SelfSame (11 page)

Her luck held out. Three older women were casting woven hemp nets out into the river, but they were concentrating and didn’t pay her any attention. She found a young black willow tree that hadn’t been stripped of its bark. Quite a bit of moss stained its trunk and limbs, but she found a clear patch of the driest bark she could and hacked away at it with her knife. Sorcha’s research into herbal remedies for Elizabeth taught her that willow tree bark was an excellent source of salicin, the natural form of aspirin. She filled the pot with water at the river, grabbed up several good-sized rounded stones from the river bed and went straight back to the longhouse.

Spotted Fawn was no longer alone. Another girl had joined her and they were chattering away in their language as Enid built up the nearest fire, set the rocks in the middle of the blaze and rested the pot near the edge. She cut the bark up into smaller pieces and put it in the water. Once the rocks were hot enough, she scooped them out of the fire with a wooden spoon and deposited them into the pot. The tea would have to steep for a while. To keep busy until it was done, she offered to help Spotted Fawn with her sewing. The girls were interested in Enid’s clothes and asked, through pantomime, if it was okay to try them on.

Enid was embarrassed that the clothes were so filthy, but the girls didn’t seem to mind. They were at that age where play was being phased out for the responsibilities of womanhood. It happened so much sooner in Enid’s world than Sorcha’s. Trying on the clothes was both play and an exploration of their budding maturity. Enid hoped they grew tired of it soon, because she planned to tear her skirt into a blanket for Joseph.

She was anxious to get back to him. Anxious to make sure he hadn’t been discovered, and especially anxious to ease his pain. She wished more than anything that she could sneak out at night and stay with him, but as soon as she fell asleep she’d be a dead weight, a dangerous burden. Just like she’d been when the Mohawk caught him in the first place.

In her determination to keep her two lives separate, Enid had become adept at distracting herself from unpleasant truths, especially those that underscored the yawning chasm between Sorcha’s world and this one. Nothing thus far in Enid’s life had more brutally highlighted that disparity than knowing Joseph had had his tongue cut out because he’d helped her. Perhaps, more than just a punishment, it had been a symbolic warning for him not to say anything about her kidnapping. The Mohawk warriors would want to avoid retribution from the townsfolk – not that Enid thought for a moment it would be forthcoming. Her father would not bother to look for her. Jedediah would seek someone else to fill his dead wife’s place.

Another girl, older than Spotted Fawn and her friend, came over and said something. Her tone indicated she was bossing the younger girls around, and sure enough, they got up and reluctantly followed the newcomer to a different area of the longhouse. It was the break Enid was hoping for. She immediately got her knife out and went to work cutting the stitching holding her skirt to the bodice of her dress. She also cut a smaller bit out of the bodice, into which she put the handful of nuts and berries and a leaf-wrapped bit of soft fish left over from last night’s meal.

She worked quickly, conscious that her mother would surely return soon. When she’d gathered everything together, she left the longhouse again, fully expecting to be stopped and questioned. All the way to the latrine trench her heart beat double-time. Just in case she was being watched, she skirted around the trench to the left and walked in a meandering circle, pausing now and then to pretend she was harvesting berries. Finally she made it to the trees and Joseph’s sheltering thicket.

He was asleep when she crawled in. She set the pot of tea aside and unfolded the blanket she’d made from her skirt. When she laid it over him, he woke with a start and his hand shot out to grasp her wrist.

“It’s me,” she whispered.

For a moment, his fevered eyes had no recognition in them. Then his eyelids drooped and he released her arm, subsiding back onto his bed of leaves.

“You need to sit up. I brought you some willow bark tea.”

He struggled back up and tried to hold the pot, but his hands were shaking. She put her hands over his and steadied them, looking into his eyes the entire time. “Take a sip and hold it in your mouth for as long as you can. It will ease the pain and is an antiseptic.”

He wouldn’t know what an antiseptic was, so she clarified, “Remember when I told your uncle about tiny creatures that make us sick? This will help keep them away.”

Joseph obediently drank from the pot, even though he struggled to swallow past the swelling and his efforts obviously caused him severe pain.

“I brought you some food. I know it will be hard to eat, but you must try or you will become weaker. Will you promise to try?”

He closed his eyes and nodded once.

“I cannot stay. If I am missed, they will look for me. I do not know when I will come again. Keep the tea from freezing if you can. Drink three mouthfuls in the morning, midday and after the sun sets. No more or it will hurt here.”

She pressed a hand to his midsection. In the back of her mind, she wondered at her own temerity. She couldn’t seem to keep from touching him. Was it gratitude for his sacrifice, sympathy for his agony or something more?

