The Endless Forest

by Sara Donati

  “I was guilty,” Curiosity said.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said. “If you need to hear me say it, then yes. It was a mistake, and you should not have done it.”

  Birdie came over and leaned against Elizabeth with all her slight weight, as she had done as a very little girl when she was uncertain and in fear of losing her balance. In a voice that was swollen with the tears she was trying to hold back, she said, “I don’t want you to be mad at Curiosity.”

  Elizabeth put her arm around her youngest daughter’s waist. “I know,” she said. “But you must understand that the anger and sadness will pass with time. What will not pass are the feelings of love and affection and gratitude I feel for Curiosity. She has been the truest friend, as much a mother to me as my own.”

  Curiosity had closed her eyes. The muscle fluttering in her cheek was the only proof that she had heard what Elizabeth was trying to tell her. Then she seemed to force herself into action. From her apron pocket Curiosity drew out two letters. Her hand was shaking when she held them out to Elizabeth. They were brittle with age, and neither of them had ever been opened.

  “Many times I imagined this, of what it would be like to give these to you. All these years I been thinking on it. I never read them; you can see the seals ain’t never been broke. So now I am going to go back to my own place and set a while, leave you three to talk among yourselves. When you are ready to talk to me, Elizabeth, I will abide by whatever it is you want me to do.”

  “But I know that already,” Elizabeth said. “I want you to stay here. Right here with us, where you belong.”

  There was a small silence. Then Curiosity took a deep breath and let it go slowly. “So,” she said. “That teapot has gone and emptied itself again. I’ll be right back.”

  She left the room without a backward glance, and Birdie would have started after her had Elizabeth not held her where she was.

  “Leave her for now,” Elizabeth said. “Leave her a few minutes. She’ll come back to us. Wait and see.”

  30

  At Lake in the Clouds the party had already started when the walkers came into the clearing. The others greeted their arrival with shouts and laughter, everyone so happy to see one another and determined to have a good time that Martha was immediately drawn in, all her doubts gone just that easily.

  Hannah took her by the hand and introduced her to the people she didn’t know—Susanna, Blue-Jay’s wife of a year; Susanna’s brother John, who had come up from Paradise earlier in the day; a young Mohawk brother and sister called Jumping-Bird and Little-Tree who were visiting from Good Pasture in Canada, and a few others whose names escaped her as soon as she had heard them.

  Though the new dark limited what she could see, Martha had the sense that very little had changed at Lake in the Clouds. The house and the cabin stood no more than a minute’s walk apart, each with a clutch of outbuildings and a scattering of trees. The long mountain glen led to the waterfall and the lake that gave this place its name. Cornfields at the other extreme, and beyond them cliffs and a steep drop.

  In the clearing between the house where Daniel had been raised up and the lake, a great bonfire was burning, putting out heat that Martha felt standing at the edge of its light. Another, smaller fire had been set farther away, where a boy of ten or twelve was turning a calf on a spit. He was in deep conversation with Annie, who was pouring something over the meat, liquid that spattered into the fire and sent up clouds of fragrant smoke. The smell came on the breeze and again Martha’s stomach cramped in protest.

  Annie caught sight of her and smiled. Martha raised a hand in greeting. She had last seen Annie on the day of the flood and she was surprised and a little ashamed to realize she had not thought much about her at all, though they were of an age and had been friendly as girls. And here she was, the new bride opening her doors to a crowd of people and showing a confidence and ease Martha had to both wonder at and admire. She might have been doing exactly the same thing in a very different setting, but that seemed more like an odd dream now, something apart from her real self.

