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.
BOOKS BY CYNTHIA VOIGT
Homecoming
Dicey’s Song
Winner of the 1983 Newbery Medal
A Solitary Blue
1984 Newbery Honor Book
Tell Me If the Lovers Are Lovers
The Callender Papers
Building Blocks
The Runner
Jackaroo
Izzy, Willy-Nilly
Come a Stranger
Stories About Rosie
Sons from Afar
Tree by Leaf
Seventeen Against the Dealer
On Fortune’s Wheel
First paperback edition October 1999
Text copyright © 1990 by Cynthia Voigt
Atheneum
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Designed by Steve Scott
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Voigt, Cynthia.
On fortune’s wheel / by Cynthia Voigt. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Faced with the prospect of an unhappy life in the Kingdom, fourteen-year-old Birle accompanies a young runaway nobleman on a journey south and falls into slavery in the citadel of a cruel prince.
[1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.V874On 1990 [Fic]—dc20
89-39010
CIP AC
ISBN 978-0-6893-1636-4
ISBN: 978-1-4391-1589-3 (eBook)
Cynthia Voigt, On Fortune's Wheel
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