Sevana went over to meet him as he got out of his truck. “Dinner’s on the stove, Fenn. Joel and I are on our way to Landmark Peak.”
He gave a nod as he shouldered his chainsaw and started across the grass.
“Anything we can pick up for you in town, Fenn?” Joel asked after him.
“Sure.” He swiveled to face Sevana as if she’d been the one to speak. “Get me a couple bottles of Old Crow and a roll of Copenhagen. And whatever you need to cook with,” he added, setting down the saw to hand her some bills out of his wallet.
Joel gave him a cursory nod. “We’ll see you after a while.”
“Not if I can help it.” Sevana just caught the muttered words as Fenn hoisted the saw back onto his shoulder and turned on his heel for the house.
After they were on their way down the hill, Joel asked Sevana tersely, “How’d things go the other night, after I got Brook?”
She wondered what to say. That Fenn had been out in the dark for over an hour for no apparent reason? That he, ridiculously, had all but accused Joel of being a thief? “He went upstairs and I didn’t see him again,” she settled on—which, while not strictly accurate, seemed close enough for general conversation.
“He drink like that every night?”
“No—but more often than he used to. Maybe I’ve driven him to it,” she tried to joke.
Joel didn’t share her humor. “You—haven’t had any more trouble with him since he was sick, have you?”
“No. Mostly he’s just been awfully quiet. But with him, it’s hard to tell if something’s truly wrong, or if it’s just his usual bad mood.”
Joel blew out a long breath. “I bet Lethbridge is looking pretty good to you right now.”
Then it was Sevana who was quiet. The fact was, she was increasingly dreading the time when she wouldn’t see Joel anymore. But of course it wasn’t proper to say so, when he would be engaged to someone else right now if he could be, so she let it brood as an unspoken misery.
Upon entering Cragmont, Joel drove through its hillside streets to let her see the unpretentious houses with their mature fir trees and striking vistas of the lake. It was quite a situation for a town, Sevana concluded, there on the lakeshore and surrounded by so many elevated peaks. And anyone could live there if they chose; it was not like Fenn and Joel’s exclusive mountain. A glimmer of desire suggested itself to her—the thought of moving there to become the town’s resident artist…someday, when she was good enough! The idea appealed to her more than a little.
Back on level ground, Joel stopped at the mercantile. “Go ahead and get what you need,” he told her. “I’m going to pick up a few more things for my trip.”
The log seat out front reminded Sevana of the old backwoodsman she’d met that first day—which seemed a very long time ago now. She wanted to tell Joel about that bizarre conversation, but he was already getting out of the truck.
The shopkeeper greeted them with his bashful grin and garbled speech, but Sevana was surprised to hear Joel answering him easily, calling him Clarence. They carried on a conversation without difficulty, and Sevana thought the slight man looked positively beaming, as if Joel was a special friend of his. It was strange to hear them talk, for she could only understand one side. But Joel knew this, and deflected things her way. “You’re having a pretty good time out here, wouldn’t you say?” he asked, to let her know Clarence was inquiring. “Oh yes, a very good time,” she answered, including the shopkeeper in her smile. The thin man grinned and dipped his head. He was much shyer with her than he was with Joel.
After more talk, Joel selected two boxes from a pile of cardboard and set them on the counter. Then Sevana wandered through the crowded aisles after him, following his lead by taking items back to fill her box. She got the things she needed for the loggers’ cookies, and some supplies for the larder—even some fishing flies for Fenn’s birthday in August, although she had to solicit Joel’s help in picking out the right kind. She easily found the chew Fenn wanted: there was a whole shelf stocked with it. The only hitch occurred when she asked for Fenn’s whisky, and Clarence took one look at her and shook his head regretfully. Joel, coming over, translated for him that even though any friend of Joel’s was a friend of his, he still couldn’t sell Old Crow to anyone underage. Then Sevana looked so distressed at the thought of Fenn’s displeasure that Joel got it for her, although the muscles in his lean jaw rippled tautly as he put the square bottles in her box.
