Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

  As soon as the words left her mouth she regretted them, but then he smiled at her and anger rose up hot and hard and filled her throat.

  “Tomorrow you should go,” she said. “Tonight.”

  She pushed ahead, but no matter how fast she walked he was behind her. By the time they came to the clearing at Lake in the Clouds they were trotting, both of them. At the sound of the waterfall Hannah broke into a run, dropped her basket, kicked off the summer moccasins she wore under her O’seronni dress, and without thought or pause she dove into the water.

  Her mother’s people dipped newborns in the waters of the great river so they would never forget who they were and who they would always be. She felt it in the pit of her stomach, the basin of her skull, in the long curve of her spine, in the very muscles of her heart: cold so intense that the sorrow and anger that had begun to etch itself in untouchable places must give way. And in their place a new understanding.

  When she was born her father had brought her here and dipped her in the Lake in the Clouds; this was where she belonged.

  When she climbed out of the lake, water and weariness streaming off her, Strikes-the-Sky was sitting there, where they had sat together for so many nights now. He had not kissed her or tried to kiss her or even spoken of kissing, and now Hannah was glad of that; it made everything easier.

  As she walked past him he said her name, “Walks-Ahead.” And then, in English the one word she had been waiting to hear from him; had thought never to hear him say: “Hannah.”

  She stopped, wrapped her arms around herself, turned.

  He was standing, but she could not make out his face.

  He said, “I see you.”

  “Yes,” she answered him, clutching at the certainty that had come so suddenly and now left her again. “I understand that you do.”

  Chapter 40

  Hannah dreamed of trees hung with plums and pears and clutches of cherries the color of blood, peaches as heavy and soft as she had imagined the moon to be when she was a child. As far as her dream self could see there were trees heavy with fruit.

  In the way of dreams Eulalia Wilde was suddenly walking beside her, pointing to one tree after another.

  Under a pear tree your cousin Isabel, under a quince your grandmother Falling-Day, for Selah Voyager sweet plums.

  They came to the apple trees and Eulalia stopped, her arms wound around herself. Here I lay me down to sleep, she said with a smile. Under the Snow.

  Beyond that a hundred trees or a thousand, branches swaying low with apples.

  What of those trees? Hannah asked. Who will rest under those trees?

  Eulalia raised her hands and chanted: Grabenstein, Children-Waiting-in-a-Line, Seek-No-Further.

  Hannah woke with a start.

  An epidemic in the village. Richard would need her help, but she had the urge to go out into Elizabeth’s garden first.

  When the Bonner’s came home from an unexpected and unwelcome trip to Scotland when the twins were just infants, they had brought with them a number of fruit trees in tubs, a gift from the Earl of Carryck’s greenhouse. The idea of plums and pears and cherries at Lake in the Clouds had so appealed to Elizabeth that she had declared herself ready to take on the challenge. If Carryck could manage to grow peaches in Scotland, certainly she could nurse a few hardier trees through the winter at Lake in the Clouds.

  In spite of Elizabeth’s best will, consultations with every farmer in the village, letters back and forth from Scotland, the best manure, careful watering, and many layers of sacking through the winter, three of the trees had not survived the first January. The next winter had killed two more, but a single cherry tree had survived. Into this tree, planted in a sunny spot between cabin and stable where it was protected from the wind, Elizabeth put all her effort, and every midsummer since it had paid her back in kind.

  The tree was like a gnarled old woman, bent of back and crusty, clutching her finery in spindly claws. Hannah filled a small basket and went into the barn to sort them.

  It smelled of drying grass and damp sawdust and of old Toby, who snored softly in his stall, and would wake only when someone remembered to put him out to graze. Hannah left the double doors open for the breeze and the rumble of the waterfalls, a familiar and comforting melody.

  When a shadow fell across the table she drew in a breath and held it.

