The Endless Forest

by Sara Donati

  Safety. As Daniel Bonner’s wife she would be safe. She would belong. Jemima couldn’t hurt her anymore if she was married to Daniel Bonner.

  But there was a great deal more to it than that. If asked, she would make herself say the rest of it, why she was drawn to him. Why she wanted him.

  The way he looked at a problem from all sides and then came up with an answer that should have been obvious from the start. How impatient he got with a certain kind of talk, and the way he struggled to hide it so as not to offend. Out of courtesy and respect, or maybe simply because he knew how to pick his battles. His loyalty to his family, and the easy dry humor, the way he talked to his nephews and nieces.

  How he dealt with Birdie, as prickly as she was, and as demanding.

  “Your little sister,” Martha said aloud.

  He grinned. “She’ll be insufferable.”

  “I don’t see why she shouldn’t have some of the credit,” Martha said, and Daniel laughed aloud. Then he turned sharply toward the village, his head inclined.

  “What?” Martha asked, pulling up short.

  “Ben,” said Daniel. “And he’s moving fast.”

  It seemed that Ben Savard could move very fast indeed when the need was on him; Martha barely had time to wonder what was wrong before he was in shouting distance. He ran loose-limbed and hardly seemed to be breathing hard.

  He raised a hand in greeting and Daniel and Martha both returned the gesture, and then he was there. His shirt and face were damp with sweat.

  “You barely had time to get to the village,” Daniel said. “You must have turned right around to come back.”

  “What is it?” Martha tried to sound as calm as Daniel, but she heard the tremor in her voice. Ben looked at her and smiled, his odd blue-green eyes flashing against the dark of his skin.

  “No need to panic,” he said. “But it would be a good idea if you turned right around and went back to your place, Daniel.”

  And just like that they did turn around and start back. In those ten minutes of walking neither Daniel nor Ben said anything, and Martha thought she would scream with needing to know.

  As soon as the door closed behind them, Ben took a deep breath and wiped his brow with his sleeve.

  “I don’t like to bear bad tidings, but Martha, your mama came into Paradise not an hour ago.” It didn’t take long for him to tell the rest of it.

  “She remarried?” Martha wondered why this possibility had never occurred to her. “And there’s a boy?”

  “That’s the claim. We all thought you should stay here until they’ve got a sense of what she wants, and how to handle the situation. A couple of hours, maybe.”

  Martha’s throat was so dry that she had to clear it twice before she could make her voice obey her. She said, “I can’t go down there at all. I don’t want to see her. Them.”

  “I know that, darlin’,” Ben said. “It’s got to come as a shock. But just hold tight, can you do that? Any message you want me to carry down, Daniel?”

  Martha saw none of her own surprise or unease on Daniel’s face. Instead he looked grim, even angry.

  “No,” he said. “Just bring us word as soon as you know anything.”

  And just that simply Ben was out the door and sprinted away, this time leaving the path to cut through the forest and down the mountainside.

  “And now what?” Martha said.

  “That’s easy,” Daniel said. “First we’re going to eat something, and then we’re going to sleep. Or you could sleep first. You look like you’re ready to collapse.”

  There was a small silence that seemed to grow between them while Daniel took cornbread, ripe cheese, and some dried meat from the food safe. He put these things on the small table with its two chairs and then went into the workroom that ran along the back of the cabin.

  Martha took a pinch of cornbread between her fingers and then let the crumbs sit on her tongue. She walked the short distance to the small chamber that opened off the far end of the room, and stood for a minute in the doorway.

  A bed, unmade. Clothes hanging from hooks. A cold hearth. A Betty lamp on the mantelpiece, and a candle stub. A few books, well read.

  From the window she could see Daniel at the pump. He looked around himself now and then in his usual watchful way. A knife sheath lay against his thigh, easy to hand. She wondered if that knife could stop a bear or a panther, and if he’d ever brought a man low that way.

