by Lauren Wolk
“No, I’ll go with you.”
My mother frowned at me, clearly confused. “Just like before. You do something meant to wake him and then you leave.”
“Miss Cate’s sick.” I plucked Quiet out from the shadow of my father’s chin and handed him to Larkin. “But I have other somethings to try when I get back.”
I put the honey jar back in my pack, my pack on my shoulder, and took a long, last look at my father.
Then we all returned to the kitchen in time to see Samuel finishing the last of my sandwich.
“Here,” I said, nodding at Quiet, who was trying to gnaw a button off Larkin’s shirt. “Take him back to Maisie.”
“But I want to keep him here for a while,” he said, pulling Quiet up against his cheek.
“And Maisie wants him back.”
Larkin picked up his sandwich, tore it in half, and gave some to me. “A pup will be more yours if you let him choose to be.”
“Aw, it doesn’t matter. Quiet is Ellie’s dog until he’s old enough to be Mr. Anderson’s.”
Larkin squinted at me. “The Anderson woman was the one who gave you honey for chores?”
I nodded.
“And Quiet’s to be theirs?”
“For hunting,” I said. “All of the puppies. In exchange for a milk cow.”
“A fair trade,” my mother said.
“It is not,” I said, flaring like a new wick.
“Either way,” Larkin said, “Quiet will decide whose dog he is. Just like his daddy did.”
Chapter Sixty
We ate our small lunch as we walked.
“What did you mean back there?” Larkin said. “No more lullabies?”
I knew that the answer would make me sound mean, but it was the truth, so I said, “My mother and my sister thought the best way to wake my father was to be gentle and quiet and calm. Like they could tempt him awake with flowers and soft talk.”
“But you thought otherwise?”
I nodded. “I imagined myself in his place, hearing nothing but good things. If it were me, I’d come back faster if I thought something was wrong. If somebody needed something.”
“Or if someone hurt you?”
That took me aback. “The bee stings were the first hurt I gave him.” I reminded Larkin about the other things I’d tried so far.
“You really put a snake in his bed?” There was some admiration in his voice.
“I thought if he heard Esther screaming about the snake, he might come back to save her.”
He made a little I see sound. “The way he tried to save Samuel from the treefall.”
“Yes.” We walked for a while in silence. Then, “Has your mother ever been inside Cate’s cabin?”
He thought for a moment. “Not since my grandma went to live there. But before that, yes. All the time.” He kept climbing as he talked, and his voice was tired. “That little cabin was where my daddy made his mandolins.”
I stopped.
After a moment, he did, too. He turned to look at me.
“Why would he have a place up there when he could have made them right close by where you lived?”
“He tried that, but his luthing got all mixed up with everything else. And he liked the idea of a place that was for nothing but one thing.” He smiled sadly. “Plus, my mother hated the smell of the hide glue. Even when it was hot, though it wasn’t so bad then. I think she hated the thought that it was made from deer. She loved deer coming through the trees below the cabin.”
“So he made his mandolins on the mountaintop?” I loved that. The very thought of it.
Larkin nodded. “The cabin was left over from when my grandma lived up there, when she was a little girl. Before her people built something better.”
He turned and started to climb again.
“I used to love spending time with my father in that little cabin. Watching him work. He would let me help when little fingers worked better than big ones.”
“And that’s where Cate went, after your father died?”
He nodded. “After we buried him. I went looking for her. And I found her sitting among his tools. Just sitting there. The hide glue had rotted and the place stank. But she just sat there in that stink, crying like a baby.”
I tried to imagine that. Then I tried not to.
“I asked her to come back. But she said she’d be fine, and I think she really did want to be alone.” He was silent for a while. “No, my mother has never gone back in that cabin since my father died. I took all my grandma’s books and other things up there, one box at a time.” He paused again. “And Captan chose her, so she had him, too.”
We made the rest of the climb in silence.
Captan met us in Cate’s yard.
He didn’t make a sound, either.
“How is she?” I asked him.
At which he turned and led us to the cabin so we could see for ourselves.
Chapter Sixty-One
She was worse.
“What took you so long?” Esther said the moment we walked through the door.
She was sitting next to the bed, holding Cate’s hand.
“We had to go to a lot of places for the honey,” I said. “And we stopped at home on the way back, to see Daddy.” I wasn’t going to lie about that. “But we’re here now and we have enough for her leg.”
Esther stood up. “I cleaned it out with the old bandages.” She swallowed hard. “And then I burned them.”
Which explained the smell in the cabin. Part good hot fire. Part corruption.
I thought of those bandages, which had once been sleeves my father had made and, before that, bolted muslin, and, before that, cotton on a loom, from a plant known to draw blood from the hands that picked it.
“Her fever’s bad,” Esther said. She frowned at Larkin. “Why didn’t you come up before now? Ellie could have gone for honey without you.”
Before he could reply, I said, “Stop that, Esther. You only came here yourself because you were scared to be home without Mother.”
