Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,19

and do it well.

So I kept silent. And they took my silence as a confession.

* * *

—

It was difficult to tell, as I lay in the darkness remembering, my face wet with cold tears, whether I had slept and woken or never slept at all.

Esther was quiet but for the slow tempo of her breath. Samuel sighed and murmured in his dreams.

I slipped from my bed and out of the cabin, closing the door behind me without a sound.

The trees wore gowns of starlight.

The dew was cold and luscious on my bare feet.

From somewhere up-mountain, an owl sounded lonely. Forlorn. Beautiful.

It seemed a terrible shame to sleep through such a night, and I was glad to be up before the sun.

I whispered Maisie’s name as I opened the door to the woodshed.

She lifted her head and slapped her tail against the ground as I crept inside and found the jar I’d borrowed for gathering stink.

I unscrewed the top and scraped the lip of the jar against my cheeks until I’d captured what tears remained on my face. Almost nothing.

I carried the jar back outside and dragged its mouth through the grass, gathering dew.

Then I retrieved the balsam I’d hidden behind the woodshed and scraped it into the jar, too.

Perhaps tomorrow I would climb down to the river that had carved a valley through the mountains. Its cold, clear water had never failed to make my father smile.

And after that maybe I’d harvest honey from the hive down beyond the brook, ready with a pouch of mud for the stings I was sure to get along the way.

But for now, I contented myself with the stars pulsing overhead, the trees reaching eagerly up, the feel of April on my skin.

When I stirred them, the embers from the tallow fire glowed hungrily, so I fed them bits of dry wood, and leaves, and pine cones, until I had a good fire going.

“Ellie,” my mother hiss-whispered from the cabin door, a blanket around her shoulders. “Have you lost your mind?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said softly. “I was visiting Maisie.”

“And the fire?”

I shrugged. “It was lonely, too.”

Which made her smile. So . . . unexpected, to see her standing on the step in the darkness, veiled in starlight, the white of her smile a quick surprise, then gone, as she turned to go back inside.

And I stood there for a while, the fire popping and hissing, and thought about that smile. And then I thought about it some more.

When the fire wore itself out, I took my jar of tears and dew and balsam into the woodshed and put it high on the shelf with my other secrets.

“I’m making some medicine,” I whispered to Maisie as I lay down next to her, the puppies a muddle of dark softness against her belly. “Maybe I should add some of your milk.” But she didn’t answer me, and I fell asleep and dreamed about nothing at all until morning woke me again.

Chapter Fifteen

The morning began as any morning might—a matter of yawns, squinting at the weather, wobbling on the tightrope between yesterday and tomorrow—but the day to come would be one of the longest and most interesting of my life.

After a proper breakfast with no punishment in it, I went out to finish my morning chores. To these, I added new ones:

Took Maisie her breakfast and sang her a small song I made up on the spot, full of barn cats and field mice and goldenrod bowed down with yellow.

Coaxed her outside for some air but stayed in the shed with the puppies so she wouldn’t fret.

Laid my hand over Quiet like a warm cape and told him things like, “You are beautiful. You are a beautiful, silly little dollop of a dog.”

When Maisie returned, I decided to go for honey and river water, but my father had taught me never to pass up the chance to get what food I could. (“You never know when there won’t be any to be had.”) So I gathered his fishing gear and put it with the medicine jar and some oilcloth for wrapping my catch, a pair of work gloves, and some tinder in my pack, the pack on my shoulder, and set out for the river.

Samuel followed me, and I let him, sure that he would tire before long and head back home.

“Where are you going, Ellie?” he said as I went down the path toward the river.

“To see if I can catch a fish for supper,”