by Lauren Wolk
Cate shook her head. “Blame comes from the Greek for ‘curse.’ That’s the root of it. A curse. Against the sacred. Which is what sisters are. Or should be. To each other.” She glared at us both. “Sacred.”
I looked at Esther. She looked at me.
“It’s all right that you were in the way,” Esther said. “You’re just a kid.”
Which made me mad, but I held my tongue.
I found Cate watching me carefully. “Captan fetched the right person,” she said.
And, just like that, I wasn’t mad anymore.
“In the morning,” she said, “look for Larkin down the path alongside the spring, down over the rocks and around and down until you reach the cabin.”
“I will.” To Esther, I said, “Wait until those bandages are bone-dry, cooked clean, and then wrap her leg up again. Clean as you can. And light that lantern there before I go,” I said, since I would need my own for the hike back down to home.
And, along with it, a good bit of courage, besides.
Chapter Fifty-One
My lantern ran out of oil before I ran out of path.
I stopped then and there, the woods dark and windy, and wanted badly to go back the way I’d come. But I’d heard my father say many times that wild animals were more afraid of people than people were of wild animals, so I wasn’t much more than nervous as I continued on in darkness.
The bear I saw as I rounded a bend in the path was several shades blacker than the night.
When I saw him, I froze.
He did, too, when he saw me.
And for a long moment, we stared at each other in the darkness, and I was glad that he was not a big, burly summer bear.
Not a wounded bear, since I knew that a bear hurt was a bear mean.
Not a mother bear, her cubs bleating with fear at a girl in the woods.
Just a thin spring bear who was surely as scared of me as I was of him. My father had said so, and I had believed him.
But then I made the mistake of reading, in his eyes, a wildness I admired. Of feeling, in him, a love of things I loved: like lying in a meadow with the grass rising high all around, hiding me from everything but the sky and the bee-heavy blossoms nodding down toward me, springing up again as the bees flew. Or a pink end-of-day sky. Or the clear whistle-ring of a wood thrush.
And I leaned—just a little—toward the bear as he stood there, stiff-legged, his head up, his eyes on me . . .
. . . and he decided to prove my father wrong.
When he started toward me, growling, I dropped the dead lantern and ran.
I knew better.
I knew that a bear would chase someone who ran.
I knew that he could run faster than me.
I knew that he could manage the trail far better with his night-eyes than I could with my day-eyes.
I knew that I would be smarter to play dead.
But I ran anyway.
And he would have been on me in no time if I hadn’t fallen and suddenly found the good sense to tuck my hands up under my chin and lie still.
I had already done a few hard things in my life, but one of the hardest, then or since, was lying with my face in the dirt, without moving at all, not at all, while the bear snuffed me and kicked my legs, still angry but puzzled and winded from the uphill run, more interested, it seemed, in new grass and grubs than in girl.
But when he plucked the cap off my head, I learned a new kind of fear.
And when he finally turned and left me, I said a new kind of thanks.
For my life.
For my unscarred skin.
And especially for the fact that Esther had stayed with Cate.
I tried to imagine her meeting up with the bear. Then I tried not to imagine that.
I lay there, unmoving, for some time.
And then I got up slowly, in chapters, and quietly brushed myself off, retrieved my cap and my lantern, and went carefully down the path, stopping often, listening as hard as I could, hoping we wouldn’t meet again. Only a small part of me wishing that we would.
* * *
—
When I walked through the door of our cabin, I found my mother waiting inside by the window, and for just a moment I thought maybe my father had woken up again.
She took one look at my face and said, “What happened? Where’s Esther?”
I didn’t know what to say first. “Is Daddy awake?”
She shook her head.
So I told her everything in order. Ending with the plan to go find Larkin and get more honey for Cate’s leg, first thing in the morning.
I left out the part about the bear. Otherwise she would never again let me go back up that mountain in darkness, doll or no doll.
And I left out the part about Cate being Mrs. Cleary.
I would let Esther tell that part, though I’d miss the chance to make my mother smile.
Ever since I’d imagined Esther being mauled by a bear, I had cared much less about other hurts, however real they might have been.
“Esther stayed there? Instead of you?” my mother said.
“She didn’t much like being in the woods, and she didn’t want to come home in the dark.” Which was true. I didn’t say that she had wanted to stay with Mrs. Cleary. That they were most likely chatting, at this very moment. Or maybe Esther was reading Cate a story from one of her many books. “She’ll come home as soon as I go back.”
“After you fetch honey with Larkin? I don’t like that at all, Ellie. You going near his mother. That woman’s far too angry.”
My mother was in her nightgown, her hair down around her shoulders, but she still managed to look fierce.
“You would go, too, if you saw that wound on Miss Cate’s leg.”
She pursed her lips. “Not near Larkin’s mother. And neither will you.”