  On the last leg of the walk Ethan had explained to her how things were ordered at Lake in the Clouds, to spare her the need to ask embarrassing questions. Annie and Gabriel lived in the cabin nearest the cornfields, the one where Runs-from-Bears and Many-Doves had raised their family. They shared their home with friends and cousins who came to visit from Good Pasture in Canada or even farther. Blue-Jay and Susanna were in the house nearer the falls, where Daniel’s parents had lived until they moved into the village. Runs-from-Bears stayed with them there. Martha was curious about Susanna and would have liked to talk to her, but that would have to wait. There was food to get ready—a great deal of food—all to be put out on two long plank tables set upwind of the bonfire.

  The women unpacked baskets and called out to one another, telling stories as they put out platters and bowls, shooed the hounds away, and laughed for the simple pleasure of it.

  There were three different kinds of bread, apple butter and honey and dried berries stewed to a jam, a side of smoked bacon cut into thick slabs, bowls of beans, pickled tomatoes and cabbage, the sharp smell of cider vinegar and dill bringing Martha’s appetite up to a roar. Jennet put a plate of gingerbread on the table and then rapped her husband’s knuckles when he reached for a piece.

  “As bad as the bairns,” she told him, and he laughed.

  Martha took part in a half dozen conversations, answered questions, and asked some of her own, though she had to raise her voice to be heard. It was very noisy with the sound of the waterfall and the fires and so many people with so much to say to one another in English and French and Mohawk.

  When Gabriel brought the first great platter of roast meat to the table, steaming and fragrant, people filled their plates and settled down to the business of eating.

  There had been no sign of Daniel, but Martha thought he would show himself now. He must, she told herself, and planned how she would greet him, how friendly her tone should be without giving away—what? What really was there to hide, anymore? People seemed to have decided for her, and she could fight against that or ignore it. Try to ignore it.

  “Friend Martha?”

  She looked up from her food, suddenly aware that Susanna’s brother was talking to her. John, she recalled. He had read law and these days he ran the mercantile for his father. A sturdily built man of some twenty-five years, as fair as his sister with his hair tied back into a neat queue and as thoughtful and quietly observant as an owl. Martha was surprised to hear his voice at all. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

  “I asked thee, could I please have the water?”

  As she picked up the pitcher Martha realized it was empty. It was a chance to get away and calm herself before she did something truly awful, and so she got up from the bench and announced she was going to fill it.

  As soon as she walked out of the light of the bonfire Martha realized how cold the evening had grown, and she wished for her shawl. To go back for it now seemed silly, and so she drew the cold air as deep into her lungs as she could and held it there for a moment. A trick she had learned as a girl, and it still seemed to work.

  At the edge of the lake a variety of water buckets stood on a low stand. There was a rope tethered to a stake in the ground and a bucket at the end of it, so she could lower it into the water, and a winch to haul it back up again.

  A misting from the waterfall fell light as silk on her face as she went down on one knee, folding her skirts carefully. Then she leaned over the mossy flat rocks and plunged the jug directly into the water.

  Balanced on the heel of one hand, she looked back over her shoulder to the tables where the others were busy eating and talking. Martha caught the sound of a male voice raised in protest and then an explosion of laughter that echoed off the cliff face and back again.

  A feeling came over her, something familiar but hard to place in that first moment. Not happiness, not exactly, but a kind of contentment she
hadn’t known in many weeks. She was among friends, safe among friends, and down in the village she had a small house to call her own, and work, if she wanted it. She could be useful. And if teaching did not suit, if she failed at it, why, it was only a matter of weeks. She could manage for that long. In the fall the new teacher would arrive and she would have to figure out what she wanted to do with her time. For now she didn’t need to answer that question. At this moment she simply needed to leverage the filled and very heavy jug out of the lake without falling in.

  Martha was digging in with the heel of her free hand and her knees when she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. A pale flickering in the dark water, like the flexing of a great fish.

  She moved back instinctively, but too late. A hand punched up out of the depths and grabbed her wrist so that she let out a small scream and dropped the jug. She tugged, but her balance was a frail thing. Another scream, louder, but not loud enough to be heard over the waterfall.

