The Hollow Girl by Hillary Monahan EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author:Hillary Monahan
- Language: English
- Genre:Teen & Young Adult Fiction on Sexual Abuse
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 18.87 MB
- Price: Free
My chin rested in my palm. My eyelids were heavy. Gran’s arm
darted out, her liver-spotted hand whacking the inside of my elbow
to knock it off the table. It pulled me out of my stupor, but almost
cost me my teeth.
“I am not saying this twice.” She reached for a cluster of herbs
hanging from a hook in the ceiling and snapped off two sprigs of
green with dusky-purple flowers. “Dwayberry.”
“Nightshade,” I said, fairly certain I had it right.
She flipped over the stems, showing the shiny, dark berries on
the underside. They were beautiful, fat and juicy, like they belonged
in a pie. Gran jiggled them in front of my nose and they made a
rustle, rustle, rustle. “Small doses numb pain, larger cause
hallucinations. More than that is the pretty poison—it is sweet to the
taste, so they smile before they die. Seven to kill a child, twenty to kill
a man. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“ ‘Yes’ what?”
“Yes, Gran. I understand.”
Her left eye swept over my face, the pupil milky white and
covered by what she called her ghost shroud. It was not a source of
power, she told me once, even if people assumed otherwise.
“My gift of sight has nothing to do with my blindness, nor does it
have anything to do with our Romani blood,” she’d said. “I was born
with a caul upon my face. Lifting it lifted the veil between worlds,
sometimes allowing me glimpses of what will be. The eye is a theater
prop—nothing more.”
Her sight must not have shown her much at that moment,
though, as she turned her head to set her brown eye upon me,
searching for cheekiness I didn’t wear. I’d learned at a young age
never to sass my grandmother. Other children had their hands
slapped or their bottoms paddled when they were ill-mannered. I’d
once lost the ability to speak for two days. Another time, she’d bound
me to a chair for three hours without ever touching me with rope.
“I’ve been studying herbs for five years.” I kept my voice even,
neutral, so she wouldn’t accuse me of whining. Gran always punished
whining with the worst chores, like gathering stinkgrass by the
bucketful. “I’d like to study magic. You said anyone can do it with
training.”
She talked about it sometimes, about the hearth witches of
Ireland granting powerful blessings and casting terrible curses. The
English witches could hear the wind’s whispered secrets and control
the weather. The Scottish witches had mastered fire and water, just
as our Welsh kinsfolk could influence dreams. The magic Gran
claimed—that I would one day claim—was vast and varied, picked up
over generations of traveling.
I hung from every story Gran told about it, mostly because she
was never forthcoming with details about the spellcraft, always
exiling me from the vardo when there was witchwork to do. My
education was her rare offered snippet or fireside story hours with
the other children.
Both left me with more questions than answers.
Gran snorted and tossed her head, locks of gray hair slithering
past her shoulders.
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