I squinted at her thoughtfully. “Wait right here,” I said.
She gave me a puzzled look but stayed put while I went through the kitchen and along to the bedroom where my father and her mandolin were both sleeping.
I picked it up and carried it to my mother. What I felt as I held it in my arm made me lonely.
“Wait,” I said again when she began to speak.
I held the mandolin up to the lantern light and peered past the strings to the mark burned into the back of its belly, a label pasted below that.
The mark said KEAVY.
And I knew that Larkin’s father had made this mandolin. And named it for his wife.
I held it out to my mother.
She gave me the lantern and took the mandolin in her arms as if it were a baby.
“What?” she said.
I held the lantern up.
“Look inside.”
“I don’t need to,” she said. “I know what’s inside. A maker’s mark. Keavy. It’s a Keavy mandolin. The best.”
“Which is her name.”
“Whose name?”
“Larkin’s mother. That’s her name. Keavy.”
My mother peered into the mandolin. Looked back at me, her eyes wide.
I said, “His father was a luthier.” The new word tasted heavy and good on my tongue. “He made mandolins. He made that one.”
“He was a luthier,” she said softly. “He made my Keavy.”
She seemed confused, and I thought I knew why.
I said, “It’s hard to imagine him naming his mandolins for someone so mean.”
She nodded. “It is.”
“Larkin says she wasn’t mean before his father died. Maybe she’ll wake up soon and come back to what she used to be.”
My mother looked me in the eye. “Or what she’ll be next.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
It was odd being in the cabin without Esther.
I could breathe more easily. But th
e cabin also felt emptier.
I fell asleep almost as soon as I lay down, the day catching up with me. And the day before that. And the one before that.
As I slept, I dreamed a different version of the memory that had so often kept me awake.
As always, I was with my father, clearing trees by the frozen garden.
As always, Samuel came running after the rabbit, my father and Esther and my mother all busy with their work.
But in this dream, I didn’t see my little brother in time.
In this dream, I rushed toward him too late. And then I tripped and fell as he ran, the tree sweeping through the air, spinning on its stump.
This time, my father saw only me, sprawled in the dirt.
And Samuel, this time, was the one felled by the tree.
In my dream, I saw him dying. I saw his small body go still. I saw his head loose on its neck, tipping toward its rest.
I saw Esther’s face. The panic in it. And I knew what she was feeling. That there had to be a way to stop everything and wind it back. Wind it back to before she had strayed too far into the trees in search of kindling while Samuel went on his silly way, chasing a rabbit toward an end to everything, toward a stillness that would never warm, never wake, never change no matter how much we hoped and prayed it would.
I woke before the dream had a chance to show me my mother’s face. Or my father’s. Or my own.
I woke to tears and a terrible need to know that Samuel was all right.
“What are you doing, Ellie?” he mumbled as I climbed into his bed and took him in my arms. He was warm and soft. Nothing but warm and soft, which was everything. “Your feet are cold and your face is wet. I’m sleeping, Ellie.”
So I hushed him and told him it wasn’t morning yet. To go back to sleep.
Which he did.
It took me much longer to follow him, though I was as tired as I’d ever been.
* * *
—
I woke the next morning to the sound of Samuel in the kitchen, asking why I was in his bed and what was wrong with my own bed and where was Esther.
“I don’t know why Ellie is in your bed,” my mother said. “We’ll ask her when she wakes up. And Esther is up on the top of the mountain with Miss Cate, helping to look after her for a bit. Now, sit down and eat your porridge.”
“Porridge? I’d rather eat a giant spider.”
“I traded Mrs. Lockhart a pair of slippers for some maple syrup to sweeten it up,” my mother said, “but if you’d rather eat a spider, you can do that.”
It sounded like a good morning. Better than most since my father’s accident. And I wanted to lie still and listen to it unfold before anything else came along to drag me away.
But then I remembered my father, who needed waking, too.
And Cate’s leg. And Esther, waiting.
“I think I’ll keep this bed for my own,” I called out, eager to be roused by my small, rumpled brother before I set out once again to make myself useful.
“That’s my bed!” Samuel cried, racing in to wrestle me out onto the floor. He shoved his legs under the covers and pulled them up to his chin.
“Then that’s my maple syrup,” I said, heading for the kitchen while he scrambled to beat me to the table.
“What’s for Maisie?” I said as I pulled on my boots.
“I’m stewing up the last of the venison, but I saved some for her.”
I dragged my jacket on over my nightdress. “Will you come with me this time?”
“To see Maisie?” She handed me an old, battered skillet that had lost its handle. “I added some gravy. But it’s time for her to be hunting again. Put her out after she eats. The puppies will be fine without her for a while.”
I stared at her. “Is that your way of telling me I’ll be fine on my own, too?”
She stared back at me. “Oh. You meant go with you up-mountain?”