  You fought with the weapons you had to hand. Something her mother had told her so many times, without talking about her own weapons or how she had used them.

  And now she was back. It was as if Jemima could somehow predict the worst possible moment to interfere in her daughter’s life. Another truth presented itself: Whatever plans Jemima had, they were already under way and nothing short of death could stop her.

  The boy might be Martha’s brother. Her half brother, and Callie’s. She didn’t know how to think about that, or even how to stop thinking about it. If it was true, the boy was the only blood relation she had in the world beyond Jemima.

  A shiver ran up her back and following close on its heels, the first tickle of nausea at the back of her throat.

  She moved to the bed and took a moment to straighten the covers and tuck them. Then she stretched out on her side, her head bedded on the crook of her arm. Weariness rolled over her in waves so that she passed from waking to sleeping in an instant, unaware that she had crossed the threshold.

  When Martha started awake, the window had been opened and a soft breeze touched her face. She was alone, and for the first moment confused. She sat up just as the chamber door opened.

  “I thought I heard you,” Daniel said. “There’s tea, if you want some.”

  And he walked off without waiting to hear if she had an answer. Martha followed him. The cold hearth had been stoked and fed, and a pot sat on the grate next to a battered kettle.

  “You needed sleep more than food,” Daniel said.

  Her stomach growled in agreement. She took the teacup he offered her and sat at the table taking small sips and trying to make sense of things.

  “How long did I sleep?”

  He cocked his head. “Maybe two hours. I was asleep myself for most of the time. On the settle.” A small curve at the corner of his mouth, as if she had accused him of something silly.

  “And no word?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But I doubt it will be much longer.”

  She said, “You can take it back. It’s not too late.”

  Because, she couldn’t quite bring herself to say, they hadn’t gone very far beyond kissing, and wasn’t that fortunate? He owed her nothing.

  Daniel took the cup from her hand and set it aside. “What are you talking about, I can take it back. What can I take back? You think I’m so scared of Jemima that I’d tuck tail and run?”

  “No,” Martha said, and she felt herself smiling. “I don’t think that, but I wanted to give you the chance to prove me wrong.”

  He studied her face for a long moment and then he cleared his throat. “We could just take off,” he said. “Elope, right now.”

  “That would be very ungrateful after all your mother’s kindnesses,” she said, and that earned her a real smile from him.

  She studied the wood grain in the tabletop, and when she had gathered her courage she said, “Maybe we should just go down to the village.”

  “I can think of a few reasons why not,” he said slowly. “But the most important one is, my folks are down there right now with their heads together, and they’ll come up with a plan. They always do. We can give them a little more time, can’t we?”

  Martha nodded, but he saw her hesitation.

  “What?”

  “I feel like a fish in a barrel,” she said.

  He seemed to understand that. “We could go back up to Lake in the Clouds,” he said. “Or under the falls, even. That’s a tradition in the family, hiding out under the falls.”

  There
were many rumors in the village about a secret hideaway on Hidden Wolf, and Martha had heard them all. And still, she found it hard to credit the notion.

  “Behind the falls?”

  He nodded. “Two caves. We store food there, and pelts. Only the family knows how to find the opening. And that includes you now too.”

  She felt herself coloring with surprise and pleasure. Martha hardly knew what to do with the extremes that day had brought, and might continue to bring. Fear and embarrassment and utter happiness and anger that gripped her like a fist. She could not think of her mother without bile rising into her throat, but then there was Daniel. His calm certainty and absolute conviction about her, who she was and what she could be. And what if he was simply wrong?

  “It’s a lot to deal with in one day,” he said to her. “And I understand if you need to keep to yourself until you sort it through. One thing though is, I’m not going to get mad at you for speaking your mind. I can see you’ve got things to say, so go on and say them.”

  That made her laugh aloud. “You never get mad, Daniel Bonner? What kind of saint are you?”

