They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Bell Tower

Aitor's POV

She slept with one hand fisted in my beard and her cropped head under my chin, and I lay awake until the window went grey.

I had decided to tell her everything in the morning, and I had been deciding it for hours.

The truth was a poor gift.

It was this: I had kept sixty people behind a wall for two winters and let each of them believe they owed me money.

I had let the old ones believe it and the young ones, and I had let her believe it, for six days, with her cap on.

I was not proud of it.

I told her in the bell tower.

She had asked for air.

I took her up the ninety-one steps in the grey light, past the ropes and the old brass bell.

At the top was a stone platform, open to the sky.

The whole valley lay below us.

The river was a black thread, and the fields on the far bank were white.

I could see the track she had ridden up with her sister.

She stood at the parapet in her brother's coat, with her bare head lifted to the wind.

I stood a pace behind her and did not touch her.

"Tell me," Itziar said.

"The people in my house are not debtors."

She did not turn.

"They were sent to me.

"Two winters ago, a man came to my gate at night with three girls and a story.

"He said they were his kin and in danger.

"The Urrutia family, across the border, are at feud with half the valleys on this side.

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