“But he’s her grandson! And I didn’t know she was Mrs. Cleary.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Hush now,” Cate said. She was trembling, her face white and dry. “It doesn’t matter.”
Larkin said, “You knew her when she was Mrs. Cleary? From town?”
“From when she was a nurse. In Bethel,” I said. “But I’ve changed so much, and she has, too, that we didn’t recognize each other.”
“But you haven’t,” Larkin said, looking at Esther.
“Haven’t what?”
“Changed.”
“Yes, she has,” I said, looking steadily at my sister. “She cleaned out that wound with no one here to teach her how.”
I took the honey jar from my pack.
“You found some honey?” Cate said.
“Yes.” I nodded. “If, by found, you mean wrangled some in exchange for cleaning a chicken coop and then stole the rest from a hive.” I craned my neck so she could see where I’d been stung.
“More spunk,” she said. “That’s good.”
Larkin pulled the blanket off Cate’s leg.
The wound, clean now, was still a dirty mess and, despite myself, I wished again for maggots.
I gave the honey to my sister. “I’ll pull back the edges,” I said, nodding at the wound. “You squeeze the honey in, Esther.”
After a long moment of no, Esther slowly dumped the whole comb out into her hand and carefully squeezed it over the wound. “Like this?”
“Just like that,” I said.
While we worked, Cate trembled and flinched, but she didn’t make a sound.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Larkin take her hand.
When I glanced up at his face, I was stunned by the grie
f I saw there.
I looked around the cabin. “We’ll need more bandages. The wash that was on the line. Where is it?”
Esther said, “I put it in the trunk.”
I went, found a clean sheet, used my knife to notch it at one end, ripped away three long strips, brought them back to the bed, and wrapped them around Cate’s leg, under and around, again and again until I ran out of cloth.
“I took some honeybees to my father so they could sting him,” I told her.
“What?” Esther said, looking at me sharply.
Cate looked at me, too, wide-eyed. “To wake him up?”
I nodded.
“Did it work?”
“Some. Not enough.”
She settled back against the pillow. “Step by step. That’s the way out of something hard.”
I smoothed Cate’s bandage in place and pulled her blanket over it.
To Esther, I said, “Will you brew some willow bark tea? For her fever?”
“She’s already had some,” Esther said, wiping her sticky hand on a rag.
“Then give her some more,” I said.
“There aren’t any more twigs.”
“Then go find the tree,” I said, trying not to sound impatient. “Willows are thirsty. Look near the spring.”
When she’d gone, Larkin said, “Your sister isn’t much like you.”
Which was true, though it wasn’t.
I watched Cate reach out tiredly to run her hand down Captan’s back.
“Do you really think Captan is Quiet’s daddy?” I asked Larkin.
He nodded. “I do believe he is.”
Cate, hearing this for the first time, said, “Who’s Quiet?”
I almost said, My pup.
“One of the pups at home.”
“They look like Captan did when he was young,” Larkin said.
Cate smiled. “Must be handsome then.”
“They are,” he replied. “And spoken for, or I’d ask for one.”
“Spoken for?”
“To be hunters,” I said. “In exchange for a milk cow.”
Which was when Esther came through the door, her fist full of willow twigs like a Quaker bouquet.
Which led Larkin to add another log to the fire.
Which made the kettle hum.
“Last time, the honey worked in a day,” I said to Cate, who nodded.
“And it may do the same this time. If not, you’ll have to cut me after all.” She tried and failed to look brave about that.
“But you can’t cut her,” Esther said to me, her own voice trembling a little. “You won’t need to do that. Will you?”
“Oh, child,” Cate said, “it might not come to that.”
But then the kettle began to scream.
And Esther turned toward the fire.
And Larkin scraped willow bark into a mug, where the hot water would soften it into medicine.
And I thought of the dead honeybees. And the terror of the snake. And the willow buds withering on the floor, just there by Larkin’s feet. And my mother’s mandolin, its strings sagging. How lonely Esther seemed. My Quiet, racing after a fawn, his teeth bared. Cate sitting alone in a fog of stink. And Larkin, standing by, appalled, while his father died.
And then Samuel coming out of nowhere, suddenly, the rabbit intent on the trees ahead, Samuel intent on the rabbit, as my father’s ax chocked and chocked against the tree, as the tree began to shake and crack, leaning, leaning, its branches frantic as it began to fall, my father stepping back and back, the tree spinning as I began to run, too slowly, toward my sweet, small brother, the tree thrashing overhead as I reached for him . . .
. . . and I felt, more clearly than ever before, my father’s hand on my back, pushing me hard. Felt him shove me clear as I swept Samuel into my arms and fell with him, the tree’s smallest branches sweeping across us as we fell, my father crashing to the ground behind us, and—
“Ellie, did you hear me?” Esther said, and I came back to myself, to the little cabin, to Esther saying something about going home soon.
“I really was in the way,” I whispered.
I looked up to find Cate’s eyes on me.
“We have to go home now,” I said slowly, standing up, looking around for my things.
