Western Wind Read Online Free Page A

the two summer dresses she’d packed. No use for them here.
    â€œCan I wash my face and hands?” she asked.
    â€œAt the sink,” Gran answered. “There’s very good water on Pring. Some of the islands have none; that’s why they’re uninhabitable. I’ll show you the facilities after you’ve unpacked. You’ll have to take sponge baths. That’s what you had when you were a baby. In fact, I gave you a few of those myself. You can heat water on the stove when you need it.”
    Elizabeth unzipped her bag. When she looked up, Gran was gone. She walked to one of two small windows so close to the floor she had to stoop to see out. The mainland seemed much farther away than her sense of the distance she and Gran had traveled in the little boat.
    Below, she saw the clamshell path leading to the dock, alongside of which the boat rocked gently. The waters of the bay were as purple now as a Concord grape. The tide had risen and covered the small point of land that made one arm of the cove.
    With some difficulty, Elizabeth pushed up the creaking window and stuck her head outside. The air was pungent with the smell of pine and salt. Across the sky to the west, she saw streaks of red as thin as paper cuts. A gull shrieked. She watched it swoop to the dock, where it cradled itself in its wings and became as still as stone. There was such silence! She couldn’t hear Gran below. Water and sky seemed one joined, immense thing in which she floated, a speck.
    There was a thud, a loud meow, and she turned to see Grace standing on the red and blue quilt, switching her tail and looking at her.
    Elizabeth sighed, stroked the cat a minute, and began to put away her clothes. On the bedside table, she put two novels from her school’s summer reading list, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Old Man and the Sea, neither of which she had yet glanced at. How could she have read in a house where everybody was waiting for a baby to wake up, or else running around like crazed mice when he did?
    She took the towel from the chair and her toothbrush and went down the stairs.
    Gran was peering into the upper part of the icebox. “It’s a good thing Jake’s coming day after tomorrow. The ice is nearly gone,” she said. “It only lasts about five days. I hope you like spaghetti. I’ve made tomato sauce. And I picked blueberries this morning before I went to Bangor. You’ll be sick of blueberries before you leave Pring. Put your toothbrush in the glass next to the pump. I’ll show you the outhouse.”
    Elizabeth followed Gran to the back of the cottage and up the rise. There, in a fragrant thicket of young spruce, stood a small outhouse, entirely open on the side that faced the bay. Leaves of thick ivy framed it.
    â€œIt doesn’t have a door,” Elizabeth said.
    â€œA door wouldn’t make it more private out here, just stuffy,” Gran said. “I’ve seen deer close by in the early morning,” she added.
    â€œHow would a deer get here?”
    â€œSwim. I once saw one swimming. Very beautiful, holding its head well above the water, like a creature from a fairy tale. Fire can drive them out of the forests on the mainland, or hunger.”
    When they returned to the cottage, Gran talked about the Herkimers as she led Elizabeth by her hand to the large painting of the family she had noticed earlier. “There they are. The whole gang,” Gran said.
    Two older people in bathing suits looked grimly out of the painting. A girl of around fourteen stood on one leg, holding the other bent sideways with a long-fingered hand. She wore an old-fashioned party dress, bright pink and covered with bows. Kneeling in front was a little boy with large transparent ears and huge eyes as dark as coal. The woman’s right hand rested above his head, not touching it. Far in the background stood the long house and collapsed barn.
    â€œJohn and Helen Herkimer,” said