Stony River Read Online Free PDF

a vast wilderness, with even the insignificant town of Cragmont an overlong distance away.
    But even more disturbing than her surroundings was the sense that she was alone—alone even here, where she’d hoped to find some semblance of family and home. In the twilight, in a house where she did not think she was welcome, she lay on the thin, hard bed revisiting all the comforts she had known and taken completely for granted in Toronto—including most of all the happy ignorance that Fenn would rather not trouble himself for his sister.
    But background to those thoughts ran the undertone of the river, winding through the valley with indistinct strains of mysterious music. And the longer she lay there, the more she began to listen to it—finding in the weaving of its distant notes something vaguely familiar, as a song she had known long ago but for some reason had forgotten. And it was that elusive, phantom melody of things half-remembered, filtering through the ancient mossy tree branches hedging the house, that finally lulled her disquiet heart to sleep.

CHAPTER 3
     
    Sevana woke in the gray half-light to the sound of heavy steps on the floorboards below, and the smell of coffee. Even though she wasn’t fully awake, she got up at once and dressed in a twill shirt and pair of jeans pulled blindly from the trunk. Then, hiking boots in hand, she ran barefoot down the stairs. Her haste was rewarded by the sight of Fenn shaving in a broken piece of mirror propped on the warming shelf. Pancakes bubbled on a hot griddle, and a stack of cooked ones sat ready on a plate. “You really do get up at the crack of dawn,” she said, impressed, ready to start over with him that new day. She sat down to tug on her socks and boots.
    “What are you doing up?” Fenn demanded, putting down the razor to splash water on his face. He was dressed as yesterday, in trousers cut off at his boot tops and a white short-sleeved jersey, his suspenders threaded with a leather saw-guard over his right shoulder.
    “I wanted to get up when you did.” She couldn’t explain the necessity she felt for his company before facing the day alone. “I can help you with something.”
    “Don’t need any help.” He dished up the last batch of pancakes and took the heaping plate to the table.
    Sevana found a small dented tin on a back shelf to claim for a washpan, and splashed her own face with water, not taking time to heat the basin on the stove as Fenn had. Then she took his place before the inconveniently undersized mirror. Lacking her usual styling tools, she began corralling her tangled length of hair into a French braid. “We look sort of alike, don’t you think, Fenn?” she inquired, peering at her shadowy reflection that showed serious, expressive eyes, lips with pleasing angles that defied some of that same seriousness, and fair skin glowing a sunrise hue from the cold water. “I mean, the same color of hair and eyes, and all. You can tell we’re related, can’t you?”
    “Lots of people have light hair and blue eyes.” Fenn was not unduly sentimental over his morning hotcakes.
    “Maybe it’s a good thing we have this summer together,” she put forth, to see if she could get him to agree. “What with school and everything, we’ve never had much time to get to know each other. And it seems if we’re brother and sister, we should be friends, doesn’t it, Fenn?”
    “I can do without friends,” he growled, with more gruffness than merited for the innocent observation.
    Securing her braid, she surveyed the finished effect and decided it would do. It wasn’t what she was used to, not any of it, but she would find ways— invent ways, if she had to—to survive until she got back to civilization. She poured a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove and took it to the table, thinking the stiff new boots were going to require some breaking in. “Is it safe to go walking around here?” she wanted to know.
    “Long as you’re not under a