Shadows Cast by Stars

by Catherine Knutsson

  “Settle down,” Cedar says, putting a hand on my shoulder to steady me. I’m so angry I’m trembling. “Cass,” he says again, more deliberately this time, “get a handle on yourself.”

  “No,” I say as I struggle against him. Doesn’t he understand? Doesn’t he get what Henry’s doing?

  But then …

  I realize. The earthquake. The last time I was this angry, I caused an earthquake. All of a sudden I can’t make myself calm enough. I hold my breath, bite my tongue, grab on to the sides of the stretcher so tightly that my fingers go numb. Despite what Henry could do, despite what he is doing, I am capable of far, far worse.

  Henry steps back from the men and storms over to us. He points at me. “You,” he snarls, “are to keep your mouth shut.”

  “We need to be quarantined,” I say, every word as pointed as his.

  “Do we? I say we don’t. None of us shows signs and the incubation period is just about over. You’ve been so out of it that you’ve got no idea how much time has passed.”

  Is that true? Maybe. Possibly, but still … “But we’ve never seen this before, Plague in Others. What if this is a new strain? What if it behaves differently?”

  He doesn’t allow me to continue. “There’s been no new cases since the earthquake. No new cases. We’re safe. Got it?” He leans in close, so close I can smell his stinking breath. “And, in case you need reminding, don’t forget who allowed your family to come here and gave you that nice house of yours. I can change my mind about that, you know.”

  “Go ahead,” I say, though fear is thick in my throat and it’s hard to force words past it. “See how well you do without a healer.”

  “Oh, I won’t send you away.” His smile deepens. “I need you. I’ve seen what you can do. But your father? Your brother? They’re expendable.” He leans on the last word, and I draw back. “I think you know what I mean.” He waves a couple of the newcomers over. “Relieve Cedar and Joe. They’ve been carrying this stretcher all morning.”

  The stretcher swings as the men lift it up. I know what Henry is doing. He’s keeping me from those who might listen. These new men, they don’t care about me one bit. But why? Why is he doing this? Yes, it’s true that the incubation period could be over, but why put the entire community at risk? How can he not understand this?

  But, as we enter town, it’s clear that it no longer matters. It’s too late. People are waiting for us, and the moment we’re sighted they come running over, hugging their husbands and sons, kissing their cheeks, welcoming them home. I turn my head and refuse to watch. What did this trip accomplish? Nothing. No refugees arrived at the outpost. The searchcraft? As far as I know, it’s still in the woods. Maybe it’s salvageable, but probably not. Madda? Dead, along with how many others? I still don’t know. So what was it that we were supposed to have done? It doesn’t make sense. None of this—my burns, the earthquake in my feet, the sisiutl in my mind—none of it makes any sense at all, especially when I open my eyes to see Henry Crawford throw his arms around a woman and a little girl.

  I look away, sickened.

  “Where are we taking you?” one of my stretcher-bearers says.

  “Home.” I want to go home. My father isn’t here. I want to see him before I quarantine myself.

  They lift the stretcher up and set out. The man at the foot of my stretcher keeps sneaking glances at me, until finally he says, “Pretty sorry to hear about your brother. I was out on the water with him. Nice guy.”

  “My brother?”

  His gaze drops to his feet. “Oh. Um … well … he was in the canoe that didn’t come back.”

  My heart stops. “What?” I whisper. Paul’s canoe? It didn’t come back? Are you sure? I try to ask, but when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. This man is wrong. He must be wrong. Paul? Missing? Does that mean Bran’s missing too? I try to get up so I can run back to town, but my arm gives out and I almost fall off the stretcher.

  “Whoa,” the man says. “Take it easy. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  I’m already hurt. I can’t tell you how hurt. “Tell me what you know,” I finally manage to say. My shoulder is aching so badly that my vision’s gone spotty and my ears are ringing, but I force myself past it. I must listen. I need to know.

