“Hsst,” Blaine said, and waved a hand at him. “Quit, you old hound.”
Wffbt, he did it again, sending air through his nose and lips as he wagged his tail and played with the new toy.
“You’re rude,” Blaine hissed at him, ignoring Dacey’s quiet laugh. Blue left her to go to the amused, friendly sound, and she quickly bent back to her sewing. Uninterrupted, Blaine managed to finish her task without too much more time lost.
She stood and checked her handiwork. “What do you think?” she asked finally, looking upon herself. “Will Mommy faint?”
Dacey swiveled his gaze away from the treetops to cast a critical eye on her split-sewn skirt, looking like he’d known all along what she was up to. He was silent just long enough to start her hands on their way to her hips, and then shook his head. “Don’t reckon,” he said. “I’ve seen some fancy riding skirts like that, come from the south.”
“Woman wearing this in public, on purpose? I’d say that’s a great big fib.” But his gaze pivoted back to pin her, and she hastily added “’Cept I don’t reckon I’m worth that trouble.”
Dacey watched the trees — there were some kinglets flittering at one another, far above them — until Blaine had packed the needle away. Then he said, “Think highly on yourself, I’ve noted.”
Blaine backed against a slender poplar, her impulse to snap an answer quickly fading. She thought of her cousins — by the time you look old enough to marry, Blaine, you’ll be an old spinster, an’ your only bulges’ll be fat! She thought of her daddy, vexed at her sassy mouth or independent spells. And Lenie, trying so kindly like to make Blaine more like herself — more like she ought to be. At least Rand understood....or tried. And Mommy... if she wasn’t wondering whether Blaine was quite normal, she seemed too tired to care one way or another.
“I ain’t got no sense,” she told Dacey, though it was obvious the words were not her own. “And I’m as ugly as homemade sin.”
“You ain’t,” he said in a practical voice. “And what does that have to do with how you think on yourself?”
Blaine stuck her chin in the air. It was supposed to be defiant, but even she knew it was only to hide a permanent hurt. “They don’t tell Lenie things like that.”
“I’ll bet Lenie don’t pay ’em no mind if they do.” He gave her one of those see-right-through-you looks. “It’s what you think of yourself that matters, Blaine, not the trouble others give you for being you.”
She didn’t answer. Even if she knew what she thought of herself, she’d be hard put to stand against what she heard from the others day after day.
“Do you think,” Dacey started again, his voice cutting the still air as though he’d never paused, “that Lenie could have made the walk from your home to mine? Would she have come back to that camp to see if I was all right? How ’bout your cousins? Would any of ’em have slid down that hill in the rain to cut me loose?” He looked at her, and he sounded almost angry. “Let ’em talk, Blaine. Let ’em talk.”
~~~~~
Ascending to the Sky Mountain Gap hit them both hard, and they rested an extra day at the summit. It was a rugged, wearying climb, and Blaine hated to think about going over the ridge proper. But after that, after their supplies had dwindled and they started foraging along the way again, the going seemed almost easy — back to ridgeline travel that quickly carried her toward home. And Blaine found that she had other things to sustain her, now, things she clung to as she got closer to a home that wouldn’t ever be as she remembered. All she had to do was think of the look on Dacey’s face when he’d said those words. Let ’em talk, Blaine. If he believed in her, maybe one day she could, too.
And in the meanwhile they closed in on Shadow Hollers. Except —
“This don’t look familiar,” she said as they stopped to get their breath at the height of the afternoon a fair week after they’d set out. “I don’t remember coming down this big ridge when we were going to your cabin.”
“Right you are,” Dacey said, pausing with his hand on Mage’s head, as ever. He gave her a brief and tired smile. “I’m bringing us around to the west of your area instead of the east, where we left from. Didn’t seem real smart to stumble right back in the way they chased us out.”
“Are we close, then?”
“Day or so,” Dacey shrugged. “But we’re not going in as soon as we get there.”
