Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,29

moose, and I had cried at how much it had smelled like food cooking.

My mother had scolded him for doing that when he could have gone to the doctor instead. She had scolded him, too, for letting me watch.

But he had kissed her and told her that doctors cost money, that he’d heal faster this way besides. And that I’d be better off knowing such things.

Esther had wanted no part of it.

Samuel had been napping.

And I had been the one to learn that lesson.

But this was not a small cut on the hand of a strong and healthy man.

This was a serious wound, caked with maggots and pus.

I thought about how else to help her.

I could go get my mother. But what could she do?

Some things, she could do . . . and do well . . . without a second thought. And she was brave, too. Brave enough to give up town. To go with my father to the mountain. To start over in a place with no roads. No doctors. Almost no people. But her kind of courage had very little wild in it. Very little of the mountain. Which was all I had—wildness—though plenty of it. And of several sorts: not one vast thing, but as varied as trees. As flowers.

I looked around the cabin. There was a mangy dog, a tick as big as a lima bean hanging above his eye. There was an old woman lying in her bed, senseless, crawling with worms, in a fog of blowflies. And there was me. No one else.

I would begin. I would do what I could. And then I would do what I thought I couldn’t do, before I went for a different kind of help.

The fire was starting to settle down, so I added more wood until the heat pushed me away.

The knife I carried with me wasn’t big enough to do much good.

I went to the tools hanging above the workbench and chose a big chisel.

It would do.

I wedged its blade between the burning logs.

While it heated, I went to the old woman and had a good look at her.

Her skin had the lines and spots of a life spent in the sun.

Her hair was long and gray and tangled.

“I’m going to hurt you terribly,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t want to look at the wound again, but I knew I had no choice.

When I did, it took my breath away.

The maggots rolled and roiled as they feasted on the dead flesh around her wound.

I turned to fetch the hot chisel.

But that, right then, was when she woke.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“You didn’t knock,” she said. Her voice was dead-tree dry, but her eyes were so blue that for a moment I forgot she was old.

I gasped at them, at her, at the sound of her voice. It was weak and pale . . . but with a strong echo in it. Something that ignited a spark of memory.

“The door was open,” I said as the echo faded and the spark winked out. “Your dog invited me in.”

At which her eyebrows went up. “Him?” She looked around but stopped, wincing. It clearly hurt her to move.

I stepped aside so the dog could take my place.

“Ah,” she said. “There you are.” She reached out and laid her hand on his head. Closed her eyes. Sighed. And then grabbed the tick on his face and ripped it off with one quick jerk.

He yelped, pawed at his face for a moment, and then sat still again.

She held out the tick. “Put this in one of those jars over there. One of the empty ones. There, on the bottom shelf.”

I had no idea what to say to that. So I fetched a jar, opened the wire bail, took off the lid, and held it out so she could drop in the tick. It bounced like a blueberry.

I put the lid back on and was about to lock the bail when she said, “Leave it loose. Air enough and all that blood will keep her for some time.”

She hadn’t even asked me my name, nor I hers, yet we were talking about ticks.

“But why do you want to keep her?” It was the first time I’d called a tick her.

“I might need her.” She closed her eyes again.

I imagined her squeezing the blood from that tick. Making a potion with it.

Witch, I thought. She’s not a hag. She’s a witch. I took a step away from the bed.

“Don’t be a ninny,” she said, without