  “Well … we’re not sure what happened,” the man says. “The canoe went out on patrol and didn’t report back when it was supposed to. No one thought anything of it at first, because sometimes currents can mess things up.” He won’t look at me. “By the time we figured out that something was wrong, too much time had passed. There was nothing to find.”

  “So what’s been done?” I blink, hard, trying to clear the spots from my eyes. “Who’s trying to find them?”

  I wait. And wait. And when no answer comes, I tip myself off the stretcher and fall in the dirt, but I don’t care. I have to go back to town. Paul and Bran are missing. We need to go find them. We need to get them back.

  All I manage is two steps before the blackness overtakes me.

  • • •

  Sometime later, I wake. They’ve bound me to the stretcher, so I’m forced to stare at the sky as they carry me toward our house. A few puffs of clouds cling to the blue. I want to touch them. I want to touch what’s untouchable.

  “No,” I say when they start down the driveway. “No, leave me here.”

  The men exchange puzzled looks. “Here?” one of them says. “You sure?”

  I nod. “Just go down and tell my father I’m up here, okay?”

  He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. “All right,” he says. “Will do.”

  A few minutes later, my father jogs up the hill toward me. My stretcher-bearers head off without a word, leaving my father and I to stare at each other. He’s trying not to cry. So am I.

  “Don’t come closer,” I manage to say. “I’ve been exposed to Plague.”

  “But you can’t catch Plague.” He’s clearly puzzled. “None of us can.”

  “We can now.” Something inside of me cracks. I think I’m going to cry, but instead, it’s laughter that spills from my mouth. My ribs hurt and my stomach is clenched in knots and all I want is to stop, but I can’t. No matter what I do, I can’t stop—until I do. Just like that. But the tears streaming down my cheeks? They don’t. They keep on coming.

  My father kneels at my side and unbinds my hands. “Oh, Cass.” He’s about to say something else but can’t, so instead, before I can stop him, he leans in and kisses both of my cheeks.

  And that’s that. Whatever happens next, we’ll face it together.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  We sit in the living room. A pool of sunlight surrounds us. I wear one of my father’s old flannel shirts and a pair of his woolen socks, for despite the summer heat, I just can’t get warm. My bones are so cold.

  No pocks yet. No fever. No Plague. We both pretend we aren’t waiting for its arrival, but I catch my father searching his arms whenever he thinks I’m not looking. I do the same. How long, how long?

  My father tries to smile. “So far, so good,” he says. “I went into town this morning, and before you ask, I was careful. I didn’t go near anyone. As far as I can tell, no one there has come down with Plague yet either.” He shrugs. “Maybe it was nothing.”

  What he means is maybe I was wrong. Maybe. That certainly would be the easy answer. But I’m not ready to dwell on that longer than necessary. I have other things I need to know about first. “What did they say about Paul?” I ask.

  He gazes out at the lake. “Not much. They don’t seem too worried, or maybe they just don’t care.” His voice is bitter. “Grace has been hassling them too. I don’t like that woman, but I have to admit, she’s a force to be reckoned with. But the Elders, they’re not budging. Not one bit. I get that it takes time to mount a rescue and that they don’t know where to look and all that …” He takes a sip of his tea, but chokes on it. When he stops coughing, his words are raspy. “If it was their kid out there, I wonder if the
y’d be doing what they’re doing right now.”

  “Dad,” I say carefully, “did they tell you about Madda?”

  “Yeah.”

  The lake is watching us, gauging our responses, mocking us with its serenity.

  “She had a feeling, you know.” One corner of his mouth curls up in a half-hearted attempt at a smile, but it fails and drops. “All that stuff about adopting you …”

  “She said you agreed.”

  He shrugs. “I did, but I didn’t really believe her about what was coming. I mean, she never spelled it out, either, but now that I think about it, she knew. There’s a big difference between knowing and believing, though.” This time, his smile is more successful. “Guess that makes you medicine woman now, huh?” His voice breaks and he gulps down another mouthful of tea to hide it.

