Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,53
at Cate. The doll quivered in her hand. “Did she know him?” I whispered.
“She did,” he replied. “Very well.” I saw his throat working. “He was her son.”
I looked from Larkin to Cate and back again.
And suddenly I saw what should have been obvious. In the way Larkin was lanky and lean. In the shape of his mouth. His hands.
“So Cate is—”
“My grandmother,” he said.
Chapter Forty
It astonished me that neither of them had thought to mention that before now.
But I was not about to scold Cate, who was crying softly. Especially since I had told very little of my own story, and even that in fits and starts.
Nor would I scold Larkin, who had lost his father and, in a way, his mother, too.
So I simply let Cate cry herself to sleep while I bustled about, drying off the potato juice that ran down Larkin’s cheek, fetching the deerskin leggings to make a pillow for his head, and taking the liberty of looking through what else was in the trunk.
I set aside a clean tunic and some britches for Cate to wear when she was ready for clothes.
First, I would help her bathe if she’d let me.
“Is there soap?” I whispered to Larkin.
“There is. In a box on the top shelf there.”
“And washrags?”
“With the soap.”
“And a towel?”
He cast a hand toward a canvas sack near the door. “Soiled. But she’ll do her wash when she’s better.”
“Well, no. She won’t,” I replied. “You’ll do her wash today.”
He frowned at that. “I will?”
“While there’s plenty of sun. What does she use?” I said, looking around.
“There’s a tub in the shed behind the cabin.”
Oh, I thought. So that’s what she keeps in there. “Then when she wakes, you’ll strip her bed and heat some water for the tub and soap everything up good, rinse it out, hang it to dry. Save the water for her bath.”
“I will?” he said again. He sat up and let the poultice fall away into his palm.
I went to him and held out my hand. He gave me the wad of wet paper with the potato inside.
“Here, let me.” I carefully plucked some stray potato off his lashes and gently smoothed the starchy mess from his cheek with the edge of my hand.
“Thank you,” he said, patting his eye with his fingertips.
Enough of the swelling had gone to let him blink. But his face was still a wreck.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Cate was your grandmother?”
“You’re from town.” He got to his feet. “You’re new here.”
“We’re not new,” I said. “We’ve lived here for three years.”
“And my family has lived here for generations. Three years is birdsong.”
I liked that birdsong bit, but I didn’t like the way he’d said it. “What’s wrong with people from town?”
“They’re mean to her.”
“Mean to Cate?”
He lowered his voice. “They think she’s a witch.”
I frowned at him. “Who’s they?”
He made a face. “Maybe not everyone. But some.” He thought back. “Do you have people called Lock something?”
“Lock something? The Lockharts? But I don’t have them, Larkin. They aren’t my people.”
He looked at me, puzzled. “What are they, then?”
I shrugged. “Neighbors. Friends. Okay, yes, my people, I guess. But they don’t have any children, so I don’t see them much. My sister and my brother and I are the only children on the mountain.”
“On the town side.”
“Yes, on the town side.”
“And why do you think no one ever bothers with the other side?”
I remembered my father telling me to stay close to home. “My parents don’t want us roaming too far. They say it’s not safe. Because of coyotes and bears and steep places where we might fall.”
“And mountain people like me. And a witch like her.”
I huffed at him. “No one ever even talks about her, Larkin.”
“Not even the Lockharts?”
I shook my head. “What would they have to tell?”
He sighed. “I was up here one day—a long time ago—when the Lockhart woman came up. She said she had a bad pain here.” He put his hand on his belly. “Nothing helped, she said. The doctor didn’t help. The medicine he gave her didn’t help. So she came up here, and my grandma asked her a lot of questions and then went in the cabin and came out with a jar of greens. Told the woman to make it into a tea and drink it every day until she felt better. And then my grandmother said what she always says to me, every time I leave here.”
I waited. “What does she say?”
Larkin paused.