because I bled so much. And she cried.”

“You tripped over her gown,” Arkadios prompted her.

“Yes, I ripped it. And I fell. Now I’m thirsty and I want something to eat.”

“Come to the kitchen then.”

Melisto hesitated, cowed by the stairs.

“Do you want me to carry you down?”

“No. I’m not a baby,” Melisto said scornfully, and wished she could take the words back. It would have been a great treat to be carried downstairs by her father. “I can go by myself.”

She squeezed the doll against her left side and started the descent, two-footing each stair. When she reached the bottom, she exhaled.

Arkadios laid his hand on the crown of her head. “That’s my brave girl.”

Melisto glowed. She followed her father into the kitchen and stood like a good child, without speaking. Her father told the cook to prepare a meal for her: a bunch of grapes, a cup of water, a chunk of bread and a pool of honey to dip it in. He carried her cup and bowl out into the courtyard and sat next to her on the wooden bench.

She drank first, gulping the whole cup of water. The grapes were easy to eat one-handed, but the bread was more difficult; she could not tear it into small pieces and ended up with honey smeared all over her face. She stretched her tongue to its limits, licking her chin and lips.

Once her appetite was satisfied, she turned to watch her father. Arkadios sat with his head thrown back, his eye on the brightening sky. Even with the doll across his knees, he did not look foolish. He was dark, well muscled, and battle-scarred: a warrior and a citizen. Melisto imagined that Zeus must look exactly like him.

She touched his hand to get his attention. “I have a new doll.”

Smiling, he passed it to her. “So I see. I told your mother she was foolish to spend money on a toy in times like these, but she insisted you needed a new doll. She was very frightened when you fell.”

“She cried,” Melisto repeated. “When there was all that blood.”

“Your mother is good to you,” said Arkadios, but Melisto scowled. How could her father know so little? She thought of Lysandra’s hands, with their sharp nails and pinching fingers. She thought of the sore patches on her scalp from the times her mother twisted and yanked her hair. All at once, the world darkened. The thing she had forgotten swam to the surface of her mind. She heard the sound of the tearing dress and the ugly snarl on her mother’s face as she whirled around, hand upraised. Lysandra had struck hard and on purpose, knocking Melisto backward into the empty air. None of it had been an accident. Her mother had meant to hurt her.

Melisto bared her teeth. “She’s not!” she fumed. “She’s not good to me, she’s bad to me, she doesn’t even like me, because I hurt her when I was born — ”

Her father’s face was startled. He didn’t understand, and she couldn’t tell him. Some demon had tempted Melisto to step on her mother’s dress: that, also, was true. In a spasm of wordless rage, she snatched the doll and swung it upward, smashing it down on the edge of the bench.

Crack! The doll’s foot flew into the air and fell to earth. It landed on the grass: pure white and perfect. Melisto gasped. She had broken her beautiful doll. She was bad even to herself. She crooked her elbow over her face and sobbed. Arkadios had never whipped her; that was Thratta’s job. But he had seen her break her new doll. He would have to whip her now, and he was strong. She began to shake all over.

Arkadios moved deliberately. He slid one arm under her knees and eased her into his lap. The movement jarred Melisto’s arm, but she scarcely felt the pain. Her father loved her. Burrowing, she tasted his smell: sweat, wool, masculinity. She gulped back her sobs, determined to show that she would be good, if he would just go on holding her.

“Melisto, I want to tell you about the night you were born.”

Melisto lifted her head. She had heard the story of her birth countless times. It was a bad story. “I know all that,” she objected. “Mother tells me. The pains went on for two nights and a day, and I hurt her because I have a big ugly head