by Lauren Wolk
He looked thoughtful. Reached out to wipe away some mud that was dripping down my jaw. “Where’s the honey?”
“I didn’t take any.”
“What?! Why not? You got stung for nothing?”
I headed up the path. “The bees didn’t have enough to spare. Not yet.”
But Samuel wasn’t impressed. “You could have got a little for our porridge,” he said bitterly. Porridge without something sweet was unfortunate.
I didn’t tell him that the honey had not been meant for porridge. Instead, I told him what my father had told me. “The bees need it more than we do, especially in the winter and the spring. For their babies. And their queen. And themselves.”
I thought again of the egg I’d fed to Maisie instead of using it to gather stink.
“Let’s trade one of the fish to Mrs. Anderson for some eggs,” I said.
Samuel said, “As long as it’s your fish.”
But, as it turned out, a snake came first.
Chapter Eighteen
When we reached the yard, we found my mother and Esther taking turns at the butter churn.
“I caught fish for supper!” Samuel cried, rushing toward them while I lugged our catch the last of the way up from the river, tired now, wiping traces of mud from my cheek.
“We didn’t know where you’d gone,” Esther barked, but not at Samuel. At me. “We were worried, Ellie. You should tell us if you take him with you.”
I might have said any number of things to that. Always, at the end of every list, was the one answer I couldn’t give her: You were the one who was supposed to be watching Samuel the day Daddy got hurt.
“And why did you go fishing when we have venison?” she said.
“I’ll dry the fish so it will keep,” I said. “Or we can use it to make broth for Daddy.”
But she just shook her head. “You know Samuel can’t swim. You shouldn’t have taken him with you. And you should have told us.”
“He followed me. I didn’t mean to take him along.”
“And Mother didn’t mean to trade Maisie’s puppies to Mr. Anderson for one of his milk cows.”
“Esther!” my mother snapped. “That’s enough.”
But she was wrong. It was not enough. “You gave the puppies away?” I said in a voice that was far too small for the big thing that rose in my throat.
“Promised them, yes. As soon as they’re old enough,” my mother said. “We need that cow. She’s much younger than Jupiter and Venus. We can’t expect them to give milk forever.”
“But all the puppies?”
“Mr. Anderson is a hunter,” she said, churning so hard now that she was in danger of busting the dasher into kindling. “He’s the main reason we have meat on our plates. He needs new dogs, coming of age behind his old ones.”
“But all of them? You gave him Quiet?”
She didn’t look at me. “We have barely enough food to spare for Maisie. We don’t need another dog. Another cow, we need.”
“But you wouldn’t even have Quiet if it weren’t for Ellie,” Samuel said, close by my side. “She saved him.”
“And she’ll drink the milk we get from this new cow. And the cream. Eat the butter. The cheese.” My mother still wouldn’t look at me. And I had no desire to look at her. Or at Esther, who wasn’t smiling exactly but didn’t look the least bit sorry. “You can visit Quiet anytime you like,” my mother said.
But that was cold comfort. I had seen what became of a dog that lived in a pack. A dog that hunted for a living.
“This isn’t because one more dog will eat too much. Mr. Anderson would have left us one puppy if you’d asked. This is to punish me.” My voice was even harder than hers. “You can’t make me give him up.”
“We all give up things we love,” my mother said. “Whether we want to or not.”
I thought of the things she’d lost when we’d left our town life. I thought about my father, slowly thinning away. The sight of his hideous sores. And I thought about Quiet as he had struggled in that water, waking.
I went into the woodshed. Maisie gave me a curious look. She was on her feet, licking one of her pups. She didn’t object when I crawled into the nest and put my head among those little dogs. And cried. And cried. And knew it was Quiet who licked the salt from my cheeks, soothing the last of the bee sting, while this new hurt took up a place in my chest alongside the flame that burned hotter, now that I had even more work to do.
Chapter Nineteen
I left my pack with the jar of balsam and tears and dew and river water in the shed and carried the fish back out to the yard.
“Where’s Samuel?” I said to Esther and my mother, still at the churn.
Esther turned. Looked. Turned back to me. She didn’t say anything.
My mother said, “He must have gone in to wash the fish off his hands.”
I went into the cabin and left the fish in the kitchen, by the pump.
“Samuel?” I called.
He didn’t answer.
I went through the kitchen to the washroom. The door stood open.
Samuel wasn’t in there.
But something else was.
I’d seen a snake or two in the washroom before, but not like this one.
This one was as long as I was. Black and shiny. Lying in a tangle, like a dropped rope, in a patch of sun near the floor drain. It had pushed away the little lid we put over the drain, slithered up from its shelter under the cabin and onto the plank floor, and gone to sleep.
I knew that as soon as I stepped into the room it would wake.
My first thought: Stomp on the floor and let it escape down that drain.
My next thought: Trap it.