“How can we help if we just watch?” To be so close, and not do anything...
“We can’t help nobody if we blunder into the Annekteh first thing. We got to take stock of things, Blaine. Got to see how things stand, what’s the best thing for us to do.”
Blaine sighed, leaned against a thick oak and rubbed her shoulder where the pack strap had done a good job of making a raw spot over her collarbone. “You got something up your sleeve, Dacey Childers, and I wish you’d tell me what it is.”
He raised an eyebrow; it was meant to profess ignorance, even if it fooled neither of them. Blaine said crossly, “You know what I mean. One minute we don’t have any defense against them and the next we’re waiting so’s to best get at ’em. Anyway, you wouldn’t have come all the way back here if the best we could do was chuck stones at ’em. I been real good about this, waiting for you to tell me. But now I’m asking.”
“Don’t trust me no more?”
“No. Well, yes, but...give a body some peace, Dacey!” Blaine thumped her heel into the tree behind her, awkward under his gaze but determined.
“There are reasons, Blaine.” He watched her frustration a moment, like he might say something else, but in the end ended their respite by shaking his head again — once, regretfully — and following Mage’s limp along the mountain.
Reasons. She scowled at his back, and impulsively stuck her tongue out at it. Childish it may have been, but she felt so much better she did it again. She waited until he was just out of sight, and pushed herself away from the oak to follow. Unlike their first journey, she was entirely comfortable following the slight trail scuff of his soft-soled boots in the winter-dampened groundcover of last fall’s leaves. If she ever lagged too far, Blue came back to see if she was doing anything interesting — all proud, with his silly half-filled packs — so there was no worry about getting lost. And she liked walking alone as much as walking with Dacey’s silent company.
It was, after all, something she’d been doing for years.
The next day Dacey left her to scout ahead, so she knew they were close. Although she couldn’t identify the individual ridges around her, they had a familiarity, a pattern she had always seen and would always recognize as home. But now she had other hill formations in her mind, as well: the intimidating rise of Sky Mountain, abrupt and clifflike on one side, sloping and more accommodating on the other. The wider valleys and less sharply sloped hills of Dacey’s home hills, rambling along in less well-defined ridge formations. And in her mind and dreams, a new awareness of a place where there were no hills, where the ground was flat and grassy.
Blaine waited for what seemed a whole day while Dacey scouted, though the sun above her seemed to think it was still only just past noon. Blue stayed with her, and Dacey had left his coat on the ground, to which the other dogs periodically returned. His pack was there as well, considerably bigger than hers. She poked through both of them, dispiritedly noting that unless she supplemented the mid-day meal, it would be cornbread and dried meat for their dinner again.
The sleeping lump of Blue caught her eye. If that big dumb hound could occasionally supply them with fresh meat, she ought to be able to do the same. She knew enough to recognize a rabbit run when she saw one, and could at least make a few snares. Blaine rose to her feet and secured the packs in a tree — not good enough to keep them from bear, but enough to discourage the dogs — and she trusted them to discourage anything else. She tried to creep away without attracting Blue’s attention — free of his packs, he was looking for amusement — and for a while she thought she’d succeeded, but soon enough he lumber
ed from the trees to fall in beside her, plenty pleased with himself.
“Come on, then,” she said ungraciously, as if she had a choice. She walked the ridge in his company, trying to put everything — Annekteh especially — out of her mind, thinking only about rabbits and rabbit terrain, and not about the fact that these hills were no longer quite the sanctuary that they had been. She hadn’t hiked long when a slash of sun through the trees caught her eye.
Without thinking she pointed it out to the dog and he thudded happily down the slope, used to directions from Dacey. She followed more carefully, and discovered the cause of the clearing while Blue was eagerly snuffling around in the thick berry briars that had grown up in it. A lightning-struck oak lay scattered, its grave washed in the sunlight; young oak saplings reached up for the patch of sky, sharing the space with intermediate growth like the briars.
