Salem's Fury (Vengeance Trilogy Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

wrong me,” I say, noticing her cheeks glisten in the firelight. “And him also to speak so.”
    My sister shakes her head and busies herself with tying another leather strip ‘round the bundle of pelts in her lap. Her fingers work deftly, far more skillful than mine at such tasks.
    “My husband is a good man, and true, but even the best of men crave youth and beauty. And I—” Sarah’s voice flutters. “I grow older, Becca. My womb barren, no matter the prayers I offer God to heal me.”
    She sets the finished bundle aside and folds her hands in her lap while I struggle to think of what words to say.
    “I-I give my husband no sons,” she says. “Not even a daughter with a wild spirit to match his own. Why should he not turn from me when one such as you shares our hut?”
    “Sarah—”
    “You have ever been the more beautiful sister.” Sarah looks at me, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Must you be the wilder also?”
    I rise, thinking I might go to her and offer some little comfort.
    The earth spins beneath me.
    My head swoons from the hunger pains I have endured the past week in preparation for the dream fast. My stomach grumbles in warning that my vision comes soon.
    The moment passes, and I abandon my own bundle to cross the distance between us. I hold Sarah in my arms, embracing my sister with a tenderness not shown between the pair of us in many a year.
    Her body shakes, trembles as she clutches me closer.
    “I have naught, Becca…naught to offer my husband but grief,” Sarah says, her voice a whimper. “A darkness lives within me ever since the night I slew Hecate, I swear it on my soul. Th-The Devil’s daughter laid a curse upon me that God will not lift.”
    I know not how to ease my sister’s mind, for the god she speaks of is but another foreign memory to me. A relic from the life before, like the father she recalls and I do not. Indeed, as a river divides one bank from the other, Sarah’s mention of her god reminds me time serves only to further the distance betwixt us.
    No small part of me wonders if the rift will ever be healed.
    “The white man’s devil has no power here.” I stroke Sarah’s hair. “Creek Jumper would fend away such an evil spirit with his magic. Just as he warded off the sickness in your legs once.”
    I regret my words the moment I speak them.
    My sister collapses into another fit of tears. “Your shaman has no power, Becca.”
    “He does,” I say. “I have seen it. With you and—”
    “Then why can I not stand of my own power?” Sarah asks. “What cruel sorcery is this that I may walk one day and not the next? No…no man, or shaman, can heal me. This curse is the Devil’s work, sister. Only God can heal me.”
    I keep my silence this time, though knowing well the reason Creek Jumper’s medicine does not keep. The old ones say my sister has not renounced the white man’s ways. They believe Sarah, like Bishop and George, will always cling to the life our family led in the time before.
    Not like me.
    Not like Father.
    “But I fear, sister,” says Sarah. “I fear He brought this torment upon me for my sins. M-my legs grow weaker each passing season. I think it be God’s intent for me to slither on my belly the rest of my days…my punishment for murdering Hecate.”
    “No.” I pull away, staring into Sarah’s tear-stained eyes that she might understand I speak true. “You saved many that night, and if your god would punish such an act, mayhap you follow the wrong spirit.”
    I point to my sister’s bed of furs, toward her Bible and the bundle she keeps hidden away—the journal of Thomas Putnam, given her by Hecate. The same book Father insisted I read over and again until I could recite the names and histories of all who would mean us harm.
    “If you believe Putnam’s words, you know the evil done Abigail Williams in her youth tortured her the rest of her days and drove her to become Hecate. Fath—” I stop myself for fear of angering Sarah