Big Millie was cured by that. So were the others, just by seeing the cure. Catania's stomach also felt better after she'd run across the camp and into the forest, while Millie chased her with a heavy piece of firewood.
It would have been a longer run—the Auerbachs were violent people—but Catania managed a sort of conversation with Big Millie while running, ducking, and dodging behind trees. She asked her if she didn't feel better, and claimed that the water-cure had been medical, not a joke at all, and the others ignorant for laughing.
Millie, who wasn't clever, finally began to believe that might be so. And after a last, half-hearted chase through frozen brambles, she threw the firewood down and went away muttering.
Still, since some Trappers kept teasing Millie, so she stayed sullen, Catania decided to go to Mary One-eye's house, remembering her promise of the library.
"I'm going to Mary's," she said to Jack. He was sitting cross-legged on a hide, playing pick-up sticks with Torrey. Jack's big hands and long fingers moved delicately over the stack of thin little peeled and polished twigs.
"You shifted one," Torrey said.
"Not yet." Jack looked up at Catania. "Be careful going to Mary One-eye's house so often." He paused, thinking. "What she wants, won't be what we want."
"Jack, I know I have to be careful."
"Going to see her is not being careful, Catania." He opened his hand, showed it empty to her, then slowly closed it. "Each time, she will try to take a piece of yourself from you. That's what chiefs do."
"And if I stay in camp today, I'll have more trouble with Big Millie, unless you so-strong men protect me."
Jack and Torrey both laughed, and said they couldn't go against Millie. They said they were afraid of her.
As Catania walked away, Torrey said, "You moved that stick."
"No, I didn't," Jack said, and tried very slowly, very carefully to slide a little twig free of the heap without disturbing any other. "But now, I did."
"My turn. You can watch how the game should be played." And it was true that Torrey, though he had short fingers—and now only nine of them—had a light touch with pick-up sticks. He began to slide a stick from the bottom, which was a trick he had that had won him wagers. Jack, pretending to look close, blew a quick silent breath at the heap, and a twig moved a little.
"Did you—what did you do?"
"Nothing," Jack said, but kept his face too still when he said it.
"My game," Torrey said, and sat back. "This is a game I have won right now!"
"I didn't do anything!"
"I have won this game," Torrey said—and turned as five Trappers walked toward their fire.
Jim and Chapman Olsen, Bailey Auerbach, and Joan Richardson with her son, Del, came up. They were carrying their lances.
"We're going back north," Bailey Auerbach said. He said it, but Jim Olsen looked it.
"Why?" Jack said.
"Because...." Bailey said.
"Because we don't like these woods," Jim Olsen said. "And because we belong in the mountains, and don't want to go south into other country."
Torrey stood up, but Jack stayed sitting.
"And because we're tired of you telling us what to do," Joan Richardson said. "We are free people."
"If you go north," Jack said, gathering the pick-up sticks, "—the Cree will hunt you and kill you."
"We just gave them a lesson down here," Chapman said. "They'll leave us alone, now."
Jack stacked the polished twigs in his grip, then dropped them into a heap for a new game. He studied the pile ... then lightly, carefully picked one off the top. "Your turn," he said. Torrey knelt, studied, then lifted another twig away.
-Jack looked up at Chapman. "Because of our forest lesson, they will hunt you harder. They'll kill you all, so their dead can rest down here."
"We'll go west, then, before we go north," Chapman said. "The Cree don't own all the mountains."
"No," Torrey said. "The Blackfoot own those others, west."
"It's bitter," Jack said, "—to be whipped out of our country." He stood up. "I know, because I've been driven out of country three times, now. But there's no longer a place for Trappers on the Range."
"You say," Joan Richardson said.
"Yes," Jack said, "—I do. And the Cree say. And the Blackfoot in the western mountains say. And all our dead people say."
Jim Olsen shifted his hand on his lance. "And I say we're going back north. We'll find a place where no tribesmen live."
