Lilac Child Chapter 9

By the time they returned to the carpet shop, they’d all somewhat recovered from the ordeal. However, Mother Olo was exhausted and collapsed into a chair as soon as they entered her kitchen.

Batu immediately rushed to her side, only to be gently pushed away. “I’m okay. The walk was more tiring than anything else. A little rest and something to eat and I’ll be well again.” Batu gave her a concerned look before handing over a folded letter drawn from a deep pocket. There was a heft and a quality to the paper that struck Mother Olo as rare. She let it sit flat in her open palm while she considered whether to open it or consign it to the fire. In her experience, messages written on such paper often brought trouble and there’d been enough of that today already. “Did this come from the Notals?” “A fancy messenger delivered it to the shop not long after you left,” Batu said with a shake of her head. The children stood awkwardly in the kitchen, none of them wanting to stray far from Zini or Mother Olo. “The fish look like they’ve been swimming upstream.”

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