Danny nodded soberly, with a quiet in the room so deep there was just the fire-sound and the howl of the wind across the roof.
Lord have mercy, was the preachers reaction, that and a shake of his head.
Dont want to talk here, Danny said. His voice had deepened with hoarseness, and he was having to force it as was. But it made him sound older. Tomorrow. Ill come over villageside. Tell you all you want to know.
The Lord was surely with these boys, the preacher said.
Danny remarked to himself that of course the man carefully didnt say that God could ever possibly be with a riderjust with the village-bred Goss kids. But he was a polite preacher. Hed come into a rider barracks without fuss and didnt outright insult the roof he was under.
And maybe it was true that God had gotten the Goss boys up the mountain and just had to do it with the help of a damned-to-hell rider because, thanks to original sin, that was the way God regularly did things in the world beyond town walls. Or something like that.
Truth, hed been halfway religious before he became a rider. He was still trying to figure the ins and outs of the preachers religion as it applied to him now that hed heard the Beast and damned himselfbecause right and wrong just didnt work out with neat edges any more when you saw beyond the neighborhood you grew up in, and from what he saw on the outside looking in, it never really had. Not even in the old neighborhood, once you started seeing the rights and the wrongs youd learned to ignore.
Nothing left down there? the second deputy askednot able to believe the extent of the disaster down there, Danny thought, and didnt blame him.
Just the three got out, Danny said, them and one Tarmin rider. One border rider camped with her, in the last shelter between first-stage and Tarmin. The two of themll come up here, come spring. II brought them up. He didnt want to go into question and answer. He wanted Brionne away from the horses, behind the solid division of a village wall. The girl needs a doctor, pretty quick.
Well see to it, the marshal said. Carlo, can you walk, son?
Sounded like a decent man. Sounded kind. He approved, then.
Yeah, Carlo said. Randy cant.
Might put em with Van, Ridley suggested. If hell take em. Under threat of God he might. Theyre the smiths kids, from down in Tarmin. Van needs competition, doesnt he?
Well talk to him, the marshal said.
Well lay the fear of the Lord on him, the preacher added.
Carlo was meanwhile trying to pull his socks and boots back onto sore and swollen feethis boots laced with cord, and he had a chance of making it in fairly short order. Randy didnt even wake
You want a tea and a shot? Callie asked the official delegation.
Thank you, no, the marshal said. Better we get these kids settled. This the girl? The marshal turned back the furs.
There followed that small silence that Brionnes pretty, doll-like face could well engender.
Are her eyes affected?
She wont shut them without the bandage, Danny muttered, tucked down in his spot. Shes been like that. Beast-struck. That was what the town preachers called it if someone went out like that and wouldnt come back. It happened, legendarily, to townfolk who either got stranded out in an area with beasts, or who, in the safety of town, had started hearing them. Hed never known a case but this one. Legendarily, it happened to the innocent faced with the beast-mind. Practicallyit happened to truckers and such that got caught out and survived. So hed heard. Most didnt survive.
He watched the preacher sign Gods mercy over her. But they were finally leaving. With Carlo managing to lever himself up by way of the wall behind him and to carry himself; the marshals deputies picked up Randy.
The marshal himself picked up Brionne, furs and all, like a father carrying a baby.
She was thirteen. She was blond. Blue-eyed. Even with her hair tangled and the scratches on her arms she looked like a saint in a painting.
Danny tried not to pay attention to any of it after that, just praying to God for them to get her the other side of that wall with nothing whatsoever happening while they were carrying her like that. Carlo asked for Randys boots and socks, and Danny just shut his eyes and ducked his head, wishing them to get moving, telling himself there wasnt any good saying good-bye to Carlo and Randy hed be here all winter if Ridley didnt order him out into the snow, and they werent his business now. He wasnt in their acceptable social class, and once the desperation wore off he didnt expect Carlo or Randy to have much more than a polite word for him when and if they next met.
The door shut.
So he didnt have to be responsible for them anymore. Hed meet Guil and Tara up here when the thaw camewhenever a thaw came to the High Loop, which was probably well toward summer in the lowlands. Hed do the job theyd hired him for and then hed go down to Shamesey and let his family know he was alive.
Andgive it about an hour into Sunday dinner before his father started preaching at him about hell and his horse and he wanted out of there.
In that light, maybe stuck on a mountaintop for several months wasnt so bad.
But he missed his father anyway. He thought now it wouldnt matter if his father yelled at him. Hed had guns pointed at him which sort of put his fathers well-meant yelling in perspective. He missed his younger brother Denis. He even missed his other brother, Sam, and that was how lonesome he was.
Definitely he missed his mother. Hed like one of her suppers right now.
Hed like her making tea (mamad never, ever put spirits in it, though) and stirring up biscuits and bringing him his supper in his bed with the flowered quilt and the dingy plaster and the cracks, three of them, that had used to run across the ceiling. He could really appreciate the old apartment tonight.
The cracks were fixed now. The place didnt look like the home he always remembered when he was far absent from it.
But that was fine. His family did right well on the money a rider son gave them. As long as they didnt exactly take him back to their bosom God wouldnt damn them for dealing with him and their neighbors would go on associating with them.
