It took her several hours. She was settling the last one under leaf mold when she suddenly thought: I have one more favor to ask you. The attic-over-the-attic: Could it no longer be there? Somehow. I mean, if there’s more of you up there, I don’t want to have to deal with it. I’m an ordinary girl, you know. I want to go on being ordinary.
And she heard the silence for the last time.
When the new superhighway went in, there was a great round bow in its elegant engineered sweep north and west: a very odd-looking, out-of-place bow, shaped a little like the way grains of wood spread out and then curl in around a knot, giving wide berth to a tiny town of about five thousand people out in the middle of nowhere. The town was beautifully centered in the bow, so beautifully that even an engineer had to admire it, however badly it twisted the handsome strong lay of the highway. The ecological reports, everyone said vaguely. Something about the ecology of the area. Don’t really know; somebody must have had an in somewhere. There isn’t really any reason at all.
About the Author
Robin McKinley has won various awards and citations for her writing, including the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown, a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature for Sunshine. Her other books include the New York Times bestseller Spindle’s End; two novel-length retellings of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and Rose Daughter; Deerskin, another novel-length fairy-tale retelling, of Charles Perrault’s Donkeyskin; and a retelling of the Robin Hood legend, The Outlaws of Sherwood. She lives with her husband, the English writer Peter Dickinson; three dogs (two hellhounds and one hellterror); an 1897 Steinway upright; and far too many rosebushes.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“The Healer” first appeared in Elsewhere, Volume II, edited by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold, published in 1982 by Ace Books.
“The Stagman” first appeared in Elsewhere, Volume III, edited by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold, published in 1984 by Ace Fantasy Books/The Berkley Publishing Group.
“Touk’s House” first appeared in Faery!, edited by Terri Windling, published in 1985 by Ace Fantasy Books/The Berkley Publishing Group.
Copyright © 1982, 1984, 1985, 1994 by Robin McKinley
Cover design by Angela Goddard
ISBN: 978-1-4976-7372-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Robin McKinley, A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories
(Series: # )
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