by Lauren Wolk
I might have told her then about the dog, but she seemed a little too much like him in that moment. The way she looked at me. As if she wanted an explanation. An answer to a question she could not quite put into words.
So I said, “Just walking.” Something I did often. Something I had once done with my father, who also liked an after-supper ramble and the softness of dark air.
“Well, walk back out and get some kindling for the soap fire.” She turned toward the stone pit where we cooked things better made outside.
I almost echoed Samuel then. I almost said, “How come Esther isn’t helping with the tallow?” But I didn’t.
Esther did her fair share. It didn’t matter that she liked housework. What mattered was that she did that work, leaving me free to do some of what my father had once done. Yard chores. Gardening. Fishing. And anything involving fire.
My mother didn’t notice the paddle of balsam I carried behind my back. She didn’t notice when I tucked it behind the woodshed. But I knew she would notice when I spread it on my father’s scar. The place where the tree had struck him. Which was as close as I could get to what ailed him.
I knew his wound was on the inside. And I knew that balsam was mostly good for wounds on the outside. But what about the things I didn’t know? What about the possibility that all we had to do to make him well was try harder? Try anything. Try everything. And admit that there were things we didn’t understand.
* * *
—
Working with my mother to build the soap-fire, stirring the tallow into the kettle of lye water that hung over the flames, made me sorry for the silence between us, so I broke it.
“I saw a dog on the trail earlier today.”
In the golden firelight, my mother seemed softer, but there was nothing soft about the look she gave me.
“What dog?”
“That’s what I want to know. It was a big one, brindled, with ears that stood up. And it didn’t seem quite tame.”
My mother added a stick to the fire. “You sure it wasn’t a coyote?”
“Dog,” I said. “Come down the trail from above.”
“Maybe someone on the hill has a new one.”
I shook my head. “There wasn’t anything new about this dog. And Mr. Peterson didn’t know him.”
“I wonder if that could be the hag’s mutt. Except it’s never come down from her camp before.”
The hag. I hadn’t heard that name for a long time.
Not since a foggy morning long before, when I had been tempted by how the mountaintop disappeared into the mist, ignored my father’s warnings, and climbed beyond the last of the five families, where there were no trails except what the deer and moose made . . . and smelled a fire up above. I had run back down to warn my father. Wildfire, I had thought. And I hadn’t been entirely mistaken.
When I found him splitting wood and told him there was a fire above, he set his ax aside and said, “It’s all right, Ellie.” He wiped the sweat off his face with his hands. “That’s just the hag up there.”
“‘Just the hag’?” The only hags I knew were in storybooks. Gnarled old creatures who cast spells and ate children for supper. “What hag?”
“The only hag I know of. And I met her only once myself, when we first came here. Didn’t know she was up there when I went looking for the mountaintop. She was in her little yard, skinning a deer, and I tell you, Ellie, I had a hard time standing still when I saw her. She was that odd. And she had a dog with her. A big one. With a dark eye.”
“What, you mean one eye black and one eye not?”
“No.” He laughed. “A dark stare. No welcome in it. Not in hers either.”
I pictured that. “Did she say anything?”
He nodded. “She said, ‘You need a leech on that ear. Then honey if it’s hot.’”
I remember him smiling at the look on my face. “I had a hurt ear. From a fall. It was swollen. She told me I should go down to the marsh and get a leech or two to drain the blood off or I’d have a ruined ear.”
“And did you?”
He shook his head. “I had your mother lance it instead. It bled so bad I thought we’d made a mistake doing that, but the pus came with it. And then I recall we did put some honey on the open cut, and it healed right and quickly. So.”
I remember how he picked up his ax again. Went on with his work. But I stopped him with a fresh question. “And what about the hag? Did you go back up after that?”
At which my father shook his head.
“You don’t ever even talk about her,” I said. “Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about her?”
My father set a fresh log on the stump and hefted his ax. “Nothing to say. And no sense pointing you children toward something better left alone. Which is what you’ll do, Ellie. Leave her alone.” And there was something so hard in his voice that I’d obeyed him.
* * *
—
Now, much later, as I stood with my mother by the fire and stirred the tallow, I wondered if the hag might have carved the little lamb and the dog and all the other small gifts I’d been given.
“How old is the hag?” I asked my mother, remembering the face I’d seen in the woods, which had seemed too young for someone called a hag.
“I have no idea,” she said. “But from what your father said, I’d imagine ‘old’ would do.”
So: not the wood-carver. But perhaps something better.
“Did you ever ask her to come see Daddy?” I asked. “After he got hurt?”
My mother looked at me like I had two heads. “The hag? When the doctor said there was nothing to be done? Don’t be foolish.” She fed another stick to the flames. “I don’t know if that dog was hers or a stray, but if you see it again, you keep away and let me know.” She kicked an ember back into the fire. “Tame or wild, a hungry dog will eat. And your brother’s still little enough to be dragged away.”
I imagined Samuel in a set of jaws, and my shoulders went up around my ears.
For a tiny boy who never looked where he was going, the woods could be especially unkind.
