The Hollow Tree by Janet Lunn Read Free Book Online Page B

travelled any farther than Orland Village from Hanover since she’d gone there to live at the age of nine. She had listened, though, because she loved him, to Gideon’s long-winded lectures on woodland life and to her father’s Mohawk students when they talked of home in the Mohawk River valley, in New York, because they spoke of it so glowingly.
    But now, faced with a journey she had come to see might take weeks through dark, wild landfull of dangerous animals, she wished desperately that she was an experienced hunter and that she had paid strict attention to Gideon’s every word about forest plants. And winter was not far off.
    She tripped over the protruding root of a big tree that grew beside a pool glinting in the moonlight, in a depression halfway up a steep hill. To her dismay, she realized Trout Brook went no farther. She had barely begun her journey and she had reached the end of the brook. She heard again in her tired mind Gideon’s voice. “I mean to follow it one day all the way to Lake Champlain.” And then he had laughed. She hadn’t paid attention to that laugh. Gideon had known Trout Brook would never lead all the way over the high mountains to Lake Champlain — of course, he had. How stupid she felt! Her feet were wet, and she was shivering inside her cloak, despite its warm fur lining. She felt as though she had been running, crawling, stumbling along and into Trout Brook for ever. Once or twice she had lost it because the little light the crescent moon shed did not reach far into the deep woods. Then her ear would pick up the bubbling sound of it as it tumbled over rocks or her foot would slip into it. And now she had come to the end of it.
    She dropped beside the pool. “Oh, Father in heaven,” she moaned, “I will surely perish outhere in the wild, of cold or hunger or because a wolf or a catamount will take me.”
    There was a sudden rustling in the leaves under a tall bush about a foot from her. She sat up. The hair stood up on the back of her neck. The rustling grew louder. The head of a large house cat emerged from the bush. Phoebe stared at it, weak with relief.
    “George?”
    His eyes were two glowing coals in the dark. He did not move, but Phoebe knew by the way he thrust his head forward so belligerently that it was George.
    “What are you doing here, George?” She reached for him. He darted up a tree, perched himself on a branch just out of reach, and turned his back to her.
    “Stay there, then. I am much too tired to even try to fetch you down.” She lay down, rolled her shawl up and put it under her head, pulled her cloak over her, and fell asleep with the soft gurgling sound of the brook in her ear.
    She woke, hours later, to see an arrow of sunlight strike a patch of leaves on the ground in front of her. On that bright patch a chipmunk stood on its hind legs, rigid with fear. George crouched, inches away, ready to pounce. Phoebe shot out her hand and grabbed the chipmunk. George’s tail lashed angrily. For a second he looked as though he might lunge at her. Then hestalked off. She stroked the chipmunk with her finger along its black stripe. “I think you will do nicely now,” she murmured. She lifted her hand. The chipmunk scooted from her lap, leapt onto a nearby log, chittered rapidly at her, then disappeared under the log.
    Phoebe got up stiffly. She found a place to pee. She washed her hands and face in the pool, then cupped her hands and drank deeply from the icy water. She shook out her cloak and shawl and put them around her, looking down rue-fully at a rent in her skirt. She sat down and took off her wet stockings and her moccasins. She was glad she had thought to exchange her shoes for the moccasins. “Better in the woods — they make you more sure-footed and make less noise,” Gideon had said approvingly when Peter Sauk brought them to her in thanks for so many dinners.
    Dinner. Phoebe did not want to think about dinner. She realized, as she hung her stockings