After sticking her head out to make sure no one was there, she made a move to leave, but he stopped her. She turned back and found him staring into her face as if he wanted to memorize it. His expression was a mixture of shame and longing. Shame, she assumed, because he was a strong warrior who’d been brought low – he didn’t want her to see him this way, didn’t want to be reliant upon her. And longing, well, instinctively she knew what he wanted. She raised a finger and brushed at a spot of dried blood on his lip, then used the same finger to tenderly smooth out one of his eyebrows. He looked like hell, but all she wanted was to throw herself into his arms.

He was gravely injured, though, and could endure only the mildest of contact. She leaned forward and ever-so-softly rested her cheek against his. “Thank you for trying to protect me,” she whispered in his ear.

It was the wrong thing to say. He pulled back, looking hurt and affronted, but she said quickly, “No, Joseph, it is more than gratitude that I feel. Don’t think that it is not.”

Even as she said the words, she realized they were true. His eyes dropped to her mouth and he made a small sound in his throat. Her eyes closed briefly and when they opened, his face was very close, his breath tickling her lips. He rested his forehead against hers and they stayed that way for a minute or more. She couldn’t stop the tears from falling down her cheeks, one after the other.

Finally, she said, “I want to stay, but I cannot.”

He nodded, his forehead rubbing up and down against hers.

“When you are well, we will escape together. That is what I wish.”

He moaned a little and tilted his head to meet her lips with his, more fiercely than could possibly be good for him. She allowed herself to enjoy it only briefly before turning her head away.

“Don’t. I know it must hurt.”

He laughed, a sound that could be produced without a tongue, and shook his head. He was telling her the pain was worth it, and she smiled back through her tears.

It took all her strength to leave him. As she walked the same meandering path as the one she’d taken to find him, she felt his eyes follow her. She only looked back about a dozen times.

At the longhouse, her mother was waiting.

“Where have you been?” she demanded. Then she appeared to soften, “Have you been weeping?”

Enid’s eyes felt sore and she realized they must be red. She thought fast. “I was betrothed, did you know?”

Bluebird’s face hardened again. “And you miss him? Love has no place in marriage. I loved your father, and I got his fist in my face as payment. Tomorrow the medicine man will see you. He will discover for himself how many souls you possess.”

The defiance with which she said it told Enid she no longer believed her story. Enid, like Sorcha, was a terrible liar. She dreaded tomorrow, like she was beginning to dread all tomorrows.

Sorcha

Joseph’s eyes were burned into her soul. Sorcha saw them when she woke, a brown so dark they appeared black when the light was low. As the light had been inside the shelter of the thicket. She saw them when she showered, how he’d had a single unshed tear trapped in his lower lashes when Enid left him. His face may not be handsome, but he had the best eyes…they would help him convey emotion where his voice would fail him.

She completed her morning routine by rote, but quickly. Her parents had already left on their long commute, and Grammy Fay appeared to be sleeping in. Sorcha skipped breakfast so she’d have more time to do some research on her father’s computer.

There was surprisingly little information on the Internet about tongue injuries, or at least ones as severe as Joseph’s. Most of the articles she found dealt with simple bite wounds, but she was partially reassured when she read that they rarely got infected and the tongue tended to heal quickly. There was nothing more she could do for him in Enid’s technologically lacking world. She did find hope in an article about aglossia, which said that people who were either born without a tongue or had to have it removed often compensated for its loss by using other structures in their mouths to produce adequate speech.

Still, it depressed her, the thought that she’d inadvertently caused him such great pain. He may be able to overcome the worst of it in time, but his life had been forever altered. She wondered if his parents, who’d taught him such good English, had also arranged for him to learn to read and write. It wasn’t as uncommon as people might think for a Native American in those times to be literate; many tribes had converted to Christianity and were motivated by trade to work with the Europeans who were slowly and inexorably invading their territory.  If Joseph could write, he had a way to communicate with anyone who could read.

When she went outside to meet Paula, she felt disoriented at first that there wasn’t any snow. It had been a long time since Enid’s world had encroached upon Sorcha’s enough to confuse her. She was not surprised to see Luanne in the front seat and Ben in back. He smiled at her when she got in, but Sorcha found she couldn’t even force a polite response.

“Everything okay?” Luanne asked.

They drove past a parked car with partially frosted windows. The two occupants waved at Luanne. It was a little thing, but for some reason seeing the protection detail lurking like vultures waiting their turn at a carcass set Sorcha off.

“No, everything is not okay. Why would you even ask that? Everything is really freaking not okay.”

