They glided rapidly toward that open water, which widened out into a very wide stretch of lake indeed. The trees of its far shore were a solid line of green with the distance—Bart estimated that straight across would be a good four to five miles. But the day was clear and almost windless, and he was no amateur with a canoe in any case. And he had been reading the weather as far back as he could remember; and this time of year, under these conditions, it was not likely that there was wind or a rain squall lurking out of sight just over the horizon.
Now, back above ground in his own kind of country once more, Bart’s instincts were reasserting themselves. Emma, he could feel, was indeed as good a paddler as her brother, although her keeping up this sort of effort for the rest of the day seemed unlikely. The sunlight sparkled along the long sheet of water before them, and the sky was blue, with just a few free-floating high clouds of pure white. He could smell the water, the pines, the spruce, and all the land around the water. They smelled good.
He could feel the stretch of his arm and shoulder and back as he pushed the paddle against the water. He could feel the muscles working clear down his legs and the hard bulge of calf muscle against thigh muscle as he knelt to paddle. The back of his head warned him that those same muscles, unused this long time to kneeling to such work, would be stiff and perhaps painful tomorrow—or even later on today; but that did not matter.
What mattered was that he was back in his own country at last. Arthur had miraculously removed himself as an obstacle between Emma and himself; and now finally there was no reason they could not settle down as they should have long ago. His solitary years were over; over so suddenly that he could not really feel what the new life was like.
That feeling, like the stiffness of his muscles, would come tomorrow and in the days after. Meanwhile he felt happily, if rather strangely, adrift, wondering about himself and Emma in the years to come, about the world, about everything. He looked into himself and was surprised to see how little he understood of what he saw. A sudden chill made itself felt inside him.
“Emma?” he said to her small sturdy back, bulky in the heavy jacket.
“Yes, Bart?” her voice floated back to him.
“What’s my Book—my Book, inside?” he asked. “I can’t seem to find any I’ve really got.”
She laughed.
“You? Of all people?” she said. “Of course you have. Everybody does. Don’t worry, you’ll find it there. You just have to wait until you can put it into words for yourself.”
She would be right, he told himself; and was comforted, in the warm silence that followed as they paddled toward the farther shore and to the north. She was always right.
The Earth Lords Page 39