Blue Willow by Deborah Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

her hands into ferocious bear paws and growled again. “This is the story of how the MacKenzies and the Colebrooks met. It’s about Old Artemas”—she pointed to Artemas—“who was your great-great-great-grandpa, and Elspeth MacKenzie”—she pointed to Lily—“who was your great-great-great-grandma.”
    Lily couldn’t figure out why people who weren’t even around anymore were called great , but as long as her relatives were as great as Artemas’s, she wouldn’t protest.
    “Old Artemas came straight off a ship from England and traveled through these woods looking for a place to settle. Elspeth had come here a few years before that, from Scotland. She lived right here, in a cabin where this very house stands today. Her husband died, and she had two half-grown sons to raise.”
    Mama growled and clawed the air. “Old Artemas was young and strong, but he didn’t know these woods. There came a bear!” Lily jumped, then slid closer to Artemas. Her mother leaned over them, her hands hooked, glaring at Artemas, who smiled in anticipation.
    “The bear, he rose up over your great-great-great-grandpa, with his fangs dripping slobber—the bear, not your grandpa—and then, then, that big black bear, he drew back one big paw and ripped your grandpa’s arm right to the bone!”
    Her arms waved wildly as she pawed the air inchesfrom their faces. Lily was breathless with excitement. “What happened then?”
    “Old Artemas whipped out his hunting knife with his good hand, and he quick-like cut that bear’s heart out!” She snatched a piece of kindling from the hearth and carved an imaginary bear. “And he ate it!”
    “Agh! Neat!”
    “Then he staggered off through the woods, dripping blood—Old Artemas, not the bear—with his arm hanging half off.” She let her right arm dangle as she staggered dramatically. “And finally he fell down, and he crawled, and he crawled, and he crawled, because he was a big, tough Englishman, and he wasn’t about to give up and die when he’d only been in America a few months.”
    “And then Elspeth MacKenzie found him,” Artemas said, leaning forward eagerly.
    “That’s right. The Widow MacKenzie, with her two half-grown sons, took in that wild-looking stranger, all torn and bloody where the bear had clawed him. There weren’t any doctors in these mountains then. The widow Elspeth sewed his arm up and nursed him while he healed, and he fell in love with her, because she was so smart and strong and pretty.”
    “Like you!” Lily said.
    “Elspeth’s two half-grown sons became like kin to Old Artemas, and they even forgave him for being an Englishman and city-born and a terrible farmer, what with the MacKenzies being Scots and lovers of the land.”
    She clasped her hands over her heart dramatically. “Elspeth told Artemas he’d never make a farmer, and he had to do what God had gifted him to do, just like all his people before, back in England. She helped him find the white clay the Indians had told her about, right down here in the creek bottom over at Blue Willow.”
    “Where the big lake is now,” Artemas said.
    “Right there, yessir. Down where the bass swim now, at the bottom of Clay Lake, that’s right where old Artemas dug the clay and set up his china business.”
    “Is the building still there?” Lily wanted to know. “If I held my nose and sat on the bottom, could I see it?”
    “No, no, the MacKenzies burned it all down right before the war. But that’s another story. Now, where was I?”
    “About Old Artemas’s clay,” Artemas told her.
    “Yes. Well, he knew this clay was special, just as fine and creamy as the clay the Chinamen had used to make the most beautiful china in the world. So Artemas built himself a potter’s wheel, and a furnace, and he went to work. And in a year he was sending white china down to Marthasville by wagon to be sold and shipped. He and Elspeth were so happy over it all.”
    Lily nodded drolly “And then he got rich,