Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,63

though I ended up doing most of the work myself while he told me how to do it.

As I squeezed off some of the potato juice, he said, “Why isn’t Daddy awake?”

I stopped what I was doing. “He’s tired, is all. He needs a lot more sleep before he wakes up again.”

“But he’s already been sleeping for a long time.”

I nodded. “I know that. But he’ll wake up soon.” I set aside the potato. “Now we’ll collect some witch hazel twigs.”

“Some what?”

By answer I took him out again into the yard and across to where the witch hazel grew. “The bark makes a good skin cleaner.” I yanked off some twigs.

Samuel spent some time on one of the bigger branches before he gave up and dedicated himself to a twig as thick as his little finger. But even that was too much for him.

“It would be easier if these were dead,” I said. “But they’re alive, so they bend a lot before they break.”

Which made me think of Cate, and my father. And mother. And Larkin. And his mother.

The list was long.

“Here,” I said. “Let me.”

But he shrugged me off and used both hands, bending the twig back and forth until he’d sawed through the raw green of it.

He held the twig up like a trophy. “Do you want some more?”

“No, that’s perfect,” I said. “We’ll boil this up and mix some with the potato.”

Which we did. The result was a goopy mess, but I had learned to have quite a lot of faith in goopy messes.

“Just lay this onto his sores,” I told my mother, holding out the bowl. “And cover them with something. The witch hazel might sting, but it won’t be as bad as vinegar.”

My mother didn’t take the bowl. “Don’t you think you should do this yourself?”

I thought about how I had managed to squeeze honey into Cate’s wound but had not imagined treating my own father’s sores.

“Won’t you?” I said in a small voice.

She considered me for a long moment, chewing her lip, before she reached for the bowl. “Yes. I’ll do this part, Ellie. You go on and help Samuel with his lessons.”

Except that wasn’t right. That didn’t feel right. Or good at all. When she said that, my gut—the spot at the top of my belly, just below my heart—swung off-kilter.

I remembered teaching Samuel to catch the trout. How I had been the one to club it over the head. But he was just small, and I wasn’t. And if I was to be the one to start something, I would be the one to finish it.

So, “No,” I said slowly, swinging back toward true. “I don’t mind. I’ll do it.”

“I don’t want to do my lessons,” Samuel said. “And I made the potato thing, so I should get to help, too.”

“Esther needs someone to read to while we take care of your father,” my mother told him. “Let that be you.”

He wasn’t entirely convinced, but my mother’s face gave him no choice in the matter, so he went with us toward my father’s room to fetch Esther.

When she heard what we meant to do, she stood up so quickly that her book fell to the floor.

“Come on,” Samuel said, picking it up. “You can read to me now.”

For a long moment she stayed where she was, looking at me and the bowl of potato in my hand, looking at my mother, a fair amount of regret plain on her face. But she didn’t say a thing.

It was clear that she wanted no part of what we were doing, though I would have thought some messes worth making, even for Esther.

Maybe if I could help my father all the way to well again, she would come back to me, too, as she had for a little while, not so long before. But that would be up to her.

* * *

—

When Esther and Samuel had left, my mother turned my father over and used clean rags to cover him everywhere except the sores themselves so I was looking at a landscape of white cloth and red flesh.

All the while, he lay still and showed no signs of waking.

Nonetheless, I talked to him as I had for months now, hoping he could hear me.

“I’m sorry if this hurts,” I said as I spooned the potato mixture onto the wounds and laid more rags over the poultices.

My mother stood out of the way while I worked, holding her own hands, but as soon as I was