Lake in the Clouds (27 page)

He kept his growing worries to himself, and watched Elizabeth do the same. Sometimes at night he could almost hear her mind working, but so far they had not talked about what they were both thinking. If there was no way to get Selah Voyager to Red Rock, what then?

There were three possibilities that came to mind, and none of them appealed much. He could go out and do some serious tracking until he found the runaways, leaving the women here to fend for themselves. That could take up to a week or more, if it turned out that Red Rock wasn’t any one place in particular and the group was on the move. Elizabeth had been on her own in the bush before, but never by choice.

Or they could go home, just take Selah back to Hidden Wolf and keep her and her child hid on the mountain. That
would be the easiest solution, but now that Liam Kirby had brought Ambrose Dye into the search, it was also the most dangerous.

Then there was Canada. They could take Selah all the way to Montreal, where she’d be safe from blackbirders and Manny could join her. There was a woman in Montreal who would take Selah in without question, but Nathaniel knew pretty much without asking how Elizabeth would react to this idea of adding another four weeks to a journey she hadn’t wanted to make in the first place, and that with a pregnant woman or, more likely, a newborn.

Elizabeth would flat out refuse to go to Canada, but whether she admitted it to herself or not, any kind of movement would suit her better than the waiting.

In some ways Elizabeth’s growing restlessness was more trouble than anything else. She liked to think of herself as a creature of habit, but the truth was, she just didn’t take well to the routine that went along with a life in the bush. The playfulness that had taken her through the first few days was still there at night, but in the day she was jittery, and in an unsettled mood Elizabeth was likely to get herself and everybody else into trouble.

For her part, Selah seemed as calm as ever, but she tended to keep to herself and spent long hours sleeping in the caves under a pile of bearskins. Sometimes she would get a distracted look, and sit quietly with her hands on her belly. For a few minutes all her attention turned inward, as if she were having a conversation with the child on whether or not it was ready to come into the world. Elizabeth went very still when this happened, relaxing only when Selah let out a deep sigh and picked up whatever work she had put aside.

Selah provided Elizabeth with distraction, for which Nathaniel was thankful. Every day she managed to find something she needed to know that Elizabeth could teach her. Yesterday they had spent most of the morning putting together makeshift compasses, something Robbie had taught Elizabeth when she first came to spend time with him here. The day before they had gone looking for the first fiddleheads, or wild onion, or anything else that would add some flavor to the regular diet of meat and cornbread.

“Fishing,” announced Elizabeth. She had come up behind
him where he sat by the cook fire, barefoot and with her hair slightly damp and flying free. She bent forward from the waist so that it fell to the ground and grasped it all in her hands as if it were a tangle of wayward rope. Peeking out from between the strands, she looked at Nathaniel and said, “I would like it if you came with us and showed Selah how to use a fishing spear.”

“That could be arranged.” Nathaniel watched the hair slide into her hands on one side, pass through the busily working fingers, and emerge as a fat plait.

“No meat today,” Elizabeth said firmly.

He made a hiccuping sound of agreement. “Trout, if we can get some.”

She righted herself to finish her work, her gaze still fixed on him. “You are very accommodating these days, Nathaniel Bonner.”

“And you are looking for a fight, Boots. Maybe you should just haul off and punch me in the nose, get it over with. If that would improve your mood.”

She sat down on the old log that had served as a bench for as long as Nathaniel could remember, polished down by years of use until it gleamed like a great bone. A smile jerked at the corner of her mouth.

“Am I looking for a fight?” She put back her head to look straight into the sky. “Yes, I suppose I am. I thank you for the kind offer, but I don’t need to punch you in the nose. It will be enough to improve my mood if we get a few fish for our supper.”

“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 ever.

“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.