Read They call her Dana for Free Online

but a few thin yellow rays of sunlight were penetrating the gloom. I lifted my hand in farewell, but the old woman made no acknowledgment of my gesture. I plunged into the swamp, filled with a multitude of conflicting emotions.
    Moving through the dense, damp tunnels of gray and green, insects humming all around, birds shrieking in the distance, I thought about all that Mama Lou had told me. I wasn't a superstitious ninny like most folk here in the swamps—I didn't, for instance, put a bit of faith in the belief that seeing a redbird meant someone would die—but I knew Mama Lou really did have the sight, and I knew everything she said would come true, try though I might to convince myself it was nonsense. Four men . . . four I would love, one I must beware of. I guess I'm

    supposed to meet 'em while I'm cleaning out the pigsty or churning the butter, I thought. Me in a silk gown and diamonds, people watching me and making a commotion. That was even harder to believe, it was a real puzzler, but in my heart I knew that someday I would be standing behind a half circle of hghts in that gown, those jewels, for whatever reason. I would be where I belonged. Mama Lou had said. Whatever could that mean?
    I skirted a bad patch of quicksand and parted strands of trailing moss, reaching into my pocket to touch the bottle of medicine. Mama Lou's medicine was the best. Ma was going to get better. There were going to be hard times, just like Mama Lou said, but that didn't mean ... It meant I would have to be very strong until Ma got over her sickness. I stepped over veins of sluggishly flowing green water, moved through clumps of cattails, smelling strong swamp odors. An alligator hissed and slithered into a nearby pond, sinking into the water like a brownish-green log. The anguish over Ma was like something live inside me, threatening to take over completely, and I knew I must keep it at bay. I couldn't give in to it. I had to be calm and cheerful for her. I couldn't ever let her know how worried I was.
    The sun was high and hot when I finally reached the farm. Heat waves shimmered visibly in the air, and I could feel the perspiration dripping slowly down my back. The chickens were silent. The pigs were roiling quietly in the mud in their sty. Not a breeze stirred. The Spanish moss hung limp and gray from the boughs of the trees surrounding the farm. I paused in the yard, lifting my hands up to shove limp, heavy honey-blond waves from my cheeks. My breasts swelled, almost spilling out of the tattered dusty pink bodice. I smoothed my hair back, longing for a bath, longing to remove my filthy dress and shabby white petticoat and submerge myself in the crystal-clear water of the secret spring where I always bathed. It was deep in the swamp, and the soft green fern growing around the banks made a wonderful, creamy lather when dampened and crushed. Perhaps I could get away to bathe later on this afternoon, I thought.
    It was as I adjusted the bodice of my dress that I felt the eyes boring into me. The sensation was so strong, so unsettling, that it was almost like physical touch. I turned, disturbed, and there he stood, near the comer of the bam. I had no idea how long he might have been there, watching me as I daydreamed about a

    bath, but I knew he had seen me tucking my full breasts deeper into the bodice. A blush tinted my cheeks. I felt embarrassment and anger and something else as well, the same instinctive apprehension I felt every time my stepfather stared at me with those sullen eyes so dark a blue they seemed almost black.
    "Momin', Dana," he said.
    His voice was harsh and husky, so guttural it often sounded like a growl. I had never heard Clem O'Malley speak kindly, and I had never seen him smile. Not as tall as either of his sons, only a few inches taller than me, he had a strong, powerful body with thick chest, broad shoulders, muscular arms. His features were flat and coarse, the cheekbones broad, the nose large, the jawline