"Not only us," Joan Richardson said. "Susan is talking about going back with the baby, and Tall-David wants to go, and some others."
Jack reached behind him, where his lance leaned against a sapling pine, and picked it up. "No," he said. "Susan and my brother's baby stay here and go south. Most of us stay here and go south. You five can go back north—but no one else, without killing."
"You're telling us what to do!" Joan Richardson made an animal's face.
"Not telling you five," Jack said. "But telling the others, yes."
"If you want to go," Torrey said to them, "—then go alone."
"If only five go," Jim Olsen said, "—then the Cree will hunt and kill us. You know that. And five people are not enough to make new families in the mountains."
"Too bad," Jack said.
Del Richardson drew his knife, and Tattooed Newton said, "Go where?" from just behind him. Newton had come over from his fire. He had a Garden ax in his hands.
"Go or stay," Jack said to them. "Fight now, or not, but no one goes with you."
"I don't think they want to fight," Newton said. "I think Jim's too careful for it."
Jim Olsen gave Newton a bad look.
"Oh, dear," Newton said. "I've upset him."
"If you want trouble," Joan said to Newton, "—you can have it with me."
But Newton only smiled at her, which seemed to make Joan angrier, so her knuckles grew white on her lance-shaft.
After a little while of silence, Jim Olsen said, "There will come a time."
"I hope not," said Jack. "There are too few of us already."
"Still one too many," Jim Olsen said, and said nothing more. Del Richardson sheathed his knife as they turned and walked away.
"Might have done better to kill him." Newton seemed to think the argument was funny. "Why do you want all these hanging on your tit, anyway?"
"I don't know," Jack said, and he and Torrey sat down again to play.
Newton smiled and shook his head. " '... that reason knows not,' " he said. Certainly a copybook phrase, or part of one. He tossed the Garden ax spinning into the air, and caught it coming down.
* * *
Catania, across the creek bridge, walked along the low path past raised beds and warming-tubs, then climbed the high path to Mary One-eye's house.
She called at the entrance tree, then climbed down the root steps and stooped inside. Mary was sitting on a soft blue cushion, staring into her fire. There was something cooking there in a trade-kettle. It smelled like bird and onions.
An old man was sleeping by the hearth. His left hand was gone.
Mary smiled at Catania, and said, "I hear you were just chased by the angry Millie."
"Yes. It was because of a joke."
"Come sit by me, tall Scar-face," Mary said, and leaned to tug another cushion beside her. "Doctors, and any women who know what others don't, should never joke. Otherwise, they may be joked at, and that spoils power."
"I don't need power," Catania said.
Mary turned from looking into the fire. "I don't care what you need for you and you shouldn't care what you need for yourself. Power is necessary for growing fear and respect—as great trees grow—so your people do as you order, and are saved from ignorance, foolishness—"
"Yes, I understand."
Mary looked very unfriendly. "Don't tell me you understand, until I have finished telling you."
"I didn't mean to be rude."
"I don't care what you meant to be."
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Catania was quiet.
"There," Mary said, and smiled at her. "That's how I first knew you could be a truly wise woman, even though you'd been nothing but a healing-whore for simple people. I knew, when you knew to be silent."
Catania sat and looked into the fire, and Mary put an arm around her and hugged her. "There," she said. "There.... Are you angry with me?"
"I'm frightened of you."
"No need to be," Mary said, then reached across and touched Catania's left breast through her buckskin shirt. She squeezed and weighed it in her hand, but not like a lover. "You'll bleed in a day or two."
"Yes."
Mary took her hand away. "At the beginning of winter, I had a pain in my heart that made me fall down. Since then, I have had two bad pains, but I haven't fallen down. Old Dorothy Gold-ankles said my heart was choking."
"Let me look," Catania said, and leaned to stare at Mary's lips. Where there had been a frightened Catania a moment ago, there was now a doctor.
"What are you looking at?"
"To see if your blood is running red enough. What did Doctor Dorothy say to do?"