Ben put a hand on her knee and she turned on him, aware of the peevishness in her voice but unable to stop herself. “Are we still playing boyfriend and girlfriend? Because I don’t remember agreeing to that. Stop pawing me, and stop…stop looking at me with Joseph’s eyes!”

To her mortification, she burst into tears. Ben immediately made a move like he was going to put his arms around her, but she shook him off and said incoherently, “Nuh!” She turned away and bent nearly double, arms hiding her face. Her skin felt like it was too tight under her clothes, like she was encased in a suffocating cocoon, compressing her entire being until her heart felt like it was going to explode from the pressure. She couldn’t breathe; the sobs came out in quick, gulping gasps. If asked to put into words exactly what she was crying about, she wouldn’t have been able to comply except to say, “Everything.”

After a while, the sobs subsided into shallow, shuddering breaths. She straightened up slowly, too wrung-out to care what she looked like. A handful of tissues was suspended in front of her face. Luanne, the practical one, trying to be helpful.

Paula had parked near Luanne’s bus stop, but since Luanne hadn’t gotten out Sorcha took it to mean she was waiting for the tear-storm to pass so she could ask – or tell – Sorcha something.

Sorcha snatched the tissues and said shortly, “What?”

“Tell us about Joseph,” Luanne said.

Sorcha blotted her face and blew her nose, gathering her thoughts. The intense look on Luanne’s face told her how important the information was to her. Perversely, it only made Sorcha want to clam up. She suspected they already knew about Joseph, though, and maybe if she just told them what they wanted to hear, they’d back off and give her some space.

“He’s a Mahican man who tried to help Enid. Mohawk braves cut out his tongue.”

Her voice broke and tears began to form in her eyes again. She pressed the wad of damp tissues to her eyes impatiently.

“When?” Ben asked. “When did they do it?”

He didn’t ask why, just wanted to know when. She remembered before when he’d asked her what day it was for Enid. She’d told him Enid was exactly two-hundred and thirty-six years ahead of her to the day, yet here he was still asking when. Then it occurred to her.

“You don’t know exactly when things happened, do you? That’s why you need me to tell you.”

She saw confirmation in his face. They had a chain of events, but no timeline.

“So something’s going to happen, but you aren’t sure when?” It was a shot in the dark; that she might catch one of them off guard enough to confirm what she suspected.

Luanne didn’t bite. “You know we can’t tell you.”

Sorcha released a shuddering sigh. “Fine. Enid brought the medicine man, Bear Talker, to see Elizabeth the day before she died, and that’s when she met Joseph, Bear Talker’s nephew. Joseph was attacked the day she was kidnapped, so that would be her Saturday morning.”

“Poor Joseph,” Paula murmured.

Sorcha looked over and the sympathy on Paula’s face reactivated the tears. “They cut out his
tongue
and he still came for her.”

Paula’s eyes widened and an unspoken question hovered in the air between the two friends. Sorcha’s lips turned down at the corner and she nodded slightly, sending an unspoken answer:
Yes, I care for him
.

She glanced at Ben and caught a quickly-hidden expression, like he’d eaten something that didn’t agree with him and it had just come back up to surprise him. She didn’t have time to contemplate it since Luanne shifted in her seat and opened the car door.

As she always did, she leaned in for that final word. To Ben, she said, “Don’t screw this up.” To Sorcha, she offered, “I know this is tough for you, but don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

Like what
? Sorcha thought. The past had already happened.

After Luanne gently shut the car door, Paula pulled back onto the road and drove to school like it was just another day. No one said anything. When Paula parked, Ben didn’t try to stop Sorcha when she got out. She and Paula walked together, with Ben following several paces behind. Sorcha left Paula at their locker and went straight to the restroom to splash water on her blotchy face. Then she went to her first class and did her best to focus on the teacher and his lecture. When lunch came around, she sat on the stage with Paula, nibbling on the crackers and cheese she’d tossed into a bag that morning. By unspoken agreement, they made small talk about Halloween, which was only a few days away.

Sorcha tried not to look for Ben but found her gaze searching the crowded gymnasium again and again. He was absent for the first half of the lunch hour, and when he finally appeared, he sat with his friend at the table in front of the stage. For the first time, his back was to her.

If he was trying to get her attention, he was succeeding, and it irritated her. She’d been distant in the car because she was still so raw from Enid’s feelings for Joseph. Plus, Ben’s assumption that she would welcome his attention was annoyingly arrogant. Even so, and even though it had only been a few days, she’d become accustomed to the idea that he was
her
Ben. And now he was ignoring her.

She remembered what Skip had said, “We’re also pretty sure who our Ben is, but if any of the rest of you want a shot at it, she’s easy on the eye.”