  Strikes-the-Sky stood in the open doorway; she knew it without raising her head. She knew him by his size and shape, by the way he breathed, and by the way her own heart disobeyed her, racing forward toward something she did not want. Not today, not now. Not yet.

  She worked on, her fingers picking through the fruit of their own accord while he watched her. Hannah vowed to herself that she would not speak first, even though some part of her protested that she was being childish.

  But he had called her by her English name and unsettled her. It was as if he saw the secret she had kept so long written plain on her forehead: she thought of herself as Hannah, first and always. The woman-name her grandmother had given her, Walks-Ahead, that name had never taken hold in her mind. It was a good name and one she had earned, but she answered to it as she might answer to girl.

  You change when Strikes-the-Sky comes into the room, Daniel had said. She could not convince anyone, not even herself, that she felt only friendship for the man who stood in the doorway watching her.

  Hannah looked up, as flushed and agitated as if she had run a mile.

  “Why do you stand there staring? Have you forgotten what I look like in these few hours?”

  Her tone did not seem to worry him. “I like the look of you, Walks-Ahead.”

  He came into the cool shadows. With the sun at his back she could not see his expression, and she was glad of it. All the things to say went through her mind in a muddle, and in the end she spoke only to hear the sound of her own voice.

  “I am very busy here, as you can see. And I need to go to the village; the doctor will be waiting for me.”

  “Your hands are busy, yes. Your mouth is not.”

  She itched with the impulse to throw something at his head, but she forced herself to breathe deeply until the urge had passed.

  “Have you no work to do?”

  “Nothing as important as what I am doing now.”

  Those words ran up her spine like a fever chill. “Enough of your teasing. What do you want?”

  His look was so direct and honest and so easily read that Hannah could not bear it; she dropped her head. Because she did not trust her own expression; because she did not want to see his. Most of all she did not want him to answer the question she had asked. What do you want? It hung in the air between them as full and ripe as the fruit in her hands. She wanted to snatch it back and swallow it whole.

  “These cherries are ripe,” she said without looking up. “If you are hungry.”

  When enough time had passed that she could trust herself she straightened her back and looked him in the eye, held out a clutch of cherries on the flat of her palm. Cherries of such a dark and deep color that all the other colors of the world were hidden in its depths. Not black or red, but both and neither. A color as deep and complex as the color of his eyes, looking at her with frank and unapologetic wanting.

  He put out his hand to take what she offered and hesitated, his palm hovering over hers. Then his fingers curved over the fruit and they brushed against her wrist.

  “I make you tremble, Walks-Ahead.”

  “You distract me from my work, nothing more.”

  “That is not the first lie I have heard from you, but it is the one that wounds.”

  She could pull away but instead she stood there while he trailed his fingers over her wrist, more purposefully this time so that the cherries rolled between their palms. His touch was light, his fingers strong and rough and cool.

  When she raised her eyes to his he was smiling. He took his hand away, and the fruit with it.

  He said, “You ran away from me last night
.”

  “I was tired.”

  How odd, that the things they said could be true and false at the same time. Hannah thought he would go then, but he only turned to the side so that he could look out into the morning light while he ate. Juice ran down from the corner of his mouth like blood and she started at that, wound her fingers in her skirt to keep herself from touching him.

  He caught the juice with the back of his hand, wiped it away.

  Without looking at her he said, “Come west with me, Walks-Ahead. Come live with me among my people. There is work for you there, among the Seneca.”

  A sound escaped her, as if all the air had been caught up inside her belly and suddenly forced its way out. She leaned against the rough table with both her hands to keep them from shaking.

  “You have nothing to say?” He was watching her again, impassively, as if he had asked her about the weather and was only waiting to hear if it would rain.

  “You want me to come west because the Seneca need another healer.” It was not so much a question as a demand; she heard that in her own voice, and so did he.

  When he smiled the long grooves in his cheeks made him look like a boy with nothing to worry about, sure of himself and his place in the world.