"Catania, she said to eat little meals and lose some of myself, and not to worry. What do you say?"
"The same. And go for long easy walks every day. Also, don't climb in the trees."
Mary smiled. "The day I have not been in a green sister, I'm better dead."
"Then let the men carry you up."
"They carry old Runaway Dorothy. I am not carried, Catania, unless I've made a victory harvest.... The reason I tell you this is that my daughter, May, is clever, but not yet wise. Another of our girls, Ruth, might do, but she's selfish. She's in your camp, fucking—she'll go when your people go." Mary leaned forward to look into the kettle. "Bird-meat boiled gets tough."
"If you don't want the girls to come to us—"
"I told you I do; we need new sap running. We have too many girls. Seven or eight could leave, and leave us stronger."
"Gardens seems strong enough to me as it is."
Mary smiled. "You're a liar—or a fool, which I doubt. If your Tall Jack had come down with two-hundred fighters instead of forty, would he have been courteous to me, and bowed his head and called me 'Mother'?"
"... Possibly not."
" 'Possibly not.' " Mary had imitated Catania very well. "Sweet Ugly, listen to me. Wise women weave the ways that hold all people safer, costing only hands or feet or eyes. And have to, because our cold world is full of Tall Jacks—though yours is certainly a wolf of wolves." Mary reached over to stick a testing finger quickly into the stew, then tasted the tip. "Too hot. I know you love him; every creature here, every bird and sister tree knows you care for Tall Jack—and they know that he is past any caring but small-caring and kindness for you. You and he have come together too late."
"Not so."
Mary said nothing, only sat on her cushion and looked at Catania. She sat silent until Catania said again, "Not so." And still Mary sat silent.
Catania, after a while, wished to say something instead of 'Not so,' but couldn't.
Mary leaned over and stroked her hair. "I know," she said. Then she turned to look into her kettle. "This fucking thing is starting to boil." She reached to pick up a large wooden spoon, and used that to swing the kettle a little out of the fire.
"My daughter is supposed to be the cook, here."
"I can go get her," Catania started to stand, "—send her to you."
"No," Mary said. "... I need a better daughter, Catania, to be the Lady of Gardens when my heart chokes itself. I need a wise daughter, deserving obedience. I need a daughter who will break her right eye, pull it out, and offer it to the people, so they will know she is a serious person who will watch over them with the eye she spared." Mary smiled. "Don't look so frightened. I would never hold you here, unless you were strong enough to be held."
Mary threw the wooden spoon whirling, hitting the old man in the head. He woke with a grunt and start.
"Get up," Mary said, "—and take this doctor to the library." She smiled at Catania. "Didn't you come to go to the library?"
"Yes."
"Think," Mary said. "Think of why else you came, why you come and come again to see me, though it frightens you. There are two people in every person, Catania, and what one of them wants is secret. So go, think of what your second person wants— and how much must be given, to get it."
The old man led Catania up out of Mary's house into sunlight and spring air. The weather was warming, day by day. Catania felt a burden and a freedom both, being out of Mary's house, and supposed the woman had taken a piece of her to keep, as Jack had said she would.
The one-handed man went before her along the high path through Gardens. And as they went, Garden people gave Catania friendly glances. Once, beneath a swinging bridge, three little girls slid giggling down a vine rope—one, two, three—-and trotted alongside, plucking at Catania's buckskins and reaching up to touch her knife's bone handle.
She stroked them like puppies as they hurried beside her. Then they were gone, popped down out of sight into a deep-root house like mountain marmots.
The one-handed man stopped by a narrow vine ladder, tied and knotted together, that swung up and up into a fir tree so large that eight men could not have joined hands around its trunk.
"If you can't climb," the one-handed man said, "I will have men carry you up." He had a green stripe painted across his mouth.
"I can climb," Catania said. "Will you tell me your name?"
"Paul Bongiorno," he said. "Climb to the bridge at the top, not the lower one, and tell the guard that Mary allows your visit."
