I thought about why she would choose to stay in such a place, books or not, though it was better than what we’d had when we first came to the mountain.

I figured any refuge could be a home if that’s what it felt like.

“Do you want me to help you to the privy?” I said.

She huffed again. “Haven’t got one.”

Which startled me. “Everyone has a privy.”

“Not up here. Not for me. Animals make water. Animals make dirt. So do I. Just like they do. In the woods.” She lifted her chin. “And a person who says anything about that is a person I don’t care to know.”

She sounded queenlike.

“Do you want me to help you outside, then?”

“No need. I’ve eaten nothing. And that’s the first I’ve had to drink since yesterday.”

“You have fever.”

“I know. My bones hurt with it. But it’s no mistake and does more good than harm. Until it’s high enough to kill me.”

“Then I’ll go get you the honey. And I’ll come back as quick as I can.” I looked at the rabbit alongside her head. “I can cook that up for you before I go.”

She nodded. “For me and him both.”

The dog smiled for the first time.

“And I brought you a fish,” I said, remembering the trout.

She made a face. “Why would you come up the mountain with a fish for someone you’d never met before? And how did you even know I was up here?”

“My father told me about you. You saw him once, with a bad ear.”

She squinted thoughtfully. “I remember him.”

“And your dog. I thought he might be trying to tell me something.”

“Good.” She nodded briskly. “A girl who can understand dogs.”

“Any girl can understand dogs.”

This time, she shook her head. Closed her eyes.

For a moment, I thought she had more to say about that. But then she opened her eyes again and said, in a harder voice, “That rabbit’s not going to cook itself, you know.”

So I picked it up by its hind legs and carried the poor thing into the clearing, the trout along with it.

—

I’d butchered a rabbit before. My father had taught me how. And how to scrape the skin and stretch it in the sun to cure.

This one was no different, except I was alone. And the rising wind on the mountaintop spoke a different tongue than the wind down below. And that woman, Cate, was in terrible trouble.

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