  He looked surprised. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t get mad. I don’t doubt we’ll have our share of disagreements, and I can lose my temper now and then. What I meant was, I wouldn’t ever strike out at you in anger. I may walk away to get myself under control, but I’ll always come back.”

  Just that simply he stole her breath away, but he wasn’t finished.

  “I expect the same from you,” he said. “It’s the way my folks have always handled things and I think it will most likely work for us too. We can get through anything that way.”

  “Your ma and da can get through anything that way,” Martha heard herself say. “What makes you think I’m equal to your ma?”

  His smile faded and he slipped his hand behind her neck to pull her face up close to his. “Are you trying to scare me off? Because let me make something clear, Martha Kirby. I see who you are, even if you cain’t see yourself.”

  She lowered her face so her forehead touched his. “I never thought I’d say this, but my mother did me a good turn.”

  Daniel turned his head and his breath moved the hair at her temple. “And how’s that?”

  “If it weren’t for her, I’d be married to Teddy right now and on a ship headed for England. And I think that would have been a mistake.”

  His mouth trailed from her temple, across her cheekbone and down to her mouth. The kiss was short, a brief soft touch that set every nerve on edge and made her collapse forward, into the sheltering curve of his arm.

  Martha felt him tense. He turned away from her, his brows folding together in concentration. He said, “Horses.”

  They moved toward the door together. Martha’s stomach lurched and for that moment she would have lost the little she had eaten but then she saw that it was Ethan who had come. He was riding his own roan and leading two others, Ben’s Florida and Hannah’s Jiminy.

  He pulled up hard and was on the ground before his Scout came to a full stop.

  “How bad is it?” Martha called out to him, and Daniel’s hand came up to the small of her back.

  “Let’s not give Jemima so much credit,” he said. “Ethan, what news have you got for us?”

  Ethan said, “Best we go inside to talk, don’t you think?”

  He accepted a cup of cold tea and emptied it in two swallows, and then he drew in a deep breath.

  “First off, she calls herself Jemima Focht now. Brought her husband with her, a lawyer. John Mayfair has stepped in to represent your side of things, Martha. Our side.”

  “And the boy? Ben said there’s a boy.”

  “There is. She says she named him Nicholas Wilde, after his father.”

  Martha wondered what Callie would make of that.

  “What do they want?” Daniel’s tone was steady. “Do you know?”

  Ethan said, “I’ll tell you what it looks like so far. Martha, Jemima is going to try to challenge the portion of your father’s will that assigns guardianship to Will Spencer and my uncle Nathaniel. They’ll claim that Liam Kirby had no right to make such provisions for you, as you are legally the daughter of Isaiah Kuick, which makes—”

  “Jemima my legal guardian,” Martha finished for him. “And if the boy is who she says he is, he has a right to half Callie’s property. So that’s it; they’re after the money and property.”

  She folded her hands tight to keep them from trembling.

  “Can I just—give her everything? Let her have it, as long as she leaves me in peace.”

  “If the courts rule in her favor, she’ll get everything anyway, and still have control over you. And there is a good chance that they will in fact rule in her favor. There was always the chance she’d come back to make such a claim.”

  “You never said as much to me. Nobody did.”

  “We saw no need to worry you about something that might never come to pass. Martha, there are strong factors in your favor. She abandoned you. Kuick admitted in writing that he wasn’t your father, and Liam Kirby claimed paternity. And there was that questionable episode with the deed to the orchard.”

  A knot fixed itself in the back of Martha’s throat, and her gorge rose to meet it. She pressed her lips together and made an effort to gain control over her stomach and her mind both. Now was not the time to wilt. It had come, as she knew it must, but she would not have to meet it alone.

  Ethan was saying, “John wrote this for Nathaniel’s signature, and there’s a letter too.” He pulled two sheets of paper, already much rumpled, from the same old battered leather bag he had been carrying for years.

  The first, smaller sheet of paper was folded in half, with Daniel’s name written in a hasty hand across it.

  “My father,” Daniel said.

