by Lauren Wolk
For all that, we would need another else.
And that was another else I meant to find.
Chapter Thirty-One
After we woke Cate and fed her the willow tea, I filled my honey jar with a cooled portion for my father and put it in my pack.
“Will you come back tomorrow?” Larkin asked.
But before I could answer, Cate said, “I’m grateful for your help, but I won’t need you now with Larkin here . . . and close by when he’s not.”
There was nothing rude about what she’d said. And it made sense that she wouldn’t need me, nearly a stranger, when she had this boy she’d taught how to read and how to make willow bark tea and how to pack a wound with honey. It made sense. But it also made me sad.
“I might need you, though,” I said. “My father is in a coma. That means—”
Cate’s eyes widened, bright with fever and . . . something else. “I know what that means,” she snapped.
Which of course was true: that she knew about medicines from the wild but also the sicknesses and cures in those books on her desk.
“What’s a coma?” Larkin asked, though if he’d been watching me these last months he surely knew that something had happened to my father, whether he’d seen the accident or not.
“It means he’s been unconscious for a long time,” Cate said impatiently. “And this is something you’re just now telling me?”
I took a step back. “I met you a few hours ago.” Though it seemed like days. “You’re sick and hurt. When was I supposed to tell you about my father?”
She flapped a hand tiredly. “Oh, well, all right then. But I know a thing or two about what ails a body. Come back if you want to, for help.”
“And you can come get me if you need to,” I told Larkin. I gave him a long look and told him what he already knew. “Straight down the deer path to a better path and then straight down some more to a cabin with a woodshed. But don’t go near that. It’s full of puppies, and their mother is nervous.”
“Puppies?” Cate said in a somewhat stronger voice. “You didn’t tell me that either.”
“No,” I said, confused by how changeable she was, sending me away one minute and then wanting to know me the next. “But you haven’t told me anything much either.” I turned to Larkin. “And I know nothing at all about you.” Though I did.
The thought of not knowing him better, not knowing them better, felt like hunger.
Which was when, without warning, I felt as if I might start to cry.
I tried to say something else, but all that came out was a croak. More bird than frog, but animal regardless. A puny animal. One that was used to feeling small.
The two of them stared at me in the yellow lantern light. Captan stood up and watched me closely.
I put my jacket on over my shirt with its missing sleeves. Picked up my pack. Cleared my throat. “I hope you get better now, Miss Cate.” I looked at Larkin. “I hope we never have to do any of this ever again.” Though that wasn’t entirely true.
And I took myself and my unspilled tears out the door.
* * *
—
I didn’t get far.
The stars stopped me for a minute in the clearing outside Cate’s cabin.
There aren’t many hurts that a sky-meadow full of clean white blossoms can’t make at least a little better.
But as I watched them, as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, as the trees at the edge of the clearing slowly took shape, one from the next, I saw someone standing among them.
I felt my shoulders rise around my neck. My whole body went terribly hot.
It was a woman. Standing so still she might have been a tree herself. Except she wasn’t. Everything about her said something else.
It was dark and she was some distance away, but something awful reached across that clearing and touched me.
And I felt what the fisher cat must have felt when faced with a hungry dog five times its size.
But as I stood there watching her, I realized that I wasn’t just afraid. I was . . . shocked. By how dark she was. How bitter. Like something scorched.
And I could feel that bitterness even across the clearing.
I waited for her to move. To say something. But she just stood there.
The way home was to my left, close by, and I wondered if I could just go quickly and be away and gone. But it was a long way down to home, and it was dark enough and the path strange enough that I couldn’t hurry without risking a fall.
So I turned, instead, and went back into Cate’s little cabin and shut the door behind me.
“Third time you didn’t knock,” Cate said from her bed. Larkin looked up from the big book. Captan, lying on the floor by Cate, raised his head, looked at me, and began to growl.
“What’s this, Cap?” Cate said. “She’s—”
“There’s a woman,” I said. “At the edge of the clearing.”
Captan stood up, stiff-legged, and growled some more, deep in his throat.
But Larkin surprised me by sighing. Closing the book. Rising from his chair and standing taller than he had before.
“You go on,” he said to me, coming to open the cabin door. He led me outside.
The woman was closer now, halfway across the clearing.
“Go on,” Larkin said again. “Go on home.”
There was something urgent in his voice.
I looked at the woman, who had come closer still. “Who is that?”
Larkin took my arm and pushed me a little, toward the path. “My mother.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
It’s one thing to climb a mountain in daylight, quite another to climb down it in darkness, and I had to go so slowly and carefully that I wasn’t far along when I heard shouting from above and stopped to listen.
Anger makes for loudness, but I still had trouble understanding much of what I heard as I stood among the trees. Something about Larkin coming home where he belonged.