Rabbits. No doubt about it. She crossed her arms and contemplated the best spot for her snares.
Blue’s yelp startled her, annoying and alarming at the same time. Now where had he got to? More important, what had he got into? Blaine circled the briars with some haste, searching out his whine.
There he was, in the thickest of it. “It’s a rabbit run, Blue,” she said. “You’re a dog. A big dumb one, at that.” He’d been trailing one of the creatures, no doubt, forging through the thorny labyrinth until he’d hit a tight turn and found himself suddenly jabbed from all directions. From within the thicket he gazed mournfully at her, his eyes rolling white and the tip of his tail wagging with much hope.
It was the tail that did it, the way its white-flagged tip wiggled at the sight of her despite the way the rest of it was held fast. Her mouth twitched in a smile. “All right,” she muttered, already knowing that she would regret it.
Knife in hand and cutting herself free along the way, she carefully moved in on him, shedding blood of her own for her trouble. Twice she had to cut her clothes free of the tough canes, but when she finally reached him, it was the work of moments to get him loose. Blue backed out of the run with her, and only hesitated long enough to rub against her once, shake off, and trot to the head of another run.
“Oh, no you don’t.” She grabbed him and used the phrase she had heard from Dacey. “No good, Blue, no good.”
He plumped his bottom on the ground, his brow wrinkling in sorrow. With the burn of her own scratches to strengthening her resolve, she easily ignored him, putting herself between him and the briars as she pulled a few strands of wool from the ragged seam in her skirt, braided them, and began the construction of a snare with one the of oak saplings around the edge of the briars.
“What’re you doing?”
Blaine jumped back from the snare, catching her skirt on a briar and stumbling over her own feet. She ended up on her rump, staring up at the boy who had spoken.
She didn’t recognize him. He was of her own height but sturdier, endowed with nondescript hair and features — aside from a pair of ears that stuck out just a mite too far. But his clothes and short bow were of the sort she’d seen all her life, and she was sure he was from around here. She might have even seen him once or twice at gatherings.
“I’m setting a snare,” she said finally, not without some indignation. “Which is a lot better than sneaking up behind somebody.”
“Sneakings the only way to move around these hills lately,” he drawled, with a great show of being relaxed while he kept his distance. “Say, ain’t you one of Cadell Kendricks’ girls?”
“What iff’n I am?” Blaine spoke with much airiness, trying to offset the fact that she was sitting on her bottom looking up at him. Getting up didn’t seem to be a great idea, considering that she was still snagged. Wouldn’t that present an amusing picture.
Then she thought of the Annekteh, and Dacey’s caution that she wouldn’t be able to tell who was and who wasn’t Taken, and she began to pick at the briars that held her, trying for a casual air, even more casual than the boy.
Not an easy task. He said, as indifferent as she could imagine, “Then you’re a piece from home. I’m Trey Mullins. Seen you a couple o’ times at the meeting hall, I reckon, but not many. Suppose you tell me what you’re doing in my parts?” And, finally, his posture had stiffened; the request was just a touch on the far side of politeness.
“Ain’t none of your business, I don’t reckon,” Blaine said, panicking inside. Annekteh, he had to be.
Both young people froze at the sound of an ominous rumble, looking to each other with accusation and suspicion. A slightly louder rumble made them both look to Blue. The noise reverberated in his chest, and with raised hackles and curled lip, he was nothing Blaine wanted to be on the wrong side of. “Blue!”
Then she thought again, and smiled at Trey. “I really don’t have any control over him,” she explained, with all the regret she could muster.
Dacey’s clear baritone rang down into the sunlight. “Blue.”
Blaine sighed, muttering, “But he does,” not caring if Trey heard her.
“Blaine?” Dacey questioned her with the single word, giving Blue another stern look as he closed in on them. The dog quieted, although his hackles remained spiked above his shoulders. Mage limped down and sat next to Dacey in his perpetual spot at the man’s right, regarding Trey with only a moment’s interest.