  He opened it and held it to the side so that Martha could read it too. The pen strokes were dark and hard enough to have torn the paper in places.

  Son—ask the girl to marry you, and then go straight to Johnstown. Make sure Jemima don’t have men there watching for you and if there’s no trouble, go see Mr. Cady. He’s familiar with the history and he’ll be able to arrange a wedding straight away. That’s the quickest and safest way to put an end to Jemima’s scheming. If Martha won’t have you, then take her to Johnstown anyway and ask the Cadys to take her in and hide her until we can figure out a way to solve this. In any case don’t bring her back to Paradise unless she’s legally married and has got a husband to speak for her. I hope that’s you.

  At the bottom his mother had added a few lines:

  Dear Martha

  The future is mysterious and frightening to you now, but in the end all will be well. There will be great happiness and great sorrow, you will have a family, you will find yourself capable of things you cannot now imagine. But you will persevere, and one day you will look around yourself and know that your life is good and that you are, in spite of all your early fears, happy.

  We hope to see you next as our daughter. That would be true no matter the circumstances.

  Martha folded the sheet carefully and tucked it into her bodice. It was a note she wanted to read again, in privacy and solitude.

  The other paper was more formally written, this time in a stranger’s hand.

  I, Nathaniel Bonner, legal guardian of the minor Martha Kuick also known as Martha Kirby, born in the village of Paradise on the west branch of the Sacandaga in New-York State on the 4th day of April in the Year 1805, do find her to be of sound and moral mind and of healthy body and competent to enter into the state of marriage, and therefore I grant my permission—

  Martha had stopped breathing. Everything had stopped, it seemed, because the only sound she could hear was the rushing of her own blood in her ears. Daniel and Ethan were looking at her.

  “I already asked you three times in the last couple hours,” Daniel said. “You never did give me a straight answer. I said I didn’t want to push you, and I meant it. I can get you settled
safe somewhere in Johnstown, Martha.”

  Her mother was in the village right now, putting one of her plans into motion. The thing was, Jemima’s schemes usually did work out in her favor.

  Martha said, “Do we have to go right now, in the clothes we’re wearing?”

  “Jennet packed a saddlebag for you,” Ethan said. “There’s money and a bill of credit and even some food. Birdie was very concerned that you two didn’t starve on your way to getting married. She begged to come along, but your ma wouldn’t have it.”

  And then the first tears did come. Martha dashed them away. She said, “Will you tell Birdie thank you? Tell them all?”

  “Of course,” Ethan said.

  “And tell her that the best part of marrying her brother is getting her as a sister.”

  There, she had said it.

  “Hey,” Daniel said, but he was smiling. “That’s a mighty odd way of accepting a proposal.”

  “It was an odd proposal,” Martha said.

  Ethan cleared his throat. “I had best get back.”

  “Wait,” Martha said. “About Callie—”

  He said, “Don’t worry about Callie, I promise I’ll take care of her.”

  Martha had her doubts, but there was another matter that concerned her more. “If she needs a place to stay, she should take Ivy House. Will you tell her that?”

  “That’s where she is now,” Ethan said. “I’m headed that way.”

  “It’s unfair that I should have everything and she be left alone,” Martha said. “Whatever she needs, she should have. No matter how put out with me she may be, I want to be sure she is safe and comfortable.”

  Ethan leaned over and kissed Martha on the cheek. Something he had never done before, but it felt right.

  “Hey,” Daniel said again, but he stepped forward and hugged his cousin with his good arm. “Ethan,” he said. “Will you talk to Lily, try to put her at ease with this?”

  “I don’t think you need worry about Lily anymore,” Ethan said. “It was her idea that you two go straight off and don’t come back until you’re good and married.”

  Of all the strange and disturbing news Ethan had brought them, this was certainly the one that would occupy Martha for the longest time. She saw the confusion move across Daniel’s face too, and then it was gone, and in its place, grim determination.