  “Yeah.” My shoulder aches. “Dad, what are we going to do? How are we going to find Paul?”

  He doesn’t say anything at first. Instead he gets up and retrieves a blanket from his room, and drapes it around my shoulders before taking a seat beside me. “I don’t know, Cass. That’s a huge place, the ocean. I want to believe they’re still alive, but I’ve spent too much time on the sea to think differently. And yet …” He takes a deep breath. “I think I’d know, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t we?”

  Yes, we would. Paul is not dead. Neither is Bran. For the first time, I think I can understand how Bran’s mother must feel, holding on to hope when everyone else has long since bid it farewell. “We’d know, Dad,” I say. “We’d know.”

  He nods. “I know you’re right. Just … I’ve asked the Elders, before Henry came back, and they said they had to wait for him. And now that he’s here? I’ve got to pray that he’ll let me take a boat out, and then I’ll have to pray for a miracle, because that’s what it would take to find a canoe out there.”

  I close my eyes and try to see them, but all I can see in my mind is the great gray expanse of the ocean. “We’ll find them, Dad. We’ll find them.”

  We sit that like for a while, my father trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe, and me trying to figure out how to make it happen. We would need a boat, which we don’t have, and we would need fuel, which we also don’t have. But supposing we did, what then? The strait between the Island and the Corridor is more than thirty miles wide, and if they got caught in a current and were taken south? They could be anywhere by now.

  No. I won’t think that.

  I will find them. I will.

  Except … I am medicine woman now. Sometimes you’ll have to make hard decisions. Madda’s words come crashing down around me. I can’t just go off in a boat. I have a responsibility to this community now.

  Does that outweigh my responsibility to Paul and Bran?

  I don’t know. I’m not even sure I can be medicine woman. My training’s hardly complete, for one thing, and for another, just because I was Madda’s apprentice doesn’t mean I’m medicine woman—or does it? Henry said I was, and he’s an Elder, so maybe I am, and yet … “Dad,” I say. “Do you think I can do this? Be medicine woman, I mean?”

  “Yes, yes, I do.” He nods to punctuate his words. “Madda wouldn’t have taken you on if she didn’t think you could do it. Me, I’m glad it’s you and not that Avalon girl. At least Paul’s away from her,” he mutters into his cup.

  That’s a small mercy. A very, very small mercy.

  I want to stay here forever, in this house perched above the lake. I want to wake to my father singing in the kitchen. I want to spend my days washing windows and picking rocks and listening to the blackbirds warble. I want to twist my hair into a thousand braids and whirl in circles, dancing like I did when I was small.

  I want my brother to come home.

  But my father is standing in the doorway, speaking words that I don’t want to hear.

  “You’re needed in town,” he says. “A boy’s been hurt.”

  I’m not ready. Madda said not to heal when I wasn’t well myself.

  And yet, a boy is hurt.

  “They’re waiting for you down at the dock. I’ve got Madda’s medicine kit ready for you,” my father says.

  This was my choice. I chose this path. So why can’t I move?

  My father takes my hand in his. “You can do this. I know you can. Put on a brave face and tend that boy like you’ve done your brother all his life.” He touches my hair. “Don’t let them see you like this, Cass. You aren’t weak. Don’t give them reason to think you are.”

  I want to tell my father he’s wrong, that I am weak, but the look on his face—the one that says he believes in me—convinces me otherwise. “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

  My father smiles. “That’s my girl.”

  He walks me down the hill to where two men bob in a big rowboat. Neither says a word in greeting. My father helps me in, hands me Madda’s medicine kit—my medicine kit—and the men begin to row. I clutch the kit to my stomach and try to ignore the pain in my shoulder, the lump of stone in the pit of my stomach. How can I do this? I don’t even know what’s inside the medicine kit at this point. How much of the St. John’s wort did I use back at the boundary? How much willow bark remains? What if I need to suture a wound and there’s no gut? What if the kit’s completely empty, so that when I arrive at this boy’s side, I’ll find I can’t do a single damned thing? I should look, but I can’t. I can’t move at all. What kind of medicine woman will they think I am, wandering around with an empty medicine kit? What then? Will they laugh at me? Kick me out? Stone me?

