Echo Mountain

by Lauren Wolk

  And headed back up the mountain, with plenty of daylight left.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Captan came to meet me at the steepest part of the path.

  “How is she?” I asked as I climbed toward him.

  He blinked an answer.

  He came forward to sniff my boots. It was the first time he’d come so close to me.

  When he looked up again, I read a bunch of questions in his eyes.

  “Yes, that’s puppy you smell. That’s Quiet. When he’s old enough, I’ll bring him to meet you.”

  But then I remembered once again that Quiet was meant for Mr. Anderson.

  “Maybe I’ll bring him up here to live.”

  When I reached my hand out, palm up, Captan rested his soft jowl in it for just a moment and then turned to lead the way to Cate’s cabin.

  And I stood there on the path, ringing hard and loud with the feel of his face lingering on my hand, along with something more about loneliness and a sore heart and what a cabin feels like when the snow drifts so high around it that daylight is as thin and pale as whey. And the only sound is the wind sheering across the mountaintop. And the days are long and cold and hungry.

  “You are a wonderful dog,” I said to him when he turned to look back at me. “You are a wonderful young man of a dog.”

  Which seemed to please him, though he didn’t smile.

  * * *

  —

  When we got to the cabin, I paused at the open door.

  Larkin was there, standing by her bed.

  Cate had said she wouldn’t need me if he was there to look after her, but I hoped there was still some work for me as well.

  “Oh Captan, my Captan,” Cate said when she saw us there. “What have you brought me now?”

  I stepped inside.

  Larkin turned.

  And as my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that he was hurt.

  His left eye was swollen shut, the skin around it a mottled black and blue.

  “What happened?” I said, walking close to peer at his eye. The lid above bulged out, balloon-like, and the skin below swelled to meet it, his lashes in between like little black teeth in a fat red mouth.

  “He got a black eye for coming up to see me,” Cate said. Her voice was dark and bitter but stronger than it had been, and there was some good color in her face.

  I reached toward his eye, but he stepped away. “I’m fine,” he said. “And she’s getting better.”

  And I learned all over again, watching him, that it’s possible to smile and look sad at the same time.

  “I am,” Cate said. “Not well, but better.”

  Larkin pulled the blanket down off her leg and untied the bandage so I could see for myself.

  The wound was still swollen. It was still dark and looked awful. But it wasn’t nearly as angry as it had been. No pus. And not much smell, either. And there was a fine crust of blood and honey where Larkin had made his cut, though the seam began to ease open as I watched, and Larkin quickly tied the bandage snug again.

  “We should stitch that closed,” I said, though I had never done such a thing.

  “No,” Cate said. “Not yet. We might still need to open it up. The bandage will be enough for now.”

  She pulled the blanket back over her leg. “I’ll need your help to go outside,” she said to me. “Not quite yet, but soon.”

  She still hadn’t said hello.

  Neither had Larkin.

  Neither had I.

  “How did you hurt your eye?” I asked.

  Cate pulled the little doll out from under the blanket and set it to one side. “I told you,” she said. “He came to see me.”

  “It was an accident,” Larkin said.

  Cate snorted. “Which happened because your mother was in a rage.”

  Larkin shrugged. “You’re not wrong. But it was still an accident.” He turned to me. “She made me do my chores when we got home last night.”

  “In the dark,” Cate muttered.

  “And I was angry, too. And I split a log so hard that a piece of wood kicked back. Caught me in the eye.” He smiled ruefully. “I won’t do that again.”

  Cate flapped her hand impatiently. “But now it’s done. So let’s get on with things. Ellie, stir up the fire, will you? And heat your knife again.”

  “But the honey’s working.”

  “Not for my leg,” she said. “For his eye.”

  Larkin nodded. “She means to let off some of the blood.” He didn’t seem too alarmed at the idea. Trust lay calm on his face.

  “And then a poultice,” she said.

  “I brought a potato for that,” Larkin said.

  Cate nodded. “Grate that into a bowl while Ellie heats the knife.” She struggled to sit up.

  We both helped her—Captan coming close to supervise—until we had her perched on the edge of the bed, weaving a little with dizziness, hanging on to both of us, her head low.

  “Stars,” she said. “Such a pretty warning.”

  We held her steady until she could raise her head.

  Her bare feet, flat on the wood floor, were thin and white, woven through with blue veins, her toes tipped with thick yellow nails.

  “Do you have socks?” I said.

  She pointed. “In that trunk, there.”

  I fetched a pair, happy to see other warm things inside the trunk. A pair of good boots nearby, waiting.

  I gave Larkin the socks. “Put these on her while I heat the knife.”

  He looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.

  Cate watched us, smiling a little.

  “And I brought some stew.” I nodded at the pack by the door. “It should be warm enough still.”

  I held the blade of my knife in the flames and watched Larkin help her with the socks. Watched him dish out some stew. Watched her take a bite.