At the time, his words had baffled her, but since then Ben’s attempts to get close to her made it clear it was just another bit of information the WPS had about Enid. Sorcha figured that one day Enid would tell someone in her world that Sorcha...what? Had fallen in love with a guy named Ben? Despite her attraction to him, it was hard for her to even consider the idea. Her heart – Enid’s heart – seemed set on Joseph. It felt wrong for her to want to be with both of them.

And yet, that had always been more than a possibility – that she would love a man in each of her worlds. Had it only been a week since she’d been confronted with the certainty that Enid would marry the odious Jedediah? Just the thought of being intimate with that man had made her sick. Sorcha suspected it would have colored her future relations with men in this world as surely as if she’d been raped. Was that why Enid had been so eager to become romantically involved with Joseph, a man she hardly knew? Or was it merely the prospect of him saving her and taking her away from all the people who wanted to own her: her father, Jedediah, her mother, and quite possibly, the Haudenosaunee medicine man?

It was all so confusing when Sorcha tried to justify her feelings – and keep them separate from Enid’s.

“What’s his deal?” Paula asked.

Sorcha had been lost in her thoughts and assumed Paula was referring to Ben. She started to say, “He’s just playing hard to get,” when she noticed Dalton Boyle and a couple of his friends were sitting with their legs hanging off the edge of the stage not far from them. He was wearing his football jersey and he and his buddies were laughing too loudly.

“Oh, God. Is he trying to start something with Ben again?” Sorcha asked.

Ben didn’t even turn to look at Dalton, but at the next table down, Kristin Barber sure did. She had her blonde hair up in a perky ponytail today and when she stood, Sorcha wondered if she’d had her jeans specially spray-painted on. She sauntered down the aisle and just about everyone in the vicinity watched to see what she would do. They all knew Kristin had recently broken up with Miles, the quarterback who’d fought with her so publicly at Saturday’s game. Dalton would be a fool to flirt with her, since Miles was his teammate and rumor had it he hadn’t taken the break-up very well.

Sorcha saw the eager look in Dalton’s eyes – and the miserable one in Paula’s. She started stuffing the leftovers from her lunch into her sack, fully intending to drag Paula out of the room so she didn’t have to witness the oncoming train wreck. To her surprise, Kristin’s destination was a little short of Dalton. She stopped next to Ben’s table and leaned her hip against it.

“Hey, Ben.”

Kristin’s voice was a throaty purr, but it carried in the near-silence. Sorcha clenched her jaw and muttered through her teeth, “Oh, no she didn’t.”

Before she knew it, she’d abandoned Paula and her lunch, jumping off the stage to stomp over and grab Ben roughly by the back of his hoodie. A few insistent tugs to the fabric and he got to his feet.

“Let’s go, Romeo,” Sorcha heard herself say. She pulled him past an astonished Kristin and marched him in front of her down the aisle and out the door.

In the hallway, he looked over his shoulder and asked mildly, “Where we goin’?”

His eyebrow had disappeared under the lock of hair on his forehead and he had a grin on his face, an infuriating one that made her want to grin back at the same time she wanted to strangle him. She let go of him and stood there awkwardly as he turned to face her, tugging his hoodie back down into place. Her cheeks had been burning the entire trip across the gym and now she felt them reignite under his amused gaze.

“So are you still mad at me?” he asked.

“I wasn’t mad at you.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

“I was upset,” she said, “but not with you. Did you not hear what I said about Joseph?”

“That I was looking at you with his eyes? I heard. Didn’t make sense.”

“Not that. The part about him having his tongue cut out because he helped Enid. It was horrible, you can’t imagine. She felt so guilty.”

“Do you love him?”

The question came out of the blue and took her aback. After a few seconds, she responded, “Enid thinks she might.”

He grimaced. “You
are
Enid. Why do you talk like she’s not you?”

“You live two lives and tell me how you’d handle it,” she snapped. She started to turn away, but he let out a groan of capitulation and threw his arms around her, drawing her close. She struggled a little, but he tightened his hold and said against her hair, “Just stop, okay?”

She did stop, suddenly aware that other students were in the hallway. The fifth period bell was about to ring.

He ran his hand down her back and up again, a soothing caress. “I just – I’m trying to understand how you could feel that way about someone you just met.”

“Enid just met him. And her world is this…intense place. Things we see in the movies happen in her world for real. It’s not like here and now.” Even as she said it she realized the here and now felt plenty intense pressed up against his body.

He inhaled and let it out slowly. “I never thought I’d be jealous of a man who’s been dead for two hundred years.”

She used his own logic against him. “How can you be jealous when you only met me a few days ago?”