Echo Mountain

by Lauren Wolk

  I wanted to heal my father, and I would.

  But I was suddenly the only one standing between that old woman and real danger. Maybe even the end of her.

  At least she would not punish me for my troubles.

  I could not say the same for my very own kin.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I expected to be punished as soon as I got home. But Samuel was still missing—and had been for two long hours—so finding him came first.

  “No sign of him,” my mother said, and I could tell that she was scared. “We hoped he was with you.”

  She and Esther were standing in the yard much as I’d left them, except now they looked grim and panicky.

  “I said I’d send him home if I saw him.” I could feel them blaming me again for something I hadn’t done. It felt like horsehair inside my clothes.

  But then I realized that this was about more than one kind of blame.

  Esther looked like she wanted to claw me. “Why did you do that?” she hissed. “Why did you put a snake in with Father?”

  I stood up as tall as I could. “I knew it would make you scream.”

  “Mercy,” my mother said. “You really have lost your mind.”

  “Why would you want me to scream?” Esther said.

  I couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled at me, but I was sure that she smiled at our father every night before she went to bed, though he couldn’t see her. “You think Daddy wouldn’t do everything he could to help you if he heard that?”

  I had decided I wouldn’t cry, no matter what sort of punishment waited for me, but this kind of talk made me so sad that I struggled to keep my voice from shaking. “If anything is going to wake him up, don’t you think his Esther, screaming, might?”

  My mother and sister both stared at me with less fury than before, but not much more of anything good or kind.

  “I’ll deal with you later,” my mother said. “Go find Samuel now, and be quick about it.”

  But as I turned away, she stopped me again. “Where are the eggs? You were gone long enough to lay some yourself.”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Then where’s the fish?” Esther said. “And where were you, if you weren’t at the Andersons’ for eggs?”

  “I was . . . looking for Samuel, up-mountain. And a dog ate the fish,” I said, which was the truth. Or part of it.

  My mother frowned at me. “That mutt?”

  “What mutt?” Esther asked.

  “I saw a mutt on the path,” I said.

  “And he took the fish?”

  From my hand, yes. He had eaten eagerly, the fish steaming in the cool air. And I might have said something like that. I might have said, Yes, he took it from me, and told half the truth that way. But I wouldn’t blame the dog for something I had done. So I said, “I gave it to him.”

  My mother shook her head. “You foolish girl. You want a wild dog coming around here, begging for more food?” She looked hard at my face. “What in the world is happening to you, Ellie?”

  I wanted to tell her the truth: that I was not a good town girl trying hard to tame the mountain like she was. Like Esther was. That I had work to do. Honey to harvest. A hag to save. A father to save. And more besides.

  But all I said was “He was hungry, too. And if he’s wild, then so am I.”

  My mother sighed. “Which is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

  * * *

  —

  After searching everywhere, including the spot by the river where we’d fished just that morning—a spot I approached this time with a belly full of dread—I finally found Samuel in the cowshed, huddled in a corner behind the manger.

  Quiet was in his arms.

  “I waited until you went in the cabin, and then I took Quiet,” he said. It was clear that he’d been crying.

  “You were crying.”

  “I’ve been hiding here forever, and I fell asleep and got a crick in my neck, and I’m hungry, and Mother means to give your pup away. But I’m not crying,” he said fiercely. “Not anymore.”

  I had no intention of teasing him. Certainly not for doing something so good and brave.

  And in that instant I found myself thinking of how that terrible January day might have ended differently. Not with my father hurt, but with Samuel the one to be struck like a hammer on a nail, like a hammer on a nail of bone and blood, the air bursting from him as he hit the ground, his small, soft body lost to a jumble of wood and hard dirt.

  “How in the world did you get Quiet out of there without Maisie noticing?” I said, my voice shaking a little.

  “Oh, she noticed. And she didn’t like it one bit. But she didn’t bite me. I thought she might, but she didn’t.” He put Quiet into my hands. “Am I in trouble?”

  “No,” I said, tucking Quiet under my chin. Closing my eyes. “But I am. For giving one of the fish to that dog we saw on the trail. And for putting a black racer into Daddy’s bed.”

  It was clear that Samuel didn’t know which question to ask, so he asked three at once.

  “Did you give him my fish? Did the snake bite Daddy?” He scrambled to his feet. “Why did you put a snake in his bed?”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it.

  “No. And no. And because I wanted Esther to scream so loud that she’d wake Daddy.”

  Samuel rolled his eyes. “Mother said loud noises won’t wake him up.”

  I nodded. “I know. But hearing Esther afraid like that . . . I thought he would come back. To protect her.”

  Samuel thought about that. “Did he?”

  I realized I didn’t know the answer, though surely Esther and my mother would have told me if there’d been any change. Surely, they would have greeted me with such news.

  “Let’s go find out,” I said.

  I didn’t want Samuel to get his hopes up, but I was pretty sure that amazing things happened all the time, partly because someone hoped they would.