“I’ll tell you if I see it again,” I said. And I meant it. I truly did. But I didn’t know where that dog would lead me. Or what it would lead me to become.
Chapter Thirteen
That night, when we gathered around my father to wish him good night, I laid my hand on his forehead and closed my eyes and told him, without a word, that I was going to bring him back.
I concentrated so hard on that thought that I could feel it pulsing in my ears, and my hand grew hot on his cool skin, as if the flame in my chest had spread.
I was startled when Esther pulled my arm away and said, “What are you doing, Ellie? Daddy doesn’t need your sweaty hand on his face.”
“Do you have a fever?” my mother said, pressing her lips against my forehead, and I closed my eyes and let myself feel that almost-kiss until she pulled back and said, “You’d better get on to bed. Your father is already sick enough.”
Later, as I tried to sleep, I touched that spot on my forehead again and again, but it was no softer than the rest of me.
I hoped it would send me quickly to sleep—perhaps even to dream of my father waking and rising and growing brawny and brown again—but instead I lay in the darkness as I always did now, jangled and jarred by a memory that kept me wakeful and sad long into the night.
* * *
—
While my mother, my sister, my brother, my father all slept, I lay, wakeful, and remembered that January day, Esther gathering kindling under the trees at the edge of the yard where the snow was thinnest, watching Samuel while my mother was inside making stew.
I remembered helping my father clear trees at the edge of the garden so in the spring we could plant more beans and peas and squash.
I remembered him showing me whe
re to stand as he swung his ax. How to keep a safe distance in case the tree kicked back like an angry horse as it fell. How to make the cut so that the tree fell mostly where he wanted it to fall. In this case, downhill. In this case, away from him. Away from me. Where it could do no harm.
But my mother was busy with the stew. And Esther was busy with her chores. And my father was busy with his ax. And I was the one who suddenly saw Samuel running across the open ground where the snow had drifted away and the bare dirt was burned pale with cold. I was the one who saw that he was running after a rabbit, his eyes fixed on the white smudge of its tail.
The tree broke just then. Began its fall. Began its great arc toward Samuel, its branches thrashing, slowing as it snagged on the branches of other trees, spinning heavily, and I charged beneath it, grabbing Samuel as I ran, both of us shoved from behind to land hard, just out of harm’s way.
I remembered lying on the cold ground with Samuel in my arms. How he struggled to get free, yelling, “Why did you do that, Ellie?”
I remembered holding him tight as I turned to see my father lying still under the tree’s branches.
His blood on the snow.
I remembered not knowing what to think about that.
I remembered pulling Samuel away before he could see my father, dragging him toward the cabin as he tried to break loose from my hand clenched tight around his wrist, hauling him farther from the garden and the tree and my father, casting him into the snow where Esther was gathering wood, where Esther was supposed to be watching him, where Esther was unaware of any trouble until I raced into the cabin yelling for my mother, until I ran back to where my father lay, my mother with me, Esther chasing us, calling, “What’s happened?” and Samuel chasing her, all of us climbing through the chaos of branches and dirt and snow to try to lug the tree off my father, all of us pulling at it together as he lay so still beneath it that I was sure he was dead.
We couldn’t reach him through the tree’s sharp, tangled limbs, no matter how Esther yelled his name, no matter how hard my mother worked to break the smaller branches, her hands torn up from trying. But we all, together, finally managed to pull some of it off him, and then I bent away the thinnest branches until they bowed, taut and difficult, in my arms while my mother and Esther tugged him away inches at a time, Samuel crying “Daddy!” again and again but too small for anything else, my mother reaching through the branches, feeling my father’s neck, feeling for his pulse, finding it, and then with a mighty surge pulling him from the last of the tangle and onto open ground, to turn him over and call his name, holding his face in her hands, the blood matting his hair, his skin a shocking white, all of us calling him, my sister holding one of his hands in both of hers, Samuel tugging on the hem of his pant leg, my mother kneeling alongside him, then scrambling to her feet, looking wildly around, her hands dripping with blood, and then running for an old blanket that we made into a hammock to drag him, his poor body bumping along the frozen ground, and then slowly, horribly, up onto the cabin’s step and through its door and across the floor, into the washroom, laying him near the drain and pouring warm water over his wound to clean it, waiting for him to wake up.
I will never forget the moment when we all stopped and sat back, exhausted, and looked at each other, at him, at the pink water trailing from his head, all of us breathing hard, Samuel still crying, crawling into my mother’s lap, his face red and snotty and swollen.
“Run to the Petersons’, Ellie,” my mother said, her voice shaking. “Tell them to fetch the doctor. Tell them to hurry.”
Chapter Fourteen
It was only days later, after the doctor had come and gone, after we had had time to consider the idea of my strong, laughing father never waking again, that my mother asked how he had come to be in the path of the tree as it fell.
She looked at me, who had been with him. Esther looked at me, who had been with him.
Samuel said, “Did you see what happened, Ellie?” He turned to my mother. “Ellie knocked me down.”
And I simply could not say, I knocked you down to save your life.
