Water and Stone Read Online Free Page B

shun her at the hacienda, leaving in the morning before Yani got to work and apparently staying out late. Was he purposely staying away from her? Had she offended the man somehow?
    By the time Willem was four years old he spent all his time playing at the old church just a short distance from the shack where they lived... so much time in fact that she absentmindedly began calling him Church. The name stuck. That he'd ever been called anything else was forgotten by everyone, including Church.
    Though Evalena always carried a disconcerting air about her, Yani was secretly glad the girl came back again. On one hand, her sister frightened her. But then again, the girl seemed so in control of herself that it lent Yani a kind of bravado she didn't normally feel when dealing with others.
    Perhaps Evalena had been drawn to them... when asked, her sister said how the snow and the falling stars had led her to that place. At the time Yani felt thankful to have her help but her ministrations had worried and disconcerted her so badly that when Evalena ended up advising her to drown her baby—or to strangle him—she nearly sent her packing. Instead, her sister had simply vanished without a word.
    Her sister Evalena's reappearance at the chabola after six all too short years upset the balance of their lives—hers and Church's—in ways which while not entirely unforeseen were not all to Yani's likings either. Evalena's presence made her think of things she'd forced to the back of her mind long ago and had hoped would remain there.
    Evalena appeared at the height of summer. A vast network of storms had blown into the north of Texas pushed by a hurricane moving into the Gulf of Mexico... flash floods inundated the entire region with the chabola only being spared by the grace of having been built on higher ground.
    Cherry creek and its sister Manaza both grew into raging rivers in a matter of minutes as great bubbles of water began bursting forth from the dry desert floor. Winds tore at the roof of the chabola like a wolf enraged and seeking to gain entrance. At the height of the storm came a loud banging at the door.
    Yani thinking something had blown loose in the storm and might further damage the derelict shack hastened Church to what she deemed the most secure part of their home—an old cellar where she sometimes kept potatoes and onions—and tiptoed to the door as the banging sounded again, this time even louder.
    Someone might be out there... perhaps a traveler caught out in the storm and seeking shelter... or maybe something more sinister. Waves of dread washed over Yani like the torrents of rain beating angry on the tin roof as she stood at the door wondering whether to open it or just let them find another port in the storm.
    "Who is at the door, mother? Shouldn't we let them in so they can get out of the storm?"
    "Get back down to the cellar, Church!"
    She sounded more cross than she would have liked. Church was a good boy. He never gave her call to raise her voice to him and though he was only six years old the boy had been fending for himself at the chabola while she worked.
    A girl who called herself Maria Ramos had acted as a babysitter for Church during his first four years of life. Yani couldn’t afford to pay her for her work but Maria didn’t mind as long as she had a roof over her head and food for her mouth. Two years before Evalena showed up again, Maria had left the chabola to return to her home in Honduras.
    The girl told her in hushed tones how she no longer felt able to deal with the music. Yani never realized other people could hear it too. For years she thought she was the only one for whom the stone sang. To her it was not an unpleasant melody but apparently the piedra acted differently upon everyone.
    "That music keeps me up at night, Yani."
    "What music, Maria??"
    "You must hear it too, Yani. At first I thought it was coming from the creek out back."
    "When do you hear the music, Maria?"
    "It's always louder