A Northern Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

Weaver Smith," Minnie scolded. "Look what you did. You should say you're sorry."
    "I'm not sorry. It's true."
    "Lots of things are true. Doesn't mean you can go round saying them," Minnie said.
    There was a silence between us then, with nothing to break it for quite some time but the
plink plink plink
of fiddleheads dropping in our pails.
    A few months back, Weaver did something—something he says he did
for
me, but I say he did
to
me. He took my composition book—which I had tossed across the train tracks and into the woods—and he gave it to Miss Wilcox.
    This composition book was where I wrote my stories and poems. I'd only shown them to three people: my mamma, Minnie, and Weaver. Mamma said they made her cry, and Minnie said they were awfully good. Weaver said they were better than good and told me I should show them to Miss Parrish, our teacher before Miss Wilcox came. He said she would know what to do with them. Maybe send them to a magazine.
    I didn't want to, but he kept badgering, so I finally did. I don't know what I was hoping for. Some small praise, I guess. A bit of encouragement. I didn't get it. Miss Parrish took me aside one day after school let out. She said she'd read my stories and found them morbid and dispiriting. She said literature was meant to uplift the heart and that a young woman such as myself ought to turn her mind to topics more cheerful and inspiring than lonely hermits and dead children.
    "Look around yourself, Mathilda," she said. "At the trees and the lakes and the mountains. At the magnificence of nature. It should inspire joy and awe. Reverence. Respect. Beautiful thoughts and fine words."
    I had looked around. I'd seen all the things she'd spoken of and more besides. I'd seen a bear cub lift its face to the drenching spring rains. And the silver moon of winter, so high and blinding. I'd seen the crimson glory of a stand of sugar maples in autumn and the unspeakable stillness of a mountain lake at dawn. I'd seen them and loved them. But I'd also seen the dark of things. The starved carcasses of winter deer. The driving fury of a blizzard wind. And the gloom that broods under the pines always. Even on the brightest of days.
    "I don't mean to discourage you, dear," she'd added. "Why don't you try to find a new subject? Something a little less unsavory. How about spring? There's so much you could write about spring. Like the new green leaves. Or the pretty violets. Or the return of robin redbreast."
    I didn't answer her. I just took my composition book and left, tears of shame scalding my eyes. Weaver was waiting for me outside of the schoolhouse. He asked me what Miss Parrish had said, but I wouldn't tell him. I waited until we were a mile out of town, then I pitched my composition book into the woods. He ran right after it. I told him he had no business with it. I wanted it gone. But he said since I'd thrown it away it wasn't mine anymore. It was his and he could do as he liked with it.
    Being the malignant weasel that he is, he kept hold of it and he waited. And then Miss Parrish's mother took ill and she left to go to Boonville and nurse her, and the school trustees got Miss Wilcox, who was renting the old Foster camp in Inlet, to take her place. And Weaver gave Miss Wilcox my composition book without even telling me. And she read my stories and told me I had a gift.
    "A true gift, Mattie," she'd said. "A rare one."
    And ever since, because of the two of them, Weaver and Miss Wilcox both, I am wanting things I have no business wanting, and what they call a gift seems to me more like a burden.
    "Mattie...," Weaver said, still dropping fiddleheads into his bucket.
    I did not answer him. I did not bother to straighten or look at him. I tried not to think about what he'd said.
    "Mattie, what's your word of the day?"
    I flapped a hand at him.
    "Come on, what is it?"
    "
Abecedarian,
" I said quietly.
    "What's it mean?"
    "Weaver, she don't want to talk to you. Nobody does."
    "Be quiet,