It was a black racer. I knew it wasn’t a poisonous snake. My father had always said racers were harmless, though a mouse or a cricket might disagree . . . and so did I, since I also knew that it had a mouth full of needle-teeth. I knew that it would writhe and coil in my hands if I picked it up. Heavy. Smooth. Angry. I knew that it would bite me if it could. I knew that I would have to try very, very hard not to shriek and holler as it twisted and whipped around my arms. But I also knew that it would make Esther scream loud enough to wake the dead.
No more lullabies.
One big leap and I was at the drain, my foot over it, as the snake burst from its nap and thrashed out long and swift, racing around the room like ink from a quill.
I’d left the door open behind me.
I couldn’t let it past me, out of the washroom, or it would hide and be still and come in the night to warm itself on one of us sleeping.
So I lunged for it as it swept past me.
It’s not easy to grab a snake in full-blown panic, but I did. With both hands, as close to the head as possible so it couldn’t curl around and bite me. Its big eyes were wild. Maybe even as wild as my own. And I suddenly saw its black-and-white world. Felt the tight choke of a frog in its throat. Its ribs arcing like slender moons inside the dark galaxy of itself.
And I almost set it free.
But I didn’t.
I made myself hold it tight, as far away from my face as I could, as I hurried out of the washroom, back to the bedroom where my father lay sleeping. I hung on with one hand while I opened the door and tossed it inside, pulling the door shut and then leaning against it, breathing so hard my lungs hurt.
My hands trembled as they tried to forget the feel of that snake. The giantness of it.
I saw the snake’s shadow from under the door. Felt it butt up against the sill. Heard it scraping along the too-narrow gap.
I pictured it racing around the room, trying to find a way out, hole seeking, peering into the mouth of my mother’s dusty mandolin, and then, finally, slithering up the post of my father’s bed, coiling on his warm belly, its tongue flicking like a little blade, its eyes
wide and anxious.
I knew that snakes only bit what they ate or what tried to eat them. I knew it wouldn’t bite someone sleeping.
I knew Esther would come in soon from the churning.
I knew she would go to my father’s room to check on him, as she always did when he’d been without us for a time, which was one of the reasons why I loved her.
I knew she would be the one to find the snake.
And I knew that if screaming could wake my father, he would wake.
Chapter Twenty
Before I left the cabin, I unwrapped two of the fish and left them for cooking. Wrapped the third in the oilcloth again. Put it back in my pack and took it out into the yard.
“He’s not inside,” I said to my mother, who was scooping butter out of the churn and into a bowl in Esther’s hands.
“Then go find him,” Esther said.
I held up my pack. “I’m taking a fish to Mrs. Anderson to trade for eggs. I’ll look for him on the path.”
My mother nodded. “And then bring him straight back for lessons.”
Which my mother gave to me and Esther and Samuel nearly every day, rain or shine, summer or winter, sick or well, and no argument about it, not that we were likely to give her one.
We could all read (though Samuel was just starting to get the hang of it) and speak the language of numbers, and we all knew about wars and presidents and the crash that had driven us from the gray, starving town into the green and generous mountain. But I pictured the bedlam when Esther found the snake, and I imagined coming back to something besides reading and writing and arithmetic.
I didn’t see Samuel on the path up-mountain. “Samuel!” I called more than once, but he didn’t answer. Surely he was somewhere back near the cabin, maybe trying to start his own little fire with a couple of hopeless rocks.
At the turn to the Andersons’, I paused and looked up the path to where it dwindled into the undergrowth.
Nobody went up there, except to hunt.
Nobody lived up there, except the hag.
Samuel wouldn’t have gone up there on his own.
I was sure he was somewhere down by home, maybe even in the yard by now, pestering my mother for a taste of butter straight from the churn. I pictured them all back in the cabin, Esther going along to check on my father, finding the snake, screaming like she’d been scalded, running from the room, her mouth a dark hole. My mother racing into the bedroom, the snake in a slick frenzy, thrashing toward escape, my mother slashing at it with her big knife.
I told the snake I was sorry. Hoped it reached the drain hole and through to safety.
And then I pictured Esther and my mother, trembling with fury, knowing that someone had shut that snake in with my father, knowing that it had to have been me, and I turned away from the Andersons’ and went farther up the mountain instead, following the path that the wild ones had left, threading my way through the undergrowth as if I were a needle looking for something to mend.
* * *
—
I expected to see the dog up there, and before long, I did.
I was navigating an especially steep, rocky place when I looked up and saw him above me, staring down. One tooth hung below his lip, but I decided that didn’t mean anything. He wasn’t growling. He wasn’t snarling. But he didn’t look very friendly, either. The tick on his face was revolting, and I made up my mind to yank it off when I could. If I could get close enough. If I could do it without dog-bite.
I said, “Hey, boy,” in my calmest voice.
I could smell the fish in the pack that hung from my shoulder, so I knew he could, too. I had meant to trade it for eggs, but I was not in that world anymore.
“I have a fish for you,” I said. “For you and . . .” But I didn’t want to call her the hag. It didn’t seem polite.
