“But Paul …”
“He’ll be fine,” Bran insists, brushing his hair away from his eyes. “Paul needs some time with them. Without me. He did well against Cedar. They’ll honor that.” His eyes meet mine. “Where’s your book?”
It still lies in the shade, tossed aside. I run to retrieve it. Bran watches. A small, guarded smile crosses his lips, a smile that gives me the feeling that the gray feather was a gift after all.
CHAPTER NINE
Eddies of heat shimmer around us. We walk side by side, making small talk and carefully avoiding mention of the fight. I’m not sure why, but I can sense Bran doesn’t want to talk about it. But I do. I’m practically itching to know who the muskrat boy is. No friend of Bran’s, that’s for certain, and no friend of my brother’s, either. All the more reason to learn about him—know thine enemy, my father says. Well, I plan to.
“Warm today,” Bran says, breaking my thoughts. “You’re not used to it.” He points to a bead of sweat winding its way down my forehead.
“Not yet. The rain keeps the Corridor pretty cool most of the time.”
“We’ll go this way, then.” He steps off the road. “It’s nicer in the forest.”
We follow the narrow, twisting path through stands of fir and cottonwood. Bran sets a fast pace, and though I don’t want to admit it, I’m struggling to keep up. “Sorry,” he says as he stops to help me over a log that blocks our path. “I keep forgetting you’re not from here, that this is new to you.” He purses his lips. “It just seems like I’ve always known you, you know?”
I nod. I do know.
“Close your eyes,” he says. “Tell me what you hear.”
I do as he asks. The stiff leaves of a poplar rustle in the wind. A jay cackles in the cottonwoods, and if I concentrate hard enough I can make out a subtle hum just below the level of hearing, as if the earth is singing a song of its own. It’s … beautiful. “It’s like a hymn,” I say.
“See? You belong here.” His bangs drop in front of his eyes; I wish I could see them. “Come on. It’s not much farther.”
The trees fall behind as we climb a granite ridge worn smooth eons ago by the slow slip and slide of a glacier. The lake opens out below the ridge like a blue fan. On a whim, I wander to the edge. The wind rushes past, begging me to take flight.
Bran’s hand steadies me. “Don’t want you to fall. Your brother would kill me.”
“He probably will anyhow, once he notices we’re gone.”
“Nope. He knows to meet us at my house later.”
I try to prevent my eyebrow from arching, but it pops up anyhow.
Bran doesn’t notice. He pushes his hair out of his face before taking a seat and patting the spot beside him. “Sit. We can talk up here.”
“Only up here?” I ask, plucking some grass before settling down beside him, and begin to work. Two stalks, bent in half, for spokes, and a blade to weave with. I’ll make a sun wheel, a Brigid cross.
“Well, no, but up here, there’s no one to interrupt us.” He casts me a sidelong look. “Being an Eagleson comes with baggage. Everyone talks, no one listens.”
So, that’s it. I’m his confessor. I should have known. I’m not the type of girl someone like Bran would ever be interested in. I’m too tall. Too thin. Too intense. Still, I hope. My mother was beautiful. Paul resembles her far more than I do, but I can’t help hoping that a sliver of her beauty was passed on to me.
Bran shifts, moving close enough that the grass bent by his frame tickles my forearm. Bees, fat and laden with pollen, drift around us. A hummingbird hovers overhead before soaring off in a blur of metallic wings. I watch it as my hands weave.
Bran laughs. “Thought we were flowers, I bet.”
“Maybe you. Definitely not me.”
“If you’re not a flower, then what are you?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.” The conversation is running too close to me. Time to redirect. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what that fight was all about?”
“For someone like Cedar, there doesn’t need to be a reason.” His voice is flat with anger. “He’s always looking to pick a fight.” He yawns and stretches out onto his back, hands cradling his head. “Like he has something to prove.”
“Such as?”