  * * *

  —

  Maisie was glad to have Quiet back. I didn’t tell her how badly I had wanted to keep him. To take him back up the mountain to a place where he would be safe. I knew he was too young to leave his mother. And I knew I could not be the kind of mother he needed right now. But I was tempted to do as Samuel had done.

  “Here he is,” I said as I laid Quiet in the nest again. “Safe and sound.”

  Maisie licked him and pushed him around with her nose until she was sure he was all right, and then she looked up at me sternly, as if to say Don’t let that happen again.

  I didn’t want to think about the look she would give me when Mr. Anderson came in a few weeks to take Quiet and all of her babies for his own.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Samuel wouldn’t tell us where he was,” Esther said when I went into the cabin and found my mother flouring the fish for frying while my sister cut the whiskers off some wilted carrots from the root cellar.

  I pictured Samuel huddled in the straw with Quiet in his arms, his face hot with sleep and crying. And I pictured Cate as well; remembered how it had felt to feed her bits of rabbit, how she had opened her mouth and waited for each bite like a child. And my father, lying so still in his bed. All of them waiting for me to do something.

  “He was in the cowshed,” I said.

  “What was he doing in there?” my mother said.

  I didn’t tell her about Quiet. “He fell asleep.”

  Samuel came out of my father’s room and joined us in the kitchen. “He’s just the same,” he whispered to me. To Esther, he said, “I’m hungry.”

  “You’ll have supper in a couple of hours.”

  “But I had no lunch.”

  “Which is your own fault, for disappearing like you did. You worried Mother, and me, too.”

  “But I’m hungry, Est
her!”

  “Oh, then sit down,” my sister said, cutting him a wedge of corn bread.

  She put it on a plate for him, the plate on the table. But when she saw me cutting some bread for myself, she snatched the pan away.

  I had missed lunch, too. Had had none of the rabbit or the fish I’d fed to Cate and Captan. What was left, I’d left for them. Already today I had gone to the Petersons’ for the venison, and then fishing, climbed the mountain up and down, and searched for Samuel high and low—all with nothing but a little porridge in my belly.

  “You gave away your lunch,” Esther said. “And your supper, as well.”

  My mother looked at me over her shoulder. I could see her regret, but something else, too. The same thing I saw on her face when any wild thing came too close to the cabin. “You’ll spend the rest of the day doing chores, and you’ll sleep in the woodshed with Maisie. Maybe with a snake of your own.”

  But she handed me a small bundle as I went out the door. A dried apple and a biscuit, folded up in a scrap of cloth. And a dish of cold venison scraps that I knew were for Maisie.

  I felt a little better when she didn’t explain that the meat was for the dog.

  But I didn’t say anything, either, as I left. My throat was too tight. And there was nothing to say that they should not have already known.

  * * *

  —

  As it turned out, my punishment was exactly what I needed: the freedom to spend the rest of the afternoon collecting honey, and taking it to the top of the mountain, and looking for new ways to help my father come back to us.

  I was sure that my mother had other chores in mind, but none of them was as important as those.

  I took the venison to Maisie, fed her and gave her a drink, ate my own little lunch, and fetched the pack I’d hidden there. Then I made sure my flint was in my pocket and examined the jar with the soupy brew I’d made from river water and dew and balsam . . . and more than that.

  The cold water I had thrown on my father had not been mine. It had belonged to the well, and before that the deep spring that fed the well, and before that the rain. I had come upon it by chance and seen in it a way to begin.

  The snake had not been mine. It had been its own, entirely. A wild thing that came into our cabin without intending to serve any purpose at all. I had come upon it by chance, too, and seen in it a way forward.

  But this brew: This was made from the river and cool night air drenching the grass in dew and the sap from an old, forgiving tree. But something of mine, too: my tears, which came from the memory of my father, hurt. And my own hurt, too.

  I had not stumbled upon it. I had made it. And it was mine. Meant for my father, who was waiting for a way to wake up, just as Cate was waiting for some honey to help her heal.

  I would try to help him first. And then I would try to help her.

  * * *

  —

  I peeked out of the woodshed. There was no one in the yard.

  I saw no one as I crossed the clearing and ducked around the back of the cabin, the jar in my hand.

  When I looked through the window, I saw no one except my father.

  Carefully, quietly, I pushed the window open, put the jar on the table just inside, and hauled myself up and through.

  I could hear Esther and my mother in the kitchen, talking, but their words were jumbled. Just chatter. It had been some time since I had chatted like that with either of them.

  I stood quietly for a moment, listening, and then turned to the bed.

  My father was as he always was.

  I unscrewed the lid of the jar.

  The concoction inside smelled sweet and musky. I was suddenly very glad that I had never reached the stump below the cabin to gather skunk stink instead.

  I screwed the lid back on tight and shook the jar for a minute or two until the balsam sludge had blended with the rest of the dark brew.

