Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,51

she saw us. She beckoned Larkin closer and reached up for his chin, turning his face so she could see his bad eye better. She nodded. “Now the potato.”

To me: “Fetch that, and a page from one of the books. Nothing important, though.”

She told Larkin to lie flat on the floor.

I flipped through the biggest book until I found a page about chilblains. Not much to do about them except wear gloves. I tore out the page.

“Now heap the potato over his eye and top it with that page, folded over in half.”

Which I did after wiping the blood from his face.

The grated potato was sloppy enough to soak the paper through. The edges of it stuck to his skin, holding it in place.

“Like this?” I said.

“Just like that. Now press gently to mold the poultice to the eye.”

“I’ll do that part,” Larkin said, cupping his palm over it.

I stared at him lying there.

“Why potato?” I said.

“Takes down the swelling. Helps to prevent infection,” he said.

“But why?” I sounded like Samuel.

“You want to know?” Cate nodded again at the books on her desk. “Find out.”

The books contained, between their many covers, thousands of pages.

My father had always told me I had a choice, when faced with a giant task that would do me good: bellyache about how long it would take or be glad it would last.

“Can I come up whenever I want to read them?”

Cate nodded. “For a price.”

I waited.

“Chores for lessons,” Larkin said. The potato poultice had wept onto the floor near his head. It would leave a stain, but Cate didn’t seem to care.

“I can do that,” I said. “You mean like sweeping and cooking and doing your wash?”

“Yes. But right now, we’ll start with putting on my boots and taking me outside.”

I had helped Samuel put on his boots many times.

Helping Cate was nothing like that.

I wondered if my father would need this kind of help, too.

When her boots were on and laced, Cate grabbed my shoulders and pulled herself to her feet.

I helped steady her, and then we two hobbled out into the clearing.

“How long do I have to lie here like this?” Larkin called after us.

“Until we say otherwise,” Cate called back.

I smiled at the we.

“What’s so funny?” Cate said.

“Not a thing,” I replied.

She steered us around the back of the cabin to a mossy spot between the cedars.

There was a big shed nearby. “What’s that for?” I said.

She looked away. “This and that,” she said, her voice . . . strange.

And I wondered what she kept in there.

She waited. “I usually do this alone,” she said.

“Can you? With your leg like that?”

She stood, bent a little, holding on to my arm. “I think maybe not,” she said quietly, looking around for a solution.

“Here,” I said, peering into a hollow stump.

She looked at it, at me. “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

I liked that, though I had to think about it as I helped her toward the stump. “Did you make that up?”

She shook her head. “Plato, maybe.”

“Who?”

“Another dead Greek.”

“How come you know so much about dead Greeks?”

She squinted at me thoughtfully. “You think an old hag like me has no proper learning, don’t you?”

This was the second time she’d accused me of such a thing.

“I do not.” I was annoyed and let her hear it. “And I don’t much like you telling me what I think.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t tell,” she said. “Asked.”

The stump was the right height. Perfect, really, though she’d be sitting on a rough and spongy seat. Not very nice.

“It’ll do,” she said.

I fetched her again when she called me, and we both went slowly back into the cabin.

She was panting and sweating from the effort of being up, so I helped her lie back down again.

The crust on her leg must have broken some more, since there was a spot of blood on the bandage where there hadn’t been one before. “What if it doesn’t get better now?” I said.

She shrugged. “Why worry about something that hasn’t happened yet?”

“Because I’d like to be ready to do what needs to be done, if it needs doing.”

“Oh, if it hasn’t improved enough by tomorrow, we’ll clean it out and put in some fresh honey.”

I chewed my lip. “We used it all, and I don’t know how much is left in the hive. Probably not much.”

“There’s a hive right near where I live,” Larkin said.

“And a mother who won’t want you taking honey for me,” Cate said, pulling the blanket up