Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,73

but the germ was still there.” She closed her eyes.

“So what do we do?” I asked, trying to keep my face calm.

“Perhaps you need to cut all that part away,” she said, swallowing hard. “If you think you can do that.”

“Cut it away?” I tried to picture that. “But I was on my way for honey when I stopped here. I’ll go for it now, straightaway. Before we try anything else.”

She gave me a sad look. “I’m sorry I wrecked what you and Larkin did. Bathing like that. Falling like that.” She turned to Esther. “You didn’t do this, child. Wet bandages didn’t do this.”

“I’m still sorry,” Esther whispered. She stood away from us, her hands tucked under her chin.

For the first time I noticed that her hair was untidy, her face tired. I imagined her sleeping on the floor, getting up to tend the fire, afraid of whatever was beyond the cabin door.

“She’s right,” I said. “You’re not a fisher cat, Esther. You didn’t do this.”

I turned back to Cate. “So will we try honey again?” I hated the thought of cutting her. I hated the thought of being the one to do that, though I would if I had to.

She sighed. “I wouldn’t mind that, if the bees can spare some.”

“Not a doctor?”

She closed her eyes. After a long moment, she said, “If we sent someone right this minute, it would still be a day or more before he could get here.”

Her lips quivered and I could feel her trembling as I pulled the blanket back up to her chin.

I wondered if she was thinking of her husband, the doctor. Or her son, who had died so quickly.

“Clean up her leg,” I said to Esther. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Chapter Fifty-Four

I hurried past the spring and down a path made as much by boy as deer, down and around until, through the trees, I saw where Larkin lived.

The cabin was a big one, with a stone chimney, ringed with gardens in patches like someone had sewn them there, just so, and old maple trees that would cast green shade in the heat of summer, red and gold when autumn came.

I hadn’t expected anything so fine.

But as I came out of the trees, I saw a grave under one of the maples.

Larkin was chopping wood at the far edge of the yard.

As I went toward him, he looked up, saw me, and put down his ax.

He glanced toward the cabin and came quickly across the clearing to meet me.

His face was yellow and green now, along with the black and blue.

“I thought I’d see you at my grandmother’s again, not here,” he said, looking over his shoulder.

“You would have, if you’d been there. I’ve gone back twice.”

“I was there last night. I spent some time with her. And Esther. She seemed fine.”

I didn’t know which she he meant, but the thought of him and Esther and Cate together in the firelight, talking and laughing, made me sad and sore.

He ducked his head. “My mother has had a lot of work for me to do, but I planned to go back up soon.”

“She’s not fine, Larkin. She’s sick again. Her leg is festering again and she has fever. We need more honey.”

Which was when his mother came out of the cabin and across the yard toward us, saying, “I thought I told you to stay away from my boy.”

But I wasn’t scared of her anymore. No matter how dark her eye.

“My mother has a mandolin named for you,” I said. “She hasn’t played it since my father got hurt. Did you know that? That my father was hurt? That he’s been asleep for months now? No, I didn’t think so. But you don’t want to know about things like that. Or that Miss Cate is sick up there. Or that Larkin here is just as sad as you are. Except he’s not mean. Not at all.”

Which stopped her in her tracks, though it didn’t shut her mouth. “You think I’m mean?” she said, though she didn’t yell it and there wasn’t quite as much darkness in her eye.

“I need honey,” I said. “For Miss Cate’s leg. Which is festering terribly. And I don’t want to have to cut off the bad part, and she doesn’t want that either, so can Larkin please take me to the hive to get what we need?”

She pinched her lips shut for a moment. “There’s some justice in that,” she finally said.