Dacey reached down to take the dog’s head between his hands. “Ah, Mage, I bet you got hungry waiting for me. You’re a good ole fellow.” Stiffly, he hooked one of the hanging sacks with a stick and pulled it down where he could reach it. Blaine sank to the fallen tree, sitting on its soft damp seat of moss, while Dacey came up with a roughly wrapped mess of bones and meat — a package Blaine remembered her mother exchanging for furs.
She watched amazed as Mage carefully — delicately, even — took a bone from Dacey, and absently felt of the scar on her hand where she hadn’t been quick enough in feeding the Kendricks hound. She was even more bewildered when Dacey lifted his head to emit a fair approximation of dogs on fox scent. He paused to listen, then repeated the cry.
Far below them, Blaine heard a faint rustle in the wet woods. Dacey smiled faintly and divided the rest of the meat stuff into four piles, finishing just before four dogs arrived, descending upon Dacey with eager, whimpering cries as they licked his hands and leaped for his face. Overwhelmed, Blaine made herself small on the log as Dacey slapped their wet, hollow-sounding doggy sides and pulled their long ears. At last they calmed enough to notice the food, and, with apologetic glances, they left him to wolf it down.
“I never seen any dog act like that,” Blaine said, purely taken aback.
“Gotta give ’em the chance,” Dacey replied, a reproof except for his mild tone. He looked down at the dogs — three reddish-brown and white spotted dogs and a bigger one so dark with rain he just appeared mottled grey-black. “I’ll show you to ’em when they’re through eating. You hungry, yourself?”
She didn’t answer immediately, still in the realization that he planned to show her to the dogs, and not the dogs to Blaine. “I could eat,” she finally admitted, surprised all over again to realize that he intended to do the cooking himself, as stiff and awkward as he was; he’d already gone to his pack tarp for dry wood. She’d never seen her daddy cook when her mommy was present.
Not that she questioned her luck. No, she drew her feet up and clasped her arms around them, resting her cheek against her knees and hugging in all the warmth she could. Above her, a white-eyed cheerbird sang about spring, filling the air with his broken, repetitive phrases.
Not quite enough to drown out the worry, thoughts of Willum and Sarie and Rand and even Lenie, the notion of them facing what she’d seen today.
Not quite enough to drown out Dacey’s noise of effort as the wood tumbled from his grasp; Blaine’s eyes flew open quick enough to catch him in the stumble, and to see how poorly he recovered from it, how jerky his movement was. Not like the Dacey who had walked up the Kendricks garden, so casual and confident, not at all. “What’s wrong?” she asked, sliding her feet to the ground — oh, that air was chill! — and eyeing him as uncertainly as he eyed his own empty hands. Trembling hands, like a palsy had set in.
“Must be left over from...from what it was they gave me,” he said finally.
She opened her mouth to ask would it go away, and then thought better of it. He obviously didn’t know — but he had to be wondering the same. “I’ll make the fire,” she said. “I got to get moving about, anyway — too cold to sit still.”
Carefully, looking as though he thought his body might betray him at any moment, Dacey sat on the fallen tree. Mage wasted no time in sidling up next to him, resting his chin on Dacey’s thigh, his brow wrinkled and his eyes worried. “It’s got damp even under the tarp,” he said of the wood, reaching to stroke Mage and then withdrawing his hand when it no longer looked steady enough even for that. “There’s a candle in the pack.”
She found it, and a tin of finer looking matches than she’d ever seen in her own home — where it was her chore to make sure that there was always flame going, somewhere, be it in the stove or a candle or one of their new coal oil lanterns. She set the wood up and shaved off some tinder, then lit the candle and let wax dribble over it. Between the candle and the waxed tinder, she coaxed the larger pieces into burning, and soon enough sat back on her heels to regard the fire, her face red from leaning over to work close to the flame. “Let it build,” she said, and then glanced at him. “Unless you’re feared those men will find us.”
Dacey glanced at Mage, then at the fire, watching the smoke drift away. “We’re too wet, and facing a night too cold, not to have it built up.”
