Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,44

“And she knows a lot of things about making people well. She has medicine she’s made from the woods, and medicine she’s learned from books, and ways to heal people from both” (though I said nothing about the maggots).

“And how is it that you know so much about this woman?” my mother said. She put Samuel’s breakfast on the table.

“I saw that dog again and followed him up the mountain,” I said. “She has a little cabin up there.”

“That dog we saw?” Samuel said. “With the dead rabbit?”

“That’s where you disappeared to yesterday? When you should have been doing your chores?” My mother shook her head. “You will not go near that woman again, do you hear me? Or that dog. Or up-mountain any farther than the turn to the Andersons’. Or I will lock you in the woodshed until you’ve found your wits.”

Esther and Samuel had stopped eating. They stared at my mother. At me.

I got up from the table and took off my jacket. “I used my shirtsleeves to tie up a wound on her leg,” I said, my voice shaking a little. “A fisher cat bit her. And the bite festered. And she’s sick with fever. And a boy from the other side of the mountain helped me clean the wound and pour honey in it and make willow bark tea for her fever. And his mother came and was angry with him for being there, just like you’re angry with me now, though I don’t know why, because Miss Cate isn’t a bad person at all and she taught Larkin how to read, which is something you would have done, too, Mother. Or you, Esther.” I turned to her. “And I will go back up there to help her again. And I will bring her back down here when she’s well enough. And I will keep trying to wake Daddy up, because he has to get well. He has to,” I said to my mother, to Esther. “Or you won’t either.”

I did not say, And neither will I. But I thought it. For the first time, I thought it.

No one said anything for a long moment.

“Who’s Larkin?” Samuel said.

And just like that I could breathe again.

Just like that, the tears that had been ready to fall decided to wait.

I turned to him. “The boy who helped me help Miss Cate.”

My mother ran her hands over her face.

She came and stood in front of me, bent down a little to look into my eyes, and took me by the shoulders. “You will not go near those people again, Ellie. I need you here. I don’t need you hurt, too. I don’t need Samuel following you into mischief. And I most certainly don’t need a hag coming into my home to cast spells on your father.”

“I told you,” Esther said, returning to her breakfast. “That’s what a hag is, Samuel. A witch.”

“She’s not,” I said, shaking my head. “She’s better than that doctor who did nothing at all.”

“Because there’s nothing to be done!” my mother said, letting go of my shoulders.

“I brought Daddy some willow bark tea. Which won’t hurt him at all. Not a bit.”

“And won’t help him either, Ellie. Now, that’s all I’m going to say about it. And that’s all I want to hear.”

She handed me my jacket. “Go do your chores. And if I find out that you’ve been back up to see her . . . I don’t know what I’ll do.”

As I went out the door, I thought about all the ways my mother might punish me if I disobeyed her again. But I couldn’t think of a single one that was worse than giving up on what I’d started.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The cows were eager to be milked, so I obliged them, soothed by the music we made in the process—the rhythm of the milk hitting the metal pail and then the wet hush, hush of its froth building.

All the while, I thought about my mother and my father, Cate and Larkin, his mother. All of it building toward something, though I knew not what.

I felt . . . tangled. Snarled up. Caught. Which made it hard to breathe. Hard to think straight. Hard to know where to turn next.

But chores helped.

They were simple. Straightforward. The same every day.

So I put the cows out to roam, carried the milk to the cabin, left it just inside the door, and went on with my chores.

The dogs came next. I mucked out their nest of