Read The Day of the Pelican for Free Online Page B

with breakfast, that the two of them would be back soon. Mama gave her a questioning look, but Meli just shook her head.
    It was a quiet meal, and because there was not much to eat, it was over quickly. Meli left the cleaning up to Mama and took the pot to the stream for water. They always needed more water, and if she was alone she wouldn't have to deal with any more unanswerable questions.
    It was midmorning before Baba returned, a glum-faced Mehmet trailing several steps behind. At least Mehmet had enough respect for Baba not to defy him, Meli thought. That was a relief.
    She didn't speak of his disappearance until later that afternoon, when she found Mehmet sitting under a chestnut tree at the far edge of the camp. He was ripping up little clumps of grass and pitching them down the hill. He didn't even glance at her when she sat down beside him. She had practiced in her head several things to say, but finally she simply blurted out, "I'm glad you re back."
    "When I'm fifteen I'll join up, no matter what Baba says."
    She hadn't practiced an answer to that, so she said nothing and comforted herself with the knowledge that it would be more than a year before her brother turned fifteen. Surely the war would be long over by then.
    ***
    Meli slept hard that night, untroubled by the anxieties of the night before, but when she left the tent in the morning, she saw only Mehmet coming from the trees carrying firewood. "Where's Baba?" she asked.
    Mehmet shrugged. "I don't know. He was gone when I woke up. Mama said he left the message that I was to be in charge, so you re going to have to listen to me for a change." He sounded almost like her bossy older brother again. "It's past time to eat. Where's Mama? Why doesn't she have the fire made already?"
    Meli went looking for their mother and found her trying, as cold as it was, to wash herself behind the tent. Mama was such a modest woman; it must be humiliating for her to have such little privacy. Indeed, when she saw Meli, she blushed and began hastily to pull her dress on over her undergarments.
    "Excuse me, Mama, but I have to know where Baba's gone." It was too much to bear, first losing Mehmet, now her father.
    "Shh. He's gone to fetch Uncle Fadil."
    "But it's miles—"
    "He got a ride partway." She buttoned her dress and put on her big sweater and then her overcoat. "We ve got to leave here, Meli," she said quietly. "Before we lose your brother."

FIVE:  
A School in the Hills

    W ITH BABA GONE, THERE WAS MUCH MORE WORK FOR the rest of the family. Everyone missed him. When Adil or Vlora asked about him, Mama would say something like, "Well, a good son has to visit his old mother, you know."
    Meli realized that she was the only other person who knew the real reason Baba was gone: to fetch Uncle Fadil and his car to take them all back. She didn't know, of course, where "back" was anymore—back home, where the police might arrest Mehmet again? Or back to the family farm, which was probably already crowded with Uncle Fadil's own daughter and grandchildren?
    But anywhere, she told herself, would be warmer than these hills. At least they were not farther up. The mountain heights above them were covered with snow now, and below the alpine meadows and evergreens the leaves of the great beech trees had turned to gold. Mama made everyone sleep so close together that Meli spent every night with someone's foot in her mouth or fist in her eye, and the younger children still cried out from the cold. At first Mehmet objected. It offended his "dignity as a man" to curl up against his siblings like a puppy in a litter, but as it got colder, he stopped complaining.
    As she lay awake every night, shivering, praying for sleep to come, she imagined she could hear the rattle of Uncle Fadil's Lada. But then the sound would turn out to be one of the old cars used by the KLA, or the arrival of another family seeking refuge—or just her imagination. It was never Baba coming back.
    Summer seemed a