Ashes Under Uricon (The Change Book 1)

Ashes Under Uricon (The Change Book 1) by David Kearns

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Authors: David Kearns
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questions, including you. So why are you trying to make me look stupid. Why don’t you ask her how many Apostles there are? Perhaps she’ll be able to tell you in French.” I paused. “And I’m very hungry.”

    “Ah,” he said. He leaned over and whispered something to Rhiannon. She pulled him up to his feet then slowly put her other hand out to me.

    “Viens,” she whispered. “Viens, Non. Nourriture. Viens.”

    Taid grasped my other hand. “Food, cariad. She says food. Let’s get some food inside us.”

Chapter 13

    She had indeed been telling the truth. Within no more than two minutes, we came to a small gate hidden in the roadside hedge. She glanced up and down the road before pushing open the gate and pulling us inside. She whispered something to Taid and he turned and pushed the gate closed behind us.

    We stood in front of a small, tumbledown cottage. The windows on the upper floor were mostly smashed, but there was still glass in the downstairs window to the left. As we reached the door, Rhiannon withdrew from inside her shift a small key that hung on a silver chain around her neck. She inserted the key into the lock, turned it and pushed open the door. Once we were inside, again she gestured to Taid and he closed it.

    We were now in a narrow, dark corridor. To the right was an open door, through which a room was visible that seemed full of broken furniture. To the left was another door, closed. Again, Rhiannon inserted the key, opened the door and led us in. This time, she closed the door and locked it. She slipped the key back inside her shift.

    It was a sparsely furnished room that was lighter than the corridor. In the middle was a large wooden table, with four chairs tucked in either side. On the far wall was a wooden cupboard with two doors. That was it. Nothing else.

    “I thought she said we were going to have food?” I said, backing up to the door, testing the handle to check that she had indeed locked it. She had.

    “Nourriture,” she said, pointing at the cupboard. She pulled out one of the chairs on the side of the table nearest to the window, turned it to face outside and sat on it. Staring through the window she began to hum to herself.

    “I suppose she means that there is food in that cupboard,” Taid said. He walked to the end of the room and pulled open one of the doors. There were three shelves inside it. All empty. My heart sank even deeper. What were we doing here? Then Taid opened the other door. This revealed a number of objects, two or three on each shelf. “Tinned food,” Taid said, mysteriously.

    I got up and joined him. “Is that what she calls food?”

    “I presume so. This is how food used to come. In the past. These are tins, and there should be something inside them. The wrappers are so faded that I can’t make out what they are, but the contents should be edible.”

    I took one of the objects off the bottom shelf. It did not look at all edible to me. The food I knew came in paper trays. You could see what you were eating with those. I put the object up to my mouth and bit on a corner of it. It was solid. “We can’t eat that,” I said, now really frustrated.

    “You don’t eat the tin, cariad. You eat what’s inside it. We need a tin opener. If there are tins here, I presume there’s an opener around here somewhere.” He moved the other ‘tins’ around in the cupboard, looking for something. I put my ‘tin’ on the table, pulled out a chair and sat on it, pulling up my knees and wrapping my arms around them. Now I was really fed up. Rhiannon seemed quite oblivious to what was going on in the room, still staring outside as she hummed her tune.

    “What are you staring at?” I said.

    “I don’t think she can hear you,” Taid said.

    I repeated my question, more loudly. This time she responded by looking at Taid. “En haut,” she said, pointing at the top of the cupboard. Then she turned to me. She stared at me for a moment. I had not

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