The Great Snapping Turtle Adventure by Susan Yaruta-Young Page B

Night came early and with it pouring rain, storming winds, and white squiggling lightning flashed again and again.”
    â€œThunderstorms scare me,” Max whined.
    â€œThunderstorm weather we respect,” Marie agreed. “But sometimes we get silly when it’s been dry and hot with sun burning up all the farm crops. Sometimes people forget to act safely, and so it was with this lovely young mother.”
    â€œOh no,” Fred and the boys said together.
    â€œStanding in the kitchen, the young mother kissed her little girl’s head and handed her to a nursemaid, a woman who helped her with the inside housework. There were many chores in those long ago days. ‘Darling baby, Mamma will be back soon, then we’ll celebrate with warmed milk and sweet molasses cookies. We’ll have a party to celebrate the coming of saving rains. Good sweets together in the kitchen, my darling little one.’”
    â€œThe nursemaid said the young mother took her baby girl back once more and kissed her again. The baby began to cry when her mother handed her back to the nursemaid. The baby cried like she knew what the adults did not know.
    â€œThe young mother turned and ran out of the kitchen. She ran outside into the storm. She held her face to the pouring rain, her arms up, and she began dancing in circles, laughing, crying, dancing faster and faster. Some say it was like she lost her good senses. Then she ran out to where the lawn grass ended and the fields began. She was laughing, crying, singing, shouting, so people say.
    â€œHer husband entered the kitchen from the living room. He looked at the baby in the nursemaid’s arms and she said, ‘Your wife has gone outside. She’s gone outside into the storm. Oh, heavens, she has.’
    â€œThe husband ran to the door. He flung it open and went onto the porch.
    â€œIt was coal shiny black outside. The wind howled and rain was slamming down. Only when lightning flashed, as it did again and again, could anyone see anything. It was only when lightning flashed could he see his beloved wife dancing. He yelled into the darkness: ‘Come back! Come be safe!’
    â€œThe lightning flashed and he saw her looking at him. She was smiling, laughing, waving, then blackness. The lightning flashed again. One last time lightning flashed and he saw her as she was struck. He saw her fall down through darkness, down into burnt brittle grains and onto the soggy ground.”
    â€œOh, no!”
    â€œSome of the men standing on the porch kept him from going to her. But the lightning that had hit her was the last of it. And in a few moments thunder was distant over the Nanticoke and booming west. They went to her then. There was no pulse. Her body was still hot but it was hot with lightning heat.
    â€œThe men carried her into the kitchen and laid her body right there.” Marie pointed to a dark stain on the wide floor boards under the rocking chair. “Right there is where she lay. Some say the dark stain you see was the shadow of the body she left behind.”
    The boys and Fred looked at the dark stain on the wide wooden boards and each gasped at the same time.
    Fred whispered, “Horrible.”
    â€œHorrible,” repeated the boys.
    â€œThe seer, Marge, began crying, like she was the young mother who died from the lightning. ‘I just keep coming to see if my baby’s alright. I just keep coming to get my baby some food I had promised her.’ That was the spirit’s message coming through Marge’s lips,” said Miss Marie. She paused for effect. “‘But I can’t find my baby. I can’t find my little one,’ the spirit said. Then Marge gave a shudder, as the sad young woman disappeared from her body. Only thing left was Marge snoring in her chair as if nothing had happened. Just like she was enjoying a little nap.”
    â€œThen what happened?” asked Max, his voice squeezed into a hiss