Esther said, “I just told you that, Ellie. We need to go.”
“No. Not just us,” I said. “Cate, too.”
Larkin looked at me sharply. “What, sick as she is?”
“And hurt. Yes, I know.” I went to the trunk where Cate kept her leggings. Gathered them up. “Which is why we should do every last thing there is to do. Not just what we know to do. And not just what we think we know.” I thought of my mother on the morning of Quiet’s birth. How she had held Maisie’s head in her lap and stroked her ears through the long labor. How tenderly she had gathered Quiet up and put him into my hands. And I wondered for the first time if that was how I’d known what to call him: how quietly he had filled her hands, not yet breathing.
Which was when Cate said, “It’s a good idea. To take me down the mountain with you.”
“But why?” Larkin said. “If you’re going anywhere, it should be home with me.”
“With Ellie,” she said firmly. “To be of use.”
We both knew there were many ways to be of use.
I could see a fire in her tired eyes, burning stronger at the very thought of it.
And mine, as well, reflected in her eyes.
Chapter Sixty-Two
I made more bandages from Larkin’s sleeves, this time, tied them tight around Cate’s wound, and dressed her in leggings and a tunic. Laced up her boots.
She took nothing else with her except the little doll, which she clutched as if it were part of her.
With Larkin on one side of her and me on the other, we managed the path slowly, carefully, stopping often to rest.
At the roughest spots, we had to ease her down as if she were made of glass, bit by bit, careful of her leg.
She trembled like a dog does when thunder’s near, but she was clear-headed and clear-eyed and . . . excited.
I could feel that. Her eagerness. And my own fire burning hotter with every step we took toward home.
Esther seemed confused about things in general and said nothing at all as she followed us down the mountain, clutching Cate’s biggest book to her chest.
My own pack was filled with other things Cate had told us to bring, like bits cut from the upside-down garden hanging from the roof of her cabin. Things I couldn’t name. Not yet.
There were no bears or fisher cats or other wild creatures on the path this time, though I imagined that there would be some wildness in my mother’s face when we appeared at the cabin door.
I didn’t know where we would put Cate, what we would feed her, but I didn’t much care.
I would happily sleep with the dogs in the woodshed. Give up what jerky or eggs or bread were meant for me and eat, instead, what I could harvest from the forest floor: mushrooms and fiddleheads; lamb’s-quarters and dandelion leaves; chives and acorns; the taproots of wild carrots.
For I knew, with great clarity and certainty, that there was more I could do to help Cate. I just didn’t yet know what that might be.
Nor did I know what next to try for my father.
But I felt that helping one would help the other.
And that we would wake my father, Cate and I. What scared me now was what might come after the waking.
I imagined my father changed. Unable to walk. Confused by who we were.
And I didn’t think there was anything in Cate’s book that would bring him back from that.
But the closer we got to the cabin, the more I was able to see what the bear saw in the eye of the purple aster, what the crow saw from her topmost nest
, what any untamed creature knew from the moment it first opened its eyes: that life is a matter of moments, strung together like rain. To try to touch just one drop at a time, to try to count them or order them or reckon their worth—each by each—was impossible.
To stand in the rain was the thing. To be in it.
Which I would do.
Which I would do to make my father well . . . and to learn him all over again if I had to.
And I wouldn’t move from that spot until I did.
There was a reason why I could feel the tree roots wince as we trod on them. Why I had been able to hear the cry of that tree as my father swung his ax, as it fell toward my sweet Samuel, just there, in its twisting shadow, chasing a rabbit across the cold ground.
There had to be.
All I had to do was find it.
Chapter Sixty-Three
We told Captan to stay outside by the cabin door, so he reluctantly lay down and put his head on his paws.
“When we come back, I’ll take you to see Maisie,” I told him. “And Quiet.”
He answered me by raising his eyebrows.
And then we helped Cate inside.
“Who’s that?” Samuel whispered when he came around the corner and saw Cate for the first time.
“This is Cate,” I said. To Cate, I said, “And this is my brother, Samuel.”
“Which is a fine name,” Cate said, sagging against me. “For a fine boy. Who I hope will lead me to the nearest chair.”
My mother seemed to speak a new language as we filed into the kitchen and sat Cate down at the table.
“What is . . . Can you . . . Ellie, how did . . . ,” she said, backing and shifting around us much as Maisie had when I had first touched Quiet.
“I’m sorry we came down uninvited,” Cate said.
“Came down?” my mother said, which was an odd question since there we were, in her kitchen, come from above, and no doubt about it.
“From up-mountain,” Cate said, and I saw her through my mother’s eyes. A shriveled, gray, hunched woman in a tunic and leggings made of deer hide and a pair of worn-out boots, a tattered rag doll in one hand.
“Thank you for the food you sent up,” she said to my mother. “Especially the venison stew,” though my mother didn’t know I’d taken some. “But more than that, thank you for sending your daughters,” though we all knew I’d gone of my own accord.