“That he’s better than me because he’s full-blooded Indian. I’m only a half-breed, and some people around here think that makes me less than them. There’s talk, you know, about what happens if my father doesn’t come back, who’ll lead the Band then.”
“And someone wants to give you the job?”
“Yeah.” He picks up a spider that’s crawling on his leg and carefully sets it on a leaf. “Some days, I think I might do okay. Most days, I think I’m too young, that I’ve got too much to learn. But, the Elders, you know, I’m not sure about them, either. They always looked to my father, who looked to the people. Now they look to no one except themselves. See that spot down there? Where the river runs out of the lake?”
I nod. The water turns murky there, as if the river is leaching life from the lake.
“That’s where my dad met the bear.”
“What bear?”
“A grizzly. The only one ever found on the Island. They can swim here, you know, all the way from the mainland. Pretty long way. Tough animals. That’s how the Elders knew my father was going to be chief, they say. Grizzly sought my father out, and fought him to see if he was strong enough. I guess he was. He used to let me play with the claws when I was little. He was going to give them to me before …” His voice trails off.
I hold my breath. Before what?
Bran gazes out toward the lake. “I’m still waiting to find my bear.”
But Bran’s shade isn’t a bear. It’s a kingfisher, and a stone, and other things too, things I’ve only seen glimpses of. Should I tell him? Would he want to know what I’ve seen?
No, I decide. What good would that do? Look at Paul. How much help have I been to him? So far, no help at all. More than once, I’ve wished I understood why I see what I do, and in this moment, I wish it more than ever.
“Do you want to be chief?” I ask, because I don’t know what else to say.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Maybe. I guess it depends if the Elders want me. Besides, Henry Crawford’s chief until my father comes back.”
If he comes back. The unspoken words hang between us until Bran says, “But, maybe one day. When I feel I’m half the man my father was. Is.” He looks down at the sun wheel in my hands. “What’s that?”
“This?” I hold it up and inspect it. “I call it a sun wheel. My mother taught me to make them. She called it a Brigid cross. It’s supposed to protect you from evil.”
Bran laughs. “Does it work?”
“I think so. Maybe. Here.” I reach out and take his hand, setting the sun-wheel in his palm and curling his fingers around it. “It’s for you.”
He stares at it for a long moment before looking back at me. “Thank you,” he says, like he really means it.
I start to say that it’s nothing, that it’s made only from grass, but I stop myself and just smile instead.
Bran sweeps his hair back and stands, offering me his hand. “Well, we should probably be getting back, I guess.”
“I guess.” Though I could stay here forever, on this hilltop, with the grass swaying in the wind, the hummingbirds, the flowers.
But I still take Bran’s hand. Our palms meet, and this time, even after he’s pulled me up from the ground, we don’t let go.
Paul sits beside the beached canoe, smiling as we approach. “I thought you two had run off together,” he says as he touches his swollen lip.
“Thought about it. Figured you’d hunt us down before long.” Bran gives Paul a friendly punch to the shoulder. Paul stands up and punches him back. They both laugh.
This is how things are meant to be, and I would stop time right now if I could. My brother is happy. I am happy.
But time doesn’t st
op.
And everything changes.
CHAPTER TEN
Sometimes, I think the earth can hear my thoughts. There are days when I wish for a storm, or for a clear sky to see the moon, and the wish arrives.
Today I wish for wind—a brisk wind, fierce, even—to bear us across the lake, to raise whitecaps so high that Bran is trapped at our house, and it comes, rushing over the hills, bending the firs, showering the lake with needles as Bran and Paul paddle the canoe toward home.
My father greets us and holds the canoe steady while we scramble onto the dock.
“Help me lift it out, Paul,” Bran says. “Last thing I want is for these waves to swamp it.”
Doesn’t sound like such a bad idea to me, but I don’t say so.
“The wind will die later,” my father says as clouds slip across the sky.
Not if I can help it.
My father brought down a brace of grouse while we were away. Bran and Paul pluck them while I light the fire.
