Free A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

North Woods. Anyone with any sense. Some of the new folks with their just-built camps bring their buggies, but they soon give them up. Buckboards are plain—just a few planks with a pair of axles nailed on under them, a seat or two, and maybe a wagon box on the top. But plain is what works best. The planks have bounce in them, and the bounce keeps the wheels from knocking the teeth out of your head on the bad roads.
    "Giddyap!" Royal told the horses. He coaxed them to turn the creaky rig around in the hotel's drive while avoiding a fringe-topped surrey carrying a touring party that had just arrived on the steamer
Clearwater
and was bound for Big Moose Lake. The horses, a pair of bays, were new. Pa said Mr. Loomis had bought them cheap from a man outside of Old Forge who'd lost his farm to the bank. They whickered and blew, shy of the surrey, but Royal kept them calm.
    He raised his hand in greeting to Mr. Satterlee, the tax assessor, who passed us on his way to the hotel. Mr. Satterlee waved back but did not smile. "Bet he's just come from the Hubbards'," Royal said. "He's slapping a lien on their land. That good-for-nothing Emmie didn't pay her taxes again."
    I wondered at his harshness. And not for the first time. "Royal, what do you have against the Hubbards?" I asked. "They're just poor folks. They don't hurt anyone."
    I got a snort for an answer. Royal didn't speak at all as we went up the hotel's long drive, past its freshly manured vegetable garden and its furrowed potato field. We passed the railroad station and crossed the tracks and then the highway—a narrow dirt road that ran between Old Forge and Inlet. That was Eagle Bay, every bit of it—a bay on Fourth Lake, a hotel sitting on it, a railroad station, a set of railroad tracks, and a dirt road. It wasn't a town. It wasn't even a village. It was at most a destination. Unless you happened to live there. Then it was home.
    As Royal steered the team toward the Uncas Road, he suddenly turned to me and said, "You still playing that game?"
    "What game?"
    "That game of yours. You know, fooling with words and such."
    "It's not fooling," I said defensively. He made my word of the day sound childish and silly.
    "You really look up a new word every day?"
    "Yes."
    "What was it today?"
    "
Unman.
"
    "What's it mean?"
    "To break down the manly spirit. To deprive of courage or fortitude."
    "Huh. Had that right on the tip of your tongue, didn't you? You sure are a notional girl."
    "
Notional.
" Royal talks like all the boys do around here. He says "ramming" when he means
visiting
and "chimley" for
chimney.
Mamma used to swat us for saying "chimley." She said it made us sound like hicks. Royal also says "don't" when he means
do.
"So don't I," he'd say to Lawton when Lawton said he wanted to go fishing. I tried, more than once, to explain to him that he really was saying "So do not I," which meant he was disagreeing with Lawton and
didn't want
to go fishing, but it never made any impression. At least he didn't say "chiney" for
china
or "popples" for
poplar trees.
That was something.
    He nodded at the book in my lap. "What you got there?"
    "A novel.
The House of Mirth.
"
    He shook his head. "Words and stories," he said, turning onto the Uncas Road. "I don't know what you see in them. Waste of time, if you ask me."
    "I didn't ask you."
    Royal didn't hear me or he didn't care if he did. He just kept right on talking. "A man's got to know how to read and write, of course, to get along in the world and all, but beyond that, words are just words. They're not very exciting. Not like fishing or hunting."
    "How would you know, Royal? You don't read. Nothing's more exciting than a book."
    The toothpick moved from the left side of his mouth to the right. "That so?" he said.
    "Yes, that's so," I said. Finishing it. Or so I thought.
    "Huh," he said. And then he snapped the reins. Hard. And barked, "Giddyap!" Loudly. I heard the horses snort as he gave them their head. The buckboard shuddered,