  I wondered whether I should feed it to him. Or smear it on the scar where his head had split, though I didn’t see what good that would do, since what ailed him went too deep for that. And the mess might make my mother work harder to keep me from trying what else I meant to try.

  So I fed him what I could.

  It was difficult to hold him up and drizzle the sticky potion into his mouth, and I could manage only a little at a time. Too much of it drooled down his chin. But I got some into him. Not much, but some.

  I laid him down again and tipped the jar to gather some of the syrup onto the tip of my finger, and then I worked it into his mouth, lifting him again until he had swallowed it. I did that over and over until I’d fed him all I could. And then I cleaned his mouth with the hem of my shirt, screwed the lid back on the jar, and kissed him on the cheek.

  As I stood up straight again, I saw his eyes roll behind their lids. Stop. Roll again.

  “Daddy!” I whispered, close to his face. I shook his shoulder. “Daddy, wake up!”

  But he didn’t. His eyes went still again.

  I pulled one eyelid up with the tip of my finger.

  His eye was looking elsewhere. Nowhere I could see. And the thin, soft skin of his eyelid felt like a curtain to another world.

  I could see stars there. Bright points in the darkness. But no sun rising. No waking yet.

  I let his eye close.

  I waited, watching him for the smallest movement.

  But he didn’t move again.

  “Daddy,” I said, close by his ear.

  Nothing at all.

  I said his name one more time, kissed him on the other cheek, watched for his eyes to move. And then I climbed back out the window with much more work to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Down-mountain, at the hive where—just that morning—I’d meant to harvest honey for my brew, I reached into my pocket for my knife and flint, only to find the carved bee waiting for me.

  I’d forgotten all about it.

  Which astonished me, since every other carving had led me into endless curiosity and speculation and happiness . . . and made me grateful for the gift. Now I spent a long moment with the little bee, amazed at how fine it was, how perfect.

  And this time I thanked the bee itself.

  And all the other bees whose honey I had come to take.

  I put the bee back in my pocket and opened my collecting jar. Put the lid in my pocket. Set my work gloves on a rock next to the trail.

  Then I made another fire to stun the bees again, though it slowed me down. Time was short now, the day hurrying toward its end, but I knew the pain of even one sting and wanted nothing to do with a hundred.

  I chose a good stick and laid it in the flames. Then I buttoned myself as much as I could, tucking my pants into my boots, my collar high around my ears.

  But the morning’s bee sting was still fresh on my mind, and I decided to do more, this time, to keep from being stung again.

  When the stick was flaming well, I emptied my pack at the side of the trail and took a long look at the oak where the hive was waiting. Memorized the way to it through the undergrowth. Then I laid the torch on the path where it would slowly give up its flame and pulled the pack over my head, tucking the edges of it into my collar and buttoning my jacket up tight to hold the makeshift hood in place.

  I felt for my gloves, pulled them on, pushed my sleeves down into them, felt for my collecting jar, carefully picked up the cold end of the smoky torch, and took a long breath.

  Blind, my feet feeling the way, I navigated by sound, too. By the buzzing that came from the hive.

  I knew the tree by its roots underfoot. Felt my way to its broad trunk. Took a breath. Closed my eyes for no good reason. And ran my hand along the bark until I felt the big hole where the bees were waiting.

  I hated to take what was theirs.

  I hated to leave them hungry and confus
ed.

  I hated the idea that more of them would die trying to stop me.

  But there was a woman on top of the mountain who needed me. Needed what they had to give.

  I poked the smoking stick into the hole, waited for it to do its work, and then cast it aside.

  I reached slowly, slowly, into the hole.

  I could feel the bees on my sleeve. One of them stung my wrist where there was a sliver of skin between glove and cuff. I tried hard not to yank my arm back, but it wasn’t easy to keep still. The sting was like an acid fang in my skin. And I knew another bee had died.

  The comb was like a soft, vibrating brick in my hand.

  I broke off a chunk of it and pulled it out of the tree, jammed it into the jar, bees and all, and screwed the lid on as I stumbled away from the hive, falling into the bushes, bees attacking the pack that blinded me, their stingers catching in its weave, dying as they stung. I imagined their soft bodies embroidering the pack in yellow and black and blood.

  Another one stung me on the ankle where my pant leg didn’t quite meet my boot. Another on my neck where my hood had come loose.

  And I felt besieged, suddenly, by the bees, by the need to steal from them, by the way I’d been banished from my own home, by the blame I carried with me like a harness, like a thorn in my hoof, like a puppy taken from his mother, from Maisie, from me.

  But crying did no good at all.

  * * *

  —

  When I could no longer hear the bees, I carefully pulled the pack from my head, a little at a time, and plucked the bits of bee from where they’d stung me, rubbing the awful stings and gulping the cool air, crying a little as I filled the pack with my things again, the jar fizzing with trapped bees.

  Then I hurried up the trail.

  Toward home.

  And then past it, upward bound.