Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,80

you honey for chores?”

I nodded.

“And Quiet’s to be theirs?”

“For hunting,” I said. “All of the puppies. In exchange for a milk cow.”

“A fair trade,” my mother said.

“It is not,” I said, flaring like a new wick.

“Either way,” Larkin said, “Quiet will decide whose dog he is. Just like his daddy did.”

Chapter Sixty

We ate our small lunch as we walked.

“What did you mean back there?” Larkin said. “No more lullabies?”

I knew that the answer would make me sound mean, but it was the truth, so I said, “My mother and my sister thought the best way to wake my father was to be gentle and quiet and calm. Like they could tempt him awake with flowers and soft talk.”

“But you thought otherwise?”

I nodded. “I imagined myself in his place, hearing nothing but good things. If it were me, I’d come back faster if I thought something was wrong. If somebody needed something.”

“Or if someone hurt you?”

That took me aback. “The bee stings were the first hurt I gave him.” I reminded Larkin about the other things I’d tried so far.

“You really put a snake in his bed?” There was some admiration in his voice.

“I thought if he heard Esther screaming about the snake, he might come back to save her.”

He made a little I see sound. “The way he tried to save Samuel from the treefall.”

“Yes.” We walked for a while in silence. Then, “Has your mother ever been inside Cate’s cabin?”

He thought for a moment. “Not since my grandma went to live there. But before that, yes. All the time.” He kept climbing as he talked, and his voice was tired. “That little cabin was where my daddy made his mandolins.”

I stopped.

After a moment, he did, too. He turned to look at me.

“Why would he have a place up there when he could have made them right close by where you lived?”

“He tried that, but his luthing got all mixed up with everything else. And he liked the idea of a place that was for nothing but one thing.” He smiled sadly. “Plus, my mother hated the smell of the hide glue. Even when it was hot, though it wasn’t so bad then. I think she hated the thought that it was made from deer. She loved deer coming through the trees below the cabin.”

“So he made his mandolins on the mountaintop?” I loved that. The very thought of it.

Larkin nodded. “The cabin was left over from when my grandma lived up there, when she was a little girl. Before her people built something better.”

He turned and started to climb again.

“I used to love spending time with my father in that little cabin. Watching him work. He would let me help when little fingers worked better than big ones.”

“And that’s where Cate went, after your father died?”

He nodded. “After we buried him. I went looking for her. And I found her sitting among his tools. Just sitting there. The hide glue had rotted and the place stank. But she just sat there in that stink, crying like a baby.”

I tried to imagine that. Then I tried not to.

“I asked her to come back. But she said she’d be fine, and I think she really did want to be alone.” He was silent for a while. “No, my mother has never gone back in that cabin since my father died. I took all my grandma’s books and other things up there, one box at a time.” He paused again. “And Captan chose her, so she had him, too.”

We made the rest of the climb in silence.

Captan met us in Cate’s yard.

He didn’t make a sound, either.

“How is she?” I asked him.

At which he turned and led us to the cabin so we could see for ourselves.

Chapter Sixty-One

She was worse.

“What took you so long?” Esther said the moment we walked through the door.

She was sitting next to the bed, holding Cate’s hand.

“We had to go to a lot of places for the honey,” I said. “And we stopped at home on the way back, to see Daddy.” I wasn’t going to lie about that. “But we’re here now and we have enough for her leg.”

Esther stood up. “I cleaned it out with the old bandages.” She swallowed hard. “And then I burned them.”

Which explained the smell in the cabin. Part good hot fire. Part corruption.

I thought of those bandages, which had once been sleeves my father had made and, before that, bolted muslin, and, before that, cotton on a loom, from a