SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) Read Online Free PDF

portion of the left wall was unobstructed, with a series of
naked hooks hanging on every third plank of siding. He stepped to
the wall and ran his fingers along a plank. When he rapped it with
his knuckles, it returned a solid sound. Maybe cedar.
    Looking down he noticed that a plank was
badly cracked and dented at the level of his knees. He tapped below
the crack with his hammer to separate the pieces, then examined the
portion above the break. The plank was ten inches wide, half an
inch thick, and still solid. Perfect. Its edges were nailed to
wooden studs.
    He used the crowbar and hammer claws to free
the long portion of the broken plank, then unscrewed the metal hook
and tossed it onto the workbench. Now he could now see the planks
on the outer side of the studs that supported the exterior siding.
He marveled at the quantity of wood and labor that had been
invested in this simple shed decades ago. Today it would be pre-fab
particle-board and vinyl, he thought, and fall apart in fifteen
years. He started work on an adjacent plank. This one came free
more quickly, since he had better leverage.
    Sweating now, he stopped to brush his hair
back from his forehead and dry his palms on his sleeves. Might as
well take a third, he thought, and have two whole ones. He could
put them all back in place easily enough when he was done with
them. He used the crowbar and hammer to free the edges of the third
plank. A pile of shingles blocked its base, so he pushed them out
of the way. His eye was immediately caught by a strange mark that
the shingles had obscured. It was a C-shaped arc overlaid with
three straight slashes that converged to a point.

    Like a symbol or letter from an extinct
language, he thought, tracing the mark with his finger. It appeared
to have been carved quickly and carelessly into the plank, almost
like graffiti.
    He extracted the nails at the base and
pulled the plank free, catching a glimpse of something behind it. A
shingle-fragment resting on half-driven nails had been placed
between the studs to form a shelf, and the shelf held an old
eggbeater-style hand drill. When he picked it up, he was surprised
by how heavy it felt. It might be fifty years old. He gripped the
handles and turned the gear wheel. The first rotation was jerky and
uneven but after that the gear and chuck turned smoothly. He shook
his head in admiration.
    The drill had pinned a thin sheaf of
yellowing papers to the exterior planks, so he set it down and
reached for them. The folded pages enclosed an old black-and-white
photograph, which he lifted to the light from the windows. It was
five by eight inches and remarkably well-focused, like old
photographs always seemed to be. Cycles of heating and cooling had
left it dry and stiff but otherwise undamaged. In the foreground a
young woman leaned against a hip-high rock, upper body facing the
camera and legs angled away. She wore a trim jacket over a
light-colored dress with a sash around the waist, and her hat had
an asymmetric upturned brim. A pendant necklace shaped like an elm
leaf rested against her dress below the collar. Her lips were
closed in a half smile and her wavy hair glinted where it fell into
curls halfway down her neck.
    Beside her stood a tall young man,
clean-shaven and serious…dark thigh-length coat, white shirt, and
gray pants tucked into boots that rose over his calves. He held a
flat cap in one hand, leaving his close-cropped hair uncovered, and
one foot was propped jauntily on a rock.
    A farrago of boulders lay behind the couple,
beyond which the surroundings fell away. In the background Vin saw
ten or more waterfalls plunging different heights and tilting in
different directions, connected by a wide labyrinth of flowing
whitewater and enormous knuckles of fractured rocks. The chaos of
water and rock extended into the distance upstream, and it was hard
to tell where the water came from or where it went. He turned the
photo over and saw a faded penciled annotation in the