Into the Wilderness

by Sara Donati

  “I was only eleven. And she wanted to come with me,” Todd said. “She knew even back then that she didn’t belong.”

  “Sarah was Kahnyen’kehàka,” Nathaniel said weakly.

  “I taught her to think otherwise,” said Todd. “Although she took some reminding, when we finally ran into each other again.”

  “Reason enough to kill you, right there.” Nathaniel’s fingers groped and curled and found no purchase. He forced himself to think of Elizabeth, and then he drew in three deep, pain-wrenching breaths, and then three more. “But I won’t,” he said finally. “At least, not right now.” He closed his eyes, but it wasn’t any good. Some things wouldn’t go away in the dark.

  “How come you’re telling me about this now?” he asked. “All this time you kept quiet.”

  “I’m sicker than you are.”

  “Well, I don’t care to hear your confession,” Nathaniel snapped.

  “That’s not the point,” Richard said. “You never have got the point.”

  “Then spit it out, man. What do you want of us?”

  There was a long pause. “The leg’s infected,” Richard said. “If she doesn’t get back here quick I won’t have much chance.”

  Nathaniel said, “You can’t have the Wolf, living or dead.”

  “But you could bury me there,” he said softly. “If I don’t make it, you could bury me next to Sarah.”

  “And if you live?”

  “Then I’ll do my best to get the mountain,” Richard said.

  Elizabeth fell for the second time climbing over a huge hummock. The carpet of moss gave way and she sank in to the ankle, coming to a full stop while the world revolved around her in a fury of wind, never-ending lightning, and thunder more predictable than the beat of her own heart. With a gasp, she sat back awkwardly on one haunch.

  She was so wet, she could not remember what it was like to be dry. The buckskin clung to her heavily, and she thought lazily about simply taking all the wet things off and just making her way without. “Eve on the way back into the garden,” she said aloud.

  Treenie crowded in close, her teeth chattering visibly. Elizabeth slung one arm around the animal’s neck to steady herself and slowly pulled her ankle out. A deep scratch, but no other injury. She had begun to pull up, when she felt the dog tense.

  Just on the other side of the stream, the ragged frame of a dead balsam was thrown into relief by a huge flash of light. The bolt struck at the tip and rent it to the root with a noise so absolute that Elizabeth felt rather than heard the whoosh of the explosion: the balsam burst into a single flame, and fell in a slow and graceful arc like a torch flung into the stream. Unable to turn away or close her streaming eyes, Elizabeth watched as the burning tree discharged a volley of small missiles which flew through the air, streaming fire. Some landed heavily in the water, but one fell at her feet with a thud. She squinted, and looked harder, trying to make sense of it: a jay, its claws turned down on themselves in death. One half of its feathers strangely disheveled and standing on end; the other half charred raw and slightly steaming.

  Elizabeth pulled herself to her feet, wiped the rain from her face, and set off again.

  The familiar night sounds provided some comfort: the odd barking cry of the fox, the echoing owls, the wolves, forever calling, the shouting of the tree frogs and crickets singing without pause. Drifting in and out of sleep, taking note of the state of the fire and the storm, paying attention to Richard’s small sounds, Nathaniel dozed and slept and thought of Elizabeth. Willed her forward, through the swamp and then due south, to Robbie. He willed her dry and whole and healthy, he willed her good spirits and easy thoughts and a clear trail. He willed her back beside him.

  Richard sat up suddenly, startling Nathaniel out of his thoughts and fully awake. His hair stood out in a mane, his beard caked with grime. In the firelight his blue eyes blazed with fever and the madness of wanting and a clear, focused fear.

  “What?” Nathaniel asked, even as he heard it himself. But he asked again, “What?” hoarsely. He reached for his rifle, the cold metal of the barrel as familiar to him as any part of his own body. His hands shook as he cocked the trigger. The sound was lost in the crackling of the fire.

