Mountain Echoes (The Walker Papers) Read Online Free Page A

that was not the answer she’d been looking for. She’d wanted me to say I never took him up in the mountains myself. I supposed I could have, but that would have been a lie, and no doubt would only make things worse at some point. She said “Anyway” a little too loudly, and went back to climbing. “Anyway, this is the long way around to where the mountain is crying—” She broke off again and shot me another glare.
    This time I stopped, scowling the short distance up at her. “Sara, there’s almost nothing you can say that’s so weird I’m going to flip out. Les already told me about the hollers, er, hollering—”
    “Can you hear them?”
    “I’m not listening.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    I tipped my chin back and looked at the pale blue sky as if it could give me patience. “It means I’m not listening. I’m not using any power right now. I like to get the lay of the land through normal means first if I can, but moreontan, but important, if the earth is screaming loudly enough that half the Qualla can hear it, then it’s probably going to knock me on my ass when I turn the Sight on, and I’d rather be sitting down, not climbing a mountain, when that happens. Okay?”
    “Oh. Okay.” Sara waited another moment, still frowning at me, then shrugged and kept climbing. After a minute she crested a small ridge and waited for me there. I popped up beside her a few seconds later and exhaled sharply.
    A scar across the mountainside drew my eye first, earth that hadn’t yet healed from the centuries-old tobacco farm that had been there. The broad-leafed plants were no longer part of the landscape, done out of business by bigger farms or given up on by families who’d lost too many members to the variety of diseases smoking offered. Mostly big business, though: even my grandfather, who had died of lung cancer, hadn’t given up his tobacco farm until it cost him more to run than it profited.
    Surrounding that scarred earth, though, bluegrass and new leaves shimmered over hills so old they’d forgotten what it was like to have rough edges. A stream cut through the holler’s floor, feeding more life than the eye could see. Insects and birdsong hummed through air soft enough to touch, soft enough to wrap myself in and settle down where I belonged. I put my hands over my mouth, tears pricking my eyes. Sara, in mystified horror, said, “God, you really can cry.”
    “It’s been a long time since I’ve been home.” I pressed my lips together behind the tent of my fingers and tried to find somewhere safe to look. There wasn’t really anywhere, not with Sara to one side and the silent valley before me, but the tightness in my throat faded and after a while I cleared it. “The whole never-let-’em-see-you-bleed thing sort of went to hell when this all started up.”
    “‘This’?”
    “The shaman thing.” As soon as I said it, I remembered Sara had a starkly different recollection of our childhood interests than I did, and she verified that with a peculiar look and a comment. “You were into that when we were teens, Joanne.”
    “Not after Lucas. I shut it all down. It came back about fifteen, sixteen months ago, and I swear to God every little thing makes me sniffly now. You’d think I was making up for lost time.”
    “Maybe you are.” Sara, as uncomfortable with my sudden emotional confessions as I was, waved at the valley. “Come on. We cut through here and the next holler is where the elders are waiting.”
    I slipped down the hill behind her, trying not to catch my coat on branches. “Is that were Lucas and Dad went missing from? I mean, last place they were seen?”
    “You could say that.”
    I squinted at her shoulders. “You’re being cryptic. So was Les.”
    “Joanne, just shut up and come on. You’ll see why in a few minutes.”
    I mumbled dire imprecations, but followed along, eating three of the chocolate bars I’d stored in my coat pockets. An apple, too, a local breed so I