Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

  “If that’s all it takes we can go fishing every day, Boots.”

  She was silent for a long minute while she watched two crows arguing in the branches of a fir. Nathaniel saw the question in her face before she had put it into words.

  “Do you suppose Splitting-Moon might have met with an accident?”

  He met her gaze. “Maybe. Maybe not. Could be ten different things holding her up. She could be here in an hour, for all I know.”

  “Then you are not worried?” She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  She pushed out a very large sigh and stood. “The child will not wait much longer. Here is my suggestion. If there is no sign of Splitting-Moon in three more days, then we must have a council and decide what to do next.”

  For the rest of the day Nathaniel couldn’t quite shake the idea that Elizabeth had already made up her mind about what to do next, but wasn’t yet ready to let him in on her plans.

  They set out not for Little Lost, but for the river Robbie had always called No-Name that wound its way along the small valley on the other side of the mountain.

  The weather had taken a real turn toward spring. Elizabeth counted this among the day’s blessings, along with the trout lily that had sprung up overnight to carpet the forest floor and the sight of a blue heron rising up out of the river, all dangling legs and brilliant white in the sun.

  As they made their way down to the river, Elizabeth thought of how good it would be to just get into a canoe and paddle away. They would climb in, all three of them, and run with the winding river, through the mountains without stopping, to join the next river and then the next, until they found themselves on Lake George. Elizabeth had the sudden and almost undeniable urge to see the lakes and the open sky overhead, and she went eagerly to the spot where Robbie had kept his canoe.

  It was gone, of course. There was no sign of it at all, nothing but an abandoned nest and a scattering of eggshell. Elizabeth must be content with fishing.

  Selah said, “Any chance we might come across a bear?”

  It was a question she asked often, and Elizabeth couldn’t figure out if she was afraid or curious.

  “We might,” said Nathaniel. “Elizabeth had her first encounter with a bear right here.” He pointed to a tree while he grinned at her. “She climbed that pine to get a better look.”

  “I climbed that pine to get away.” Elizabeth could not help but laugh at his playfulness, and the memory of that morning. “I had scabs on my hands and knees for a week.”

  Selah said, “Don’t think I could get up a tree with this belly.”

  “You won’t need to,” said Nathaniel. “A black bear wants to get away from you worse than you want to see it go. Just stay clear, and never get between any bear and her cubs. And don’t climb a tree. A bear in a serious mood will just follow you right up.”

  “I saw a man got in the way of a bear, when I was a girl,” said Selah. “Out on Long-Island. Tore his face right off and took out his throat. His own kin couldn’t recognize him.”

  “I’m not saying it never happens,” Nathaniel said, more seriously now that he saw how concerned she really was. “But there’s no reason to fear the worst, not if you keep your head and do what needs doing.”

  He had been sharpening the blade at the end of the fishing spear with his whetstone, but he looked down the river and stopped.

  “What is it?” Elizabeth craned her neck to look upriver. She could see nothing, but there was the sound of something big in the underbrush.

  Nathaniel had put down the fishing spear. “Moose.”

  “Moose?” Selah’s tone was part curiosity and part anxiety.

  He pointed. “A moose with a new calf is a bigger worry than any black bear. She’ll be testy.”

  A quarter mile away at a marshy bend in the river, the moose had come out of the trees with a calf just behind her, wobbling and butting against her udder. This seemed to concern her as little as the afterbirth that still hung around her hocks like bloody and bedraggled skirts; she was intent on the river, and she stepped into it almost daintily, moving toward a clump of bulrushes. First she drank for a long minute, and then she pulled up a great mouthful of greenery. That was when she caught sight of them.

  “Good Lord,” whispered Selah, with real awe in her voice. “Look at those legs, they must be six feet long.”

  Nathaniel swung his rifle into his hands, but Elizabeth knew by the lack of tension in his arms that it was more precaution than real concern.