  Fear was commonplace in the bush. Once, deep in concentration as he aimed at a running buck, he had lost his footing and begun to slide over the edge of a cliff. As a young man, he had seen a panther drop out of a tree onto a boy’s back and reach around to lay his throat open with a casual swipe of a paw. More than once, he had capsized in icy white water. But this fear was colder, because he could put no face to it, beyond the ones that Joe had described. No face that he wanted to see.

  With his bad hand cradled against his chest, Richard was holding up his left palm toward Nathaniel. Wait, he mouthed. Wait.

  Against the first gauzy light of dawn the huge form materialized in the door all at once. Nathaniel’s nostrils flared: sweat and tobacco and beaver musk and bear grease, and all the other smells together that made the Kahnyen’kehàka smell. Fear gave way to relief so suddenly that Nathaniel broke into a running sweat. He lowered his rifle sights to wipe his face with one sleeve.

  The man in the doorway came forward. The firelight picked out his rough-cast features: an old tomahawk scar ran from his scalp down the left side of his face; one ear was mangled. Nathaniel didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t matter. He would be related somehow, through Sarah. And a Kahnyen’kehàka out hunting or traveling wouldn’t be alone.

  It took three heartbeats for Nathaniel to realize that something was wrong with Richard, who crouched motionless on the other side of the fire. All the wariness and anger in his face had disappeared. Above the beard, his face had taken on the look of a child, blank with fear.

  The man’s eyes were narrowed and fixed on Richard. Suddenly, unexpectedly, they widened in surprise. The large mouth broadened into a smile, splitting the tattoos on his cheeks with deep dimples, turning him from a warrior into a boy.

  “Irtakohsaks,” said the man to Richard Todd. “Etshitewa’kenha, karìwehs tsi sahtentyonh.”

  Cat-Eater, Little Brother. You have been gone a very long time.

  XXXVII

  Such a warm and excessively sunny morning seemed improbable after the night of storms, but Elizabeth woke to just that. She might be wet through, every muscle might protest at the need for action, but the early morning sunlight was welcome on her face.

  And there was a rabbit, fresh killed, bleeding into the grass at her feet, and evidence on Treenie’s muzzle that she had indulged herself first.

  “Very generous of you,” Elizabeth praised her. “But how am I going to start a fire?” She hauled herself into a sitting position and stretched arms overhead, wincing slightly. She was not quite hungry enough to eat the flesh raw. But eat she must.

  Eventually, she found a cranny between some boulders where the accumulation of autumn leaves was thick and deep enough to provide some dry tinder. This she fed carefully until there was enough of a flame to cook the rabbit on an improvised spit of green wood. In the end she burned both her fingers and her mouth and ate it near to raw anyway, while Treenie made short work of the odds and ends.

  She wished desperately for the time to sit quietly and dry out, even as she sorted through her things and made ready to set off. In the bottom of her pack she found a forgotten store of nuts, which she cracked between her teeth while she surveyed the damage. The gunpowder was damp, but she was only a morning’s walk from Robbie, if she didn’t lose her way. For that long she could do without the musket. The knife was easily dried and oiled. Finally, Elizabeth changed into the spare hunting shirt, which was not quite so damp as the overdress on her back, loosed her hair so that it could dry in the breeze and the sun, pinned her hair brooch to the inside of her shirt to keep it safe, checked the compass, and set off with her moccasins cold and wet on her feet.

  She found herself humming after a bit, and stopped, surprised and a little shocked at a disquietin
g truth: she was no longer panicked. The thought of Nathaniel made her walk faster, but somewhere during the storm she had lost the kind of breathless fear which had threatened to overwhelm her since the shooting. Under clear skies washed into brilliance, panic was replaced by a calmness of purpose.

  The forest thinned by mid-morning into something approximating a meadow, or as close to a meadow as she had ever experienced in the great northern woods. About an acre in diameter, it was predominantly knee-high grasses and blueberry thickets. Recognizing the place as the one Nathaniel had described to her, Elizabeth stopped and took her bearings again. She was to leave the river and turn due south, here, and make her way over the hill before her. There would be a deer trail, Nathaniel had said, that crossed a brook with an abandoned beaver dam.