“Tell us a story,” Paul says as we settle in. The grouse sizzle and pop each time Bran turns them.
My father doesn’t look up. “Maybe later, Paulie,” he says, though we know from the tone of his voice that “later” really means “no.”
I love my father’s stories, but he seldom tells them anymore. Some things are best left to die, he says. Stories haunt the living and when my father turns his gaze back to the flames, I can see he’s no longer with us. Words hold power—everyone knows this—but perhaps those who tell stories know it better than the rest, for through their voice, the dead live again, resurrected like that story of the woman Eurydice, except there’s no Orpheus to lead the way back to the world of the living.
Just as well—he didn’t do a particularly good job of it.
“You tell one then, Cass,” Paul says. “You tell a story.”
I’m not sure why, but the look in Paul’s eyes tells me he needs this story from me, to hold him to the earth, to tie him to something solid. Stories do that, my father says. They make the impossible real. That’s why my father’s choice to not tell stories anymore hurts both Paul and me. Some days we need to believe in the impossible.
But when I try to find the words, none will come. I try, but all I can think of is that my father looks so sad tonight, staring into the fire, remembering. I know the story he would tell, if he could speak, the one of how he met my mother and knew, in an instant, she was the one he would marry. He’s told it to us often enough, but tonight, for some reason, he can’t, and neither can I.
Later, against my wishes, the wind dies and Bran leaves. My father leaves as well, but Paul and I stay by the fire. Paul stares at the coals pulsing gray and gold. The fire has stolen him, drawing him down into the world of vision.
Above us, stars crowd the heavens. When we were little, Paul wanted to be a star. I don’t know where he got that idea, but stars were the one thing he never tired of learning of at school. He learned all the myths, of Andromeda, of Calliope, and, especially, of Orion. The stars of Orion’s belt have always been his favorite. My father says his father told him those three stars were once three ravens, crossing the heavens. To go where? I wonder. To do what?
A branch breaks in the forest behind me, as if in answer to my questions. I whirl around, but there’s nothing there.
My movement rouses Paul. “What’s the matter?” he asks, rubbing his eyes.
“I heard something behind us.” A shiver slithers up my arm. “Probably just a deer.”
“Probably,” he says, yawning, but I see the worried wrinkle of his brow as he turns his gaze back to the fire.
What does he see in the embers? I wish I knew, but I must wait until he’s ready to tell me. And I hate waiting.
He knows this and lies down, leaving room for me. When we were little, our family would spend nights under the stars, lying with our heads together to create a star of our own. The top of my head touches Paul’s, and my arms stretch out at my sides, filling the space our parents would have claimed. Satellites swoop through the heavens, as bright as fireflies.
“Do you think they’re watching us?” Paul asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I hope not.” But I get up and head for the house anyhow.
I bolt awake.
Moonlight spills into my room, painting the floor a milky white. The grumble and roar of my father’s snoring rises from downstairs.
Paul isn’t in the house. I can feel it. Something is wrong. Altered.
I slip from my sleeping bag and tiptoe downstairs. Sure enough, Paul’s sleeping bag is empty again.
Outside, the lake stretches out like a silver gauntlet, beckoning me.
I step over the threshold, out into a night full of frog song. But then, the frogs stop singing. The night goes silent. I stand completely still. Paul is out there somewhere. I want to search for him, but fear grips me and all I can do is stare into the depths of the forest.
A rock bounces out of the shadows, nearly hitting my leg.
“Paul?”
“Go back inside.” His voice drifts up from somewhere down the hill. There’s no way he could have thrown that rock.
“Paul, what’s wrong?”
“Cass, go back inside.”
“But …”
“GO NOW!”
I flee, tripping over the threshold and falling into the house.
My father wakes up and stumbles from his room to stare at me. “What’s going on?” he rasps.
I don’t answer. I don’t have an answer. Sparks of spirit float around my head, trying to warn me of something I don’t understand. My father draws me into his arms, but I can’t see him. The sparks press in on me, droning like a swarming hive, so thick I might drown.