  The men dip their oars into the dark water and pull, dip and pull, and there, beyond the wake, is the sisiutl, watching me with its glassy black eyes. He’s coming along to see what unfolds, and when I fail, he’ll swallow me whole.

  But the sisiutl stops swimming and floats there in the water, just under the surface, as the boat draws toward the opposite shore. If anyone looked at it, they’d probably think it was a dead-head. Maybe it is. Maybe none of this is really happening. Maybe the shades aren’t really shades. Maybe the sisiutl isn’t really a sisiutl at all, but a trick of light that my brain has interpreted as something supernatural because that’s the only way I can make sense of this twisted reality I live in.

  I turn my gaze to the sky. I don’t want to look at the lake anymore. If this world is a figment of my imagination, shouldn’t I be able to look at these two men in this rowboat and see Paul and Bran at the oars instead? Shouldn’t I look back at the dock and see my father standing there with Madda?

  The man across from me frowns. “You okay?” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Just fine.”

  And I will be, I tell myself. Just wait and see.

  They beach the rowboat on the southern end of the lake, not far from Bran’s house.

  “That way,” one of the men says, pointing toward the neat rows of an orchard. He helps me out of the boat. My feet sink into the sand as I watch them paddle away.

  I turn my back on the lake and head to the orchard.

  Women cluster around my patient. They part as I approach. I recognize some of them from that day in the park, when Helen invited me to make baskets with them. They watch me with blank expressions, as if they don’t know me. And they don’t. They don’t want to, either. I’m here to heal, and then leave. I’m an outsider. I know it. They know it. And that’s just the way it is.

  Helen is kneeling beside the boy who’s lying on his back unconscious. I almost drop the medicine kit. Helen. Who has lost Madda too. I draw a deep breath and walk toward her, hoping she’ll look at me. How could I have forgotten Helen? Who told her?

  Doesn’t matter who told her, my mind whispers. It should have been you.

  It should have. Yes, it should have, but I was too lost in my own grief, my own pain, to think of anyone else but myself. The need to apologize, to make amends, to make everything better is so strong that I have to bite back the words, because now isn’t the time. Right now, that boy on the ground needs my help. Fix him first.
Fix the rest after.

  A dark-haired woman sits beside Helen, cradling the boy’s head, weeping. She looks up at me. The woman from the park. The one who shunned me.

  Doesn’t matter, I repeat to myself. Fix the boy. Fix him. Concentrate on that. Put the rest away.

  I crouch beside Helen. “What happened?”

  “He fell,” the mother says.

  “From how high?” I glance up at the tree above us.

  “I wouldn’t know, would I? I wasn’t here when it happened.” Her eyes are angry and red. “You’re the healer. Heal him.”

  Someone behind me snickers. Suddenly I can tell that this is a test. Heal the boy, and I pass. If I don’t, I’m nothing more than a half-breed outsider. My shoulder is throbbing. I pry the boy’s eyes open and find the whites staring back at me. His pulse is light and fluttery; his forehead cold. I gently check for broken bones but find none. No contusions, no scrapes, either. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was sleeping, but he isn’t. I can feel it. “Someone must be able to tell me what happened. You don’t expect me to work magic, do you?” I say.

  Helen gives me a worried look. “We aren’t sure what happened, actually. He was climbing trees, but no one saw him fall.”

  “Okay,” I say. “How long has he been lying here?”

  “About an hour.”

  An hour. I sit on my heels and bite back a groan. An hour. An hour! And I haven’t the faintest idea what’s wrong with him. Did he have a seizure? Is he in a coma? And if he is, what can I do about it? I open my medicine kit and stare at the bundles of herbs. What powers do they have? What latent magic do they hold within their petals, their fragile leaves, macerated and broken into pieces as if that might give them sway over life and death?