Bone River by Megan Chance Read Free Book Online

basket of berries at my side, my saffron skirts shifting about my legs with the hot dry summer breeze. I was waiting. Waiting and impatient, and that waiting grew and grew until I was so tense and anxious I did not think I could wait another moment.
    Then I felt him. I turned to look.
    Everything changed.
    I rose to run, my foot catching the basket, upturning it, and the berries spilled onto the ground, a pool of them like blood, the basket rolling and rolling down the hill, the design woven into it—light reeds against dark—flashing as it rolled, and I could only stare at it, frozen. I could not move. He was here, and I knew what was coming, and I was afraid. I was afraid and I could not run and could not scream—
    I woke with a start, sitting bolt upright, sweating, choking, my chest so tight I could not catch a breath. I gasped, panicking, clutching my throat.
    “What is it? What’s wrong?” Junius’s voice, sleepy and alarmed. He grabbed me, and I fought him, unthinking, still caught in the dream, trying to get away. “Lea, stop. It was adream. It was only a dream.” He pulled me hard into his chest, murmuring, “It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s all right.”
    My fear faded in the reality of Junius’s warmth, the darkness of the room, the moonlight casting a subtle light beyond. I was here, in my bed, in my room.
    I took a deep breath, and another, until my heart fell into a regular beat.
    “A bad nightmare?” Junius asked.
    “Yes,” I managed. “Yes. It was...terrible. I was waiting and...and the basket overturned, and it was so...so horrible...” It sounded ridiculous when I said it. Not the least bit frightening.
    Junius whispered, “Ssshhh. Ssshhh. It’s all right. Nothing to worry about. Just a dream.”
    I lay back with him, snuggling into his arms. I listened to the rise and fall of his breathing, the beat of his heart, until the dream faded and was gone.
    The next morning, Junius said, “That was a bad nightmare you had last night,” and I nodded and told him I couldn’t remember it, which wasn’t true. I tried to forget it as I went about my chores, though I couldn’t. There was something about the dream that carried, that made me even more anxious, and it all settled around her. I wanted to see her, to touch her, to be reassured—
about what
? I found myself pausing in the middle of carrying milk to the springhouse, staring at the barn, murmuring, “What trick have you played on me?”
    I refused to surrender to such absurdity. Dreams, instincts...I’d fought them all my life. As a child, I’d always been susceptible to bad dreams—I’d awakened to blind fear in the night more times than I cared to remember, running to Papa’s room to fling myself into his arms, begging for his comfort. He’d soothed me with whispers,
Ssshhh, ssshhh, my dear, dear girl. It’s only a dream. There’s nothing real in it
, though in the morning it had always occasioned a lecture—I should not have read those oldlegends or listened so closely to the songs, or whatever it was I’d done to bring the bad dreams.
Superstition is the enemy of objectivity
, he’d told me often. Science needed facts.
    I remembered those words and told myself I would take my time today, do my chores, go out to her when I was good and ready. I was no green girl to run at every change in the wind.
    But still, when Junius stopped me as I finally made my way to the barn, saying, “I need those drawings for Baird first, sweetheart. The collection’s been waiting long enough,” I felt a sinking desperation.
    “But I—”
    “The mummy can wait. And you haven’t got that canoe yet for me, have you? I might have to send it off after all.”
    That was true. I hadn’t kept my end of the bargain. I needed to go into Bruceport and speak with Bibi again, but after our conversation yesterday, I was reluctant. I didn’t want to hear her words—I was already uneasy enough.
Without cause
, I reminded myself. Still, Bibi would