  “Oh my,” she said, her eyes closed. “In all my life, in all the world, nothing has ever tasted better than this.”

  “Do you want some?” I asked Larkin.

  “I’m not hungry,” he said, though he looked like he was. He fetched a bowl and a grater from the cupboard, and in no time he had turned the potato into shreds.

  I liked a person who could do something well, without a lot of wasted motions, or time, or wondering how to do it. He just did it.

  I said, “My father woke up this morning.”

  Cate stopped eating. Opened her eyes. “From a coma?”

  I nodded.

  “For how long was he gone?”

  I thought back. “Since late in January. Since just before that big storm.” We had been housebound for days, sitting in the dark, cold cabin, watching my father sleep while the world outside wore white and blue and gold.

  “He was asleep for twelve weeks,” I said. “Almost thirteen.”

  “And now he wakes, just like that?”

  So I told them about the cold water and the snake and the potion I’d made. The twitching hand. The rolling eyes.

  They listened as if to a bedtime story.

  When I finished, Cate looked at me thoughtfully. “There was a time when I would have said coincidence. Poppycock. Wishful thinking. But that was a long time ago.”

  “Do you think it was something in the potion I fed him? Maybe the balsam?”

  She shook her head. Went on eating. “Not in the least.”

  “The snake?”

  She huffed. “Not that either.”

  “Then what?” Larkin said.

  Cate shrugged. Tipped her head toward the big books on the desk. “Something else you won’t find in those.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “And now it’s time for you to learn how to let blood,” Cate said.

  “What, me?”


  “Hard for Larkin to lance his own eye. And I already know how.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “It won’t take but a minute.”

  “You want me to poke a knife into the skin by his eye?”

  Larkin himself looked more than a little alarmed by the idea.

  Captan did, too.

  Cate smiled. “Aristotle said, ‘For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.’”

  Which reminded me of my father and the day he’d taught me to make fire. And of Samuel as he caught his first fish.

  “Who’s Aristotle?”

  “A dead Greek.” She waved us both closer. Tapped Larkin gently, just below the corner of his bulging eye. “Not straight in. Not stabbing. Lay the blade flat against the most swollen part, here.” She pointed with one ragged nail. “Away from the eye itself. Then push down a little so the knife tip is buried in the swell. And then slide it slowly until it pierces the skin. Just a bit.”

  I peered at her. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  She shook her head. “I never kid when it comes to knives. Or eyes.”

  I looked at Larkin. He nodded.

  I looked at Captan. If dogs could shrug, I believe he would have.

  I followed Larkin as he dragged Cate’s chair through the cabin door and out into the clearing. He sat in it and tipped his head back.

  Captan came to sit next to him, leaning against his leg.

  “And stand clear of where the blood will fly!” Cate yelled from inside the cabin.

  I stood with the knife in my hand. “We don’t have to do this, you know. You can just wait for the swelling to go down.”

  Larkin peered up at me. “Have you ever tried to follow a steep trail in poor light, half blind?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’d like to avoid a broken leg. So please, Ellie. Just cut me.”

  I sighed once. Twice. Did what Cate had said to do. Laid the knife blade flat against his skin, the tip pointed away from his eye, pressed until the flesh rose up around it, and slid it slowly, the pressure building around it, building around it, until it suddenly broke the thin skin and popped the blister.

  I had forgotten to stand clear of the spray.

  Larkin himself got the worst of it.

  He looked like someone had swung a bat at his face.

  “Yuck,” I said, wiping his blood off my cheek. My jacket, still wet, was speckled with red that seeped out into little stars.

  I helped Larkin to his feet and picked up the chair. We both followed Captan back into the cabin.

  “Good sweet mother of souls,” Cate said when she saw us. She beckoned Larkin closer and reached up for his chin, turning his face so she could see his bad eye better. She nodded. “Now the potato.”

  To me: “Fetch that, and a page from one of the books. Nothing important, though.”

  She told Larkin to lie flat on the floor.

  I flipped through the biggest book until I found a page about chilblains. Not much to do about them except wear gloves. I tore out the page.

  “Now heap the potato over his eye and top it with that page, folded over in half.”

  Which I did after wiping the blood from his face.

  The grated potato was sloppy enough to soak the paper through. The edges of it stuck to his skin, holding it in place.

  “Like this?” I said.

  “Just like that. Now press gently to mold the poultice to the eye.”

  “I’ll do that part,” Larkin said, cupping his palm over it.

  I stared at him lying there.

  “Why potato?” I said.

  “Takes down the swelling. Helps to prevent infection,” he said.

  “But why?” I sounded like Samuel.

  “You want to know?” Cate nodded again at the books on her desk. “Find out.”

  The books contained, between their many covers, thousands of pages.

  My father had always told me I had a choice, when faced with a giant task that would do me good: bellyache about how long it would take or be glad it would last.

