Bell Mountain (The Bell Mountain Series) Read Online Free Page A

who it was.
    “What are you doing here?” he snapped. “Who do you think you are, sneaking up on me like that!”
    It was the girl from the chamber house, the stuck-up one, the councilor’s daughter. She had her golden hair in braids. She wore a dress that was cleaner than anything Jack had ever owned and shiny new shoes.
    “What are you doing here!” he said.
    “I followed you from the chamber house yesterday. I was in the hallway, right outside the classroom, and you charged right past and never saw me.”
    “Is that so?”
    “You needn’t be snotty,” she said. “I came for my lessons, and I heard you and Ashrof talking, and you said you were going to climb Bell Mountain. Are you?”
    “What business is it of yours? I don’t even know your name.” He did know, but he was too angry to remember it.
    “It’s Ellayne. My father is Roshay Bault, the chief councilor. I know your name. It’s Jack Bucket. Silly name!”
    For two spits Jack would have knocked her down, but he knew boys didn’t hit girls—especially girls whose fathers were councilors. Van would sell him to the Heathen for a human sacrifice if he hit this girl.
    “What I do is no business of yours, Miss Busybody,” he said. “And nobody said you could come into this yard. So get lost!”
    “I will not get lost,” Ellayne said. “I won’t go until you tell me all about the mountain, and the bell, and all the rest. I heard some of it yesterday, but not all. And I wasn’t snooping. I couldn’t help hearing it.”
    “You must have mush for brains. Why should I tell you anything at all?”
    She stood as stiff as a militia captain on parade and said, “Because I really want to know! I’d tell you if you asked me. I don’t think Ashrof even wanted to hear it, but you told him.”
    Jack didn’t play with councilors’ children and didn’t know what they were like. Maybe this one was the best of the lot. But very few people can pass up an invitation to talk about themselves and their plans, and Jack wasn’t one of them.
    “Why not?” he said. He kicked an old keg that lay on the ground beside him. “Sit here.” And he sat on a piece of a log that he was saving for firewood in the winter. It gave him some pleasure to see how careful she had to be of her dress when she sat on the keg.
    “All right, then—what do you want to know?”
    “You’re really going to climb Bell Mountain? All the way up?”
    “I’m really going to do it.”
    “To ring the bell?”
    “You bet.”
    “But Ashrof said you’d never get up the mountain. It’s too dangerous. You’ll fall, or get eaten by a bear, or freeze to death.”
    Jack laughed. She really had been listening yesterday.
    “Don’t be silly,” he said. “If it was impossible to get to the top of the mountain, there wouldn’t be a bell up there.”
    “But how do you know there even is a bell?” Ellayne said. “That’s what I don’t get. Ashrof doesn’t think there’s a bell.”
    Jack’s chin tilted up a little without him knowing it.
    “Oh, there’s a bell up there, all right,” he said. “I know.”
    “How? How do you know?”
    “Because a long time before Ashrof ever told me about it, I dreamed of it. That’s how I know.”
    Ellayne asked a hundred questions, and Jack answered them. He didn’t like her, but he liked talking about the bell. The keg and the log got to be uncomfortable by and by, so he asked her into the house, and they sat at Van’s table. She darted glances all around like she’d never been in a house before. He couldn’t know that Ellayne’s house was so fine and roomy inside that Van’s place was a wonder to her. He would’ve stared just as she did, had he been inside her house—staring at walls that were painted and regularly scrubbed clean. Van’s walls were bare plaster, stained with smoke.
    They’d just about talked themselves out when Ellayne again brought up the subject of the danger.
    “Oh, I’ve already heard all about that,” Jack