  The moose looked at them for a long minute. Then she dropped her head and her nostrils flared as she made a loud, fluttering noise. It was warning enough for Elizabeth.

  “Nathaniel, wouldn’t it be best if we left this part of the river—”

  He shook his head without taking his eyes away from the moose. “No need to worry unless she flattens her ears.”

  The moose considered them for another long minute, took a last mouthful of rushes, and ambled back into the trees with her calf scrambling along behind.

  “Wasn’t that a sight,” breathed Selah. “Don’t think anybody back on Pearl Street ever saw such a thing.”

  In the excitement she had backed away a few steps, so that her bare heels protruded over the lip of the riverbank. She was rocking back and forth, her arms wrapped around herself.

  Elizabeth said, “Be careful that you don’t lose your balance—”

  A loud hissing erupted from the bank below Selah’s feet, a high and sizzling sound like hot fat in a wet fry pan.

  Nathaniel was ten feet off, but his head came up like a shot. He dropped his rifle and bolted toward Selah, reaching over his shoulder for his tomahawk with one hand, and for his knife with the other.

  “Jump to the side!” he shouted.

  Selah looked up with a dazed and puzzled expression, as if he had ordered her to gallop like a horse. The hissing had frightened her, but she did not see what Elizabeth saw plainly behind her: a snapping turtle the size of a tree stump lunging up the bank toward Selah’s bare ankles, its thick neck extended and the jaw gaping open.

  “Jump now!” Nathaniel bellowed and she did, hopping high and right, but not quite far enough: the turtle’s jaws clicked shut on the hem of her overdress with a sound like a door slamming and she went tumbling to the ground, grunting in surprise.

  Selah was trying to scramble away, her belly digging a furrow in the ground. On her hands and knees she and the turtle were almost the same height, and it looked for a moment as if the snapper had mistaken Selah for one of her own errant children and was intent on dragging her back to the river where she belonged. Elizabeth grabbed Selah’s right arm and pulled, but the turtle didn’t seem interested in giving up its mouthful of doeskin, not even for the ankle right beneath its nose.

  Then Nathaniel’s tomahawk came down hard, severing the leathery folds of the neck at the point where it joined the shell. The hissing stopped just as suddenly as it had started.

  Selah propped herself up on one elbow, shaking her head to clear it. Her overdress was muddied and streaked with grass, and there was a swipe of dirt on her forehead. She had broken out in a sweat and for one moment Elizabeth thought she would faint.

  She sat down beside Selah and took out her handkerchief to wipe the dirt away.

  “That was a bit more excitement than we needed this morning,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “Never seen a turtle so big,” Selah whispered. “Seem like all the creatures in the bush three times bigger than they need to be. It put the fear of God in me, I cain’t deny that.”

  Nathaniel crouched down to wipe the blade of his tomahawk clean on the grass. “Once a snapper gets started it can’t change the direction of a lunge,” he said in a perfectly calm tone. He leaned over to look at the bloody head clamped to Selah’s overdress like a curious piece of outsized jewelry. Elizabeth shuddered to see that the sulphur yellow slitted eyes were still open, and the expression was as ferocious as ev
er.

  “Jumping to one side is usually enough,” Nathaniel continued, pressing his fingers into the jaw hinges until the mouth gaped far enough open to disengage it. “I expect she’s got a nest in that bank and that’s why she came after you.”

  He held out the head, still dribbling blood. “Do you want this? The turtle is the symbol of great strength. The Kahnyen’kehàka people believe that the turtle carries the whole weight of the world on its back. It’s good luck if you dry it and wear it in a pouch around your neck.”

  That Nathaniel would suggest this did not surprise Elizabeth—she knew enough of Mahican and Mohawk beliefs to understand his purpose—but she was surprised that Selah consented. She put a hand to her throat as if to imagine the pouch there, and touched the wooden talisman that Manny had given her when she ran, hanging by a rawhide string.

  “Turtle stew for dinner then,” Elizabeth said, trying to strike a lighter tone. She prodded the ridged shell. It was covered with algae, and looked like nothing more than a great rock.

