The Unnameables by Ellen Booraem Read Free Book Online Page A

we can do."
    Medford didn't get a chance to talk to Prudy alone until four days later, the first day free of Book Learning. Even Deemer knew enough not to keep an apprentice in the Archives all day. Medford was waiting for her when she left Town Hall midafternoon.
    Cordelia Weaver's cloth man still hung in the air between them. They couldn't look each other in the eye. But Medford brushed past all that. "How is it?" he asked.
    "'Tis fine. 'Twill be fine. I like teaching the young ones." He knew she was saying this as much for her own ears as his.
    "What about Deemer and reading in the Archives?"
    She pressed her lips together and started walking quickly toward home.
    "Prudy?" Medford said, keeping pace with her and trying to look into her face.
    "'Tis fine, Medford. Dull as a Mason's morning, reading all that about seeds and harvests and what's in the root cellar for winter. But Master Learned says I must earn the privilege of reading the better journals. I did read about when we got sweaters and our first motorboat."
    She stopped walking, looked at him at last. To his surprise, her eyes had brightened. "Some didn't want us to have the motorboats, see, so there was a big fight at Town Meeting. The Learneds said 'twould be the end of us, cutting the Mainland trip to one day and having to bring in the fuel and the parts and such. But more than sixty years have passed and here we be, same as ever. I said that to Master Learned."
    "And what did he say?"
    "That I should go back to my reading and not make ignorant comments." She grinned, almost like her old self.
    "So you're really going to do this? You're going to be a Learned?"
    The grin faded. "I have no choice, Medford. All I can do is make the best of it."
    They started walking again, slower now. "Will you come to us for supper?" Prudy asked, as if everything was the same as ever.
    "I'll have to ask Boyce," Medford said.
    "So do it."
    So he did.

    BY THE TIME winter blasted in from the sea they were fast friends again, although Prudy spent so much time in the Archives that they hardly saw each other. When they were together, there were the following restrictions: They avoided looking each other in the eye when alone. They did not use the words
bury
or
buried.
And they never mentioned Bog Island.
    Under Deemer's influence, Prudy started using Book Talk more often. Sometimes even Medford couldn't figure out what she was saying. Everyone put up with it until the day she came down in the morning and told Earnest, "I dost bid thee good morrow, brother." He dragged her outside and put her head under the pump. That took care of Book Talk, but only for a day or two.
    Prudy stopped chewing on her braids. (
In the sight of Others, do not gnaw on thy Nails nor the skin of thy Hands,
the Book said. Deemer said this applied to braids as well.) She never crossed her legs. (
When seated, keep thy feet Firm and Even.
) She rarely laughed (
Show not thy Mirth at any Publick Spectacle
) although she sometimes clapped her hand over her mouth, shoulders trembling. And she no longer allowed anyone to call Deemer Old Prune Face. Medford got sick of sentences that began, "Master Learned says ..."
    For his part, Medford did his best not to attract attention that winter. He grew a pigtail, only to discover that it did, in fact, tickle. So he resumed cutting his hair off with his knife. This somehow attracted even more attention than it had before he grew the pigtail. All of his classmates and most adults called him Raggedy Runyuin now.
    Except for the conversation he and Prudy had overheard between Marvin Glazer and Patience Waterman, Medford never heard one person mention Essence's banishment. Even Earnest never spoke her name in public, although Prudy said he'd tried to get Twig to find out why she was gone. "Pa said we'll find out soon enough," Prudy reported. "Earnest isn't speaking to Pa much just now."
    In February a blizzard dumped four feet of snow on Island in just over a day. To Medford's