Ghostly Snow by Lena Mae Hill

Author:Lena Mae Hill [Hill, Lena Mae]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Speak Now
Published: 2017-12-04T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

With a scream, I charge back towards Dad. But the heat stops me short of reaching the branch. “Dad,” I scream, but I know he’s gone. Something inside me feels it, like a slice of my heart is cleaved from the whole.

I scream again, but heat blisters my skin when I try to reach out. Tears streaming down my face, I turn and race into the clearing at the front of Harmon’s lodge. I tell one of the firefighters, who must think I’m crazy as I hysterically explain, amid tears and wild gesturing, where my father is. When he goes to investigate, I join the wolves.

“Where’s Harmon?” I ask, grabbing the first person I see, my sisters’ friend Xiu. Her face is bright red and shiny with sweat, her black hair sticking to her cheeks.

“He went up the mountain,” she says. “When it started. He took off that way.”

She nods towards the flaming mountain as someone supplies her with a bucket, which she sloshes onto his porch.

I stumble back, my heart in my throat. I can’t lose him and my father on the same day. It’s too much to bear. Especially since I know why Harmon took off up the mountain—for me. Choking on sobs, I turn and plow into the woods again. I skirt around the fire, staying far enough away that I won’t meet the same fate at my father, but close enough to the edge to know that I’m going in the right direction. As I scramble up the mountain, slipping on wet leaves, choking on smoke, I pray for my father, and for Harmon, and all the rest of the wolves. And I swear that the next time I see that bitch who took away my shifting and made me into the slowest creature on earth, I will rip out her heart.

I keep cursing myself as I trudge uphill. Why didn’t I stop and put out the fire when it started? My mother didn’t, either. She was probably happy to watch Doralice burn. But where is she now? Was she down at the fire, helping save the lodge? Or did I lose her, too?

To my surprise, the thought makes my stomach knot and my tears start again. Yes, she was horrible. But she was still my mother. There was so much I still wanted to know. Who knows, over the next twenty or forty years, how much they could have told me. Things I’ll never know, lost forever.

And it’s not just what he knew. It’s who he was. Yes, he was selfish and gluttonous, irresponsible and defensive. But he was my father. He gave up being a king for me. He took me away from this violent life and gave me a normal life, with curfews, movies with friends, and cotton candy at the fair. He took me to school to meet my teachers at open-house, took me to the doctor when I got sick, took me on father-daughter dates to get root beer floats at old-fashioned soda fountains.

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