But my mother and Esther made my father put a bolt on the cabin door, so they could lock us in each night and sleep, finally, in peace. Dry. Safe. A thick wall between them and the wilderness.

By the time our first mountain winter came, we had a snug, safe home with four good rooms—one for us children, one for our parents, one for our kitchen, and one for everything else. A root cellar for what we’d grown the whole summer long. A place where we could start again. The know-how to make our way in this new world. And, for some of us, the blessing of knowing that we were blessed.

But that was before my father’s accident changed everything.

Chapter Four

“Mr. Peterson shot a doe,” my mother said as we lingered over our tea on the morning when Quiet was born. “Ellie, after breakfast you and Samuel go on up and get our share.”

Once the winter ice had melted, none of the five families who lived on the western slope of Echo Mountain had a way to keep meat fresh, so we’d come to share our kills, eating the best parts in short order and drying the rest for jerky.

Everyone knew that our next kill probably wouldn’t come anytime soon. My mother was a terrible shot, and she didn’t have time to lie in wait for a doe. Esther was gun-shy. Samuel at six was still too young and quite small for his age, besides.

I myself was two opposite things at the same time. One: I was now an excellent woods-girl who could hunt and trap and fish and harvest as if I’d been born to it. Two: I was an echo-girl. When I clubbed a fish to death, my own head ached and shuddered. When I snared a rabbit, I knew what it meant to be trapped. And when I pulled a carrot from the sheath of its earth, I, too, missed the darkness.

There were times when this two-ness made me feel as if I were being stretched east and west, my bones creaking and crying as they strained back toward one.

But hunger has a way of getting what it wants. And the hunger of a brother or a sister or a mother or a father is a very strong hunger indeed.

Before his accident, my father had provided plenty of meat, firewood, river fish, furs, and sometimes honey. But I was now the one who caught fish. And I snared rabbits. And if we grew hungry enough, I knew I would be the one to shoot a deer.

If I had to.

I hoped I wouldn’t have to.

One more reason for my father to wake up.

While he slept, we paid for our venison with cream and butter and things the other families didn’t grow: potatoes mostly, but carrots, too, and beets. Onions and turnips. Parsnips and rutabagas.