Black Lake by Johanna Lane Read Free Book Online

their father had set them some geography at nine. It was nearly eleven now and they’d have to hurry to get it done before lunch. Kate began drawing in a listless, halfhearted way. Philip got up and went to the window.
    “What are you doing?” she asked.
    “Looking at the valley.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I want to draw it.”
    Kate sighed in exasperation. She was annoyed that Philip had reminded their father to set them schoolwork.
    “There’s one in this book, that you can trace;  it’ll be a lot easier.”
    “But I want to draw our valley, not that one.”
    “We don’t have time—here.”
    She thrust their textbook in his direction and pointed at the perfectly symmetrical glaciated valley. He took the book from her, glanced at the picture, and then let his eyes wander back to his favorite passage:
During the last ice age, glaciers covered much of Ireland. When they finally melted, a new country had been fashioned out of the old landscape. Snow collected on the mountains and turned to ice, which pushed down into the rock in a circular motion, forming what geographers call a corrie or cirque (from the French word for circus, because the geographical feature they formed resembled an upside-down big top). Soon the ice would find a weakness in the side of the cirque and spill over the lip. It made its way down the mountainside, gathering momentum, pulling branches, rocks, soil and other debris with it (the correct term is moraine ) until it became a great river of ice, gouging its way to the sea. The glacier followed the path of the river that went before it, obliterating the old terrain and forming a U-shaped valley, which, over the years, would fill with water and become a deep lake with steep sides.…
    Philip had read and reread this section. He was fascinated to think that thousands of years ago Dulough looked quite different than it did now, that there had been no lake but a river, winding its way down to the sea. And ice so deep that it swallowed up everything in its path. If the house and cottages had been around then, it would have swept them away, too. Before reading about glaciation, he had never considered that his world had not always been just as he saw it, and he felt suddenly more grown-up to be armed with this information.
    Kate had nearly finished drawing the textbook U-shaped valley into her notebook. Theirs was not nearly so neat and tidy. Philip got up again and looked out the window above the sink. The valley in the book was a theoretical one, and in that, it was perfect, with evenly spaced cirques and hanging valleys, as well as symmetrical-looking scree. He was determined to draw Dulough just as it was now, but he would leave out anything he wasn’t sure how to label.
    Kate said, “If you don’t hurry up and get that done, they’re going to know we weren’t here all morning.”
      
    Their mother was the first to return home. She burst through the back door with such force that the door hit the wall behind and shuddered. She made sure that the glass hadn’t broken and turned to encounter her children sitting at the kitchen table, looking up at her in surprise. She was not usually one for door banging, and Philip wondered whether she had almost forgotten that she had two children, doing their lessons in the new kitchen, in the little house with the damp walls. Now she stood by the sink, watching them and swaying slightly.
    “Look at my drawing.” He held it up for her. “It’s Dulough.”
    Kate looked at him as if he were an idiot. She took her mother’s hand loosely.
    “What’s wrong?” she asked.
    Philip’s picture was forgotten. He shouldn’t have shown it to her until it was completely finished. He wanted her to say that it was very good.
    “The gardeners took a huge chunk out of the lawn to widen the path. Apparently there wouldn’t have been enough room for the visitors to walk otherwise.”
    There was a new accent on the way his mother said “visitors.” Before, she