  With a start Elizabeth found herself nearly tripping over a fawn hidden in the grass, a tiny thing with huge round eyes that looked up at her without fear or interest. Treenie pushed forward eagerly.

  “Mind your manners,” Elizabeth said to her sharply. Dejected, the dog loped ahead in search of an uncensored meal. Elizabeth was hungry, too, but on the other side of this hill she would come to the lake called Little Lost, at the foot of Robbie’s mountain. The thought of delay was unbearable.

  She tucked the compass into her belt and went down on one knee to retie a moccasin, feeling her hair, dry now, falling in a veil past her cheek and shoulder to touch the ground. It was a strange feeling to wear her hair loose, almost as disconcerting as it would be to walk naked through the meadow. Feeling suddenly vulnerable, Elizabeth stood.

  “Not so long ago, the Indians would have fought over those long curls of yours,” said a voice behind her. “Killed each other for the privilege of scalping you. But of course, your hair is magnificent, Madame Bonner.”

  Elizabeth drew one very slow and deep breath. She turned, her thoughts churning as fast as the racing of her heart.

  Jack Lingo. He was directly before her; she could see the individual hairs in the eyebrow which he raised in a quizzical arch.

  “I see I have surprised you.”

  His gaze flickered away, over her shoulder. Behind them Treenie was growling, a sound which would have made Elizabeth’s hair stand on end in other circumstances. The trapper pursed his lips.

  “Your animal?” he asked, bringing up the barrel of his rifle.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said hoarsely. The clack of the hammer striking the lock seemed very loud. With the hiss of the primer powder, she simply reached out and pushed the barrel hard to one side and held it there in her fist. She felt it jerk in her hand with the blast of sound and smoke. Above her own coughing, the other sounds came all together: Lingo’s curse, and the dog’s scream. She turned in time to see the flash of one red haunch disappearing into the trees.

  Elizabeth turned on her heel to go after her, but Lingo had her by the wrist with a grip that did not yet hurt, but soon would.

  “Let me go,” Elizabeth said.

  “It was just a graze, thanks to your foolish intervention. You needn’t worry about the animal.”

  Elizabeth stilled suddenly.

  The eyebrow peaked again. “You don’t believe me, and why should you? But in this case I am telling the truth. She has gone off to tend her wound. She may live.”

  He jerked with his head toward a log on the ground, letting go of her wrist.

  “Sit.”

  She stood, and watched his face cloud with something she could not name. Not anger. Anticipation. Her stomach rose and turned in on itself.

  “Mr. Lingo,” she said, and faltered.

  “Sit,” he repeated. “We may have a long wait ahead of us. And please, you must call me Jacques.”

  “Jacques,” she said. “Please let me go.”

  At that he gave her a broad smile. His teeth were very white and even, overlarge in his face. “Do you beg me already? You disappointed me last time, madame. This time I will wait for your good husband to come and confront him myself. Perhaps with your assistance we can finally resolve this misunderstanding between us.”

  Elizabeth could not gather her thoughts. He intended to keep her here with him; she could not be delayed. Perspiration trickled down her face.

  He was looking at her sharply. “Unless you are already widowed?”

  She jumped. “No.”

  Lingo reached over and took the useless musket out of her belt. He tapped the muzzle against one tooth, thoughtfully. “So soon tired of married life? No, I thought not. He has a way with the women, does Nathaniel. There was a little wench up in Good Pasture, she would have followed him anywhere once he had her. But he was not interested in a wife at that time. Or shall we say, not in a poor wife. But I bore you.”

  “Mr. Lingo,” began Elizabeth. “Come along with me if you must, but I have an errand that cannot wait.”

  “Cannot wait?”

  Elizabeth shifted uncomfortably, using all her concentration to set her face in neutral lines. To tell this man that Nathaniel lay wounded and defenseless a day and a half’s walk away did not appeal to her at all. On the other hand, if she did not tell him he might keep her here all day, which would be disastrous. She had no doubt that he could outrun her, even with his limp. Remembering the look on Nathaniel’s face when he had found her after her last conversation with Lingo, she knew that she was in very serious trouble.