"Thank you, Paul."
"Don't look down," Paul Bongiorno said.
... But Catania did look down. She looked down as she reached the first bridge. The bridge was long, hanging between distant thick branches, and it swung slightly in a breeze. Catania had grown uneasy watching it as she climbed up ... and up. So she looked down.
There had been much deeper gulfs in the mountains—even Long Ledge had been higher than this from the base of its cliff— but here, she was climbing on something that moved under her moccasin-boots, that gave and creaked and swayed this way and that so nothing was certain except the rough gray-brown wall of bark behind it.
Looking down, she saw everything tiny, too far away, and became dizzy from the distance there was to fall. The vine-ladder leaned away from the fir's trunk; it leaned back so she had to grip the cross-cords, the rungs, very hard to keep from leaning farther and farther back, until she was hanging with nothing but air beneath her.
Catania was sorry she'd passed the first bridge. She could have rested there, and if it swung in the wind, so what? So what.... Wonderful phrase. She couldn't remember where she'd read it.
She thought Garden people must be staring up at her, squinting in the sunlight to see her so high against the trunk of the tree. They would be looking and wondering what might be wrong, why a grown woman was clinging and not climbing, where little children went all day.
Catania looked up instead of down, and very high above her, as high above her as the ground was down below, she saw a man watching. Gold glinted on his arm.
A doctor cannot show herself a fool, or no one will trust her. Catania got her left foot up onto the next cross-cord—rung—and then her right. But that made her lean back and out even more. Everyone is watching this fool....
She couldn't understand what the problem was. She'd climbed this high—now what was the difficulty? Perhaps the vine-ladder's lines had loosened, come undone in places....
The ladder began to shake, and that frightened Catania so she couldn't pretend any longer not to be frightened. Something must be broken.
The shaking grew worse. She tightened her grip—and thought if she fell past the swinging bridge she might reach out and catch something there to save herself.
"Your hands." A pleasant slurring Garden voice.
Catania looked up, and saw that th
e Gold-bracelets, this one leaner than most Garden people, had come down to her. "... What?"
"Your hands hold you close to the ladder; your feet climb." He swung around and came down beside her like a red squirrel. She could smell the pine-sap in the green stripes painted on him, and the comforting odor of a man's sweat.
He reached around the small of her back, and hauled her upright against the ladder's vines. When she had a closer grip, he slid down past her. She felt his hands on her ankles. "Left," he said, and lifted that foot to the next rung up. Then "Right," lifted that foot and set it in place. "Left... right, left... right..." And Catania went up so easily, holding the ladder close to her, climbing properly, that the Gold-bracelets soon let her ankles go, swarmed up past her, and was gone.
She found him waiting at the top bridge. He had his ax in his hand.
"Why are you here?" he said, as if he hadn't seen her before.
"Mary said I could see the library." Across the bridge, there was a long house made of adzed planks. The planks were painted green and seemed to be sewn together with plant-cord twisted thick.
The Gold-bracelets considered it. "But she's not with you."
"No." The long house was supported by great branches. It lay across three of them as if it had fallen from the sky.
"If you've given me a lie, I'll throw you down the tree."
"I'm not lying."
"Then go across." He gestured at the bridge with his ax, and smiled. "You won't fall."
Catania walked over the bridge, careful to stay in the middle, on the short pieces of wood knotted across it for a footpath. The bridge swayed back and forth as she went, and Catania wished there were vines along the sides ... anything to hold on to.
She reached a platform of planks. There was a starved blue-gray dog painted on them—painted running to the right. The house's roof came out over this platform to make a shelter. There was a wooden door like the one at the first-pulp mill, so she supposed this was a building, not just a house.
Here, standing on planks pegged together that hardly moved, she looked down for the second time, and saw, through the great tree's sweeps of green foliage, almost all of Gardens stretched beneath her, the fast creek foaming through it. It was more than a bow-shot to the ground.
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