Read Online Effigy by Alissa York - Free Book Online Page A

did as he was told, but he handled the bags as though they were a pair of lungs still breathing. After that he helped the Tracker cover the twins with dirt and gathered brushto build a fire on the spot—thereby throwing animals off the scent and hiding any change in the earth. The whole time dropping things, stumbling over his own two feet.
    Since then any outing that included Lal commenced and ended with the wheel-cut trail they follow now, known hereabouts as the Hammer Track. Ink knows the road and wants to run it. After a mile or so Erastus lets her.
    “Hold up,” Lal cries, already falling behind.

    Dorrie’s rhythm is all off. It’s mid-afternoon and she ought to be sleeping—or if not sleeping, then working on the wolves. Instead, she paces from the small window at the back of her barn to the smaller one beside the door. The back view sprawls southwest down the greening valley. The front looks northeast into the circle of yard. On perhaps the twentieth pass, she halts to watch Sister Ruth exit the main house and cross to her stunted trees.
    The swelling under Ruth’s apron troubles Dorrie. How will the second wife carry on with her work next year? Can she possibly pick leaves and bear them to her worms with a baby dragging at her breast? True, she can look forward to Mother Hammer taking over once the thing is weaned, but by then she will have lost an entire season.
    Babies are a deal of trouble, but at least they can be laid down and left to cry. Ruth’s older children are dutiful—Mother Hammer has made them so—but they still require tending. Someone must feed and wash them, teach them to be virtuous, to warble out songs, to read. Endless trouble. Endless need.
    Once, in the dead of Dorrie’s first winter on the ranch, the eldest daughter made the mistake of bringing that need to her.Hammer had dropped off a frost-stiffened snowshoe hare only an hour before. Dorrie was just getting to work on the thing when she felt a sudden blast of cold and looked up to find Josephine standing mutely in the crack of the door. The stove threw its heat her way. Stupid child, holding a door ajar in January. Telling her to close it would be risky, though. She might take it as an invitation to step inside.
    Dorrie crossed her arms. “Mother Hammer doesn’t like you being here.”
    The girl didn’t budge.
    “It’s dangerous.”
    Still nothing. Josephine stood shivering, snow sifting in around her, dusting the raw wood floor. Her eyes wide and wary, she took in the hare, the knives in their neat array. What harm if she did come in and warm her small hands by the stove? None, except that Dorrie had come over all gooseflesh. From the wind, yes, but only in part.
    It was something about the girl’s size—perfectly normal for the six- or seven-year-old she was then. Dorrie had worked on smaller specimens, creatures whose translucent ribs would seem mere filaments alongside the finger bones Josephine harboured in her mittened fist. Still, the child’s body seemed insufficient, vulnerable in the extreme.
    A nauseous ache took hold of Dorrie by the shoulders. She reached for the hare and held it out at arm’s length.
    “Run away, little girl,” she squeaked, bobbing the rigid ears. But her stepdaughter was already long gone.

    There’s a dream Ruth has—not often, perhaps once a month. Save the past four. Save any she’s passed while in the family way.It will return, she tells herself. Once I am delivered of my burden, it will return.
    Lying atop the covers, she cups a hand to the rise of her condition. Still months to go and already the thing is stoking her blood to blazing, weighting her steps, making a dull sponge of her brain. She shifts onto her side, her temple seeking a fresh spot on the pillow. How is she meant to rest? More to the point, how is she meant to work?
    She’s seen through five whole seasons, egg to moth, but never while carrying a child. Sister Thankful gave her those good years, arriving when Ruth