Stony River by Ciarra Montanna Read Free Book Online Page B

been too busy with his career to have much time for anything else. Fenn and I spent a few years with him when we were young, and some of the summers, but mostly we lived at school. Fenn came out here when he graduated from military academy, and this is the first time I’ve seen him since then.”
    “I confess, for all the years Fenn’s been here, I don’t know him very well.” Joel’s voice took on a guarded tone. “Are you very close to him?”
    “I don’t know him very well myself,” she admitted, adding a tiny, pink-striped spring beauty to her fairylike bouquet. “But it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, it’s bound to take some time to get caught up.”
    “Reckon so—” and if Joel had other opinions on the matter, he did not speak them. But out of a silence he’d lapsed into, he asked, “Sevana, has your father ever been out to visit Fenn?”
    She tilted her head at him. “Out here? No, he never has.”
    “So he has no knowledge of what Fenn’s life is like?”
    “You mean—like not having electricity, and being so far from town?”
    “Well, not so much that. It’s more—well, the loggers out here are a rough bunch, and their lifestyle—” He was trying to be diplomatic, placing the blame on the whole class of loggers instead of one in particular. “It’s just not something I’d necessarily want my seventeen-year-old daughter in the middle of.” As if regretting having spoken at all, he got abruptly to his feet. “Are you thirsty?”
    After the long trek up the trail—“A little,” she admitted.
    “I should have asked you sooner,” he apologized. “I’ll fetch some water from the spring.”
    Not inclined to sit idly by when there was something new to see, Sevana followed him. Just within the trees in a shallow draw, a spring had carved out a small rocky hollow in the hillside. From this cavern, a miniature stream freefell a few handbreadths into a gravelly pool. “Here’s my running water,” Joel teased her. He unhooked a tin cup from a hemlock branch and held it under the spill. “I’m afraid it’s a community cup,” he gave fair warning as he handed it over.
    She remembered his cryptic reference to a ‘she’ at his first greeting. “Do you have a family up here?”
    “No, I live alone. I just meant it’s the cup I use, also.”
    “So, a community of two.” Sevana found herself teasing him in turn. “That’s a pretty small town. I think I’ll take my chances.” She took a reckless gulp, and instantly felt her mouth and throat ache with the excruciating cold. “That’s ice water without the ice!” she gasped. She drank the rest much more cautiously, then gave the cup back so he could have a turn.
    When they returned to the sheep, Joel opened his knapsack. “I didn’t bring any company fare for lunch, but you’re welcome to share what I have.”
    When she refused out of politeness, he insisted, saying he had plenty. So she accepted portions of his homemade brown bread and cheese and dried apple rings, and thought how good it tasted—out where food was so much more precious because it was so hard to come by, so far to get more.
    There was such a stillness when no one was talking. A wind stirred the grasses lightly, and now and then a sheep called to another, but those little sounds were swallowed by the large presence cast by the overlooking mountains. And in that silence, Sevana felt something calling to her—drawing her toward something unknown or far away. It was almost as if the mountains themselves were calling her, beckoning in some inexplicable way.
    But her reverie was forgotten as one of the sheep turned suddenly and bolted down the hill. For a minute it seemed the rest of the flock would follow, for they all stopped eating and looked after him, and some took nervous steps that direction. While Sevana was still staring in surprise, Joel had gone after the runaway with long strides. One of the lambs followed until he turned and spoke to