Echo Mountain

by Lauren Wolk

  I opened the door and coaxed her outside, where the sunlight made her sneeze and yawn.

  Quiet had wrapped his soft legs around my hand and was trying to suck on my finger.

  “How in the world am I going to give you up?” I whispered.

  One more thing I didn’t know how to do. One more thing I would have to do in order to learn how to do it.

  * * *

  —

  I didn’t see Captan on my climb.

  I had thought to go straight down the other side of the mountain to find Larkin and, with him, the honey we might need if Cate’s leg festered again. But I went to check on Cate first, to see how she and Esther had fared while I was gone, hoping she was enough improved that we could leave the honey to the bees.

  The yard was empty when I got there, but for its dead garden and its cold firepit and those empty clothes hanging limp on the line.

  I pictured Cate as I’d first found her. Her long, ratty hair. Her thick yellow nails. The candle stubs burned out on her floor. The maggots and the blowflies. Such sad company.

  And I felt tired just thinking about her life alone.

  But when I went into the cabin this time, it was nothing like that.

  Now, on the hearth that had been black and cold, there was an orange-and-yellow fire having a spirited conversation with a birch log.

  A skillet bridging the hearth bricks sizzled with jerky and what smelled like pumpkin seeds browning.

  The books on the desk stood in tidy stacks, the jars on the shelves were lined up from small to large, and Captan sat by the fire, his coat smooth. No burrs at all.

  Cate lay propped up in her bed, in her clean nightdress, her blanket smooth and straight, her hair in a neat braid that wound its way over her shoulder to flaunt a bow fashioned from a strip of rag.

  Her hands gleamed with oil in the firelight, their nails short again.

  “Doesn’t she look better?” Esther said, going to sit on the edge of the bed.

  “Civilized,” Cate said, smiling tiredly. “She’s made me tidy again.”

  And for a moment, I felt stupid and small as I looked around at what Esther had managed while I was gone.

  But then I looked more closely at Cate lying so still and calm and clean in her bed.

  Her collarbone—the cleft in it just there, at the base of her neck—looked so fragile that I thought of songbirds and mice and rabbits, but old ones. Thin ones. The ones who, in fairy tales, always had important things to say.

  Except she wasn’t saying anything as she lay there and gazed up at me.

  Her cheeks were too rosy. Her eyes too bright.

  And there was something about her smile that worried me. It looked like a lot of work, that smile.

  I laid my hand on her cheek.

  “Can you move away?” I said to Esther, who stayed where she was, frowning. “Please, let me see her leg.”

  “Ellie, she’s fine,” Esther said. “Look at her.”

  “Are you fine?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Cate said. “Perhaps not as fine as I look.”

  “She has a fever again,” I said, pushing Esther aside. I drew the blanket down and worked open the knots holding the bandages in place.

  The cloth, inside where it was knotted, was still damp.

  “Bone-dry,” I said. “These should have been bone-dry.”

  “Why?” Esther snapped. “What does it matter?”

  “What happens to a bedsheet left wet?”

  She grew still. “It molders.”

  When I pulled the bandages away, Cate’s wound gaped open like a little swamp, just as green and foul.

  “Oh dear Lord,” Esther said, her hand over her mouth. She stepped back from the bed so suddenly that she nearly tripped over a chair.

  And I rushed to the shelf of jars, searching for the one that held the maggots, but when I found it and carried it to the fire I could see only a cluster of cocoons inside. Flies inside those, waiting to emerge.

  “No grubs,” I said.

  I handed the jar to Esther, who nearly dropped it.

  I went back to kneel by Cate’s bed.

  “Is it so bad?” she said, craning her neck to look down along her body.

  “It is. I don’t know how, so quickly, but it is.”

  “The germ was still there,” she said. “The honey was working, 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. “If she dies of something she can’t fix.”

  And I knew she was talking about how Larkin’s father had died. “See, that’s what I’m talking about,” I said impatiently. “That’s just mean. When that’s not what we need right now.”

  She glared at me for a long moment. Then she sighed. “There’s no honey. Not in our hive. I was just there, not two days ago, and it’s dead. Every bee.”

  I was shocked at the idea of that. A whole hive dying. “But, why?”

  I sounded like Samuel.

  She looked at me in surprise. “Things die. No reason to it.”

  “Maybe too wet,” Larkin said. “Maybe mites. Maybe something robbed them and they starved.”

  I thought of the honey I’d taken from the hive by the river.

  “Don’t you have any of your own?” I said. “From last summer?”

  “We might,” Larkin said, his eyes wide. And off he ran, into the cabin, then came slowly back again with a jar in his hand.

  “Nowhere near enough,” he said, tipping the jar into the sun so we could see the thin golden film in the bottom of it.

  I knew that our own honey was much the same, spent on Christmas.

  I couldn’t imagine Cate dying for lack of honey, though maybe any reason, even that one, was better than none. “We could go for the doctor,” I said.

  “Who will want to be paid,” Larkin’s mother said. “In real money. Do you have any of that?”

  To which I said nothing.

  “Nor do I,” she said. “Not enough.”

  “We could offer something in trade,” I said. “When my father got hurt, my mother paid the doctor with a silver locket.”

  She lifted her chin. “Do you see a silver locket?”

  I looked at the fine cabin. “You must have something you could trade. A mandolin?”

  “No,” she barked. “I have just one left and I’ll not trade it away.” Though I knew she would, in an instant, if it were Larkin who was sick. “Besides, it would take too long for a doctor to get here.” Something she clearly knew, as Cate had known. Something that brought the darkness back to her face.

  She turned and went into the cabin.

  But she did not drag Larkin with her.