He took a step away and I took a step upward, and then another, turning my attention back to the climb, managing it carefully, slowly, mindful of the possibility of a fall.
When I reached easier ground, I found that the dog had retreated farther but was still near.
“Why don’t you lead the way?” I said. “I’ll follow. Go on.”
Which he did, heading along what was surely his own trail, fewer trees up here, patches of green moss, gray moss, humps of rock everywhere, lichen and mushrooms, stray feathers, and, suddenly, an antler like a hard white flower blooming in a nest of ivy.
My father and I liked such things. The long, curved set of beaver teeth we’d found near the river. A snake skin, clear enough to see through; a matter of tiny diamonds and white lace that I wore in my hair until Esther plucked it out and threw it in the fire.
It had smelled like lightning as it burned.
A little farther along, the dog and I came through the stunted trees into a clearing, nearly flat, tucked against the topmost ledges of the mountain.
There was a fire ring in the clearing, but no fire. An iron spit stretched over it, with a cauldron hanging cold and empty above where there had once been a flame. Plenty of dead wood piled nearby. Nothing cut and split. Just old branches and sticks, fallen and gathered. Nearby, between two hemlocks, an old, tattered shawl hung from a line, dead leaves and a lone hawk feather caught in its weave.
There was a garden bed, too. A long, thin one with nothing in it. Just some weeds no one had bothered to pull.
At the far edge of the clearing, a little cabin nestled in a grove of red cedars. I could see that the door was open. There was no smoke coming from the chimney. No sound. No sign of life.
The dog trotted to the door and turned to wait for me.
Oddly, as I approached the door, he finally decided to growl.
“Which is it? Do you want me here or not?”
In answer, he disappeared into the cabin.
When I didn’t follow, he stuck his head back out the door and looked at me curiously.
“All right,” I said. “I’m coming.”
Chapter Twenty-One
I peered cautiously through the door.
The cedars around the cabin greened the light coming through the windows, so it was dim inside. Like being in the woods.
But I could see enough.
I could see that there were clothes hanging from pegs on the wall. Some boots in the corner. A desk and a trunk with a humped lid.
Shelves on one wall sagged with jars and bottles.
There was an open-faced cupboard in one corner with more jars and some sacks, too. Grain and dried apples, from the looks of it.
In another corner, there was a cold fireplace. Alongside it sat a big copper bucket full of logs, and another smaller one with kindling.
And there were candles on every flat surface. One, on the floor, had melted into a puddle, its wick burned away.
I was amazed that it hadn’t burned the whole place to the ground.
But I knew that if I were a flame I would rather fizzle out than ruin a place like this one.
For besides the ordinary, workaday business of clothes and boots and such, the little cabin was filled with other things as well.
On one wall: shelves of books in all colors and sizes, like the keys of a new instrument I wanted badly to play.
Hanging from the roof: dozens of faded bouquets dangling like an upside-down garden.
And there was a workbench and a back wall hung all over with tools that my father would have cried to see. Beautiful tools of all kinds, as if someone had made wonderful things here.
And . . . wait, there, just on the windowsill by the door, there was something wonderful. A tiny fawn, carved from red wood, its hooves more delicate than petals. And a mouse with his tail hanging down over the edge. And a tiny squirrel, its paws tucked under its chin, watching me as I edged farther into the room.
And that was when I realized the rumpled bed in the shadows
along the back wall wasn’t empty, as I’d thought.
I took a slow step forward, peering into the shadows, and saw that an old woman lay there, her face so pale it melted into the pillow and blended with the bedclothes, all of them faded and worn.
I looked again at the carvings on the windowsill, and for just a moment I thought this woman might have made such things for me, left them for me to find. But she was far too old to have the face I’d seen peering at me from the woods.
One of her hands, lying on the blanket, reminded me of the day I’d found a dead bird in the yard, its claws limp but curled up, like a baby’s hands will curl when he’s sleeping. Except there was nothing about babies here in this room. Nothing at all. Despite the books, despite the flowers overhead, despite the small wooden creatures and the handsome tools, everything here felt old and beaten and sad.
The air buzzed with flies.
The dog sat by the bed, waiting.
I put down my pack and walked slowly closer.
The woman who lay there was still, her eyes closed, but I could see that she was breathing.
A dead rabbit lay next to her head, flies drinking from its eyes.
I swallowed. Made myself breathe.
“That’s the rabbit I saw in your mouth, down-mountain, isn’t it?” I whispered to the dog. “You were trying to feed her, weren’t you, boy?”
He watched me without blinking.
The woman looked clean but gray. Whole but broken.
“Ma’am,” I said softly, and then again more loudly.
She didn’t respond.
I touched her hand. I had expected cold. I got hot instead. Too hot. And I was suddenly filled with a terrible sadness and such longing that I felt empty and stricken and poor.
I touched her old-apple face. Even hotter. Even more like the end of a sad tale.
Something was very wrong with her.
There was a small cloth doll tucked up in the crook of her neck. It was made out of rags. The kind my father used to polish things.