The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Author: Mark Lawrence
- Language: English
- Genre: Action & Adventure Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Livira
They named Livira after a weed. You couldn’t grow much in the Dust
but that never stopped hungry people trying. They said livira would
grow in places where rocks wouldn’t. Which never made sense to
Livira because rocks don’t grow. Unfortunately, not even goats could eat
the stuff and any farmer who watered a crop would find themselves
spending most of their time fighting it. Spill a single drop of water in the
Dust and, soon enough, strands of livira would come coiling out of the
cracked ground for a taste.
Her parents had given her a different name but she hardly remembered
it. People called her Livira because, like the weed, you couldn’t keep her
down.
“Come on then!” Livira picked herself up and wiped the blood from her
nose. She raised her fists again. “Come on.”
Acmar shook his head, looking embarrassed now that a ring of children
had gathered. All of them were dusty but Livira was coated in the stuff,
head to foot.
“Come on!” she shouted. She felt woozy and her head rang as if it were
the summoning bell and someone kept beating it.
“You’re twice her size.” Benth broke into the circle and pushed Acmar
aside.
“She won’t stay down,” Acmar complained, rubbing his knuckles.
“It’s a draw then.” Benth stepped between them, a broad-shouldered boy
and handsome despite his broken nose. Seeing Livira’s scowl he grabbed
her hand and raised it above her head. “Livira wins again.”
The others cheered and laughed then broke and ran before the advance
of a tall figure, dark against the sun’s white glare.
“Livy!” Her aunt’s scolding voice. Fingers wrapped her wrist and she
was being jerked away towards the black shadow of the family hut.
Aunt Teela shoved a cracked leather bucket at her. “The beans need
watering.”
“Yessum!” Livira had always loved the well. She spat a bloody mess
into the dust then grinned up at her aunt before hurrying off with the bucket.
Her aunt shook her head. You could put Livira down but you couldn’t keep
her there.
Livira’s hurrying didn’t last long. She slowed as she passed Ella’s shack.
The old woman collected wind-weed, or rather the kids chased and caught it
for her, racing over the hardpan in pursuit of the tough, fibrous balls. The
things were almost entirely empty space and Ella’s cunning fingers could
coax the randomness of their criss-crossed strands into meaning that
pleased the eye. Deft twists could render a horse or man suspended in a
network of threads within the outer sphere that was itself just a lattice of
thicker strands.
Livira watched Ella work. “I wish I could do that.”
Ella looked up from her task and held up her current piece on the palm
of one wrinkled hand. “For you.”
Livira picked it up, a small sphere of wind-weed just five or six inches
across.
Immediately Ella took up a replacement and began anew.
Livira studied her unexpected prize. It looked half-finished, the mass of
fibres compressed towards the middle seeming like just a clotting of many
threads that wove nothing.
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