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

again, even if the letter would never get farther than Jeffers’s hands. Maybe she’d just keep writing to him and Marda and Britta until this boulder in her chest rolled out and let her heart beat freely again.
    â€œDon’t move!” Astrid called out suddenly.
    Miri froze. Another snake? She did not want to hold still. She wanted to scream and flail and claw her way out of the water and far from Lesser Alva. But if Astrid said not to move, then she was not in danger of a mere toothless worm.
    Astrid was in the water off to her side. She had her knife out.
    â€œI’m going to get it,” Astrid whispered.
    â€œMiri, move slowly to shore,” Sus whispered. “
Slowly
. Astrid, a little to your left. Felissa …”
    Sus handed one pole to Felissa and backed away, taking up a position on shore so the three sisters formed a triangle.
    Miri slowly backed up, scanning for a snake. All she noticed was a log floating in the thick green water. Coming closer. And the log had eyes.
    Miri could no longer get her legs to move. She could not even manage to breathe.
    Sus’s and Felissa’s poles dangled loops of rope at one end. Miri had seen the girls use them to hook fowl by the neck. Felissa widened the loop. Astrid was coming closer, her eyes never leaving the not-log.
    â€œReady?” Astrid asked.
    â€œGo for the neck,” Sus whispered. “Remember last time. Aim true.”
    â€œStrike swiftly,” said Felissa.
    There was no warning. The beast lunged for Miri, its impossibly huge mouth open and full of long, crooked teeth. Miri screamed and scrambled back. The beast’s mouth snapped shut, just a hand’s breadth from Miri’s foot. And it would have gotten her too, if Felissa had not hooked its head and pulled up on the pole. Sus’s polehad missed. She kept trying to hook the beast from the other side.
    The beast lunged again, but Astrid sprang onto its back, driving her knife into its soft, white throat. The beast thrashed, long, thick tail whipping. Sus managed to loop its neck just before both Astrid and the animal went underwater. The pole began to slip from Sus’s hands. Miri crawled up beside Sus, grabbed on, and helped pull.
    They yanked its head out of the water. It had twisted and was upside down, thrashing, blood oozing from its neck and making blackish clouds in the green water.
    â€œAstrid!” Miri shouted.
    A hand seized the beast from the water. Another followed, still gripping a knife. Astrid pulled herself on top of the beast and stabbed again. This time the thrashing slowed.
    Astrid clambered up the bank, threw aside her knife, and took hold of Felissa’s pole.
    â€œPull!” Astrid said. “Pull!”
    And with each call, the girls pulled, inching the beast out of the water.
    It had stopped moving. The girls all fell to the ground, muddy and exhausted. The animal lay between them, longer than Miri and Sus put together, its eyes cloudy like a struck fish’s. It had dark-green, hard, and knobbyskin and four short legs with long claws. Beside its narrow, teeth-filled head and long tail, its stout body seemed tiny.
    Miri stared at teeth the length of her thumb and shivered in the muggy sunlight. She felt Sus shiver beside her. Astrid was breathing hard.
    Felissa giggled. She looked at Astrid, waggling her eyebrows, and smiled hugely. Astrid giggled too.
    And then all three girls began to laugh. Miri gazed at them. Had they lost their minds? They’d almost been killed! Felissa put her arms around her sisters’ shoulders, reaching out to put a hand on Miri’s back.
    â€œIt’s not every day something tries to eat you, huh, Miri?” said Felissa, laughing.
    Miri smiled. The relief and the smile mixed together in her, making her stomach ticklish till she laughed too.
    â€œThat was a big one,” Astrid whispered.
    â€œReally big,” said Felissa. “Bigger than the one the villagers brought in