by Lauren Wolk
Samuel followed me, and I let him, sure that he would tire before long and head back home.
“Where are you going, Ellie?” he said as I went down the path toward the river.
“To see if I can catch a fish for supper,” I said, though that was only one of the things I meant to do.
“With so much venison to eat?”
“Mother will make most of that into jerky. For when there isn’t any fresh. Besides, I like fish.”
“I don’t, much,” he said, though Mother always fried it crisp and gave it to us with pickles and cream.
“Well, I don’t much like jerky. And I don’t like being hungry. But if you’d rather eat pickles and cream without fish, that’s fine with me.”
At which he said “Huh” and nothing else.
The path was steep and rocky in places, but there were saplings all along it, and the ones nearest the difficult spots were smooth from where we had grabbed them again and again to steady ourselves. I had long since learned to find a handhold before I took a hard step down, but Samuel preferred to hop from rock to rock, and it wasn’t long before he fell.
“Oh, good grief,” I said as he lay crying on the path, banged up but with no real damage done. “How many times do you have to fall before you realize you’re not a mountain goat?”
He looked up at me with a wet face. “I don’t think I’m a goat. Why would I think I’m a goat?”
“Never mind,” I said, helping him up. “Just slow down. I have a fish to catch, and you’re here to help or go home.”
He brushed himself off. “Help, then. I’ll go home when I want to go home and not because you said so.”
Which I ignored completely.
And we set off again, the river still far below us, Samuel scooting ahead as soon as the path leveled out a bit, determined to lead the way.
I let him, since it was easier to keep an eye on him if he was ahead of me, but I wished he would stay near.
That was always one of my wishes: to keep him near.
* * *
—
There were many things that tempted me as we went down the mountain: a fresh-green meadow where fire from lightning strike had cleared a few acres of trees before rain had put it out; a vernal pool where peepers sang so loudly at twilight that we could hear them even far up-mountain; a granite ledge big enough for me to sit on, like a turtle in the sun. But I decided to keep those things for another day. And I left the honey, too, for the trip home, since it would be harder to fish with bee-stung hands, but I heard the hive hidden in an oak as we passed, and the old tree, too, humming with excitement as its buds erupted into leaf.
As we passed by there, I saw a brand-new gift, sitting on a white rock at the edge of the trail where even Samuel might have seen it if he hadn’t been in such a hurry.
A honeybee. Made of wood and something I couldn’t name.
I held it up in the light. Smiled. Peered into the trees. Said, “Thank you,” in case someone was listening. “I wish you’d come out and meet me.”
“And I wish you’d hurry up,” Samuel said from down the path a bit. “Or the river’s gonna dry up before we get there.”
I put the bee in my pocket and held it there in my hand.
Looked long into the trees all around me. Saw nothing.
Waited until Samuel disappeared around a bend and then, feeling a little foolish, said, “I don’t know why you won’t show yourself.”
The trees stood quietly, waiting as I waited, but nothing moved. Nothing answered.
And I did not dare let Samuel reach the river before me.
But when I hurried down the trail, I found him standing quiet and still, with his hand up to stop me. He whispered, “Look there, Ellie.”
I saw, over his head, not on the trail but in the trees to one side, the ghost dog, a rabbit hanging limp from his mouth.
He stared back at us.
Samuel must have seen something in that dark eye, because when I came up alongside him he slowly worked his way behind me, put one hand flat on my back, peered out from around me, and said, “I don’t like him.”
I felt sorry for the poor rabbit in those jaws, but I’d been known to eat a rabbit, too. “He won’t hurt us,” I whispered.
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve met him twice before and he didn’t hurt me. Remember when I came up to the Petersons’ and said I’d seen a dog?” I said nothing about the hag or whether this might be her mutt. I imagined Samuel climbing up to her camp. Ending up in a pie. And I understood why my parents hadn’t talked about her. “He’s just a hungry stray.”
“Then let’s catch him and take him home for ours.”
But I had no intention of doing that. Maisie and Quiet and, for a while, the other puppies were ours if they were anyone’s, but this dog was not. If he was the hag’s, something had changed up there at that camp. Something had sent him down among us.
I wondered what. And I decided, just then, to find out.
* * *
—
“Git!” I suddenly yelled, waving an arm, and the dog loped off through the brush and out of sight, the rabbit flopping in his mouth, and I thought it odd that the dog had not eaten it right away, as most hungry dogs would, while it was still warm.
“What did you do that for?” Samuel said, coming out from my shadow to glare at me. “He could have been my dog, Ellie.”
“Or you could have been his boy, more likely. He’s too much dog for you. And wild, besides. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have hidden behind me.”
At which Samuel glared harder. “I wasn’t hiding. You make me sound like a baby. I’m not a baby, Ellie.”
“Of course you’re not,” I replied. “You haven’t been a baby for years and years.”
“And years,” he said. “Third time you’ve been right.”