Larkin yelling back. Something about him being old enough to make up his own mind.
After a while, the shouting stopped.
I imagined Larkin and his mother stomping down the other slope. All of us descending away from Star Peak. All of us except Cate and Captan, who stayed on that mountaintop alone together.
I had work to do, down-mountain. I had the chores I’d never done and my father to tend. But I decided I would come back soon to help Cate, too, whether she wanted me or not.
That was something I could do, so I would do it.
More than that, I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it like I wanted to be out in the spring air. To grow things. To grow up.
And I hoped that Larkin would come back soon, too, to see me and Cate both, no matter what his mother had to say about it.
I didn’t care if he never left me another carving. Never again lingered close by the cabin to be a distant friend.
What I wanted now was to know him. Even if I already did.
And for him to know me.
* * *
—
It took some time to get back down that mountain, especially through the wildest parts. As I went, I carried my knife straight down alongside my leg, for comfort, my eyes drinking in as much starlight as they could hold. Breathing through my mouth so I could hear better. Watching for bears, though I didn’t see anything of the sort. And I realized that I was more afraid of that woman from the other side of the mountain than I was of a bear.
Like the book had said: The human bite is one of the worst.
And I knew, all over again, that there was more than one kind of wild.
* * *
—
Maisie woke as I opened the door to the woodshed. She growled for a moment until she saw that it was just me, coming home, and then she got up to meet me, wagging her tail.
“Oh, my girl, my girl,” I whispered. I knelt down and took her face in my hands, kissing the top of her soft head.
The puppies were sleeping, but I needed Quiet as much as he needed his rest.
“Hello, my sweetling,” I murmured as I picked him up and held him against my chest, where he settled again into sleep almost immediately. Maisie wagged her tail harder, her whole body rocking, but she didn’t seem to mind too much. And we lay down together in that messy, wonderful nest, warming each other, and slept hard until morning.
* * *
—
“Do you want breakfast or not?” my mother said.
She stood in the doorway of the woodshed, daybreak framing her in white.
I sat up, straw falling from my hair, and blinked at her. Maisie was already awake, and the puppies, too, staggering around their nest like sweet dopes.
“I do,” I said, climbing to my feet, brushing myself off.
“Then come on inside.”
As I followed her out, she reached for my hand and pulled me along behind her as if I were a little girl.
And I felt as if a thread of light bound her hand to mine.
I stumbled across the yard, paying too little attention to where I put my feet, and far more to the feel of my hand in hers.
She took me inside and sat me at the table by the kitchen stove.
“Get warm,” she said.
It was early yet, Samuel and Esther still in bed.
I put my hands out toward the stove, yawning.
She brought me a plate of eggs and fried venison with a biscuit and some coffee.
I looked at her for a long moment.
“Eat it while it’s hot,” she said, turning to add more venison to the skillet.
I did that. It took me about one minute. I could have eaten as much again with no trouble at all.
When she turned back and saw my empty plate, she stood still. Looked at my face. Back at the plate.
“Will you stop all that business about your father, please?” she said in a voice not much bigger than a whisper.
I put down my mug. “Is that why you gave me such a good breakfast? So I would stop trying to wake Daddy?”
She sighed. “Have you ever known me to bribe my children, Ellie?”
“No.”
“Then no, that’s not why I gave you a good breakfast.” She sat down next to me. “I know you mean well, but you’re not helping. You’re making things worse. Getting Samuel’s hopes up. Playing a wild game with your father when Esther is terrified that you’ll hurt him.”
Again. She didn’t say it, but I heard it anyway.
“And you think that, too?”
She looked at me intently. “I don’t know. I want him to wake up. I want him to get well. Of course I do. And I almost think you might be right to do what you’re doing. Almost. But I don’t.”
I was so sorry. I was so sad. But I had nothing to say to that except, “Doing something is more right than doing nothing.”
I thought she might cry.
“And what if you do wake him up and he’s still not well?”
I didn’t know what she meant. “But there’s nothing else wrong with him, except he won’t wake up.” It sounded more like a question than I’d intended.
“Nothing that we know of. But he wouldn’t still be sleeping if he weren’t hurt, Ellie.”
I considered what she was saying. I pictured my father . . . changed. I pictured him unlike the father I’d known. And my heart hurt in a brand-new way.
“Maybe he’ll be fine,” I said, and I heard, in my voice, another thing about hope.
She nodded. “Maybe he will. But jarring him and shocking him might be the worst thing for him. Can you not see that?”
I remembered what had happened when I’d fed him my brew. “He rolled his eyes,” I said, realizing, as I did, that I would now have to tell her about the other thing I’d done.
Chapter Thirty-Three
My mother sat up straighter. “What do you mean?”
