Read Online The Forgotten Sisters by Shannon Hale - Free Book Online

opened her mouth to answer but had nothing to say.
    Astrid passed very close to Miri on her way outside and whispered, “And I’m older than you,
tutor
.”
    Miri stood alone there for some time, listening to the girls’ talk mix with the chirps of swamp sparrows, rude quacks of ducks, and singing from the village islands. A thousand conversations just out of reach.
    She pressed her foot against the linder floor and called out in quarry-speech. The memory she silently sang was of the night she’d spent trapped in a closet at the princess academy, forgotten and alone. Everyone who would be able to detect her quarry-speech was much too far away, but she kept on anyway.
    Written Autumn Week Ten
    Never received
    Dear Peder
,
    I do not know why you think well of me. I seem to remember a time when I was passably useful. On Mount Eskel I could milk the goats and make cheese. How I would love to make cheese right now! Instead of sweating in a swamp not catching fish. Or lizards or rats or turtles or ducks
.
    And definitely not teaching three girls how to be princesses
.
    I would run home to you if I could. Even knowing what it would mean to our village to own the land under us, I would abandon my duty if I had any hope of making it home. Now you surely cannot be thinking well of me
.
    Thinking well of you at least
,
    Miri
    Written Autumn Week Ten
    Never received
    For Miri my sister
,
    I hoped to get a letter from you before winter closed the pass, but the first snows have come. No chance in sending this to you now before spring. I will write anyway. It is nice to pretend you can hear me
.
    Last week, Peder and his father were arguing. The entire village could hear. Peder wanted to go back for you. His pa said Peder’s place is on Mount Eskel. Time to return to quarry work and forget Asland. And forget you too, since you were too enchanted with the lowlands to return home
.
    Peder ran out of the house. I joined him later on that huge, chair-shaped boulder that looks out over the cliff. He asked me if you would come home if you could, and I said yes
.
    I brought out the stack of letters you had written to me from Asland over the past year. He read them all. Sometimes he frowned, but mostly he smiled
.
    He said he was going to find you. I said of course. And so he packed up clothes and food in a blanket and left
.
    Surely he will find you before spring, when the traders might come to take you this letter. For now, it will sit lonely here on the mantel
.
    Your sister
,
    Marda

Chapter Eight
    The water slips, the water blinks
    The water tips its tail
    The water dips, the water sinks
    The water shows its scales
    What water unhinges its jaws?
    The most dangerous kind that was
    Miri was so tired of being damp. Her body itched with constant sweat. Her clothes got wet in the morning from splashing through water on the hunt and never really dried. Her feet were filthy, her hair was sticky and frizzed out around her face, pestering her forehead and cheeks with every breeze. She felt more like a scuttling rodent than a person.
    And she was tired. So many dreams. The redheaded twins, doing nothing, just playing, sitting, sleeping. She was annoyed with herself for not having more interesting dreams.
    Last night in addition to the twins, she had dreamsof Astrid and Felissa. They’d been younger, but she’d still known it was them in that way that dreams worked.
    â€œWho lived here before you?” Miri asked, sloshing through hip-deep water with a net.
    â€œNobody,” said Astrid.
    â€œBut the house is old.”
And full of memories
, Miri thought and wondered if it were true. Could a house’s memories infiltrate her dreams? “Did your mother say how she came to live here?”
    â€œShe said it was the best place for us,” said Felissa. “That it was safe.”
    Miri slapped a fat mosquito feasting on her arm. She looked back toward the house and considered returning to write to Peder