Chapter Sixteen
The river was where we’d left it, endlessly traveling down its own winding path, through shadow and sunlight, under fallen trees furred with moss and over boulders polished by the current.
Someone, somewhere had named this the Androscoggin, but we generally called it “The River.”
At the end of the path and across some marshy ground, a flat rock above a deep pool at the edge of the current made a perfect place to drop a line. “Find me some bait,” I said to Samuel, who would have been happy to hunt crickets in September when they were thick on the ground but was less eager to forage for April slugs.
“I don’t like things that are slimy,” he said, making a face.
“Help or go home,” I said again, so he sighed a huge sigh and crawled into the undergrowth to hunt for a slug, which he found and brought back to me on a leaf veined with its glimmer-trail. “Go get me another,” I said.
I wasn’t fond of slugs for bait, either. They really were slimy. And they tended to leak their guts when I put them on a hook, leaving not much more than skin and slime behind, but I hadn’t brought a spade to dig for worms, and I didn’t like to use salamanders with their big, glossy eyes and their little hands. So I said, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” and, gritting my teeth until my jaw ached, threaded the slug onto the hook as quick as I could, and dropped it in the pool, my end of the line wrapped around a good, strong stick, and waited.
Some fish were as unimpressed with slugs as I was, but a trout will take a slug, and soon one did. I yanked the line up and away, hooking the fish by the mouth, sorry as I did it, sorry as I wound the line around the stick and pulled the trout up to the rock, sorry as I beat it senseless with a rock, sorry as I put a fresh slug on my hook, sorry as I sent it down into the pool.
I shivered with their pain. Cringed as they died. But none of that stopped me from doing what I had to do.
“Let me try,” Samuel said, reaching for the line.
He was only newly big enough f
or this, and I myself was newly sad that my father would not be the one to teach him, but I gave Samuel the line and taught him how to hold it in two hands, how to move it slowly so the slug seemed to swim though it was dead, how to wait, wait, wait, and then yank hard to set the hook. No good hesitating if you meant to do a thing like that. Do it and be done with it, good and quick. That’s what I told him as the fish took the bait. That’s what I told him when the fish thrashed and fought so hard to be free that I had to hold on to Samuel and the line both, regardless of how determined he was to do it on his own. That’s what I told him when we hauled the trout up onto the rock, its gorgeous scales flashing in the sun, its eye wild before I beat it to death. That part I spared Samuel. That part . . . I’d never done that part before my father went to sleep. But I had done it ever since then, never without being sorry.
Samuel yammered about how much nicer his fish was than mine, and I hoped that meant he’d eat some of it. Muscle came from meat, and Samuel was so little. I wanted him bigger. Stronger. Tougher.
Some fresh fish would do him good.
So I agreed that his fish was by far the better. And I hunted up another slug so he could try for a third. And I stood close but without touching the line as he cast in again, and caught another trout, and did everything else that needed to be done except that last part with the rock.
I made him watch while I cleaned the fish and threw the guts into the river to wash downstream like big, gory worms, a feast for turtles and bottom-fish and flies, but unlikely to attract bears to the place where we fished.
“Those are the best fish anyone ever caught,” Samuel said of his two trout. “And yours is pretty nice, too.”
The three fish were identical.
“You’re right. And they will be delicious.” At which he smiled.
I wrapped the fish in oilcloth and tucked them into my pack, setting aside the glass jar I’d brought with me.
“What’s that?” Samuel asked.
The balsam inside had melted a bit with the heat of the sun on the rock, turning the tears and dew a nice shade of copper.
“Nothing.” I climbed down to the edge of the river to let a little cold water flow into the jar. Just enough for some wildness. “It’s something like tea. Nothing you’d like.”
And then I made a mud pie and wrapped it in my kerchief, for the bee sting that was sure to come.
Chapter Seventeen
When we reached it, the hive was wide-awake, which is not a great thing when a person wants honey. But I was there, and the hive was there, and I would try.
“Sit,” I said to Samuel, pointing at a log just off the path. “And don’t move.”
He gave me a look. But he sat where I pointed and watched as I buttoned my shirt to the neck.
“Aren’t you afraid of getting stung?” he asked.
“Not afraid, so much, though I hope I don’t.”
From my pocket, I took my knife and a flint spearhead I’d found when my father and I were planting potatoes. “Keep that with you,” my father had said. “It could save your life someday.” I’d thought he meant as a weapon until he showed me how to strike the flint on his shovel to make sparks. “Fire,” he had said. “Few things more valuable in this world, and you can make all you’ll ever need if you know how. That’s the secret to everything. Knowing how.”
“And you’ll teach me.” Which was as much statement as question.
“I will. But you’ll learn best by doing.”
I had thought about that. “How am I supposed to do something that will teach me how to do it if I don’t know how to do it in the first place? That’s like a circle.”
My father had laughed. “It is. But it’s true. Though you can read about how to do things, too.”