  “I have to fetch Robbie,” she said finally. “There was an accident. Richard Todd was hurt. Nathaniel can’t carry him out, alone.”

  The blue eyes narrowed. “I have no patience with lying women,” he said. “I have relieved more than one of that breed of their tongues.”

  Elizabeth drew herself up, and called forth every bit of dignity she possessed. “Richard Todd is injured, and I am on my way to Robbie. I’d like my musket back, please.”

  She regretted that please. It had sparked an unpleasant smile.

  “Mais non, you cannot leave so soon. And it would not do you any good. Robbie is away.”

  “Away?” She cleared her throat. “If he is walking his trap lines, he will be back soon enough. Now.” She nodded and took a step backward. “Excuse me—”

  “But I most certainly do not,” said Jack Lingo. “Look, here comes an old friend of yours. Perhaps you will find his conversation more to your liking.”

  Even in total darkness, the smell would have been enough to put a name to the man who came up behind her.

  “Dutch Ton,” said Lingo. “The beautiful Madame Bonner, of whom you speak so often. I think we will make camp right here, don’t you?”

  In the late afternoon she made her first attempt at escape, and failed. The men had been drinking for hours, quarreling and singing in turns; sometimes they seemed to forget her, and other times they discussed her openly, as if she were not capable of understanding their comments.

  Elizabeth watched the sun track through the sky, feeling the skin on her nose and across her cheekbones burning and stretching with the heat. Lingo would not allow her to change her position; he walked with her to the edge of the forest when she relieved herself, turning away slowly after a disquieting moment when he seemed to be set on watching her.

  She guessed the hour to be three in the afternoon when they fell asleep. Lingo sat against a sapling with his rifle cradled across his lap, his ankles crossed and his chin on his chest, Dutch Ton, twice his width, lay spread-eagle in the meadow grass with his mouth open to the sky, the ginger stubble on his face glistening with saliva. Elizabeth watched them breathing for a long time, and then she simply stood up and began to walk away.

  When she had reached the edge of the wood, a rifle shot clipped a tree branch just above her head. Lingo had caught up to her before she could even think of running. Without a word, he wound one fist in her hair and yanked her back to camp. She would not yell, though she could not stop the tears that welled up at the pain.

  This time he did not banter politely as he bound her. The rope was old and sticky with some substance Elizabeth could
not—did not want to—identify. He pulled a loop tight around her left wrist, and tied the other end to his belt. Then he fell with a grunt back down to the ground, scratching the crotch of his breeches intently. He laughed out loud when she looked away.

  “What do you think, has he grown tired of her?” he asked Dutch Ton. “It is hard to imagine, looking at her. But then again perhaps she is unresponsive.”

  “She can read,” Ton pointed out. “A teacher.”

  Lingo spat into the fire.

  “We might shave her head,” he said thoughtfully, leaning over to touch a curl where it lay on Elizabeth’s shoulder. “No scars, after all. But a clear message.”

  She jerked away. Some time ago she had decided that it would not serve her in any way to involve herself in a discussion with either of these men, and so she bit her tongue and fought hard to keep her face calm. With each passing hour that became more difficult.

  Lingo had uncorked the bottle and drank again, deeply.

  I am not thirsty, Elizabeth chanted to herself. I am not thirsty.

  He leaned toward her on one elbow, held out the bottle. She pressed her mouth into a hard line and blinked, slowly.

  Lingo lowered the bottle, but stayed stretched out before her, staring up at her face. There was graying stubble on his face now, and a network of wrinkles at his eyes and the corners of his mouth. The skin on his neck was loose and soft.

  “You are older than you first appear,” Elizabeth said out loud, surprised at the creakiness of her own voice, unused now for hours.

  His expression hardened, and he snorted softly. Then with his mouth pursed and his elegant brows drawn together in a tight vee, he lifted one hand with a slow and deliberate motion and encircled her ankle with it. She could feel the heat of his palm through the soft leather of her moccasin, the length of his thumb, the firm pressure of four fingertips.

  When Elizabeth was suffused with color, he smiled, and let her ankle go.