Read "The Mother" by Pearl S. Buck online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
In the night of that same day the wind rose suddenly as a tiger's roar out of the distant hills, and it blew the clouds down out of the sky where they had hung heavy and full of rain, their light long gone. And the sudden rains poured and washed the heats out of that day. When at last the mist was gone, the dawn, pure and cool, grew quiet and fell from a gray and tranquil sky.
Now out of that storm and chill came down from heaven suddenly, at last, the old woman's death. She had sat asleep too long, her old body naked for the wind to blow upon when the sun went down, and when the mother came home at twilight, silent, and as if she came from the field and honest labor, she found the old woman in her bed and cold with sudden chills and aches and she cried out, "Some wicked spirit has caught me, daughter! Some ill wind fell on me! " And she moaned and put out her little shriveled hand and the mother took it and it was dry and burning hot.