  “Will you come with me?” I said.

  “To the other hive? The one where you went before?”

  I shook my head. “I already took most of what they had.”

  “Then where?”

  “Maybe the other families have some.”

  He frowned. “And if they don’t?”

  I thought of the pail of cold water on the cabin step. The bear on the path. Captan. And everything else that had brought me to this moment. This fresh chance to be of use.

  “I don’t know. But I’d rather ask for it and get none than cut Miss Cate’s leg without ever asking.”

  Larkin must have heard something in my voice. Something that echoed what he was surely telling himself.

  With a last glance at the cabin, he said, “Then let’s be quick about it, or it will be for nothing.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  We stopped first at the Andersons’, where Mrs. Anderson came rushing to the door when I banged, perhaps too hard, and asked her for honey without saying why.

  She looked past me at Larkin, who stood in the yard, a little distance away, his face hidden in the shadow of his hat.

  “Who’s that?” she whispered. Mrs. Anderson was so thin that she’d once traded five blueberry pies to my father to make a Sunday smock that didn’t swallow her whole.

  I remembered thinking she should have just eaten the pies herself and filled out the smock she had, but I was happy with any arrangement that let me eat pie for days on end.

  “That’s Larkin,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “He’s from the other side.”

  “The other side of what?” As if we lived on the moon and could not fathom the side we couldn’t see.

  “The mountain,” I said, as patiently as I could.

  “Oh.” She looked a little confused. “And what will you give me for the honey?”

  I hadn’t expected to pay for it, even in trade, and I had no time to bicker, so “My thanks,” I said. “And whatever I have to give that’s mine, down the road. But I need the honey now. As much as you’ve got.”

  Which wasn’t much, in the end, but more than I had.

  I watched as she spooned perhaps a smidgen, no more than a dollop, from her own jar into mine.

  “I’ll have you muck out the chicken coop for that,” she called as we hurried off down the path.

  “I will,” I called back. “I promise.”

  The Petersons came next, with much the same result. No more than a tablespoon.

  “The honey’s a fair trade for the balsam that sealed Scotch’s hoof,” Mr. Peterson said thoughtfully. “So consider us even.”

  He looked at Larkin, who stood a little away.

  “You’re from here?” Mr. Peterson asked him.

  To which Larkin said, “Since before your grandfather was born.”

  I expected some feathers to ruffle at that, though none did.

  “Smart of you to start out where so many of us are ending up,” Mr. Peterson said.

  Which apparently sat well with Larkin, who said, “Thank you for the honey.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Mr. Peterson said. “It’s her honey now. Though why it merits a visit from the pair of you I do not know.”

  “It’s for a good reason,” I said, heading off the porch and down the path, Larkin at my heels.

  Next, we stopped at the Lockharts’, where Mrs. Lockhart said she did, indeed, have some honey but was also the most reluctant to part with it.

  “What do you want it for?” she said.

  Of all the families on Echo Mountain, the Lockharts were the ones we knew the least. They were farther away, where there was little reason for us to cross paths, and they seldom wanted to barter.

  Larkin had said nothing about payment for the tea that Cate had given Mrs. Lockhart for her stomach problems, and I imagined that Mrs. Lockhart had given her nothing in exchange.

  Just as she had given nothing in payment to my father when he had mended her feathered church hat, which was molting.

  I was surprised, then, when she looked at me standing there on her porch and said, “Honey’s not free, you know.”

  “I need it to heal something,” I said.

  Larkin stood in the yard near the step to the porch and stared at the ground.

  Mrs. Lockhart looked me up and down. “You seem to be in one piece,” she said. “And so does he. Is he some kin of yours?”

  I almost said no, but I didn’t want to say that he was the grandson of the “witch” who had cursed her with a belly stone—though part of me wanted to put that notion to rest. And I felt the time ticking more quickly the longer we were away. So I said, “Yes, he is. Come to visit.”

  “To help wit
h your father?” she whispered.

  I nodded. “So will you share some honey, Mrs. Lockhart?”

  “It’s for him, isn’t it? Your father?” she said, somewhat softer now.

  “For his bedsores,” I said, hoping that would turn the key.

  But all she said was, “Share? No, I’ll not share. But I’ll sell.”

  “For how much?” I said, as if I had money to spend.

  “Five trout,” she said. “I hear you’re quite the fisher-girl.”

  “Done,” I said, holding out my jar.

  But she stepped back inside and said, “You’ll have my honey when I have the trout,” and closed the door in my face.

  I stood on the porch, amazed beyond words.

  “I told you,” Larkin said. “She’s one of them.”

  “One of who?”

  “One of them who decide they own something just so they can sell it.”

  I looked at the too-little honey in the jar. “Just one more family,” I said, heading down the path again. “The Neills. Closest to the river.”

  “No. We’re taking too long and the Neills aren’t likely to have any honey. But the bees still do.”

  “Larkin, I told you. I already took what they had to spare.”

  When he stopped, I stopped.

  “Here’s the thing about bees,” he said. “They die. Winter’s too cold, they die. Too wet, they die. We take their honey, they die. It’s all the same.”

  I shook my head. “My father told me I should always leave some for the bees.”

  “And if he were awake to ask, he’d say maybe not this time. Especially when it’s springtime and the flowers are in bloom and, with them, more honey.”

  “If the bees live long enough to make more.”

  “Which they might. Which they probably will, Ellie.”

  And there was something so sad in his eyes, so broken, that I felt broken, too.

  “All right,” I finally said. “As long as we spend it on Cate, we should take what honey we can.”

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  “That’s quite a flint,” Larkin said when I took the spearhead from my pocket and opened my knife.