  He said, “In the old days our mothers would settle this for us, but now we must act for ourselves. Walks-Ahead, listen. If you will take me, I will be a good husband to you. We will stand together, side by side, among the real people.”

  Hannah blinked, struck by an unbidden memory as sharp as ice. Long ago, her girl-self had stood right on this very spot in the deep of winter, with Liam Kirby. He had looked at her like Strikes-the-Sky looked at her now. He had asked her for a promise she could not make.

  She could see him still, snow caught in his eyebrows and in the deep red of his hair where it stuck out from his cap, his skin so pale that she could watch the pulsing of his blood in the veins at his temple.

  To me you are white. He had said those words to her, and with them he put up the first barrier between them. The first of many barriers, although she had not imagined that then; when she was a child Liam had been as much a part of her life as Hidden Wolf, and as permanent. But he was gone, for now and ever.

  On that day she had wanted to strike out at Liam, to spit out the denial that sat bitter on her tongue—I am not white. But those words could not be said, because they were only partly true. She was white, and she was red, and she was everything and nothing in between. But she had been a girl then, and now she was a woman and she had other words, better words, that she was not afraid to use, that she must say or choke.

  “My people are real people,” she said to Strikes-the-Sky, and she had to swallow hard to make her voice obey her. “All my people, white or Mohawk, they are all real people.”

  He raised his head and found her gaze, steady and sure and so focused, as if he had nothing else to see in the world. He studied her as he had studied the map of the mountain that Daniel had drawn for him, to win its secrets. To make it his own.

  “Your people are all real people,” he echoed. “You are right to correct me.”

  It was the single thing that he could say to open the door between them. Hannah was so surprised to hear those words that she could not think of any response that did not sound dull.

  Strikes-the-Sky did not seem to be bothered by her silence. He said, “In my village, there would be time. We would dance with the others, every night by the great fire. We would dance with your scarf caught between our hands, and one night when you were ready you would put the scarf around my shoulders. And then I would leave my mother’s fire and come to live in your longhouse.”

  He came no closer, but Hannah could feel him, the strength of him, his will, as strong as any she had ever known. As strong as my own. She closed her eyes and when she opened them he was there still, Strikes-the-Sky. She wondered if his skin would taste as sweet as his mouth had tasted for that short moment; Hannah looked away, and back again.

  A good man, her uncle would say if she should ask. He was a good husband to my wife’s sister. Any woman should be glad of such a husband.

  “Is that how your first marriage was arranged with Tall-Woman?”

  She saw the grief flicker in his eyes when she spoke the name of a wife dead three years. That is good, she said to herself, to see that his heart is so true. And just then it occurred to Hannah to wonder if her uncle Strong-Words had spoken to Strikes-the-Sky about her. If he had taken his friend aside and said my sister’s daughter is a good woman or she will make a good wife, or it is time now for you to take another woman.

  “No,” Strikes-the-Sky said. “There was sickness in the village, and many of the elders and youngest died. Her mother died three days after mine. It was not a time of dancing.” He paused, but he did not look away. “Tall-Woman came to me in the night, to give comfort. To take it.”

  There was a long silence between them, while he remembered and she imagined.

  Finally Hannah said, “There is war, in the west.”

  “Yes. And there is war here too, of a different kind. You fight every day in that war. In a few minutes you will go fight again.”

  An image rose up before her of the widow Kuick, her face contorted in disgust. Her son, his eyes wild with fever and loss.

  Shall I call your wife to you? she had asked him.

  I have no wife, he had answered her.

  She said, “Why did you make Tall-Woman come to you?”

  Strikes-the-Sky blinked at her, as if she had spoken a language he did not recognize. “It was her choice, Walks-Ahead. As it is your choice now.”

  Very slowly she said, “We do not have to abandon all the old ways. You could leave your mother’s fire and come to live among my people.”

  Such a stillness came over him that Hannah was struck with fear: he would turn and walk away. She knew then that she did not want him to go, but neither could she take back the words she had spoken. They were true words, and she would not be ashamed of them.