She heard the decision with relief; already the chill crept back into her cheeks. At least her jacket was good sturdy wool, and her skirts the same. Now if only she had a scarf, or a blanket to huddle under. She glanced at Dacey’s pack. Surely he had at least one, traveling in the hills like he was, this time of year.
And he should be under it, looking like he did.
That was when something in her suddenly took over, and she went to the pack as if she owned it, pulling out that blanket and draping it around him. While the dogs lolled around in vast contentment over their bones and making horrible cracking and crunching noises, she found the greens he’d picked the day before — young jewelweed and some marsh beauties; he must have been near water. She found the corn meal and a small sack of flour, and the small stoppered jar of syrup, and set it all out to wait for cooking heat in the fire. And then she marched her tired legs out onto the ridge, wishing for cohosh roots or tickweed for tea and knowing that she was in the wrong place, wrong season; she settled for scraping a generous handful of black cherry bark to ease his muscles, and was on her way back when she spotted a handful of stripling sassafras.
If only she had the book...
But she knew the book. She knew it well, with all its incomplete pages and half-truths. Well enough to go to the largest of the trees — barely taller than her head, it was — and carve off a section of bark. “Sorry,” she whispered to the tree, for it was hardly large enough to offer such insult. But black cherry tea wouldn’t be enough, not for the muscle jerks that Dacey had.
Her blinder had worked, hadn’t it? Maybe this recipe, incomplete as it was, would work as well.
She returned to their rude camp, commandeered the fire and a little pot from the pack, and then wrangled his shirt from him, tying the bark in the sleeve — tying the concoction to him. “It might not come out the same color, but it’ll stay whole enough,” she told him, making sure he wrapped back up in the blanket. But the sassafras needed that, to make it work with the cherry bark — needed steeping in something related to what she was trying to cure.
By the time darkness fell, she was warm from exertion, and Dacey had forced down the strange tea, as well as the inexpert pone and syrup Blaine had mixed up. And about the time his shakes eased, as his expression turned to surprised relief and he stared at his steady hands as though to convince himself, she realized she’d taken her mommy’s role after all...and that she hadn’t minded it one little bit.
Not when there was someone who needed caring.
Not when she did it from need, and not because she was supposed to. Or told to.
That was shock enough that it didn’t bear thinking about, not on this day with too many shocks already. She finished scouring the cook pan and set it aside to sit beside Dacey and take up half the blanket, nibbling on one last, cold pone cake. Within moments, the four hounds sat ringed before her, drooling slightly and licking hopeful lips. The crippled dog curled comfortably beside Dacey, and although he did not stoop to begging, he definitely had his eye on her.
“You can’t be hungry!” Blaine held the food well away from them, though they’d not come any closer. “Look at your bellies — y’all are about to burst!”
“Brains ain’t caught up with their stomachs yet,” Dacey said, though it had been some time since they’d eaten. He gave her a little grin. “Point of fact, their brains never catch up with their stomachs.”
Now that sounded like her family’s hound.
Dacey nodded at the dogs in turn. “That one’s Chase — he’s a young dog, but he’s steady and he’s got as clear a voice as you could ever want. That’s his sister Whimsy,”
he said, indicating a long nosed but sweet-eyed dog next to the brown-faced Chase. “She’s a bit touched, but put her behind Chase and she’ll unravel the trail he misses. That there,” he pointed at a slightly smaller, mostly white dog with a gold patch over one eye, a bitch who had just given up on her begging to lie down with a grunt and a sour look, “that’s Maidie, the mommy of the last two. She’s the boss.”
He paused to look at the last dog, which had wiggled forward on his bottom until his big-joweled, ticked, tan, and black face nearly hung over Blaine’s knees — despite the fact that she’d just tucked the last of the pone in her mouth. She tried to inch away without being noticed, but for every move she made, the dog had one to mirror it.