And then I feel it, way down in the bottom of my gut: only a tickle at first, but then it grows, crescendoing to a rumble, forcing me to my feet as I drag my father after me.
The world is about to change.
The floor shudders and suddenly my father understands. “Up to the road!” he shouts.
Stones bite into my bare feet. I slip, fall, skin my knee, my hands, as I try to stand. My father hauls me up. The sparks coat my eyes, my ears. I feel like I’ll retch, but I can’t. Not yet.
We fall on the old, broken asphalt.
My father wheezes, “Paulie?”
In reply, the world begins to sway.
When the earthquake finally stops, I scramble down the hill to search the lakeshore while my father scours the woods that flank the house. No Paul. The look on my father’s face when I meet him halfway up the hill mirrors my own. We are panic-stricken.
“Back up to the road,” my father says. “He’s probably waiting for us up there.”
But the road is no longer a road. Asphalt lies in heaves and gullies, and trees are strewn about like spent match-sticks. An earthquake is always a reminder that we humans are as expendable as anything else, and if a fir that has weathered five hundred years of existence can be toppled, so can we.
A whistle from behind makes me whirl around, and there Paul is, stepping out from the forest, covered in scrapes. He holds his left forearm with his right hand and the dark seep of blood stains his shirt. A piece of wood is embedded in his skin.
We run to him.
“Leave it,” he says when I move to examine his arm.
I give him my sternest look. “Only if you want it to fester. You’ll lose your arm.” I can’t tell him how relieved I am, how worried I was.
“Fine,” Paul snaps. “Get it out, then.”
We head back down the driveway and stop at the truck. Paul paces, waiting as my father fishes our precious supply of whiskey out from behind the seat, as I stare at the house, looking to see how it fared. In the predawn darkness, it looks okay, but what damage will daylight reveal? None if we’re lucky, though I know that’s too much to hope for.
“Here, Cass,” my father says, handing me his jackknife. “Use this.”
Paul watches as I dig the wood
from his flesh, and doesn’t wince—not once, not even when I pour whiskey over the wound and stitch it with deer-gut thread.
“Another scar,” I murmur as I tie off the knot.
He grins. “Good.”
Our house, by some miracle, is unscathed. Below, the boathouse has come loose from its moorings and the dock is partially submerged, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.
Only then, after we’ve surveyed the damage, do I let myself think of Bran, of Madda, of the people in the town. If the wind listens, if the sky hears my words, surely they will see them all safe.
Paul touches my arm. “Relax,” he says. “It’ll be okay.”
But I see the raven in my brother’s eyes, and I know more is yet to come.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Daylight breaks after we’ve begun the long walk into town. Fallen trees litter the road. Our father makes us stop at each one, inspecting it carefully while Paul and I pace. We’ve been through earthquakes before, and we all know what the aftermath brings. Our house might be safe and we might be unharmed, but what about everyone else? What about Bran? Helen? Madda?
Paul carries an ax, and my father a machete and a shovel. I bring a basket holding bandages, a bottle of whiskey, needles, and thread. No one speaks, allowing me to run through the things my mother taught me: how to start a heart. How to stanch a wound. How to tie a tourniquet. How to stitch a person back together. Some of these things I’ve never done, but my mother made sure I knew how to, just in case.
The smell of smoke reaches us long before we arrive in the town. Something’s burning. When we finally emerge from the forest, we see it’s the church. The roof has already collapsed and smoke billows from its shell. People have formed a fire line and swing buckets of lake water from hand to hand, dousing the house next to the church, but I fear it, too, will go up in flames before long. Someone will then have lost a home, and all their belongings along with it. My heart squeezes tight at the thought. I know what that feels like.
Down the way, in the park, a tent has been set up. It seems to be a hub of activity, so my father steers us there, but once we step under the canvas awning, we realize the tent is a hospital. My father pats me on the shoulder before he and Paul step back outside. He knows I’ll be able to help here.
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