  Strikes-the-Sky said, “I must go back to my people.”

  Her blood rushed so that Hannah felt light-headed. She swayed a little with it, and steadied herself against the table. “I would not try to convince you otherwise.”

  “Walks-Ahead.” His tone was suddenly urgent. “Make no mistake, the choice is yours but you must choose.”

  Hannah looked him directly in the eye, and while he did not flinch his detached manner had gone, and in its place was an urgency and wanting that she had been waiting for.

  “I am not ready to choose.”

  Strikes-the-Sky stepped toward her, reached out and took her hand. His breath came as fast and hard as her own, but he only took her hand in his.

  “You are not ready to choose yet, Walks-Ahead,” he said. “But soon.”

  She surprised herself by holding on to his hand when he would take it away. She said, “Sometimes you will call me Hannah, because that is my name too.”

  “Sometimes I will call you Hannah.” He smiled then, a true smile. “But mostly I hope to call you wife.”

  It was a great relief to have Daniel home again, and still by morning Lily’s worries were too big for even the two of them to carry.

  He had wanted a report on Jemima Kuick straightaway, and when she told him the truth—-Jemima seemed to have forgot the whole matter of what happened at Eagle Rock—he looked at her as if she had suddenly sprouted horns.

  “More likely you’ve had your nose stuck in that sketchbook and you just didn’t pay atention.” And then seeing the look on her face Daniel’s eyes filled with water, and Lily knew how worried he was, as worried as a boy could be.

  Together they went to find Hannah in her workroom.

  She was putting together the things she needed to take into the village. There was a line between her eyebrows that meant she was very worried or distracted or both, and so they waited.

  Lily didn’t know anyway what she wanted to say, but it was good to be here,
the three of them together.

  Hannah glanced at Daniel and said, “Can you hand me that pile of rags, please? Did the two of you come to ask me about Eulalia Wilde?”

  Lily most definitely did not want to hear any more about Eulalia, who had been her friend and was gone now to the shadowlands without warning. To lose an arm did not seem so very terrible now, at least for Eulalia; she could have still tended trees and danced with Obediah Cameron, who would have to marry somebody else now.

  Daniel said, “Her brother doesn’t have anyone to look after him now.”

  Right then Hannah put down what she had in her hands and came over to put her arms around Daniel, who was not much shorter than she was but still put his head on her shoulder and stayed that way for a long minute.

  When Hannah stepped away she said, “You needn’t worry about me, Daniel. I am careful.”

  Lily said, “How can you be careful when there’s sickness everywhere you go?”

  “This sickness is not like last summer,” Hannah said.

  “It’s not quinsy, yes. Ma told us. But it could be just as bad.”

  The real question was made of bolder words: How many will die will I get it too what if we all get sick? Why can’t you just stay here with us?

  Hannah understood, as she always did, and she paused in what she was doing to sit down on her bed and draw her sister down on one side and her brother on the other. Lily liked being in the workroom with Hannah, for the comforting smells and the closeness of it, but she was so afraid of what her sister would say that she had the urge to jump up and run away.

  “Some will die,” Hannah said. “How many depends on how strong the sickness is and how fast it spreads.”

  “Our mother is scared. Because of Robbie.” Daniel said their little brother’s name only seldom, and Lily knew what it cost him.

  “Of course,” Hannah said. “It was less than a year ago that we lost him. We are all scared, I think. It shows good common sense, as long as we do not let our fear get in the way of doing what must be done.”

  Hannah saw the thoughts moving behind her little sister’s eyes, a fluttering like moths against a candlelit window at dusk. Daniel’s worry showed itself in the way he would not meet her eye. They did not understand and nothing Hannah had to say could make them understand, because it was all a mystery. Where the sickness came from, how it moved from person to person, why it killed some and not others. How she could promise them that she would not come down with it and die.