He was by far the largest of the lot, with long, lanky legs and a broad, deep chest; he’d dried enough so she could see that he was not really black, but had black spots over a heavily ticked base coat. Suddenly she saw he wasn’t at all interested in food; his intent gaze riveted on her braids, which had fallen over her shoulder. Slowly, drawing his lips up just enough to expose his teeth, he stretched his neck and opened his mouth —
“That’s Blue,” Dacey said, and the name was put in such tones that the dog backed guiltily away. “He hunts when we’re treeing for meat. The others don’t care for nothing but the foxes.” His attention turned to Mage; he scrubbed the dog behind the ears. “An’ you know Mage.”
“Mage. That’s a fanciful one,” Blaine said, smothering a rude snort.
“Reckon it is. People around here used to believe in the magic of these hills, and that’s where his line comes from. His grandaddy was Mage, too.”
Blaine regarded the dogs, now slumbering, and cast a quizzical eye at Dacey. “Why, you treat these dogs like they was people.”
“They’re more respectable than a sight of the people I’ve met. If you don’t care to, you don’t have to talk to them none.” Dacey dropped his hand and his last morsel of food down to Mage, but there was no malice in his words. “’Course,” he added, and a glint of hardness came into his voice, “don’t be rough with ’em, neither. They might not be people, but they got feelings.”
“I don’t talk rough to nothing,” Blaine said, but was forced, in honesty, to amend her statement. “’Ceptin Lenie sometimes, but I swear, she does deserve it!”
“Lenie?” Dacey repeated blankly. “Oh, your sister. The one who’s looking for a man.”
A laugh slipped out of her, though she’d never expected to do any such thing on this evening. “It shows, don’t it.”
“Sure it does. But there’s plenty of men appreciate that.”
“That’s what she tells me,” Blaine said sourly, and was hit with a sudden surge of grief that she might not ever hear it again. How had she gotten herself into this? Dacey. How had he —
“Dacey,” she said, slowly, “How do you come to be here?”
He looked at her; she wasn’t sure he was seeing her. “Fear, I reckon,” he said finally. “Of not being here. Of not listening.”
She had the feeling he’d just said something profoundly reflective of himself...and she hadn’t understood a word. “Try saying that so it makes sense,” she told him, not a little cranky.
Dacey looked away. “We need to be moving early tomorrow,” he said, as if they’d not exchanged those words at all. He reached to his pack, drawing out what made up the bulk of it — two small wool blankets and a quilt, none too generous in size but looking mighty good to Blaine. “Find yourself a good spot, see if you can’t sleep some. I’m gonna be at your back — we need the warm. And...don’t worry, tonight. You’ll be safe with the dogs here.”
Blaine wasn’t sure if he was reassuring her that the dogs were safe or that they would keep her safe. She gave Blue a look — he had never moved very far from her — and slowly inched off the fallen tree to curl up against it, pulling her lined skirts tightly around her chilled legs and accepting the blankets, wondering how they’d be big enough for two. She didn’t think she’d get warm enough to sleep even if her skirts were wool, and her jacket finally dry. When Blue and his massive bulk wandered over and settled down beside her, her first impulse was to push him away — but only until she felt his warmth seep through her clothes.
As long as he stayed warm, she decided, he could lie as close as he wanted.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 5
Blaine stood at the top of an unfamiliar ridge and inhaled the fresh, chill air, breathing in the pure joy of living, so full of it she just had to share it with —
But when she turned, smiling, there was no one there. Who had she been expecting?
Suddenly she didn’t know.
A howl sliced the air, and Blaine whirled to catch a glimpse of something white, moving fast and awkward but evading her gaze just the same.
“Blaine!” From behind her again, and again she whirled, finding Dacey clinging to a thick tree, his eyes blank.
“Don’t worry, Sissy. I’ll help.”
She spun to the voice, feeling dizzy. Rand stood before her — Rand who never called her Sissy as he did Lenie and Sarie — his hand outstretched. “I’ll help,” he said, and smiled. She reached for him —
Another howl smacked her ears from behind, made her lose her balance, step back and away. Danger, it whispered, trickling into her conscious thoughts and turning into fear. When she looked back, Rand was no longer there, and the outstretched hand belonged to the smiling leader; in it was a black, sticky bolus — a horror.
“Blaine!”
First Dacey — then the howl, shouting, Blaine! — and then the leader, laughing. Laughing. Laughing, “Blaine...Blaine....”
