Virginia Hamilton Read Online Free PDF Page B

felt hot and clammy on her face.
    Maybe if I stick my feet in just once to cool off.
    But she hadn’t the nerve.
    ’Cause they come so fast on you. The slimy devils! she thought. Maybe something forms them as you set foot in the water. And warns them you are stepping in.
    Glancing all around, Justice thought about leaving.
    Run away and forget it!
    And thought again about sticking her feet in.
    “This whole Quinella place is just so devilish!” Saying it low on her breath seemed to calm her. “I’m not gonna put my feet in, not on your life I’m not!”
    Angry at not being foolish enough or brave enough to wade in the warmish black water. It had been right here at the Trace that something awful had happened to Levi.
    Never to forget it, either, never in my life.
    As she thought about the incident, something dawned, more important than the memory of it.
    Their dad had brought them down here to fish—her, Thomas and Levi. She had been about eight years old. Not that long ago. Thomas never could get enough of good fishing, and neither could her dad. Levi liked swimming, and Justice had felt at home searching the edgewater for flat stones to mark with her initials.
    Levi had waded to his waist in the water; then he had plunged flat out on his stomach.
    “Feels like lukewarm soup!” he’d shouted to them.
    “You’ve had experience swimming in lukewarm soup,” her dad had shouted back, laughing.
    It was the sequence of what had happened next that now loomed out of the memory, like pictures from a scrapbook suddenly spotlighted.
    Not another word had been spoken. Levi had looked peculiar. Thomas hadn’t been watching Levi swim, but suddenly he had dropped his fishing rod. Thomas had slowly got to his feet, his mouth hanging open, as Levi swam toward shore.
    Like clear snapshots torn from an album and held close to intense light.
    Justice stood absolutely still now at the edgewater, transfixed by pictures framed crystal clear and perfect in her mind’s eye.
    Levi wading out of the water, not aware of anything wrong but maybe sensing something was wrong because of the strange way Thomas was staring at him. Their dad leaping up as if something had stung him hard, gaping at Levi, also.
    Levi had begun running frantically around and around. He had started screaming in this terrifying wail.
    Fat, slimy worms had covered his chest and back. Black, blood-sucking leeches all over his legs. The river had to have been full of them. They’d been the most scary, the most devilish things to see.
    Their dad had tried to pull them off Levi. But the leeches had clung to his skin as they sucked his blood.
    Awful for her to think about even now.
    Their dad had hurried with matches, lighting two, three at a time for the bigger leeches. Burning the beasts off Levi. Levi’s body jerking, shivering. Him screaming the worst forlorn sound the whole time.
    “Never to forget it,” Justice told herself. “I can still smell them slimy beasts burning. And see ’em curl up like dry crisps and fall.”
    Not only the memory. That’s not all of it, she thought.
    But the way Thomas had dropped his fishing rod.
    The funniest thing!
    Dropping it and getting to his feet. Staring at Levi before they ever knew there were going to be leeches all over him.
    Justice jumped away from the edgewater, startled by the suggestion of her own mind.
    She began following the Quinella Trace downriver toward the shade.
    He knew what was going to happen before Levi ever got out of the water!
    The thought turned her insides cold. And she denied it.
    “Oh, my goodness!” She had glided within the shade, unawares.
    The cool darkness of massive trees surrounded her. Justice was reminded of what she was supposed to be doing down here at the Quinella. She forced the past away, and the denial, to the back of her mind. Moving on, she watched her feet step silently. Shade and shadow were the only light under full, heavy branches of the huge trees. Weeds were low here and