Storm Read Online Free PDF

you kiss me, Sebah? Will you be my wife?”
    “You need my father’s permission.” If my father’s still alive. If anyone’s still alive. I haven’t let myself think like this—it hurts so bad. My family! I pound my fists on Aban’s chest. “Ask him!”
    Aban catches my fists tight in his hands. He breathes heavy. His face is as sincere as any face I’ve ever seen. “I am asking him, Sebah. Inside my head. I am asking respectfully. And when I see him next . . .” He puts his own face in mine, as close as it can get without touching. “When I see him, I’ll ask outright.” His head stands just slightly above mine, so that now he’s blocking the rain from my face and I feel the air move on my lips fromthe movement of his lips. It is a small thing, but it feels good. It feels very good. This boy is alive and life feels rare now—rare and wonderful. “It’s the best I can do, Sebah. You know that. Do your best, in response. Answer for him. Please.”
    “I can’t.”
    He looks so sad.
    I put my hand on his cheek. “But I can answer for myself.”

CHAPTER FOUR
Days 16–18
    T here must be a fire somewhere. The air tells me that.
    I crawl out the branch from the crook Aban and I share and unfold myself. My body is creaky, as though I’ve aged decades. But my footing is secure. We’ve been in this tree long enough now that every part of me has adjusted. My feet and hands seem to curl to the shape of each modulation of the bark.
    This is not the tree the boar trapped me in. The water from the never-ending rain reached the bottom of that tree within a day of Aban joining me there. So we abandoned it and walked uphill, stopping to dig our fingers into the mud and pull out drowned field mice. It was Aban who discovered them. I don’t know how and I didn’t ask. They were revolting. But Aban and Screamer ate them ravenously, while I satisfied myself withmushrooms and the filmy green slime that lies on the surface of the mud everywhere.
    The water followed us. We kept ahead of it, but only barely. And then we stopped. We could see that the trees were ending. We’d be at the top of the world soon, with nothing but rock under our feet. Nothing to eat. Taking our chances in the tallest cedar around made the most sense; trees are plants, and plants are edible. But the tallest cedar’s bottom crook was too high for me to reach. And this cedar had a nice low bottom crook—a point that both of us could easily jump down from to gather food. So this is our tree.
    “You’re a good tree,” I say as I pat the bark. “Old and good.” I’ve been studying the cedar trees. The bark on this one is deeply cracked, like those of the trees right around it. The younger tree downhill, the one that disappeared under the water only yesterday, had a cone-shaped crown. But the crown of Aban’s and my tree is broad and flat. I am convinced that, too, happened with age, like the fissuring of the bark.
    People boil cedar bark and make those afflicted with skin rot wash themselves in the potion that results. My skin has not rotted. Yet. The wool of my mantle seems to be a proper shield against the rain. I tell Aban we should take turns wearing it. But he won’t. He says, “That’s part of my job in protecting you.” He can be stubborn. So he’s bare, and his skin looks like withered fruit. When he presses against me in mating, I’m afraid to touch him too firmly. I’m afraid my fingers will break right through.Would a cedar bath help him? I laugh aloud at the very idea; the whole world has become a bath.
    I kiss the branch my hand rests on now. We are high in the tree, so the branches are close to one another. When I stand like this, I can rest my back against the next higher branch. I like the way the branches on a cedar spiral around the trunk. It feels balanced. Calm. Interesting. It’s important to have interesting things to think about as the rain falls and makes the waters splash up onto my toes. This tree is now