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Jeremy worked hard for most of his waking hours because working was about the
only way to keep from thinking about other things, topics that continually
plagued him. Such as dead parents, live girls who sometimes could be seen with
no clothes on, and a life that had no future, only an endless path down which
he walked, pushing a loaded barrow.
Sal in her soft voice asked: "You live with your parents, Jeremy? Brothers?
Sisters?"
Jeremy tossed his mass of red hair in a quick negative motion. "Nothing like
that." His voice was harsh, and suddenly it broke deep. "My father and mother
are dead. I live with my aunt and uncle."
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Looking up at him, she thought that his face was not attractive in any
conventional way, running to odd angles and high bones prominent in cheeks too
young to sprout a beard. Greenish eyes peered through a tight-curled mass of
reddish hair. Face and wiry neck and exposed arms were largely a mass of
freckles.
Jeremy's arms and legs tended to be long and would one day be powerful. His
hands and feet had already got most of their growing done; his shoulders were
sloping and still narrow. Today his right knee was starting to show through a
hole in trousers that, though Aunt Lynn had made them only a couple of months
ago, were already beginning to be too short.
Sometimes when Jeremy saw the woman again she seemed a little stronger, her
speech a little easier. And then again he would come back and find her weaker
than ever before.
What if she should die? What in all the hells was he ever going to do then?
Once she reached up her small, hard hand and clutched at one of his. "Jeremy.
I don't want to make any trouble for you. But there's something I must do.
Something more important than anything else than anything. More than what
happens to you. Or to me either. So you must help me to get downstream. You
must."
He listened carefully, trying to learn what the important thing was whatever
it was, he was going to do it. "I can try. Yes, I can help you. Anything! How
far down do you want to go?"
"All the way. Hundreds of miles from here. All the way to the sea."
Yes.
And in that moment he understood suddenly, with a sense of vast relief, that
he would get her a boat and, when she left, he was going with her.
"You haven't told anyone else? About me?"
"No! Never fear; I won't." Jeremy feared to trust anyone else in the village
with the knowledge of his discovery. Certainly he knew better than to trust
his aunt or uncle in any matter like this.
"Who is your mayor or do you have a mayor?"
He shook his head. "This place is too small for that."
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/...The%20Face%20of%20Apollo%20(v1.
1%20htm).html (14 of 221) [2/4/2004 11:11:04 PM]
Fred Saberhagen - The Book of the Gods 1 - The Face of Apollo
"How many houses?"
"About a dozen." Then he added an earnest caution: "The people here hate
strangers. They'd keep no secret for you. This place is not like my old
home my real home."
"What was that like?"
Jeremy shook his head. He could find no words to begin to describe the
differences between his home village, the place where he'd spent his first
fourteen years, and this. There everyone had known him and his parents had
been alive.
Marvellously, Sal seemed to get the idea anyway. "Yes. There's a great world
out there, isn't there?"
He nodded. At least he could hope there was. He was inarticulately grateful
for her understanding.
For the past half a year he'd been an orphan, feeling much alienated. Uncle
Humbert was not basically unkind, but such daring as he possessed, and Aunt
Lynn's as well, had been stretched to the limits by taking in a refugee. Both
of them sometimes looked at Jeremy in a way that seemed to indicate that they
regretted their decision. Apparently it just wasn't done, in the Raisinmakers'
village.
The truth was that Uncle Humbert, with no children of his own, had been unable
to refuse the prospect of cheap labor that the boy provided. He could do a
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