  A thoughtful, almost distressed look came over Selah’s face. She closed her eyes, and for a moment Elizabeth thought that she was going to be sick after all. Then she spread her hands out over her belly, and her eyes opened with a click.

  Elizabeth saw two things: in Selah’s face, a dawning relief quickly replaced by grim determination; and a patch of wet spreading out over her lap. A familiar smell rose up, the smell of flood plains and life brewing.

  “We may have to wait on that turtle stew,” said Nathaniel, one brow raised. “You best get her up to the caves, Boots. Soon as I’ve got some of this meat I’ll follow you.”

  By sunset the contractions were strong and regular, and Selah had paced a trail around the clearing. When Elizabeth brought her water she stopped to drink, but she turned away corn-bread and meat with a shake of the head.

  “I’ll just bring it up,” she said, stopping to rub her stomach. “But later on I’ll have a bowl of that turtle stew, wait and see.”

  Elizabeth had helped with some twenty births since she came to Paradise, and she had seen how every woman came to the experience differently. Some seemed to lose track of the world around them and flounder in confusion; some lost courage early on; others turned irritable and rancorous; some seemed to find an almost mystic state of calm. Selah was simply focused, minute by minute, on what her body might be asking of her, as if childbirth were a puzzle to be solved.

  When the last of the light was gone and a fine drizzle had begun to fall, she reluctantly agreed to move inside, where she walked up and down the length of the stone corridor, stopping sometimes to lean against the wall.

  Nathaniel started a small fire in the cave where Selah slept, set out the candles that would be needed later, and filled the water barrel. Curiosity had given Elizabeth a package of things she might need in case Selah went into labor, and now she opened it for the first time.

  Each item was wrapped carefully in muslin: a pair of scissors, a small ball of string, needle and thread, a scalpel that Elizabeth recognized as belonging to Hannah, a bundle of soft muslin cloths, swaddling clothes, and three small stone bottles, each tightly corked and with a tag attached. The handwriting was Hannah’s, and the sight of it touched Elizabeth. She would very much like to have Hannah here right now.

  At the very bottom was a note in Curiosity’s hand:

  If you come to read this I expect Selah is in travail. There never was a woman who set such a store on doing things just right as you, Elizabeth, so I thought I better say a few words and remind you of what you know already. First off, remember that she’s got to do the work herself. For the most part the best thing you can do for her is to just stand back and speak calm words. Tell her to holler when the need come over her. You have seen yourself that most times a third child will come sliding into this world like the heart of a boiled onion from its shell. But the most important thing is, don’t let her rush herself. Most trouble come because somebody gets impatient.

  Elizabeth read the note twice, and then she folded it neatly and put it back where she had found it.

  A third child will come sliding into this world like the heart of a boiled onion from its shell. Most times. Elizabeth thought back to the morning that Daisy Hench had brought her Solange into the world, and the calm good spirits that had prevailed in that birthing room. Mariah Greber’s third daughter Hope was much the same, and Willy LeBlanc’s arrival had taken Molly by surprise as she hung wash, so that there was barely time to call for help. And Robbie, Elizabeth’s own third child.

  She had labored all through a warm night in June. The twins had been born in the middle of a storm, with only Hannah to attend Elizabeth; by comparison Robbie’s birth had felt almost dreamlike. The birthing room had been very quiet for the most part, not the quiet of dread or despair but absolute calm and something that could only be called joy. Nathaniel had been nearby, and all the women she loved and trusted most in the world: Curiosity and Hannah and Many-Doves. Elizabeth could close her eyes and see it whenever she pleased: Curiosity holding Robbie up for them to see in the first light of dawn.

  She braced her shoulders, took a deep breath, and went to get herself ready.

  Nathaniel came to talk to her while she changed.

  “She’s been through so much,” he said. “She’s not likely to panic now.”