  She was going to fall in; she was going to be pulled in, pulled down and down into the cold and dark. Martha began to struggle in earnest but in that split second a head and shoulders broke the water.

  “Daniel Bonner!” she roared his name in her surprise and outrage. “What—”

  Another pull and she was tilted forward as though she were about to dive. In the flickering light of the bonfire the water in his curly dark hair glimmered, and she saw that he was laughing. Laughing.

  “You—” The things she wanted to call him were unladylike. That was the last coherent thought Martha could summon, and then he was kissing her. He let go of her wrist and settled his wet palm against her throat, fingers spread, to hold her where he wanted her, and he kissed her full on the mouth. His skin was cold and his mouth shockingly hot. Martha felt it like a blow to the chest, a blow that traveled to the deepest part of her where something only vaguely imagined sparked into sudden life.

  A kiss that lasted three seconds, no more, and then he was smiling at her. She opened her mouth to say something but he pressed his fingers there, gently, and shook his head.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” he said, still smiling. “Go on back, I’ll be there shortly.”

  She hesitated for the merest second, her thoughts were tumbling so; a mistake.

  “Or if you want to wait—” He made to climb out and she stood abruptly. Daniel looked up at her like one of the selkies in Jennet’s stories, sleek and dark. In one movement she pivoted away and then remembered the jug, stopped her movement but too suddenly. One boot lost its purchase on the wet rocks and then she was falling, aware of the tangle of her skirts as she kicked, aware of the wave of cold air off the waterfalls and of Daniel, a quick view of his surprised expression and then she was in the water, the cold shutting out everything else.

  A strong hand grabbed at her and missed, grabbed again. Martha would have reached up but her arms were suddenly so heavy she couldn’t lift them.

  An arm closed around her waist and with a great upward thrust her face broke water.

  “Easy,” Daniel said. “Easy.”

  He wasn’t smiling anymore, at least there was that much. As Martha caught her breath she could see that he had been as scared as she was. And still her fist came up of its own accord with every intention of cuffing him over the ear. Daniel caught it easily, but he had to let go of her to do it and with that Martha realized a few startling things. First, he was standing on an outcropping of stone that served as a step beneath the waterline, so that he had footing, while she had none. Second, he had not a stitch of clothing on. Daniel Bonner was stark naked.

  She stood pressed against a naked man in a mountain lake on a spring night and the only thought in her head was that he was going to kiss her again, and she wanted him to.

  “We weren’t planning on swimming,” boomed a voice above them. “But you always were one for the unexpected, Daniel.”

  Martha closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. When she looked she saw that they were all there. With the light to their backs she could not make out the faces, but she could name them every one, anyway. Hannah, Ben, Jennet, Luke, Annie and Gabriel, Ethan. Ethan, who had been her teacher and should be outraged, but she was sure he was smiling. The others, the ones she had just met were definitely smiling, though they were trying not to.

  All that took no more than a heartbeat and then Susanna was coming forward.

  “Blue-Jay,” she said in a no-nonsense tone. “Help Martha out of there. Daniel is in no position.”

  “Oh, I see his position all right,” Blue-Jay said. He leaned over and extended a hand, and Martha took it. He pulled her up onto dry land with a flick of his wrist, as if she weighed no more than a trout.

  There were a dozen conversations going on, but Susanna had her by the shoulders and was propelling her toward the house. “Dry clothes, hot tea,” she said. “Quickly.”

  Martha tried not to hear the teasing Daniel was taking. At least he was responding with an easy humor, something she herself could not have done. She wondered if he was going to climb out of the lake as he was, in front of everybody. If nobody would mind him walking across the glen naked.

  Suddenly she stopped and turned.

  “He did not pull me in!” she shouted. “He didn’t! I fell!”

  There was a split second of silence, and then Jennet called back.

  “Och, aye. I fell right here mysel, lass. Most Bonner women do.”

