Lake in the Clouds by Sara Donati Read Free Book Online Page A

her shoulders and mounted her horse as nimbly as a twenty-year-old.
    “It will set folks to talking if I go straight up the mountain, and that’s the last thing we need right now. Let’s hope young Liam don’t follow her trail to Lake in the Clouds. As soon as Mariah has delivered her child and I’ve checked on Kitty, I’ll be by.”
    Galileo handed her the reins and patted her knee thoughtfully. “You ain’t had a full night’s sleep in two days, wife.”
    She smiled down at him, a fierce kind of smile. “I’ll get there as soon as I may. In the meantime you all keep an eye on Liam Kirby until I have a chance to talk to the boy and set him straight.”

    Hannah Bonner’s Day Book
    A PRIL 12, 1802. E VENING .
    Warm and clear. First bees among the nimble weed. Black phoebes are come early this year.
    Yesterday evening Elizabeth and I were called to Kitty Todd in travail and this morning at 4 of the clock she was delivered of a stillborn daughter. The afterbirth came cleanly. Curiosity’s good ointment and a bath of tansy, mugwort, chamomile, and hyssop gave the poor mother some relief.
    Last night my aunt Many-Doves dreamed of bears in the strawberry fields.
    Miss Selah Voyager has come to stay and brought a fever with her. A quickened pulse and rattling low in both lungs. She coughs but brings forth nothing. Her urine cloudy. Gave her an infusion of willow bark and meadowsweet for fever and an onion-and-camphor poultice to loosen the corruption in her chest. Dressed a wound on her leg with slippery elm. Her child moves cleverly but shows no signs of being ready to come into the world. I believe she will recover, if I can keep her quiet long enough and if the bounty hunters she fears can be kept at bay.

Chapter 3
    Lily Bonner’s father and grandfather went down to the village without her and so she devised a plan: this afternoon while all the women were wound up in the new troubles and the boys were busy trying to distract cousin Ethan from his sorrow, she would slip away to the lake and reappear in the evening with enough smelt to feed everybody. A supper of smelt fried in cornmeal would please her mother, impress her father, and best of all, irritate her brother.
    It did not take long to find a piece of fishing net the right size, but Lily had to climb up on a barrel to get the canvas bucket down from its hook on the barn wall. She was finely built and small for her age—shorter even than her cousin Kateri who was a year younger. But she was quick and she managed on her own.
    If it weren’t for the fact that Hannah was sitting on the porch with her daybook in her lap, Lily would have slipped away right then.
    But her sister had that look that came over her when somebody was sicker than she thought they ought to be, as if it were an insult to her personally. It was a look she had a lot, even when she meant to smile, as she did now.
    “Little sister, are you going to tote that bucket all by yourself once it’s full?”
    Hannah’s voice carried like the breeze off the waterfalls, and sent a shiver right up Lily’s back. It made her jump to haveher mind read so easily. Sometimes it felt as if her forehead were made of window glass and every thought there was as plain as the words on a page.
    She dragged the bucket over to the porch, and sat down on the step. “I’m strong as any boy.”
    “Stronger,” said Hannah.
    Lily sniffed. “The smelt are running, and everybody but me’s too busy to notice.”
    “Where are the boys?”
    “They went with Ethan to the fort.”
    “Hmmm.” Hannah fanned herself with the blotter. “Maybe Grandfather will go with you to the lake when he comes back from the village.” Her sister was reading her mind again, but this time Lily did not mind so much.
    She shifted so she could see into the daybook resting across her sister’s knees. Hannah often drew pictures to go along with her notes, but this page was filled only with her neat handwriting. Lily studied the page for