“Yesterday,” I said, though it felt like long ago. “I fed him some”—I couldn’t say brew since it made me sound like a witch—“some broth. And after that his eyes rolled behind their lids.”
She stared at me. “I made no fresh broth until last night, and I fed it to him myself. And he didn’t roll his eyes.” She grew still. “What kind of broth did you feed him, Ellie?”
“I made it. From river water and balsam.” I didn’t say anything about tears or dew, all of which made me feel more separate and apart from her than ever.
“And you thought it was all right to do that without asking me first?” She was angry but seemed sincerely curious, too.
“I would never do anything to hurt him. You know that, don’t you?” I was as curious as she was. It was as if we were two dogs, facing each other for the first time, trying to figure each other out.
She sighed again. “Nonetheless. I want you to stop now. Do you understand me?”
I did. And I didn’t.
“I can’t,” I said, my voice just as sad as hers. “And you’ve already punished me for anything I’ve done or might do.” I thought about Quiet. How hard he would become, killing things to earn his keep. “You should have saved some of that for later. What’s left now that could be any worse than taking Quiet away from me?”
Her face stiffened. Her whole body stiffened. “And if you kill your father, trying to wake him? Won’t that be a far worse punishment? Have you thought of that?”
I hadn’t. I hadn’t for one moment thought of that.
She got up from the table to turn the venison, to crack the last two eggs into the grease. One for Esther. One for Samuel.
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. I truly was.
She gave me a long look. “Does that mean you’ll stop?”
But I didn’t have a good answer to that, so I said, “What if I knew someone who might be able to help him?”
The eggs bubbled and popped. Esther came into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. “How was it, sleeping with the dogs?” she said.
I ignored her.
I waited for my mother’s reply.
She flipped the eggs, tended them, waited for them to be done, then slid one and some meat onto a fresh plate for Esther. She poured some coffee into a mug and put it on the table.
She said, “And who might that be?”
“Her name is Cate. She hurt her leg, but when she’s well she could come down and see him.”
“Come down? From up the mountain? You mean the hag?” And her wide eyes narrowed, the curiosity on her face hardening into something else.
“What hag?” Esther said.
“What hag?” Samuel stood in the doorway. He was so sleep-tousled that he looked like he’d been caught in a storm.
“Sit down,” my mother said, fetching another plate.
“What hag?” Samuel turned to me. “What’s a hag, Ellie?”
“A witch,” Esther said, her nightgown clean, her hair combed, her hands shiny with the tallow she rubbed on them before bed each night.
“She’s not a witch,” I said. “And she knows a lot of things about making people well. She has medicine she’s made from the woods, and medicine she’s learned from books, and ways to heal people from both” (though I said nothing about the maggots).
“And how is it that you know so much about this woman?” my mother said. She put Samuel’s breakfast on the table.
“I saw that dog again and followed him up the mountain,” I said. “She has a little cabin up there.”
“That dog we saw?” Samuel said. “With the dead rabbit?”
“That’s where you disappeared to yesterday? When you should have been doing your chores?” My mother shook her head. “You will not go near that woman again, do
you hear me? Or that dog. Or up-mountain any farther than the turn to the Andersons’. Or I will lock you in the woodshed until you’ve found your wits.”
Esther and Samuel had stopped eating. They stared at my mother. At me.
I got up from the table and took off my jacket. “I used my shirtsleeves to tie up a wound on her leg,” I said, my voice shaking a little. “A fisher cat bit her. And the bite festered. And she’s sick with fever. And a boy from the other side of the mountain helped me clean the wound and pour honey in it and make willow bark tea for her fever. And his mother came and was angry with him for being there, just like you’re angry with me now, though I don’t know why, because Miss Cate isn’t a bad person at all and she taught Larkin how to read, which is something you would have done, too, Mother. Or you, Esther.” I turned to her. “And I will go back up there to help her again. And I will bring her back down here when she’s well enough. And I will keep trying to wake Daddy up, because he has to get well. He has to,” I said to my mother, to Esther. “Or you won’t either.”
I did not say, And neither will I. But I thought it. For the first time, I thought it.
No one said anything for a long moment.
“Who’s Larkin?” Samuel said.
And just like that I could breathe again.
Just like that, the tears that had been ready to fall decided to wait.
I turned to him. “The boy who helped me help Miss Cate.”
My mother ran her hands over her face.
She came and stood in front of me, bent down a little to look into my eyes, and took me by the shoulders. “You will not go near those people again, Ellie. I need you here. I don’t need you hurt, too. I don’t need Samuel following you into mischief. And I most certainly don’t need a hag coming into my home to cast spells on your father.”
“I told you,” Esther said, returning to her breakfast. “That’s what a hag is, Samuel. A witch.”