Ozark Trilogy 3: And Then There'll Be Fireworks Read Online Free PDF Page A

... there’s precious little left to lay a fire with , down in the towns. People are suffering, and your own sister lies near death in the Castle. How can you sit these and face us and make jokes over it all?”
    “Would it help,” Troublesome put the question, “if I moaned about it instead? Would it ease anybody’s fever, stop anybody’s bleeding, or put food in anybody’s stomach or fire on their hearth? Would it wake my sister—who is not , by the way, anywhere near death. Not as near as the seven of you, I assure you.”
    “Ah, you’re heartless,” Granny Hazelbide mourned. “Just heartless!”
    Troublesome said nothing at all, but waited and watched, and they began to smell the porridge on the stove and their stomachs knotted.
    “Well, we want you to make a journey,” said Granny Gableframe when it finally became clear that they’d get no more out of the girl. “A long and a perilous journey. And that’s why we’re here ... to ask you. Politely.”
    Troublesome stared at her, black brows knit over her nose, and gave a sharp “tchh” with her tongue.
    “A journey? Go on a trip?”
    “Yes. And a good long one.”
    She stood up and went to the stove and began passing the porridge over to them, warning them to use their shawls to hold on so they’d not burn their fingers.
    “Certainly can’t hurt the shawls, the state they’re in,” she said.
    She watched them while they ate; and seeing that they were truly hungry, she didn’t bother them, but busied herself pouring more tea and serving more porridge until it seemed to her that everybody was at last satisfied and she could gather up the motley collection of serving things in her apron and put it all into a pan of hot soapy water.
    Whereupon she sat down, shaking her hands to dry them, and said, “No more excuses, now. You’re dry, and you’re warm, and you’re fed and watered. It’s too cold for you to be taking baths at your age, so you’ll have to stay dirty, and I’ve no remedies for your other miseries; I’ve made you as comfortable as I’m capable of. Now I’ll have you tell me about this journey, thank you kindly.”
    “We want you to go to Castle Wommack,” said Granny Hazelbide, and Troublesome almost fell off her makeshift stool in astonishment.
    “To Kintucky? Granny, you’ve lost your mind entirely! However would I get to Castle Wommack?”
    “On a ship.”
    “Granny Hazelbide, there’s no ship goes to Kintucky any more, and no supplies to last the journey if there were. You’ve been nibbling something best left on its stem, I say.”
    “We have a ship,” said Hazelbide, putting one stubborn word after another, “and a crew—not much of a crew, but it’ll serve in this instance—and supplies enough to get all of you to Kintucky and back. Including the Mule you’ll be taking along to get you from the coast to the Castle.”
    “Dozens!” said Troublesome. “I’d of said that was impossible.”
    “It wasn’t cheap.”
    “It took all we had,” put in Granny Whiffletree, “and all that the Grannys had on Oklahomah, and a contribution or two—not necessarily voluntary, if you take my meaning—from a few useless Magicians and Magicians of Rank. But we did it.”
    “Bribed the ship captain, did you? And bribed the crew?”
    “That we did.”
    “And you think they’ll stay bribed!”
    “We do. The captain’s a Brightwater, and all but one of the crew as well. And that one’s a McDaniels. They’ll stay bribed.”
    “Supposing,” hazarded Troublesome, leaning forward, “that I was such a lunatic as to go gallivanting off to Kintucky in the middle of the autumn ... just suppose that, which I’m not ... what precisely is my goal, other than to drown myself and the captain and the crew and that poor Mule?”
    They told her, and they watched her face go thoughtful, and Granny Gableframe pinched the next Granny down on the bench, gently; they knew then that they had her.
    “I agree,” said Troublesome