Swamp by Kathleen Duey & Karen A. Bale

Author:Kathleen Duey & Karen A. Bale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

Lily could not sleep. She lay still with her eyes closed, but her thoughts were churning. Papa and Maman had not said another word about the Courville brothers. Papa had done all he would when he had offered Mr. Thomas his help.

“And what do I expect him to do?” Lily whispered to herself in the dark. “Order a plantation boss to let him help search?”

Lily heard Marie shift on her cot, making the dreamy little sleep-sound Lily was so familiar with, but she did not awaken. Rose Eva did not stir either. Once she had begun sleeping through the night as a baby, she had become the deepest dreamer in the family. Nothing woke her, not even thunder.

Lily sighed and sat up on her cot and held very still, listening to her sisters’ soft breathing. Paul’s mother would be frantic. Lily tried to imagine how Maman would feel if Augustin and Pierre were lost. She tried to imagine how she would feel.

Without really meaning to, Lily swung her feet to the cool plank floor. She stood up slowly, afraid to admit to herself what she was doing. Even when she pulled her chemise and dress from the hooks beside the door, she was telling herself that she only meant to go outside for a while, to walk the gallerie until she was tired enough to sleep.

Lily eased open her bedroom door. The leather hinges made no sound at all. Her bare feet were equally silent on the planked floor. There was a little glow still in the hearth to light her way, and her parents’ door was closed tightly. She tiptoed past it.

Lily spooned pieces of fish from the gumbo into a clean cloth. Then she wrapped what remained of the evening’s corn bread. She took a piece of salt pork and some rice, too, and she placed everything in her mother’s oldest flour sack.

She took down a shawl from the clothes hooks by the hearth, and thought about taking her shoes. But it was not likely she would end up inside the Courvilles’ house, and in the swamp, shoes were only in the way.

Lily got one of her father’s waterskins and filled it from the kitchen bucket. Then she quietly opened the cypress box that held the knives. Picking out her skinning blade, she dropped it into the sack too.

Bracing her shoulders, Lily went out the front door. There was no way to rebar it, and she hesitated on the gallerie. Then she said a prayer for her family’s safety and turned resolutely toward the landing. There was a big moon rising, and she was grateful. A dark night would have been much worse.

Lily’s pirogue seemed to be waiting patiently for her. She climbed into it, thinking about her grandfather. She often imagined he was still alive, paddling in the bow, insisting she learn to steer from the stern.

Shivering a little, Lily lowered her sack into the pirogue. Then she untied the mooring rope and climbed in. She picked up her paddle and settled herself on the bench.

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