The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) Read Online Free PDF

computer station?” Mark’s spirits were beginning to lift. He and Mo only had another week, but even a week could become interesting.
    “Don’t see why not.”
    “We could download stuff—music?”
    “Sure! We could party!”
    Kate cut through the exchanges. “Partying wasn’t what I had in mind.”
    “Kate here is saving Ireland’s plants from extinction. I’ve been recruited to help her. The den will be our headquarters.”
    “Wow!” Mark pretended to be impressed.
    Mo muttered, “Shu-shu-shut up, Mark!”
    The two youths grinned, struggling to control themselves.
    Mark lifted his eyebrows at Kate. “Maybe we can work out a compromise?”
    Kate shook her fist at him. “The only compromise I’ll give you is a meeting between this fist and your scalded English face!”
    The two boys fell into uncontrollable laughter.
    Mo raked her fingernail along Mark’s spine as Kate blushed a furious red. For a moment the two girls looked at each other. Then Mo’s lips pouted and she waved Kate to join her. “Cuh-cuh-cuh . . . Oh, come on, Kate!”
    There was no getting out of the chore after that. Mark, still laughing at times, threw himself into it as hard as the others. Clearing the dairy of junk took several hot and sweaty hours. All four of them ended up covered in dirt and spiderwebs. Alan tugged and hammered at the single cold tap until he got it working, and they washed their hands and faces over the white porcelain sink. They filled up some empty bottles so they could sprinkle water over the concrete floor, getting ready to sweep it clean. A careless sprinkle and they ended up throwing the water over each other amid hoots of laughter. An hour later, with the sun heading west, they found an old wooden table and an assortment of chairs, so they could settle down and rest in a little more comfort, feasting on Irish ham sandwiches and ice-cold orange juice from Padraig’s kitchen.
    A sweat-streaked Kate rested her face on her interlaced knuckles and looked across the table at the fair-haired English boy. His short-sleeved shirt was muddied and streaked. Could it really be that all four of them were orphans? And if so, was Alan right—was this too much to put down to coincidence? The thought caused an anxious fluttering of her heart. She noticed Mark lifting a battered-looking harmonica from his shirt pocket and she watched how he toyed with it on the scratched bare wood of the table.
    “Are you going to give us a tune?”
    His face flushed an even deeper red with embarrassment and he stuffed the harmonica back into the shirt pocket. But from time to time, as they munched and got to know each other, Kate noticed that he would glance her way, as if mentally assessing this bossy Irish girl with her green eyes and a temper to match the color of her hair.

The Sigil
    Mark and Mo were late in getting back to the rented house, formerly a Church of Ireland parsonage, where their adoptive mother, Bethal, was impatiently waiting. Bethal was tall, gray-eyed and bony, with long mousy hair plaited like a show horse’s tail and long unshapely hands that always looked raw. Now, in the gloom of the oak-paneled entrance hall, she shrank from the grimy appearance of their clothes.
    “Filthy toads!” Her lips were inadequate to cover her gravestones of teeth. “Filthy!
Filthy
in body and soul!”
    With her ribs thrust out, she blocked entry to the tunnel-like corridor that led to the ground floor washroom.
    “Get up there! Let Sir see for himself the state you’re in! He’ll know what to do about it!”
    So saying, she harried them upstairs with raps of her knuckles against the backs of their skulls, on through the tiers of chairs in the Meeting Hall and the tabletop makeshift altar, and through the heavy door into the office-cum-sacristy at the back. Here she abandoned them with a slam of the door. Late as they were, evening worship had not long ended and the pungent odor of sweat still permeated the Hall and chased