“I’m setting a snare so we might could have something other’n dried meat for dinner,” Blaine said.
“And just look what you caught,” Dacey said dryly. “Who is he?”
“Lives a couple hollers away from my folks. I don’t know what he’s doing here... maybe he’s Annekteh, Dacey?”
“I am not!” Trey said hotly.
Dacey shook his head, passed his hand over Mage’s head. “No, I don’t reckon he is.”
“How do you know?” Trey and Blaine asked at the same time. They glared at one another.
“Ain’t you the one that’s missing?” Trey said to her, still sporting a fine hateful face. “What’re you doing here? Don’t you know your folks has give up on you?”
“If they’d only ever listened to me in the first place —” Blaine snapped back, but stopped. That wasn’t fair. It was Rand who hadn’t listened, and it just pained her so much to think about her folks that striking out was easier than facing up to it. She picked at a briar, freed it from her skirt.
Trey let it pass; he’d honed in on Dacey. “Who the Spirits are you? Someone fancies himself an expert on the Annekteh? Don’t mean nothing to me. I’m telling you now, I don’t aim to let you cause trouble for us.”
Dacey eyed him back, and there was something about his look that made Blaine think of Mage when he was about to show Chase or Blue their true place in the dog pack. “Let me put this plain. I’m the only hope you got of freeing yourselves from the Takers. You’d best think about how to help us, not about throwing threats at us.”
Trey waited, arms crossed. “You ain’t told me nothing, yet. Who are you? You got some stake in this, you better convince me of it.”
“I got the same stake as anyone else,” Dacey said, and his voice grew hard. Didn’t like to be pushed, Blaine thought, surprised at this side of him, and even proud of it. “More so, maybe. No one forced me to come up here and take your part in things, but I come, and you’re a fool to walk away from that. I’m from the old seer’s line is all you need to know, and where I met up with Blaine don’t make no never mind.” He looked Trey up and down. “You’re smart, you’ll see we’re your best chance to save Shadow Hollers.”
Trey snorted. “You take yourself too serious.”
“That’s my problem. You going to help?”
“How?” Trey asked, suspicion narrowing his eyes.
“Meet me regular and tell me about their doings — of their habits, or any plans you get wind of. Take a look at your neighbors and make sure they ain’t Taken, let me know if they are.” Dacey paused, but Trey didn’t say anything, just waited. Blaine, riveted to their conversation, forgot that her bottom was
growing damp from the ground, ceased worrying at the briars. “Some food’d make it easier to hide up here, if we ain’t have’n to traipse around looking for it ourselves. Oh — and I need to know if they got pistols.”
Trey stared at him a moment, taken back. “You don’t ask for much. How do I know you’re not —” the thought was occurring to him too late, and he knew it.
Dacey grinned. “Let me touch you.”
“No need,” Trey said hastily, and then gave Dacey a troubled look. “It don’t really matter. I don’t trust you, one way or the other.”
Dacey gave him a hard look. “And I don’t trust you, either. For all I know you’ll go running down that mountain and tell the Annekteh of us. You want to make it back home, you’d best convince me you’ll work with us.”
Trey startled; he’d clearly not even considered this possibility. Finally, he said, slow and careful, “I don’t reckon I have to trust you just yet. Iff’n you ain’t nothing, you’ll do no harm out in these woods. Iff’n you’re something...well, then, maybe you’ll be of some help after all. I ’ll give you that much.” And he squared his shoulders some, waiting to see what Dacey would make of it.
Dacey gave him a grin, one that clearly startled him. “That’s a might better answer than playing like you’ll throw right in with us.” Us, he’d said. Blaine liked that. “Don’t reckon I trust you, either. But it’s a start. You go off and see if you can round up some of the things we need. And tell me — they got guards around, or patrols?”
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