Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,30
opening her eyes.
As if she’d heard what I’d thought.
I put the jar on the shelf and then edged closer again, more curious than afraid. I had a hundred questions. Maybe more. I started with, “What’s your name?”
She paused, as if to think. As if no one had asked her that question for a long time. “Cate,” she said.
“Short for?”
“Cathrine. With a c and only one e.” She spelled it out. “After my mother, though she was never Cate. And you?”
“Ellie,” I said.
“Short for?”
“Nothing. Long for Leigh.”
“Leigh.” The old woman nodded. “That’s a good, strong name. Simple. With nice round edges. Like a pear.”
We ran out of things to say about our names, so I said, “Why do you have a doll?”
She looked confused for a moment and then felt for the little doll and pulled it against her chest. “Why shouldn’t I have her?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t say you shouldn’t. I just asked why you did.”
She didn’t answer, but I thought I understood. I had long since given my own doll to Samuel, who had lost it in the woods, but I still remembered how it had felt to hold her in my arms as I settled toward sleep.
“How did you hurt your leg?”
She gave me a hard look. “It’s not good manners to come into my home and look at me while I’m sleeping.”
Much of this situation was odd and surprising. That she would talk about manners was more of the same.
“I tried to rouse you. You wouldn’t wake up. You have fever. There’s a dead rabbit next to your head. Of course I looked at you.”
She turned her head. Saw the rabbit next to her. Saw the flies. “Oh Captan, my Captan,” she whispered, reaching for the dog again.
I watched him relax under her hand. Watched his tail sweep the floor.
“Is that his name? Captain?”
“It is. But not Captain. Captan. No i.”
I wanted to ask about that, but dog names and bottled ticks and everything else could wait. She still hadn’t answered my question, so I asked it again.
“How did you hurt your leg? Did you cut yourself?”
She huffed. “I didn’t get this old by cutting myself.” To my great surprise, a single tear gathered itself in the corner of each eye and followed the map of her face. “It was a fisher cat. A big one. It went after Captan. Got me, instead.”
I had seen a fisher cat only once, but once was enough. Far too many teeth for a critter not much bigger than a groundhog. And sharp. Like white knives.
Again, as if she could hear me thinking, the woman said, “Can’t blame it, really, seeing as how it was not even half Cap’s size and cornered, against a rock face. Nowhere to go.”
“And you got between it and the dog?”
She stared at me. “Wouldn’t you?”
I thought about Quiet, a dog I had known for only two days. Not even two days. “I would.”
She nodded. “I thought so.”
As if she knew me.
She peered down at her leg. “What a mess.”
I nodded. “I was about to burn it.”
She looked at me, startled. “Burn my grubs?”
Which startled me, too. “Your grubs?”
“Them!” she said, pointing at her leg.
I made a face. “I know what grubs are. But yours? You put them there?”
She closed her eyes. “They eat only what’s dead.”
“But there’s pus, too. Can they stop the festering?”
She shook her head. “A fisher cat will eat something dead and get its mouth full of germ and then spread the germ into something else. Like it did to me. I tried burdock root. Pepper. I need honey. To kill the germ.”
I thought of the hive I’d meant to raid.
“And witch hazel?” I said.
She looked at me sharply. “And witch hazel, I suppose. Though that alone won’t make much difference. It’s honey and grubs that will save my leg. Maybe save me. If I’m to be saved.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I rubbed the spot on my face where the bee had stung. “How much honey?”
“As much as you can get.”
There. She expected me to get it. But I expected that, too. It was something I could do, so I would do it.
“I shouldn’t burn it? Your leg?” And I confess that I was relieved about that.
She shook her head. “We open up the wound and pack it with honey.”
I did not see any we about it. She could barely lift her head.
Her face suddenly changed. “Something’s hot,” she said. “What are you heating?”
“The chisel,” I said. “For burning you.”
She struggled up onto her elbows.