Bell Mountain (The Bell Mountain Series) Read Online Free

nasty, pale, flabby skin; and jaws a-snappin’, looking to bite the fingers off your hand. I was so surprised, I fell right on my keister. When I got up again, it was gone.’”
    They wanted Van to haul the great fish into town for them and paid him a penny to do it. It took all five fishermen to wrestle it into the cart. They knew people would have to see it or they wouldn’t believe them. And to be sure, there was no one else in Caristun who’d ever seen a fish like that. The men were trying to sell it when Van left them to pick up the chief’s furniture.
    Jack served Van bread and sausages and an onion from their store. As he wolfed it down, he continued the story of his trip.
    At the inn where he spent the night in Caristun, the talk around the fireplace was all about unsettling news from near and far.
    “Up north, toward the River Winter, farmers have been pulling up stakes and heading south, and there aren’t many farmers up there to begin with,” Van said. “They’ve been telling all kinds of wild stories about monsters in the woods.
    “Out west, where the river gets lost in the North and South Mires before it finds the sea, people have seen lights moving around the mires by night. No one dares to traipse around there by day—too easy to get sucked down. There’s otter and muskrat trappers who go there, but they say they wouldn’t dare go out at night. They’ve been having good hauls of furs, but they don’t like some of the noises they’ve been hearing lately.”
    The general opinion of all the travelers was that the world was getting strange and scary, never mind what the presters from the Temple said.
    The worst news came from the east, from the hills and forests that lapped up against the mountains, where miners and loggers worked.
    “There’s going to be a war, that’s certain,” Van said. “A regular, all-out war with armies. The Heathen are fixing to come over the mountains by the thousands. That’s why there hasn’t been much raiding this year. They’re busy building up their strength for an invasion, so they can hit us hard. Won’t be long before the Big Bosses in Obann start making ready for it.”
    He shook his head and sighed, and drained the rest of his ale.
    “I didn’t see anything funny on the way home,” he said. “But just before I come within hailing distance of the stockade, as I was passing by that little patch of woods, I heard something. A lot of whistling, like—only it didn’t sound like birds. I’ll swear it wasn’t birds. Pour me another mug of ale, Jack. I reckon I’m lucky to be back—with the furniture I fetched for the chief, much good may it do him!”
     

CHAPTER 5
A Stuck-Up Girl and an Ignorant Boy
    On days when he didn’t have to travel out of town, Van would report to the council stables for whatever work they had for him. Any of the councilors could call on him to transport this or that, either on the cart or on his back.
    Having caught up on his chores, Jack would ordinarily have gone off to amuse himself—by the riverbank, in the meadows, with other boys or alone. It was usually alone. The other boys had fathers and mothers. They weren’t waiting for a stepfather to find a new wife, have children of his own, and get rid of an unwanted stepson. Van’s own son, once he had one, would get his cart and his job. Jack would be lucky if Van didn’t hire him out to a caravan or as a servant to a logging gang.
    He didn’t have to go beyond the stockade to see the mountain. Bell Mountain loomed in the east, mocking Jack’s dreams with its silence. He would have liked to have had the dream again last night, but it didn’t come. What would he do if it never came again?
    “When are you going?”
    Jack jumped, startled by the voice behind him. How long he’d been standing by Van’s tack shed, gazing up at the mountain, he never knew.
    He came down with his hair standing on end on the back of his neck, fists balled—and was even madder when he saw