“It won’t take long. It’s not so far.”
She turned back to the stove. “No, Ellie. Your father needs me here.”
“But you were ready to go last night when Captan came down with that doll.”
“I know. But your father could wake up again while we’re gone and I can’t very well leave Samuel alone with him. Besides, she has family of her own.”
“She has one boy only.”
“And you’re one girl, doing more for her than anyone. And now Esther, too. And you want me to get involved as well?”
“What about Larkin’s mother?”
She threw a log in the stove and latched the door. “What about her?”
“She’s Keavy,” I said.
“Which is just a name, Ellie. She’s not actually a mandolin.” She began to pump water into the kettle. “I’ve never seen a person with less music in her.”
Which I understood. Which was true. For now, that was true. But I thought my mother was being hard-hearted.
Especially when, just the night before, she had seemed newly soft.
“Since Daddy got hurt, you haven’t played once or sung really at all,” I said carefully.
My mother put the kettle on the stove, too hard, and stood with her back to me for a long moment.
Then she said the same thing Samuel had said not so many days before. “You’re twelve, Ellie. What do you know about it?”
I spent some time thinking about what she meant by it while she stood warming her hands over the kettle.
Then I said, “I know what it’s like to try to change something sad and awful.”
She turned from the stove and looked at me.
“I suppose you do,” she said, too much weariness in her voice. “But I won’t leave your father to go up that mountain with you.”
Which was all right, really. Going back to Cate’s alone was something I could do, so I would do it. But I would miss the chance to unspool the thread that kept my mother bound to where she was.
And then she said the thing that made me sorry for pushing so hard: “I already have enough sad and awful as it is.”
“I’ll go with you, Ellie,” Samuel said from the doorway.
And I loved him even more.
“You’ll do no such thing,” my mother said. “You, at least, will do your lessons and your chores today. That’s what you’ll do. You”—she looked back at me—“you do whatever you want. But send your sister down here again. Miss Cate isn’t the only one who needs some help.”
“I’ll feed Maisie,” Samuel said, still watching us. “And I’ll look after the puppies.”
I handed him the skillet. “She’ll be glad to see you. And tell Quiet I’ll be back soon.”
Before I left, I went to see my father.
My mother had turned him onto his side and propped him there to take the weight off his back for a while.
I knelt next to the bed and looked straight into his slack face.
The pillow by his mouth was wet with his drool.
“You woke up once,” I said. “You need to wake up again.” I kissed his forehead. It should have been warmer. “When I come back, we’re going to start all over again. Not just me. You, too.”
But if he heard me, he showed no sign of it.
Chapter Fifty-Three
I got dressed. Ate my porridge in a few big bites. Packed a fresh jar for gathering honey. Made sure I had my work gloves. My flint. My knife.
My mother watched me. “Does she have any food up there?”
“Some. I don’t know. But I saw grain. Some dried apples. And there’s the bread and jerky I took up yesterday, if they haven’t eaten it all. She must have more, stored somewhere.”
I thought of the shed behind the cabin and what might be in it. Larkin bringing her what he could. That garden, and what might have grown there. The snares she set.
“Even so, put
the last of that porridge in a crock.”
There. That was what I needed. To hear her say such things.
I packed everything in my pack and hung it from my shoulder.
I looked at Samuel, who had come back in from the woodshed and was humming and swinging his feet as he finished his breakfast.
“Keep Daddy company while I’m gone.”
“I will,” he said solemnly.
“And don’t forget to check on the puppies, too, and give Maisie plenty of water.”
He shook his head. “I won’t.”
“And don’t go wandering off anywhere.”
“Ellie, stop being so bossy,” he said, glaring at me. “You sound like Esther.”
Which set me back a step or two.
“I have to go now,” I said slowly, my mind already on its way. I started to say Be good but stopped myself and said, “Goodbye,” instead.
“I’m going to bring Frank in to visit with Daddy.” Samuel scraped the last bit of porridge up and into his mouth.
“Who’s Frank?”
“The puppy with the white paw,” Samuel said.
I opened my mouth to ask why he had chosen Frank, but instead I said, “It’s not a good idea to name puppies we have to give up.”
At which he gave me his usual scowl. “You got to name Quiet.”
I nodded. “Yes, I did. That’s how I know.”
And my mother turned to look at me before I went out the door.
* * *
—
I had intended to stay away from Quiet, since spending time with him would just make it harder to let him go, but I stopped in the woodshed before heading up the mountain again.
“Hey, little one,” I said as I picked him up and held his nose against mine.
Maisie had licked the skillet clean and was grooming her paws, the other puppies staggering around the nest in search of her. She looked at them fondly but stayed right where she was.
I didn’t know how she managed to be such a good mother with no one to teach her how.
“Go on out for a bit,” I told her. “Go on. Go have a run. They’ll be all right.”