~~~~~
Before supper, Rand went to his daddy and did his best to accomplish it all — protecting Blaine’s solitude, and finding a way to tell of her predicament.
It didn’t include mentioning men with swords. He still couldn’t believe that one, himself.
He found Cadell in the barn, sharpening the plow blade. “Daddy,” he said, “I ought to have told this before, but...Blaine and I had a little fuss, an’ she lost her head and ran up the hill.”
Cadell lifted his head from the plow, brows raised.
“I wanted to give her time to come back on her own — I figured she’d be back quick enough,” Rand said, and that much had certainly been the truth. “I’m about to get worried, though.” No, I’m long past worried. What if she had been caught in the storm, and slipped in a bad spot? Plenty of those, in these hills.
“Well,” Cadell said, and left it at that a moment. “That girl is certain-sure one for making trouble. I ought to have drawed the line with her a lot sooner than this.”
Not the reaction Rand expected, and he couldn’t find a response, nothing but, “It’ll be dark, soon.”
“She’s got to be ready for marrying, soon,” Cadell said, slowly applying the whetstone to the plow blade. “And she ain’t noways near it, now. She’s got too many notions in her head.” He frowned, and looked up at Rand again. “Could be this is a good thing, son. Maybe a night in the open will calm her down some, so she’ll act as befitting.”
“She could be hurt —”
“Can’t imagine so. She gets along better off the farm than she lets on, Rand. I seen her sneaking around, now and then. And some of those berries she brings back, they ain’t from along the creek where we send her. No, son, I think she’s took a real hissy fit, and thought to hare off to some life other than the one she’s got. If she ain’t back first thing of the morning, we’ll go looking for her. I’ll get Jason’s dogs on the trail — he likes to brag about how they found Bayard the Younger’s boy last year.”
“If she ain’t back by then, I’ll take to looking for her while you get Jason,” Rand said.
“You always were the one to spoil her,” Cadell said, a smile in the corners of his mouth. He turned back to the plow. “I’m surprised you didn’t come to me before this.”
“I was trying to save her some trouble,”
Rand said. “Now I wish I hadn’t.” That was the certain rueful truth, and it rang in his voice. He hoped Cadell heard it, hadn’t been put off by what of the fibs might have shown on his face. In looks he was closer to Lenie, with the same, squared-off sort of features they’d both gotten from Cadell. Blaine had the lean features that went with her lean body, and aside from a faint resemblance to her mother, looked like no one else in the family. But Rand had always felt closer in spirit to Blaine, who listened to his thoughts instead of scoffing them off like Lenie did. Like he’d done to her. Could have gone with her, even if it was a dream.
“Don’t worry yourself,” Cadell said. “She’s upset, sure, but beneath it all, the girl’s got a good head on her shoulders.”
Rand was glad his daddy had turned away, and was unable to see the surprise on his face. Why don’t you ever tell her that? Out loud, he simply said, “Yes, sir,” and went to wash up for supper.
Morning came with no sign of Blaine, leaving Cadell puzzled but Rand unsurprised — and glad to be out in the yard when Lottie cornered Cadell on the porch, showing a temper the children rarely saw.
“Only a crazy man would leave his girl out there all night. There’s no telling what she could of run into and you know it!” Her eyes sparked anger, showing the inner fire Blaine never seemed to know to bank.
“Now, Lottie...” Cadell shifted back against the porch rail, looking just as cornered as he was.
“Now, nothing!” One hand on her hip, the other aiming an index finger at him, she said, “You ought to have gone out last night when Rand told you of this! Just because Blaine’s the only one of our children to show a little gumption, to have some idea of what she wants for herself, you’ve got the notion it’s your job to pound it out of her. Well, you can just let her be when she comes back! If she comes back.” Lottie’s voice broke, and she turned suddenly away. “You ought to at least have tried, last night.”
“Ahh....” Cadell ducked his head. “All right, honey. Don’t take on so. I’m on my way to Jason’s, and Rand’s going out to look for her right now — ain’t you, son.”
Seer's Blood Page 5