The Forgotten Sisters Read Online Free PDF Page B

stare. “Maybe our ma’s parents or grandparents made a king mad and the family was sent far away.”
    â€œOr maybe they
chose
to live here,” said Astrid. Amosquito lit on her cheek. She slapped it, leaving a tiny splatter of blood.
    The girls checked traps. Some were knots of tough reeds woven together around a brace of thin branches, others were simple but clever snares. All were empty.
    â€œToad toots,” Astrid said under her breath.
    Miri supposed it was a local curse. She learned several more that morning: peat head, grouse kin, soggy bottom bellows, and stones.
    As they approached a pond’s edge, a trio of floating birds dived headfirst into the water. Miri watched but they did not come back up. In a swamp, the whole world seemed upside down. Next would fish take to the sky?
    Felissa clambered thigh-deep in the stagnant water and began dragging a coarse net through its depths. Occasionally she snagged a few thumb-size fish and tossed them back to Sus.
    â€œGot something!” Astrid shouted from nearby. A fat, brown swamp rat flailed, its neck caught in a trap. Astrid pulled a small knife out of her belt and stabbed it through the back of its head. She tucked the limp rat under her belt and set the trap back up.
    Miri shivered and tried to hide it by joining Felissa in the pond.
    â€œHere, I can try that,” she offered.
    The chill water crept up to her legs, her skirt spread out on top of the water like a lily pad. Suddenly her skirt jumped and twitched as if something was caught beneath it. Miri lifted it, looking.
    A strike of pain hit like a knife in her leg. Her hands went to her thigh, and she felt something hard and slick. It quivered away, skimming atop the water’s surface. It was long and thin and shiny, thick as her wrist, built of dark brown scales. A snake.
    Miri screamed. Her bare feet slipped on the pond bottom and she went under.
    Felissa pulled her back up by her hair. Miri gasped and thrashed, fighting her way up the slimy bank and onto the muddy ground. She lay down, coughing and clutching at her leg. Her whole body vibrated, and she seemed to feel venom streak like heat from the wound through her veins. She was dying in a swamp. She’d never see home again.
    â€œLet me see,” Felissa said, prying Miri’s hands away from her leg.
    Felissa wiped the blood with her skirt and exposed a mark made of many small pricks in the shape of a horseshoe.
    â€œOh good,” said Felissa.
    Good?
Were these girls insane? She’d been bitten by a swamp snake!
    â€œYou’ll be fine,” said Astrid. “If it’d been poisonous, you’d have just two teeth marks.”
    Astrid put her pointer fingers beside her mouth to mimic fangs.
    Miri’s panicked breathing still racked her chest, and blood oozed from her thigh, but the burn of venom she’d felt certain was coursing through her seemed to dim and fade.
    â€œI guess you better go change,” said Astrid. “Think you can find your way back?”
    The white stone house was visible on the rise, clear as the sun.
    â€œI think I can guess the general direction,” Miri muttered.
    â€œThen you have permission to enter our house.”
    Miri sloshed to her feet and stumbled away. Her wet skirt clung to her legs, sticky as a spider’s web. Behind her, she could hear Astrid mutter, “City folk.”
    A rain barrel outside the house was nearly full. Miri stripped down to nothing, the house between her and the island village. She ladled some water over herself, scrubbing furiously at the mud and hesitantly at her leg wound. She tore a length from her shirt, pulled up some dry-ish moss, pressed it over the snake’s bite, and wrapped her leg with the fabric to hold it there. The bleeding slowed.
    She went inside and opened her pack, sorting for the first time through the clothes Britta had sent. And then she slumped to the floor, her face in her hands. Britta had packed