“What about learning things from people who don’t know how to write?” Like some of the others on Echo Mountain. Like babies. Like dogs. “And what if someone doesn’t know how to read? That takes lessons.”
“Everything takes lessons,” my father said. “Though some you’ll give to yourself.” And my father had been right. Sometimes I was my own best teacher. He taught me how to make tinder and how to strike the flint with my knife and how to coax a flame, but in the end, I had to do that work myself before I truly learned how.
“How come we don’t use matches anymore?” I had asked him.
I remember him sighing. “Same reason we built our own cabin and grow our own food now. Matches cost money, Ellie. And the nearest mercantile is a world away.”
So I had practiced with the flint until I had blisters, but it had still taken me a very long time before I could start a fire. The day I first made one without any help was a very fine day indeed.
“Look here,” I said to Samuel as he sat on the log and I cleared some ground near his feet. From my pack I took what looked like a bird’s nest: a ball of oak bark I’d shredded into coarse wood-thread and molded into shape. I carried one with me always, usually several in the bottom of my pack.
“This is your tinder,” I told him, setting the little nest aside. “Which you can make yourself from threads of dead bark or dry grass as long as it’s very fine.” Then I gathered small twigs and built a tiny pyramid, just big enough to hold some dried leaves with room left over for the nest of bark thread.
Then I scraped the flint hard and strong with my knife until sparks flew into the tinder and then caught, suddenly, making a small flame that I blew on gently, gently, until it strengthened. I quickly slid the burning tinder among the twigs, which caught, making a stronger flame. Before long, the fire was burning well enough to add more sticks and finally a big one I would use as a torch.
Samuel watched it all in silence, with round eyes, and I felt at least ten feet tall.
“Who taught you to do that?” he said, his face serious.
“Daddy did.” I blew on the flames and fed them with dry leaves to make sure the torch was well and truly engulfed.
“Why didn’t he teach me?” Samuel looked so small that I nearly scooped him up into my arms.
“He will. Soon.”
I did not say Or I will. Our father would do it. He would.
The biggest stick was flaming well when I lifted it into the air and swept it mildly enough to feed it, feed it, coax it hotter and hotter. Then I held it aloft as I scooped dirt and stomped on the fire I’d built.
“What did you do that for?” Samuel said. “That was a good fire!”
“And I got what I needed. Now stay right here and don’t move.”
The hive was so close to the trail that I thought maybe I should send Samuel farther away, but I didn’t know any words that would make him leave. So again I said, “Don’t move,” before I turned up my collar and pulled on my gloves and crept through the thicket around the oak hive. As I came closer to it, I held the torch straight up until it began to go out, then blew the last of the flame away so it gave just smoke.
With the smoking branch in front of me, I edged up to the oak tree, the hive in its big, dark mouth humming away, and then gently poked the stick into the hole, not too far, just enough to fill the hive with smoke, which would make the bees drowsy and dumb.
After a bit, a few stumbled out, stunned, and flew lazily to the ground.
Others, coming in from their work, spun crazily, looking for a foe, but I stood as still as a broken clock and waited until the hive grew quiet.
Then I pulled the stick away and plunged it, hot end first, into the ground and slowly reached my gloved hand into the hive, feeling for the comb.
The bees in the hive covered my glove until it trembled with their sleepy buzzing.
I could feel the comb where they stored the honey that fed them all winter, that kept them alive in the year’s hardest, leanest months, that was meant for them and their young. And I felt their terror. Felt their panic as they choked and nodded in the smoke, t
heir queen weeping. And I let go of the comb and slowly drew my empty hand from the hive.
It was covered with bees slowly regaining their wits, baffled by the smoke but waking as I watched. I shook my hand gently as I backed away from the hive and some of them fell softly away. Others clung without moving and I knew they had stung my glove and died doing it. Which made my heart hurt.
“Go, go,” I said to Samuel as I cleared the thicket. “Quickly now.” And off he went, up the path ahead of me.
Oddly, it was only then, as I was leaving, that a lone bee flew up and stung me on the cheek.
One of the hardest lessons I had ever learned concerned honeybees and how they died when they stung. How they couldn’t leave just the stinger behind, so they had to leave some of themselves behind, too. And died. As the ones on my glove had. As the one who had stung my cheek had. Which made no sense to me.
I hadn’t taken a drop of honey. I was well away. And now a bee had died, regardless.
My cheek was on fire, no less when I pulled the soft, fuzzy bit of bee off my skin, but somewhat better when I pulled open the kerchief full of mud and pressed it against my face.
I told the bees I was sorry as I flicked their sad remains off my glove and dragged it through the dirt until it was clean.
Samuel came back down the path toward me.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “Why didn’t you come with me? And why do you have mud on your face?”
“Bee sting,” I said, wincing with the pain of it.
He came close, peering at my cheek. “You’ve got a big bump there.”
I nodded. “It’ll go away.”
“Why aren’t you crying?”
I shrugged. “Won’t help me to cry.” Though there were times when tears did me some good.