He believed, well, a mishmash of things that didnt fit. But there wasnt anything he could do about being what he was, not since the night hed started hearing Cloud in his dreams, and the day hed gone down to the rider camp to ask the riders to do something about the wild horse that (not at all his fault, of course) he was hearing night after night while the Shamesey gate-guards were shooting at itand not having a bit of luck: a threatened horse was real good at imaging he was where he wasnt.
A horse was good at snagging a fool, too. Helluva lot of chance hed had. Cloud had come looking for human company and he was what answered. Hed been
happy. Happy, dammit, since that day. Most times.
All the attractive commotion was gone, now. Young Jennie was running out of energywhining at her mother.
He thought thenhe thoughthe really didnt feel too energetic, himself, and that the room was getting much too hot. He was getting a little sick at his stomach, to go with the blinding headache that had never yet left him. So he thought hed get up from where he was sitting and see if he could get an answer out of Ridley, whether he could sleep here the nightthat was all he was interested in right now, a place to lie down.
He drew his bare feet up, braced a hand on the fireplace rock, got up
Felt his center of balance off and went down backward, stupid thing to do. He knew he was going to hit his head on the fireplace.
And did. Hard.
Embarrassing move. He was blind for an instant, and then knew hed fallen so his neck was bent forward and his legs were tucked and sort of crossed, so not only had he added to the headache, it wasnt easy to find anything with his hands to help him up againjust couldnt find up from down. He heard t
he to-do hed made in the room as he set a hand on the hearth stones, trying to figure out the position hed gotten into.
Strong hands pulled him away from the fire before he put his hand quite in it. That had to be Ridley, who hauled him up onto his knees and got him on his feet.
Is he hurt? the kid asked, all concerned, and the woman said theyd better put him to bed.
Is he going to die? little girl sounded worried. Or excited. But Ridley said,
Hell be all right. Out of the way. Out of the way!
Ridley provided balance. All he had to do was get up and sort out his right foot from his left, the way hed done on the mountainside, just one step after another, all the way to what he hoped was a clean and empty bed.
* * *
Chapter 7
Ť ^ ť
Darcy Schaffer didnt know how long shed heard the wind. The heavy storm shutters were locked tight on the windows, and didnt admit but a hint of light or darkshutters that could keep out a blizzard or an intruder, or the world in general.
She was heating water for breakfast tea when she heard that distant kind of thump in the snow-passage that meant someone was running around at this hour of the morningbefore dawnand if it was those damned teenaged Durant kids again, out and annoying the neighbors before their parents were awake, she was going to call the marshal and let him talk to their parents.
But it was measured, heavier steps she began to discern headed for the passageway and directly for her door, and more than one of them. Her heart unwillingly picked up the sense of panic she felt when, first, she was sure someone was going to call at her door, and second, that someone had come with a cogent need for her to deal with them. She didnt want to deal with the outside. She dealt with it only on emergenciesand that was when they came to her, someone with a pain or a hurt that sweet oil from the grocer wouldnt cure. She was Evergreens only doctor.
Well, dammit, she thought, wiped her hands and left the kettle on to boil as she walked down the three steps from the kitchen that led to the snow-door. She reached the door from her side exactly at the moment the visitors knocked on it and the preachers voice called out, Darcy, its John, open up!
John Quarles and at least one other set of footsteps in a hurry. Definitely an emergencyand John didnt usually come unless it was serious. She lifted the bar, shot the bolt back and opened the door wide.
She was, being the village doctor, prepared for blood and disaster of every kind. Johns involvement usually meant somebody was dying or damned close to itand she saw marshal Peterson and deputy Jeff Burani further back in the dark passage, the marshal carrying a fur-wrapped body.
John was saying, Darcy, theres a case
But she wasnt just seeing the marshal. She was seeing her daughter Faye in the marshals arms, wrapped in those furs. It was Then. It was That Day, the preacher was at the door, and Eli Peterson and his deputy were coming toward her down the passage, bringing Faye, who was dead; and soon then Mark was
dead.
But they were both in the mountain, where the village buried its dead. That Day was sealed away and she couldnt relive it, couldnt say, to Faye, No, you cant go
Darcy. The preacher had her arm, trying to move her back from the door and its cold draft. The teakettle on the stove reached a boil and screamed a steady, maddening note.
Distracted, she gave ground and let them in: marshal Peterson, Jeff Burani, preacher John Quarles, and a hurt kidwhose kid, she wasnt sure, and her thoughts went flying distractedly down a list of kids that size and that weight. Above all else she didnt like treating kids or dealing with anxious parents. But there was no one else for the hard cases and the broken bones and the appendectomies and such.
Sorry, Darcy, sorry to bring this in on you Marshal Peterson turned the body to pass her and the preacher in the threshold. His heavy boots clumped loudly on the hollow wood and the kettle was still screaming fit to drive a body mad. The first thing she did when she reached the level of the kitchen was to go and lift the kettle off the fire.