When they were back in the truck, Sevana asked how he could understand Clarence, and he said there was no trick to it, it was just a matter of being around him enough to get used to it. As he started the engine, Sevana cast one more look down the street, if by chance to see the oldtimer with the ghostly-eyed dog at his heels. When she related that peculiar encounter to Joel as they drove out of town, he acted neither surprised nor mystified. “That fellow’s been around here longer than anybody,” he said. “He’s an eccentric, and it’s rumored he writes volumes of material no one has ever seen, but he’s not a bad sort. He just meant the mountains are a hard place to leave, that’s all.” He grew reflective. “A hard place to leave,” he repeated soberly.
Then he was steering up a precipitous mountainside just outside Cragmont, and Sevana turned her eyes to see the new territory he was taking her into.
The road to Landmark Peak was the worst Sevana had been on yet. One switchback was so sharp Joel had to back up to finish the turn. Another curve had washed out completely, and some previous adventurer had rolled a rotten log into the gully for the tires to ride over. The truck dropped into the hole, and rocked and bounced alarmingly before grinding out of it again. Sevana was wide-eyed, but Joel didn’t seem to recognize the road was practically impassable. “They should have used a bigger log,” was all he said.
At another tight switchback, he pulled in an Indian paintbrush from the straight-up cutbank outside his window. “Paintbrush for the artist,” he said, presenting the scarlet flower as he drove on around the corner. “What about it, Sevana? Will I one day hear your name mentioned with the other great artists of our time?”
“I hope so.” Intensity darkened her eyes, so that Joel, looking over, thought they resembled a smoky blue sky. “I’m going to give it everything I’ve got.”
“You’ve got talent and determination, so I can’t see anything standing in your way,” he said seriously. “And to think, I knew you before everybody else.”
Sevana smiled at him, clinging to the faith he expressed even as she clutched the flower he’d given her. It was encouraging to be believed in.
The truck continued its rigorous toil up the stony grade. Little by little they were gaining that steep mountain, if the force fighting against them didn’t win to drag them back into the valley. They had just rounded a horseshoe-shaped switchback with a sloped edge that shot nakedly into open space, when the truck jarred over a large rock, sputtered in protest, and died. Joel didn’t even try to restart it. He just set the brake, remarking that at least he wouldn’t have to block the tires, and got out.
Even opening the door was a strain against the steep angle, and Sevana could feel the pull of gravity resisting her as she climbed the tilted road with Joel. Wind was rasping through the stiff-needled alpine firs and rough clumps of juniper and heather: it was sharp-scented, fresh and tangy. There were a few patches of unmelted snow. On the crest ahead loomed empty sky, and it seemed they were approaching the top of the world.
A snowdrift lay across the road, slanting over the edge. “Watch your step, the snow’s icy—” Joel was saying, and in the same instant snatched her arm as she started to slide. “Dig your feet in as you go.” He kept hold of her until they were on bare ground again.
Suddenly a weathered gray-white firetower loomed above them on the skyline. “Welcome to Landmark Peak,” Joel intoned in his best tour-guide voice. “Elevation 6980 feet. That’s a clear gain of five-thousand vertical feet from the valley floor.”
After scrambling ov
er one last snowdrift, they reached the ridgetop where the land dropped away at their feet. All around them, mountains and valleys rose and fell like waves of the sea to the far horizons, where more peaks stood in a mighty, unbroken circle around the rim of the world. The sky, which Sevana had grown used to being just a small slice above the rising mountainsides, was wide as the earth. The sun, which she had thought already set, was still shining above the horizon to the west. “Oh, Joel, look at all those mountains!” she said in wonder.
With the gladness of the view reflected in his eyes, Joel pointed out their own Old Stormy, Graystone, and Bearclaw amid the crests of that range. He named other ranges of the mountain chain, big for their distance. But he wasn’t satisfied to remain on the ground, and urged her to climb the tower with him. Sevana thought the old building looked precarious—built on wooden stilts at the edge of a precipice as it was—but she followed him anyway, holding tightly to the splintery railing for the four very steep flights of shuddering steps. The windows and door of the building were boarded up, but around it ran a catwalk from which they could look out in every direction unhindered.