  “I think you’re right.” Elizabeth wound her plait around her head and secured it with a kerchief.

  He was silent for a while, but Elizabeth could feel his unease.

  “Did you want to say something?”

  He grunted softly to himself. “I suppose I do. The thing is, Boots, I don’t mean to tell you your business—”

  She turned to him, and raised an eyebrow. “But?”

  “But you might want to talk to her, during.”

  Elizabeth heard the irritation in her own voice. “I wasn’t planning on taking a vow of silence for the duration, you know.”

  He cleared his throat. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. It’s just that you tend to go quiet when you’re anxious, and I got the idea that you don’t even know you’re doing it. When you were in labor with Robbie, Curiosity talked to you the whole time. I seem to remember she made you laugh more than once. And things went easier for it, as far as I could tell.”

  Elizabeth did not answer at first. She was changing into her second, cleaner overdress, and wondering whether she should cut her nails. Hannah would quote Hakim Ibrahim to her if she were here: the devil lives beneath the nails.

  “I see your point,” she said finally. “But Curiosity is much more at ease in a birthing room than I could ever be. I’ll do my best to make her comfortable.”

  He cleared his throat. “To tell the truth, it was more you I was thinking about, Boots.” Nathaniel reached out and cupped her face in his hand.

  Elizabeth stepped forward to put her arms around his waist. With her forehead against his shoulder she took a deep breath and then another, and slowly the tension that had cramped the muscles of her shoulders and back began to leave her. She trembled, and it seemed to her that he was trembling a little too, in sympathy for what she must go and do alone. To stand like this in Nathaniel’s arms was more comfort than any talk, and when she pulled away she could smile at him with honest good humor.

  “Elizabeth?” Selah’s voice came down the corridor. “Elizabeth?”

  “Things seem to be moving along,” said Nathaniel. “You call me if you need a hand, I’ll be just outside.”

  Elizabeth remembered the most difficult part of her own labors as the time just before the urge to push came over her. In those endless minutes her stoicism had evaporated, and she had not been able to keep herself from howling in agony. Selah had come to this point in her travails, but she would not let herself scream even after Elizabeth read Curiosity’s advice out loud.

  She was squatting with her back against the wall. Elizabeth crouched with her, holding on to her hands. In the pause after a particu
larly long contraction, when Selah’s strength seemed to be ebbing, she asked, “Have you thought what you want to name this child?”

  Selah’s gaze had been turned inward, but now she came back to the world long enough to focus on Elizabeth. She managed a small smile. “That depend,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, and Elizabeth reached over to get a dipper of water. Her own shadow jerked and danced on the wall in the light of the fire and the candles.

  Selah swallowed and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “What does it depend on?”

  The long tendons in Selah’s neck stood out when she rested her head back against the wall. “On whether this child look like my Violet or not.”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes. She had meant to distract Selah, and instead had reminded her of Hubert Vaark. Before she could decide whether an apology would make it worse or better, another contraction had started.

  When it was over Selah said, “Sometimes you got to wonder what people are thinking when they name children. There’s an alderman down in the city used to come by Pearl Street, his name was Mr. Mangle Minthorne. Now why would his mama call him Mangle? He look normal enough. I always wondered if maybe it was a hard birth and she held it against him.”

  Elizabeth had to smile. “There’s a family in Paradise, Horace and Mariah Greber. They have five girls called Faith, Charity, Hope, Prudence, and Constance. Then the sixth child came along not long ago, their first boy.”

  The muscles in Selah’s stomach had begun to contract again, like a small mountain intent on moving itself. Elizabeth held Selah’s hands until it was over, and then she wiped her brow.

  “More water?”

  Selah shook her head, and she managed a smile. “Five girls and finally a son come along. What a happy day. What did they name the boy?”

  Elizabeth smiled, as she did whenever she thought of the morning Horace Greber had announced his new son’s name at Sunday services. For once he lost his dour expression and smiled so broadly that his whole face had folded into great pleated wrinkles.