The scream went on in her head. She hadnt screamed aloud, Then. Shed shut in, shut down. She didnt panic, now. She put on a professional face and calmed her heart, listening without giving a damn to what they were saying about a rider coming in, which didnt make any sense with a storm raging out there, and that rider bringing three kids up the road from Tarmin, which made much less sense.
We took the boys on to Van Mackeys, John said. Figured it was asking enough for you to take on the girl, Darcy, but the Lord has set a particular task on you. The Lord has had His hand on this child of His in a special way, and maybe in His good providence Hes given you this precious charge. Shes been in the passage of the Beast. Her minds gone to sleep.
John said other things. She didnt believe in his God but she believed in John. They were partners in life and death, John doing the breaking of news and dealing with the next of kin, and that was a very useful thing to her. The marshal she had far less to do with and didnt give a damn for most of the cases he brought herminers and loggers whod gotten drunk and bashed each other senseless or tried to shoot up the barracks.
But then they folded back the furs and showed her the girl, and it was Faye. It was Fayes blond curls, it was Fayes pale face, just that age.
Her eyes were open. Fayes hadnt been. Hadnt ever been again. Fayes eyes in this child looked through her, blue as the sky in summer.
Whats your name, sweetheart? Darcy asked, and brushed her hand across the girls forehead. But the girl didnt blink.
Theyre reporting Tarmins entirely wiped out, the marshal said.
She listened to it. It wouldnt come into focus. Tarmingone?
The girl didnt come out so well as the brothers, the marshal said. They were swarmed. Kids holed up. Shes the youngest. Her minds affected. They say shes getting steadily worse, dont know how many days.
Not my field, Darcy would have said. Shed dealt with a couple of shock casesminers, generally, who in their profession had to get along without riders to do more than check on their camps now and again, and just made do with guns and dugouts. The miners were tough. One had come around. The other hadnt.
Her brothers and one rider got her up here, storm and all. Theyve been through hell. I know its cruel, Darcy, but I honestly didnt know who else to take her to. Mackeys going to take the two boys in or Ill break his neck. I just dont know what else to do with the girl. I know you got one guy over this. If you could just take a look at her
Take her upstairs, she said. Downstairs was the clinic. Upstairs was where she lived. Warmer up there, most-times.
All right, Peterson said, and furs and all, carried the girl out of her kitchen, around the corner to the stairs. Darcy followed with the lamp and got in front for the ascent. Peterson carried the girl up, and the preacher came behind her, with the deputy clumping after them, up, up where there was a small landing and a choice of rooms.
The whole upstairs wasnt warm yet: the kitchen stove was only just getting going. Their breath almost frosted, and the storm had torn something loose outside that banged and thumped. But Mark had planned for stormy days. Mark had set prism glasses in the steeps of the windward side of the roof where snow didnt stick when the wind blew. The light came down four mirrored tubes, and it didnt need kerosene to keep the upstairs lit even when the shutters were closed.
Fayes room had one. She opened the door. Dawn must be starting, because there was a faint glow coming in above the lamplight. She hadnt noticed how much dust there had gotten to be. But the sheets were clean under the coverlet, and she had the marshal lay the girl down there.
You sure youre all right? the marshal asked her then, and she knew damned well what he was thinking and asking of her.
Fine. She wasnt angry, just ready for them to get out of her way and
let her find out what the girls chances were. She wasnt sentimental about Fayes things. She could use this room when it was practical. And it was practical now, a matter of light that didnt risk fire or cost money.
Such a pale, cold face. She couldnt keep her hand from the blond curls. She knew it wasnt Faye, but it was something to deceive her eyes and her hands and, at least for a while, the blank spot in her heart. Oh, honey, can you blink for me? Can you do that?
Let us pray, John said, and launched into something about the Lord and lost sheep.
Yeah, she said, instead of amenshe said things like that habitually and John kept his mouth shut and winced: John could have the souls on their way to the next world, but she wanted this one alive.
So she herded the three men downstairs, as of no use, and had no time to spare for tea or cordialities: she shoved them out the door, with them promising to check this afternoon, and John Quarles promising to bring groceries if she needed them.
I have everything I need, she said, maybe foolishly, because it wasnt the truth, and she shut the door on them, then shot the bolt and dropped the bar.
Faye, all done up in furs and softness. It was a beautiful dead child the marshal had brought her, That Day, and she began to cry.
But old thoughts came to her and prompted her to stop sniveling and get something done. She found the dusty warming bricks in the downstairs closet and set them on the kitchen stove top, and stoked it up with another few sticks of wood.
She took the hot kettle upstairs, moving faster than she had moved about her business in long, long months. She knew it wasnt her daughtershe knew better; but she didnt choose to know: that was the real difference between sane and crazy.
In the thoughts she chose to think, Faye was home, the marshal had brought her, and she had a chance this time to fight death, hands on and by her effortslim, but at least this time, a chance.
The smith, Mackey, hadnt been exactly hospitable.
But Carlo thought now, sitting in a warm nook in Van Mackeys forge, with the faint glow of embers for light as well as heat, that he was very willing to put up with pain in his fingers and feet. He was grateful that Danny Fisher hadnt let them quiteven if Danny had missed the shelters in the whiteout.
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