Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,27

But I didn’t want to call her the hag. It didn’t seem polite.

He took a step away and I took a step upward, and then another, turning my attention back to the climb, managing it carefully, slowly, mindful of the possibility of a fall.

When I reached easier ground, I found that the dog had retreated farther but was still near.

“Why don’t you lead the way?” I said. “I’ll follow. Go on.”

Which he did, heading along what was surely his own trail, fewer trees up here, patches of green moss, gray moss, humps of rock everywhere, lichen and mushrooms, stray feathers, and, suddenly, an antler like a hard white flower blooming in a nest of ivy.

My father and I liked such things. The long, curved set of beaver teeth we’d found near the river. A snake skin, clear enough to see through; a matter of tiny diamonds and white lace that I wore in my hair until Esther plucked it out and threw it in the fire.

It had smelled like lightning as it burned.

A little farther along, the dog and I came through the stunted trees into a clearing, nearly flat, tucked against the topmost ledges of the mountain.

There was a fire ring in the clearing, but no fire. An iron spit stretched over it, with a cauldron hanging cold and empty above where there had once been a flame. Plenty of dead wood piled nearby. Nothing cut and split. Just old branches and sticks, fallen and gathered. Nearby, between two hemlocks, an old, tattered shawl hung from a line, dead leaves and a lone hawk feather caught in its weave.

There was a garden bed, too. A long, thin one with nothing in it. Just some weeds no one had bothered to pull.

At the far edge of the clearing, a little cabin nestled in a grove of red cedars. I could see that the door was open. There was no smoke coming from the chimney. No sound. No sign of life.

The dog trotted to the door and turned to wait for me.

Oddly, as I approached the door, he finally decided to growl.

“Which is it? Do you want me here or not?”

In answer, he disappeared into the cabin.

When I didn’t follow, he stuck his head back out the door and looked at me curiously.

“All right,” I said. “I’m coming.”

Chapter Twenty-One

I peered cautiously through the door.

The cedars around the cabin greened the light coming through the windows, so it was dim inside. Like being in the woods.

But I could see enough.

I could see that there were clothes hanging from pegs on the wall. Some boots in the corner. A desk and a trunk with a humped lid.

Shelves on one wall sagged with jars and bottles.

There was an open-faced cupboard in one corner with more jars and some sacks, too. Grain and dried apples, from the looks of it.

In another corner, there was a cold fireplace. Alongside it sat a big copper bucket full of logs, and another smaller one with kindling.

And there were candles on every flat surface. One, on the floor, had melted into a puddle, its wick burned away.

I was amazed that it hadn’t burned the whole place to the ground.

But I knew that if I were a flame I would rather fizzle out than ruin a place like this one.

For besides the ordinary, workaday business of clothes and boots and such, the little cabin was filled with other things as well.

On one wall: shelves of books in all colors and sizes, like the keys of a new instrument I wanted badly to play.

Hanging from the roof: dozens of faded bouquets dangling like an upside-down garden.

And there was a workbench and a back wall hung all over with tools that my father would have cried to see. Beautiful tools of all kinds, as if someone had made wonderful things here.

And . . . wait, there, just on the windowsill by the door, there was something wonderful. A tiny fawn, carved from red wood, its hooves more delicate than petals. And a mouse with his tail hanging down over the edge. And a tiny squirrel, its paws tucked under its chin, watching me as I edged farther into the room.

And that was when I realized the rumpled bed in the shadows along the back wall wasn’t empty, as I’d thought.

I took a slow step forward, peering into the shadows, and saw that an old woman lay there, her face so pale it melted into the pillow and blended with the bedclothes, all