  “Can I come up whenever I want to read them?”

  Cate nodded. “For a price.”

  I waited.

  “Chores for lessons,” Larkin said. The potato poultice had wept onto the floor near his head. It would leave a stain, but Cate didn’t seem to care.

  “I can do that,” I said. “You mean like sweeping and cooking and doing your wash?”

  “Yes. But right now, we’ll start with putting on my boots and taking me outside.”

  I had helped Samuel put on his boots many times.

  Helping Cate was nothing like that.

  I wondered if my father would need this kind of help, too.

  When her boots were on and laced, Cate grabbed my shoulders and pulled herself to her feet.

  I helped steady her, and then we two hobbled out into the clearing.

  “How long do I have to lie here like this?” Larkin called after us.

  “Until we say otherwise,” Cate called back.

  I smiled at the we.

  “What’s so funny?” Cate said.

  “Not a thing,” I replied.

  She steered us around the back of the cabin to a mossy spot between the cedars.

  There was a big shed nearby. “What’s that for?” I said.

  She looked away. “This and that,” she said, her voice . . . strange.

  And I wondered what she kept in there.

  She waited. “I usually do this alone,” she said.

  “Can you? With your leg like that?”

  She stood, bent a little, holding on to my arm. “I think maybe not,” she said quietly, looking around for a solution.

  “Here,” I said, peering into a hollow stump.

  She looked at it, at me. “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

  I liked that, though I had to think about it as I helped her toward the stump. “Did you make that up?”

  She shook her head. “Plato, maybe.”

  “Who?”

  “Another dead Greek.”

  “How come you know so much about dead Greeks?”

  She squinted at me thoughtfully. “You think an old hag like me has no proper learning, don’t you?”

  This was the second time she’d accused me of such a thing.

  “I do not.” I was annoyed and let her hear it. “And I don’t much like you telling me what I think.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t tell,” she said. “Asked.”

  The stump was the right height. Perfect, really, though she’d be sitting on a rough and spongy seat. Not very nice.

  “It’ll do,” she said.

  I fetched her again when she called me, and we both went slowly back into the cabin.

  She was panting and sweating from the effort of being up, so I helped her lie back down again.

  The crust on her leg must have broken some more, since there was a spot of blood on the bandage where there hadn’t been one before. “What if it doesn’t get better now?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Why worry about something that hasn’t happened yet?”

  “Because I’d like to be ready to do what needs to be done, if it needs doing.”

  “Oh, if it hasn’t improved enough by tomorrow, we’ll clean it out and put in some fresh honey.”

  I chewed my lip. “We used it all, and I don’t know how much is left in the hive. Probably not much.”

  “There’s a hive right near where I live,” Larkin said.

  “And a mother who won’t want you taking honey for me,” Cate said, pulling the blanket up to her chin.

  “If it does get better, will we just leave the honey that’s in there now?” I asked.

  Cate considered that. �
�Why not? Might make me even sweeter than I already am.”

  Which made Larkin laugh.

  Cate said, “A boy who can laugh when he’s lying on the floor with a potato poultice on his eye. What do you think, Captan? Is that some boy?”

  Captan opened his eyes. He thumped the floor with his tail just once and closed his eyes again.

  “Won’t do me any good to cry,” Larkin said, though he wasn’t laughing anymore, either.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “Did you make that stew you brought?” Cate asked.

  “No,” I said. “My mother did. And she’d have my head if she knew I’d put cold water in the jar so it would take a lid.”

  Cate said, “Oh, it was plenty good, even so.”

  I watched her trying to catch her breath, the doll again tucked up by her cheek. She seemed young and old at the same time.

  “My father told me he saw you skinning a deer on that day he climbed up here.”

  Cate shrugged. “Maybe so. I do that when I kill one.”

  “You kill deer?”

  She raised one eyebrow at me. Something I would have to try myself. “And why wouldn’t I?”

  I looked around the cabin. Saw no gun. No bow. Said as much.

  “Have you never made a snare?” she said, clearly curious.

  My father had. For rabbits. For other small game. And had taught me how, though I didn’t like to snare things. The animals we caught tried too many hard things to get loose.

  He had used a gun for deer. Taught me that, too. But I didn’t like fast killing any better than slow. I did like to eat, though.

  “I’ve made a snare,” I said. “But not for deer.”

  She flapped a hand tiredly. “What works for small things, works for big ones. I do set a snare now and then. Bait it with corn. Sometimes I catch a raccoon. Sometimes a deer.”

  “You eat raccoon?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I do,” Larkin said from the floor.

  What a strange conversation we were having, we three. One abed. One lying on the floor. One standing. Talking about game.

  “I haven’t,” I said. “But my father once made me a coonskin cap. The meat went to the dog.”

  Cate nodded. “If you cook it right, raccoon is quite tasty.”