This also seemed to amuse her. She dropped her apron and brushed it. The geese gathered around to get the last dusty bits, then headed off toward the barn, clacking and gossiping. The goose girl raised her arms over her head, pulling the fabric of her dress taut against admirable breasts. （Yes, I noticed—sue me.） She clapped twice.
The old white horse raised its head and ambled toward her. I saw its mane had been braided with bits of colored glass and ribbons. Such decoration suggested to me that it was a she. The next moment I became sure, because when the horse spoke, it was with a female’s voice.
“I will answer some of your questions, because Dora sent you and because my mistress knows the belt with the pretty blue stones that you wear.”
The horse seemed to have no interest in the belt or the holstered .45; she was looking off at the road and the trees on the far side. It was the goose girl who was looking at the concho belt. Then she looked back up at me with those brilliant blue eyes.
“Have you come from Adrian?”
The voice came from the white horse—in the neighborhood, at least—but I could see the muscles moving in the girl’s throat and around what had once been her mouth.
“You’re a ventriloquist!” I blurted.
She smiled with her eyes and took my hand. It provoked another of those shocks.
“Come.”
The goose girl led me around the farmhouse.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Leah and Falada. Help Her. A Meeting on the Road. Wolfies. Two Moons.
1
We only talked for an hour, and I ended up doing most of it, but it was long enough for me to be sure that she was no ordinary farmgirl. That probably sounds snobby, as if I don’t believe farmgirls can be smart, or pretty, or even beautiful. I don’t mean any of those things. I’m sure there are even farmgirls somewhere in this great round world of ours who are able to practice ventriloquism. There was something else, something more. She had a certain confidence, an air, as if she were used to having people—and not just farmhands—do her bidding. And after that first hesitation, probably caused by my sudden appearance, she showed absolutely no fear.
I probably don’t need to tell you that it only took that hour for me to fall head over heels in love with her, either, because you probably already knew it. It’s how these stories go, isn’t it? Only for me it was no story, it was my life. It was also Charlie Reade luck: fall for a girl who was not only older, but whose mouth I could never kiss. I would have been glad to kiss the scar where it had been, though, which ought to tell you how bad I had it. One other thing I knew was that mouth or no mouth, she wasn’t meant for the likes of me. She was more than just a girl feeding geese. A lot more.
Besides, how much romance can you make when the beautiful girl has to talk to the love-struck Romeo through a horse?
But that’s what we did.
2
There was a gazebo near the garden. We sat inside, at a little round table. A couple of the hands came out of the corn headed for the barn with full baskets, so I guessed it was summer over here instead of early October. The horse cropped grass nearby. A gray girl with a badly deformed face brought a tray and set it down. On it were two cloth napkins, a glass, and two pitchers, one big and one the size of those teensy pitchers of half-and-half you get in diners. The big one held what looked like lemonade. The small one contained yellow gluck that might have been pureed squash. The goose girl motioned for me to pour from the big pitcher and drink. I did so, with some embarrassment. Because I had a mouth to drink with.
“Good,” I said, and it was—just the right mixture of sweet and tart.
The gray girl was still standing at the goose girl’s shoulder. She pointed at the yellow gluck in the small pitcher.
The goose girl nodded, but her nostrils flared in a sigh and the scar that should have been a mouth pulled down a little. The serving girl took a glass tube from the pocket of a dress that was as gray as her skin. She bent, meaning to push it into the gluck, but the goose girl took the tube and laid it on the table instead. She looked up at the serving girl, nodded, and put her hands together, as if saying namaste. The girl returned the nod and left.
When she was gone, the goose girl clapped for the horse. She came and hung her head over the rail between us, still chewing her last mouthful.
“I am Falada,” the horse said, but her mouth didn’t move the way the dummy’s moves as it sits on the ventriloquist’s knee; she just kept chewing. I had no idea why the girl was keeping up the voice-throwing charade. “My mistress is Leah.”