Chapter 18
THERE WAS NO COVER closer to the house, so they had to wait in the forest. Roald stretched out on the grass and was soon asleep, but Johanna felt uneasy. She spent a good while studying the shapes in the water. If she squinted, she could see them bleeding into the pool over the edge of the waterfall and re-forming once they were in the pond. She walked a little way back where she could see the cloudy water run out of the pit that the monks used to cool the iron. A stream of particularly milky water flowed out of a clay pipe that came from the deeper hole.
At regular intervals, a monk would come up the ramp out of that hole with a wheelbarrow full of black stuff. As Roald had said, his face was black as soot, and this made his eyes look oddly bright. He would wheel his load to