I simply could not say, And the tree knocked Daddy down because of you.
I loved him too much to do that to him. And I knew my father would wake up—I knew he would—and tell everyone the truth of it. By then it wouldn’t matter that Samuel had chased a rabbit into harm’s way. My father would be well again. My mother would smile again. And everything would be all right again. I knew it would. So I said, “No, Samuel, I didn’t see what happened. One minute, Daddy was cutting the tree, and I was . . . dragging some branches into a pile. And then the tree fell. I didn’t mean to knock you down, Samuel. I was running to get help and I didn’t mean to knock you down.”
He frowned at me for a long moment, and I hoped that he wouldn’t work too hard to unravel that thread. To sort out the jumble of what had happened.
“You were in the way, weren’t you?” my sister said.
At first, I thought she was talking to Samuel, but then I realized she was looking at me. Talking to me.
Esther wasn’t a mean girl. But she never tried to be more gentle than she was. And it was clear that she needed a reason. An explanation. Someone to blame.
My mother looked at me, too, waiting for an answer. She wasn’t angry like Esther was, but it was clear that she had no extra space in her heart just then for anything except my father.
Part of me wanted to tell them that it was Samuel’s fault, if a little boy could be blamed for such a thing. But when I thought of saying the words, I felt sick and sad. When I thought of Samuel someday learning that he had drawn his father into this disaster—perhaps even into death—I felt even more terrible.
And I knew how Esther would feel—she who should have been watching Samuel.
Which was when I decided that it would be worse to pass the blame than to shoulder it.
If I’d learned anything from the mountain—and from my father—it was that I felt stronger and happier if I was able to do a hard thing and do it well.
So I kept silent. And they took my silence as a confession.
* * *
—
It was difficult to tell, as I lay in the darkness remembering, my face wet with cold tears, whether I had slept and woken or never slept at all.
Esther was quiet but for the slow tempo of her breath. Samuel sighed and murmured in his dreams.
I slipped from my bed and out of the cabin, closing the door behind me without a sound.
The trees wore gowns of starlight.
The dew was cold and luscious on my bare feet.
From somewhere up-mountain, an owl sounded lonely. Forlorn. Beautiful.
It seemed a terrible shame to sleep through such a night, and I was glad to be up before the sun.
I whispered Maisie’s name as I opened the door to the woodshed.
She lifted her head and slapped her tail against the ground as I crept inside and found the jar I’d borrowed for gathering stink.
I unscrewed the top and scraped the lip of the jar against my cheeks until I’d captured what tears remained on my face. Almost nothing.
I carried the jar back outside and dragged its mouth through the grass, gathering dew.
Then I retrieved the balsam I’d hidden behind the woodshed and scraped it into the jar, too.
Perhaps tomorrow I would climb down to the river that had carved a valley through the mountains. Its cold, clear water had never failed to make my father smile.
And after that maybe I’d harvest honey from the hive down beyond the brook, ready with a pouch of mud for the stings I was sure to get along the way.
But for now, I contented myself with the stars pulsing overhead, the trees reaching eagerly up, the feel of April on my skin.
When I stirred them, the embers from the tallow fire glowed hungrily, so I fed them bits of dry wood, and
leaves, and pine cones, until I had a good fire going.
“Ellie,” my mother hiss-whispered from the cabin door, a blanket around her shoulders. “Have you lost your mind?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I said softly. “I was visiting Maisie.”
“And the fire?”
I shrugged. “It was lonely, too.”
Which made her smile. So . . . unexpected, to see her standing on the step in the darkness, veiled in starlight, the white of her smile a quick surprise, then gone, as she turned to go back inside.
And I stood there for a while, the fire popping and hissing, and thought about that smile. And then I thought about it some more.
When the fire wore itself out, I took my jar of tears and dew and balsam into the woodshed and put it high on the shelf with my other secrets.
“I’m making some medicine,” I whispered to Maisie as I lay down next to her, the puppies a muddle of dark softness against her belly. “Maybe I should add some of your milk.” But she didn’t answer me, and I fell asleep and dreamed about nothing at all until morning woke me again.
Chapter Fifteen
The morning began as any morning might—a matter of yawns, squinting at the weather, wobbling on the tightrope between yesterday and tomorrow—but the day to come would be one of the longest and most interesting of my life.
After a proper breakfast with no punishment in it, I went out to finish my morning chores. To these, I added new ones:
Took Maisie her breakfast and sang her a small song I made up on the spot, full of barn cats and field mice and goldenrod bowed down with yellow.
Coaxed her outside for some air but stayed in the shed with the puppies so she wouldn’t fret.
Laid my hand over Quiet like a warm cape and told him things like, “You are beautiful. You are a beautiful, silly little dollop of a dog.”
When Maisie returned, I decided to go for honey and river water, but my father had taught me never to pass up the chance to get what food I could. (“You never know when there won’t be any to be had.”) So I gathered his fishing gear and put it with the medicine jar and some oilcloth for wrapping my catch, a pair of work gloves, and some tinder in my pack, the pack on my shoulder, and set out for the river.