The Endless Forest Read Free Page A

unusual household in some ways, but to Birdie it was a second home. Noisier than her own maybe, when her nieces and nephews—known in the family as the little people—were all in the same room.
    Rain was rattling against the shutters so loudly that at first Birdie didn’t realize Hannah had come into the kitchen. She sat down at the table, tucked a stray dark hair into the scarf she had wrapped around her head, and then scooped up her youngest child and sat him, a solid six-month-old brick of boy, on her lap. He immediately began to bounce softly and sing to himself, thumping her breast with one little fist, as if demanding admission.
    “You had your fill not an hour ago,” Hannah said to him. “You just want to noodle.”
    “The sweetest child yet,” Curiosity said in approval.
    A soft rumble of thunder made the baby blink in surprise. Hannah nuzzled him, but she spoke to Birdie. She said, “Little sister, can you look after the children for me while I’m gone?” Birdie straightened in her surprise.
    “But there’s school.”
    “No school today,” Curiosity said. “That’s the other thing your brother come to tell us.”
    No school. A day here—a rainy day here—with the Savard nephews and nieces, the oldest not three years younger than Birdie herself, but twice as much trouble.
    Birdie drew in a deep breath. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong? Where’s Daniel now?”
    “Out the barn with Ben and Runs-from-Bears and my Joshua and all the rest of the menfolk,” said Curiosity. “Talking about the weather.”
    Birdie’s eyes moved to Joan, who was opening the window in order to pull the shutters closed. The rain was falling in sheets, and Joan’s face and arms got wet. She looked purely disgusted, but that was nothing new. Joan was always sour and her sister Anje was always sunny. Today Joan was especially sour because she didn’t like coming to help out at Downhill House; and she was even more eager than Birdie to get back uphill.
    To Hannah Curiosity said: “Thaw woke me up in the middle of the night. But then I suppose I was half listening for it anyway. The signs all there.”
    It occurred to Birdie finally that there was a connection between the weather and how long Ma and Da were in coming. They had traveled by sleigh as far as Johnstown and then booked passage down the river to the city. They would come back up the Hudson by steamboat—another adventure she was missing—and in Johnstown they’d get the horses and sleighs from the livery. The trip between Johnstown and Paradise flew by in a sleigh.
    But the snow was going fast, and in its place there would be mud, and there wasn’t a sleigh known to man that ran over mud. It would be a much longer and more difficult journey. All because of the early thaw, and the rain.
    Birdie felt Hannah’s eyes on her, the warm weight of her regard. “I wish Throws-Far had stayed up in Canada,” Birdie said. “If he had to come back here, why couldn’t he keep his old weather predictions to himself? It’s not fair.” She stopped herself because from the corner of her eye she saw Anje taking in every word and storing it away. Birdie glanced down at her feet and said, “I shouldn’t talk like that. Da says Throws-Far is a good man.”
    Hannah was smiling at her. “A good man can also be a frustrating man.”
    “Amen to that,” said Curiosity. “But Throws-Far, he always been one to shout out to the world the things he want to believe hisself. Even as a little boy. If he hadn’t been raised among the Mohawk, I have no doubt he would have turned into a preacher of the fire-and-brimstone variety.”
    “But do you think he’s right?” Birdie asked. “Is there such a thing as a hundred-year water?”
    “I suppose we’ll find out.” Hannah’s expression was clear and honest but not very comforting. When she was like this she most reminded Birdie of their father, who could tell you an unhappy truth and still make you feel safe.
    Hannah