Echo Mountain

by Lauren Wolk

I felt strong and able, too. A mountain girl. Smart. Quick. On my way to wise.

could feel his loneliness as if it were mine. And, in that moment, my own loneliness doubled . . . and then receded down to less than what it had been.

Which was when I learned that loneliness shared is loneliness halved.

You’re my carver! You’re the one who made the beautiful bee that’s in my pocket right now! Right this minute! You’re the one who’s been watching me all this time!

Why had he not just come straight up to me, this lonely boy who could make a knife sing?

“There’s more than one way down a mountain, or up one, for that matter. More than one way across a river. More than one road into town. And more than one town, too.”

“Would you want to traipse down a slope you used to know, tree by tree, brook by brook, that’s someone else’s now?”

Larkin nodded. Almost bowed a little. If he’d had a hat, he might have doffed it. More good manners.

Honesty. Good manners and honesty. I liked those qualities in a person.

“We’ll kill something—a rabbit maybe—and wait for the flies to find it. Lay their

eggs. Wait for the eggs to hatch. It takes no time at all.”

“Why would you worry about what might not happen? The honey is good for now, and we can brew witch hazel for cleaning her. And if we need something else, we’ll try something else.”

“Star Peak,” I said to them. “That’s what this mountaintop is called now.”

Like the mountain itself, which someone else had named Echo, which was also Ellie’s Mountain. Which was also Larkin’s. Which was also Cate’s. And my father’s. And Samuel’s, too.

But I didn’t think my mother or Esther would want their names on any part of this mountain. And it made me sick and sad to think so.

I tried to say something else, but all that came out was a croak. More bird than frog, but animal regardless. A puny animal. One that was used to feeling small.

There aren’t many hurts that a sky-meadow full of clean white blossoms can’t make at least a little better.

But as I stood there watching her, I realized that I wasn’t just afraid. I was . . . shocked. By how dark she was. How bitter. Like something scorched.

What I wanted now was to know him. Even if I already did. And for him to know me.

And I stood there on the path, ringing hard and loud with the feel of his face lingering on my hand, along with something more about loneliness and a sore heart and what a cabin feels like when the snow drifts so high around it that daylight is as thin and pale as whey. And the only sound is the wind

sheering across the mountaintop. And the days are long and cold and hungry.

“You are a wonderful young man of a dog.”

Trust lay calm on his face.

We had been housebound for days, sitting in the dark, cold cabin, watching

my father sleep while the world outside wore white and blue and gold.

Cate smiled. “Aristotle said, ‘For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.’”

“Who’s Aristotle?” “A dead Greek.”

I flipped through the biggest book until I found a page about chilblains. Not much to do about them except wear gloves. I tore out the page.

My father had always told me I had a choice, when faced with a giant task that would do me good: bellyache about how long it would take or be glad it would last.

She raised one eyebrow at me. Something I would have to try myself.

I looked from one of them to the other. Both had gone quiet. The kind of quiet that hurts the ear. Something was very wrong, suddenly, and I was standing right in the middle of it.

“And my family has lived here for generations. Three years is birdsong.”

“It’s Gaelic. Her mother, my great-grandmother, came from Scotland. It means ‘Good health to you and every blessing.’ Not a spell. A blessing.”

If I had felt tangled before, I felt even more tangled now.

“You were hard to watch when you first got here.” It had been hard to be those people, so I knew it must have been hard to watch us, too.

“Yes, at first. He wanted to be a luthier, and he wanted to live with trees all around him.

I imagined his father waking the memory of wind and rain and sun and snow and starlight from wood otherwise mute.

I thought of my mother sitting by the fire, playing her mandolin, releasing all that rain and snow and sun and starlight. The thought made my bones hum.

Thoughts of my own father, my own mother, rose up like bread. “I should be getting home.”

Four mays, and only one of them good. The other three were a mountain range I did not want to climb.

“The brain’s like the world. Every part of it has a way of doing things. But

you won’t know what you know until you know it,” she said. “Your father will come back to himself slowly, and along the way you’ll find out how to help him.”

The sun was slipping down the far side of the day, and the shadows were slowly unspooling like black ribbons across the yard.

And then I got up slowly, in chapters, and quietly brushed myself off, retrieved my cap and my lantern, and went carefully down the path, stopping often, listening as hard as I could, hoping we wouldn’t meet again.

“His father was a luthier.” The new word tasted heavy and good on my tongue.

Samuel went on his silly way, chasing a rabbit toward an end to everything, toward a stillness that would never warm, never wake, never change

no matter how much we hoped and prayed it would.

that life is a matter of moments, strung together like rain. To try to touch just one drop at a time, to try to count them or order them or reckon their worth—each by each—was impossible. To stand in the rain was the thing. To be in it.

She held out a hand to me, which I took. “I’ve come to help Ellie. Who is also a hag, you know.” And I, in that moment, became an oak. A snake. A bright bird.

She turned to Larkin. “Thank you for taking such good care of me for so long.” And there, in those twelve words, I heard the beginning of some kind of goodbye.