  For the second time since her return to Paradise, Martha found herself being put to rights in front of a blazing fire, stripped of her own clothes. At least this time there was no mud and no LeBlanc daughters to come in and glare at her.

  Susanna and Hannah wrapped her in blankets and put her in the good rocking chair, which was positioned as close to the hearth as they dared. Then Hannah took up toweling to rub her hair and head dry, and if she were honest, Martha would have to admit what a wonderful thing it was to be tended to this way. She had nothing to do but sip her tea and study her surroundings.

  The house was well made, the walls thick enough to reduce the noise of the waterfalls to a hush, but oddest of all, it smelled pleasant. After a winter of scraping and curing pelts it should have been ripe, but there was only the faintest odor of bear grease and gun oil. It was true that Susanna had hung bundles of dried flowers and herbs from the rafters along with the last of the stores of corn and squash and onions, but in Martha’s experience those things could hardly be enough.

  “She airs every room out, twice a day,” Hannah said, “no matter the weather, and she leaves many of them open all night. It was one of her conditions.”

  “For marrying Blue-Jay?”

  Hannah laughed. “For living up here. I don’t think there’s any force in nature that could have changed her mind about Blue-Jay.”

  From the chamber that opened off the main room Susanna called out to them.

  “The skirts will be a little short, but the stockings are good wool.”

  Martha’s voice creaked. “I’m glad of whatever you can lend me. Truly.”

  Her own things were hanging in front of the hearth, dripping into the hissing fire.

  Behind her Hannah said, “You could stay here and rest, if you like.”

  It was a reasonable thing to offer and Hannah’s tone was unremarkable, but Martha tensed. Another decision to make, and she could hardly organize her thoughts enough to drink a cup of tea. Daniel Bonner had kissed her, and she had kissed him back, and somehow or another she had to make sense of that before she walked out of this house and had to look him—and everybody else—in the eye.

  “Daniel swam in that lake every day, winter and summer, from the time he was old enough to walk until he built his own place,” Hannah went on in a conversational tone. “He still comes up to swim two or three times a week at first light. He’s hardened to the cold in a way you can’t be. I’m worried that you may come down sick.”

  “Oh,” Martha said. “You think it would be wise for me to stay her
e by the fire, is that what you mean?”

  “No,” Hannah said. “I hope you’ll come back to the party with us, but I don’t want you to feel as though you must.” And then she hesitated. It was odd to see such an expression on Hannah’s face. To Martha she seemed the most self-possessed and confident woman she had ever known. It was something of a relief to realize that others found the situation as awkward as Martha did herself.

  Hannah said, “Daniel didn’t mean for it to go so far, I’m sure of that. He would never put you in danger.”

  Martha tried to look interested but not overly so.

  “You couldn’t know this,” Hannah said, “but it’s been a very long time since we’ve seen Daniel so playful. We have you to thank for that.”

  “It wasn’t anything I did,” Martha said. “I just happened to—” her voice trailed away, because if she didn’t believe the things she was about to say, Hannah certainly would not.

  Hannah was smiling now, a soft smile with a great deal of understanding in it. She said, “You haven’t asked me for advice, but I’m going to give you some anyway. As embarrassed as you are now, one day you’ll look back on this night—on this whole summer, is my guess—and the memory will warm you.”

  “I forget sometimes that you’re old enough to be my—to have a daughter my age,” Martha said.

  “Oh please.” Hannah laughed. “I’d rather you thought of me as a sister.”

  Before Martha could think of a response to such a surprising statement, Susanna appeared with an armful of neatly folded clothing. Underskirts and skirts, sleeves and a fitted bodice and the stockings, as promised.

  Susanna had a bright smile and the kindest of eyes. A friendly girl, people said of her, always attentive and sincere. And how her parents had grieved when she turned her back on the Friends and went her own way.

  “Are you happy here?” Martha heard herself ask the question and wished she could take it back, but Susanna seemed to take no offense.