Wishes Under a Starlit Sky by Lucy Knott

Author:Lucy Knott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-10-07T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The Breckenridge sky is nothing but clouds of light grey, threatening snow, so the four of us – me, Dad, Mum and Madi – are currently out in the garden at the back of the house attempting to get our very early morning task of chopping wood completed swiftly to beat the blizzard, which I’m hoping will come and go this morning so we can at least spend some of Christmas Day out on the deck breathing in the Colorado air.

‘Line it up, Mads, that’s it. Keep your eyes on that line of focus and swing,’ Dad calls out from a safe distance away from Madi and her swinging axe. I’ve got my own stump with my own small log waiting to be halved resting on top of it. I’m heeding my dad’s instructions too, with it being years since I’ve done this sort of activity, as I study my log, looking for its breaking point. I keep my eye on the small crack in the wood, raise my axe into the air and bring it down with all my might. The log splits in two and I automatically jump up and down in the air, feeling incredibly proud of myself. My mum is busying herself collecting more logs but pauses to clap at my achievement. I look over to my dad and he is grinning proudly from ear to ear.

I stop jumping when I notice Madi with her tongue sticking out, her eyebrows scrunched up, staring fiercely at the log before her. I don’t want to distract her. Memories come flooding back of the one time Madi helped me release some teenage angst when my mum was out at the shop. I grimace. It was rare for my parents to get angry, but that day my mum had been fuming when she arrived home to find me with my head wrapped up in a bandage that had been white to start with but quickly turned crimson the moment Madi had put it to the two-inch slice on my forehead.

It had been my fault. I had been teaching Madi how to hold the axe and where to place her weight, when I’d got too close. The axe was a touch too heavy and when I thought she was going to lift it up over her head and take her swing, she instead dipped it back slightly to regain her grip, catching me right above my eye. Why I thought it a good idea to stand behind her, I will never know. I was young and dumb in that instance. It had taken weeks of grovelling for my parents to forgive me and let me anywhere near their workshop again.

My dad catches me looking over at them and winks at me as he takes another step back. I smile. Madi swings her axe with a Wonder Woman roar, which makes me chuckle. She too cracks the wood in half. ‘Did you see that? I did it. Whoa, that felt good,’ she says, stretching her arms above her head as much as her pink ski jacket will allow.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.