Sevana studied the view from all four sides, but spent the most time facing their own river canyon. She could see the Stony winding in a thin silvery line far below, see the evergreen forests uniformly clothing the flanks of the deep valley, see the fissured iron-gray rocks rising barren above them, and gain a bird’s-eye perspective of how everything fit together. For the first time she understood the true magnitude of the land she had come to shelter in, and was so overcome by it that she stood silent in awe.
Joel was looking at her. “Sometimes I can see you painting pictures with your eyes.”
“Is it that obvious? Why, Joel, you could spend your whole life here and never run out of subjects!”
They sat on the platform and ate the bread and cheese and apples Joel had bought in town for the occasion. “Why isn’t anyone stationed here now?” Sevana asked as she unwillingly crunched into her winesap, which in her opinion was too perfectly shaped and colored to eat.
“The building’s over fifty years old, and the Ministry of Forests decided not to put money into renovating it. Chantal was the last lookout here.”
Sevana had a hard time picturing the sophisticated girl she’d met, living in that primitive tower—and Joel guessed her thoughts. “She was all wrong for the job,” he acknowledged. “Straight from Vancouver, no experience in how to rough it, scared to be alone, scared of the wildlife, scared of the spiders and ants that live in these old towers. If I hadn’t come along, she probably wouldn’t have lasted the summer without quitting or getting fired. But it was the best thing she could have done for her career. The photos she captured that summer were priceless.”
But he hadn’t come here to reminisce—had deliberately purposed he wouldn’t; and was operating on a level distanced from his feelings, for he wanted to show Sevana his wilderness. “See Old Stormy?” He rose for a view unblocked by the railing. “At its base is the pass where I take the sheep. It’s an open meadow, and in July it’s filled with wildflowers.”
“Why July?” Standing with him, Sevana tried her best to spy the pass that offered no clue of its existence.
“July is spring up there. August is summer, and September is fall.”
While Sevana contemplated a land so high that three seasons could pass in the span of a single summer elsewhere, that same wilderness was coloring in the setting sun. The peaks flared briefly and fell dark as the sun disappeared behind the jagged line of mountains to the northwest. Then the western horizon flamed orange, and the panorama of valleys and ridges turned a misty violet.
The lonely wind gusted against the lookout, shaking it. It wailed against the rocks and scrubby trees it found in its way, then swirled off into the chasm. Sevana gripped the weathered railing as it vibrated under her hand and hoped the old building was still solid, but she didn’t take her eyes from the view.
Something beyond words was within her, in that high, wild world of the far-setting sun—the force of the wind…the purple, hazy ranges…the scent of heather, resinous and sharp. And the wildness was in her, too: a love and a longing, a fear and a fascination—so overwhelming it sought expression, but finding none was left unsatisfied, pent-up.
Joel was leaning boldly over the rail, watching the sky that seemed to be growing no darker. “It always amazes me how long it stays light when you’re above the mountains.”
“Yes—isn’t it strange to be so high, perched up here?” she said. “We’re so alone among the sea of ranges, and you can feel it—in everything, can’t you?”
“Yes, you can.” He was facing west, searching out the unseen lands beyond the edge of the sky, and his expression was not without conflict. “It’s funny, you can see so far from up here, but you can’t look ahead even one day, to know what your life will be like tomorrow.”
They stayed until the sunset had begun to deepen—until the alpine firs were only black spearpoints against the scorched-orange horizon, and the wind was singing a night song over the far expanses—and still they walked in its lingering glow to the truck. How Joel got turned around in that harrowing place Sevana didn’t know, but he did so with perfect control, while she tried not to think of the dropoff only inches to the side and the slope pulling them that way.
