Hidden

Hidden by Donna Jo Napoli Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Hidden by Donna Jo Napoli Read Free Book Online
Authors: Donna Jo Napoli
either. And winter is coming. Thora already pickled herring and eels in salt water, and everyone’s been drying salmon and plums for the long months ahead. And, alas for us but lucky for her, Gunhild is with child again. Resources will be scarce soon. Øg and I are extra.
    They’re hospitable to Beorn; he brought things to trade, after all.
    Ã˜g and I are empty-handed. No. I wriggle around and manage to pull Øg into a tight hug. We can’t be thrown out now. We’d die on our own.
    We have to work our way into their favor no matter what, until my family finds me.

C HAPTER S IX
    They’re killing animals today, because we won’t have enough food around in winter to feed them all. Their meat will be dried, and we’ll chew on it in winter’s harshest months. It’s not winter yet by any means. But everyone says the rains are coming—which is strange to me, because it seems to rain here most of the time, just as in Eire. But apparently it’s soon going to rain and not stop, just rain, rain, rain for two or three months. And it’s best to dry the meat in the sun—so we have to do it while there are still sunny days ahead.
    Besides, Beorn is here—we have to take advantage of that. Thorkild and Thorsten need him to help with the slaughtering, because Thora’s husband, Karl, fell from an apple tree and twisted his back, so he’s trying to mend. The animals—two goats and a cow—have to be skinned and gutted and cut into quarters before the women can slice thin pieces to hang from the racks Thorsten built. It takes lifting and lugging.
    They’re also killing a pig today, but not to dry. Pigshave a lot of fat, and fat goes rancid if you dry the meat. So last week we collected apples from the two trees behind the barn and squashed some to ferment into vinegar. The pork will be pickled in that vinegar.
    It doesn’t really bother me that the goats and that pig will die. The animals have been left outside since spring, day and night, like they do in Eire, except there it’s year round. That means there have been no jobs in tending most of them, and that means I haven’t really come to know them well, not like I knew all our animals back home. Besides, I’m no baby. I’m nearly nine. I understand how life works. I understand that some have to die in order for all the others to live.
    Killing that cow, though, that’s different. The cows are milked twice a day, and once my hand healed, I proved to be the best at milking. It’s not that I have especially strong hands—I don’t. Nor that I have some special technique with my hands—I don’t. It’s that I talk with the cows. I whisper in their ears. I rub them in the direction their hair whorls, and I put my eye right up to theirs and blink. I scratch them under the chin and call them by name. They didn’t have names before and they sort of still don’t, since no one knows their names except me, because I’m the one who named them. They’re happy around me, and they give their milk freely to me. I can fill a bucket higher and faster than anyone.
    The cow that’s going to die is Ciaran. My sweet little friend Ciaran. She’s old now, and there are two milkers younger than her and a new girl calf who seems strong and promises to contribute a lot eventually. Ciaran gives hardly any milk these days. After I first heard them talking about how useless she was, I started pouring milk from the other cows’ buckets into hers. But Thorsten caught me doing it and told. Besides, even if Ciaran was producing more, she’s the oldest, and they all prefer goat and sheep milk to cow milk anyway. So I couldn’t save her. She’s doomed.
    When they asked me to gather the animals for killing and put them in the barn to wait their turn, I refused. I won’t have any part in it. Thorkild looked angry at first, but then he flapped me away with his

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