Lily's Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

said,
in Acorn’s direction.
     
     
     
    Some time after noon, they turned
north-west, still following the blazed trail. To the west lay the
River. Lil strained to hear its voice. The bush was awesomely
silent. The odd crow, unmated, cawed in complaint; a bear crumpled
the dry brush nearby, seeking the late berries, the crab-apple
windfalls, a sour-cherry unravaged by headlong flocks. Unobserved,
squirrels broke open the chestnut, hazel, beech, walnut, acorn. In
the pines, steadily diminishing now, chickadees tumbled out of
tune. More and more, there were large natural clearings – beaver
meadows or sandy patches where the hundred-foot oaks and pines had
given in to be replaced by clans of cherry, crab and snow-apple
which, though silent and satiate now, in the spring must have
emblazoned the bush with immaculate flame.
    Mostly, though, they heard their own
footfalls in sunny glade or pillared gloom. Sounder, impatient with
Papa’s considered pace, scooted off into the semi-dark and popped
up in front of them with a red squirrel in his hand kicking out the
last of its life.
    “ For supper,” he explained,
setting off again, guided by his own compass.
    They came not to the River but to a genuine
road, a fifteen-foot swath cut through the bush, the stumps pulled
out and smoothed over with sand. Across the myriad streams
trickling west towards the river, bridges of demi-logs had been
crudely constructed. Lil realized that a horse and cart could
travel here. No vehicle approached. They followed the road due
north until the sun began to tilt sharply to their left. It will
sink soon, right in the River, Lil thought.
    “ Are we near the water?”
she said, no longer able to keep this feeling to herself. How she
wished she were Sounder, able to dance sideways and chatter
jay-like to any tree that would listen.
    Papa increased his pace. Acorn muttered his
disapproval. After a while Sounder said quietly to Lil: “River of
Light is just through the trees there; we been following it; but no
path, even for a brave walker.”
    Lil looked longingly through the trees to
her left but saw only black irregular columns fluted by the sun
behind them. Her disappointment was interrupted by Sounder’s
exclamation.
    “ Here’s the
farms.”
     
     
     
    Never had Lil seen such an expanse of open
space unimpeded by trees. To the east of the road the bush had
been, in typical pioneer fashion, denuded of all timber, all brush.
Not even a windbreak separated one farm from another. The stumps of
the slain trees had been piled lengthwise to create makeshift
fences demarcating fields, properties, gardens, dooryards. At first
such angularity seemed alien to Lil, even painful to look at. But
the sight of cabins, several of them the largest buildings she had
ever seen, ranged neatly back from the road in neighbourly view of
one another, was overwhelming. She barely noticed that the sun was
fading quickly, the dusk rising from the newly ploughed fields
already burgeoning with fall wheat, its fern-green haze lending the
last of its light to this miraculous community.
    The others were apparently impervious to
miracles for they had moved well ahead of her and were stopped,
waiting for her, in front of the third cabin, the smoke from its
fieldstone chimney lingering and friendly in the motionless air. It
was only when Lil came up to them that she glanced away from the
farms to the west again and discovered that the bush had, for a
stretch of two or three hundred yards, been cleared all the way
down to what could only be called the River.
    “ This way,” Papa commanded
as she stood staring into the scarlet, gouged eye of the
sun.
     
     
     
    Mrs. Partridge was really very kind to her.
She bathed Lil’s blistered feet in soda water, rubbed them with
ewe’s grease, and put into her moccasins little pads of the softest
cotton in the world. “Store-bought at Cameron’s,” she said with
restrained pride, “up to Port Sarnia.” After the meal of