“Well, Sevana,” Joel said, when they were bumping over the unforgiving rocks again, “I can’t take you to the wilderness, but at least you can say you saw it from a distance.”
“Yes, and what a sight it was!” She was still in a blissful daydream.
She had thought the adventure over now, was already looking back on it to savor it—but Joel had something else in mind. At a wide corner he came to a stop, debating something. “There’s a little glacial cirque back in here, not too far. I know it’s getting dark, but if we hurry—”
She saw how much he wanted to do it. “I’d like to see it,” she said, hand on the door latch. With him, she was game for anything—soaking in as many experiences as she would be allowed.
He flashed her a grin. “I may have to take back what I said about you being a city girl,” he said.
CHAPTER 22
It was dark at the beginning as they fought through a thicket of young trees crowding the road, but before long they broke into an open basin illumined well enough by the dome of pale sky to allow a subtle view of the whole terrain.
“Let’s go!” Joel’s voice carried enthusiasm, as if the wild country held a certain healing balm for the soreness of his heart. “We’ll go up and see the lake, and then we’ll race the dark out of here.”
They hurried over the sparse grass, Sevana trying not to step on the fragile wildflowers which looked only like miniature blobs of white in the dusk. A stream reflecting the sheen of the sky ran across their way—not deep, but too wide to jump across. Joel stopped at the edge. “Want to get your boots wet, or take them off?”
“Do we have time?”
“It’ll stay light like this for another hour yet.”
“Then I’ll take them off,” she decided, taking a seat on one of the many stones of that glacier-scarred land.
“Probably best.” Even though she had a feeling he wouldn’t have done so if he’d been by himself, he also sat down and untied his boots.
It turned out Sevana was glad she’d taken the trouble, for it proved one of the most memorable experiences of that exceptional day. It was not soon she forgot the tingling shock of the frigid water or the sting of sharp gravel on her feet, as she and Joel splashed across the stream as fast as they could, waving their boots and hooting and shrieking—the echoes rebounding back to them doubly loud in the barren landscape.
After donning their footwear, they hiked the rest of the way to the lake. There it was, in a shallow rock bowl: an oval pool mirroring the pale milky sky with marblelike luminance. A few well-placed lily pads adorned its calm surface like deliberate decoration. Huge round boulders and flat flagstones were set on th
e grassy shore randomly and yet with a curious appearance of order, so that Sevana could fancy the shore held the ruins of some magical courtyard.
“This is Frog Lake,” said Joel.
“No, it’s Fairy Lake.” Sevana’s eyes shone like the lake itself in the twilit radiance. “It doesn’t look real—it’s a setting for some olden kingdom of fairies or elves…or at least enchanted frogs.”
He smiled. “It’s a nice place to spend a summer afternoon.” He sprang up on one of the rocks to look over the dusky domain. He made Sevana think of a wolf surveying its territory—lean, alert, skilled in surviving by his own resources in a land he was familiar with to the last detail. But scarcely had he taken his stance when he stepped down again. “Ready to go?”
Sevana wondered why he wanted to go so soon, when the minute before he’d seemed so content, but she followed in mute acquiescence as he turned and walked in a brisk pace to the creek. Before she had time to take off her boots, he said, “I’ll carry you,”—and catching her up in his arms in a single motion easily, as if she had been one of his sheep, splashed straight through the water, boots and all.
Startled, Sevana clung to his shoulder even while she tried to study his face. The light was too muted to see the subtleties of his expression, but she didn’t have to see anything to know something wasn’t right. “Joel—”
He was still carrying her as if he’d forgotten to put her down. “There you go,” he said a little too heartily, setting her on her feet. “Saved you the trouble of taking off your boots.” He stepped off the little game trail they were on. “Why don’t you go first?”
They were entering the thicket when Sevana heard rocks bouncing behind them and a shower of pebbles as from a small landslide. Joel gave her a gentle nudge to keep her moving. When they were inside the shadowed cab of the truck, she asked—now fairly certain of the answer: “Was something back there?”
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