Read The Forgotten Sisters for Free Online

her own wardrobe for Miri. A princess’s wardrobe.
    When the girls returned, Miri was wearing a yellow silk dress, belted and pulled to keep from dragging on the floor. Astrid snorted.
    â€œHow’s your leg?” Felissa asked, pretending not to notice her ridiculous attire.
    Miri shrugged as if she were not bothered a bit, but she could not help shuddering.
    â€œIf you jump into the water in a skirt, flailing and backing up every which way, you’re going to get bit,” said Astrid.
    Felissa crouched by Miri, pulled back the wrapping and then replaced it. “No swelling or redness. Definitely not poisonous.”
    â€œI didn’t even see the snake,” said Miri.
    â€œMaybe we’re just used to watching,” said Felissa. “Soon you’ll learn to notice movement that doesn’t belong.”
    Miri doubted that. In a swamp, everything was moving all the time.
    â€œI mean,
if
you stay,” Felissa added. Though she saidit with a smile, her tone seemed to imply she was certain that Miri would not be staying.
    A stubbornness coursed through Miri, hot as imagined venom. But she just asked, “Were you successful this morning?”
    â€œNot bad.” Astrid had a second rodent beside the rat in her belt, and Sus’s basket held a couple of handfuls of tiny fish, some reed roots, and a green plant, still wet. Astrid tossed the rat at Miri’s feet. “Think you can be useful?”
    â€œAstrid, she’s a city girl and a lady,” Felissa said under her breath. Apparently despite Miri’s disclosure about her mountain home, she had been so inept in the swamp they just could not believe she was anything but a pampered noble.
    Miri picked up the rat, turned it over, grabbed a knife from a pot, and started to skin it. Really, it was not much different than skinning a rabbit.
    On Mount Eskel, the villagers slaughtered their rabbits in high winter, when food was scarce and rabbit fur thickest. When Miri had been eight years old, she’d seen her sister, Marda, holding a rabbit over a stone, the knife in her hand trembling, her tears coming fast.
    â€œWait!” Miri had run out into the knee-deep snow. “I’ll do it, Marda, I’ll do it.”
    Miri had sweated over the task, her hands clumsy in the attempt to be swift. But new fur meant she could patch her old and useless winter cap into something that actually kept her ears warm. And for the first time, Marda did not cry when eating rabbit stew.
    This rat was already dead, and Miri peeled off its skin even and quick. She cleaned it, pushed a wooden skewer through the body, and tidied up the limbs with pieces of green swamp grass so they wouldn’t dangle.
    Astrid’s mouth hung open.
    â€œIsn’t it amazing,” Miri said slyly, “what a person can learn from a book?”
    Though the little house was mostly empty, it had a fine hearth with hooks for skewers and an iron pot. The water was already hot, and Sus added the small fish and chopped-up plant. They ate the soup, washed their clothes and the floor of the house, and by lunch hour the rodents were roasted and ready.
    Miri watched King Fader’s potential brides sit cross-legged on the floor, eating rat meat with their fingers, breaking off tiny ribs to pick it out of their teeth. These were the girls who could help Miri win Mount Eskel away from the king and merchants. These were the girls who might prevent a war.
    Sus sucked the rat’s roasted eyeballs out of its skull. Astrid burped.
    Miri looked out the window toward Mount Eskel. No mountains in view. All she could see was land so wet it was indistinguishable from water. A flock of geese crossed the sky, their honks as brash and abrupt as an alarm of warning.

Chapter Five
    The sun is staring, the water is fine
    Little lily lie, lie a little low
    The sweet river flow mixes into brine
    Little lily lie, lie down below
    Evening in the swamp rustled and stretched,