Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,91
kind of mess it made.
Cate lifted her head up again to watch me working.
For a time we were silent while I added more glue, blowing on it until it had a skin, soft but firm.
My mother, at the door, said, “I’ve brought you some more tea.”
The smell of balsam twined with the smell of the vinegar, and I felt as if I were in a fresh winter garden, though the stink of the glue failed to give much ground.
She brought two mugs of tea into the room and set them on the windowsill. She made sure not to look at what I was doing to Cate’s leg. “Is everything all right?”
“It is,” I said. “Will you bring that vinegar now?”
She waited for a long moment.
Then she went to do as I’d asked.
After a moment, she came back into the room, carrying the pot of steaming vinegar. “I don’t know what you—”
But as she neared the bed, she saw Cate’s wound, and she almost dropped the pot.
“Mercy,” she whispered. “What are you doing, Ellie?”
“Here. Just put it on the floor by the bed. I’ll need a ladle, too, please. And a clean rag or two.”
She looked at us, a little wild-eyed, but then she stopped and took a closer look at what I’d made, at the glue dam and the swollen wound in the middle of it, and said, “You mean to pour hot vinegar in there?”
“I do. But not hot enough to burn her. And just a little at a time. So it can seep in with the honey and clean the wound.”
She looked at Cate. “Is this another thing you’ve taught her?”
“Heavens, no,” Cate said. “This is her idea. If anything, I’ve bungled the whole deal since the beginning. If I’d let her run the show, I’d be right as rain by now.”
“Though I did plan to burn you with a hot chisel,” I said.
Which made my mother flinch. She put the pot on the floor. “If it’s bad enough to do this, should we not send for the doctor right now?”
I looked at Cate and could see that she didn’t want to get into that again: the business of paying or not paying a man who might arrive in a day or two or three when she would either be better or beyond whatever help he could give.
“I believe we have a doctor right here,” she said, nodding at me. “And I’m a nurse, don’t forget. So all we lack is some medicine that people have been doing without for thousands of years.”
Nobody said “and dying for lack of it,” though I’ll bet we all thought it.
My mother said, “If you’re sure.”
Cate nodded.
We waited while my mother went for what we needed.
When she came back, she paused.
She looked like she had something to say.
I knew my mother. I knew she was still struggling. But the hag was Mrs. Cleary. The same nurse who had helped Esther through a course of earaches so bad they’d made her scream. And I was the same girl who had made my daddy’s hand twitch, and his eyes roll. Made him groan. Was maybe the reason he had opened his eyes, even if for just a little while.
I smiled at her, the flame in my chest so bright I was surprised she couldn’t see it shining from my eyes.
But perhaps she could, since she finally said, “This is all so strange, and I don’t much understand any of it, but I’m sorry for how hard I’ve been.”
I thought of Larkin’s mother. Esther. Cate. And me myself.
“Daddy’s been asleep for months,” I said. “How were you supposed to be? And you’re right. I am a twelve-year-old girl. I’m not a doctor. So it’s all right, Mother.”
Which earned me a look I’d keep for a long, long time.
* * *
—
After she’d gone out again, I shut the door and turned back to the bed.
Cate said, “Would you really have burned me with that chisel?”
It was the same question Larkin had asked days before, though the answer was no longer true.
I shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I’m ever so glad you didn’t have to do that.”
“Me too. It would have made things worse.”
“Yes, but something like that—” She stopped to choose her words. “It’s something you should never have to do.”
“Because I’m twelve?”
At which Cate looked disappointed. Hurt, even. “Because no one should have to do such a thing if there’s another way.”
If there’s an else.
“Even this,” she said. “The hot vinegar. What you’re