Darkthaw (6 page)

She waves me off. “Refusing them did not feel right.”

“But it'll take us near twice as long to get to your home, now.”

“We have time.”

She sounds like she means it. I raise my eyebrows.

“If we start to lose too much time,” she says. “I can send Nishwa and Isi on ahead.”

I study her. Only half a day from the settlement and she already looks happier—like a weight has been lifted. “Are you sure you're all right?” I ask. “This morning . . .”

Her cheeks color a mite. “This morning I was a bit frenzied,” she admits. “The mapmaker's news unsettled me. And Kane's request was one more surprise. But we are on our way now. And we will reach my people in time.”

I step over the bones and we continue walking. “Isi doesn't seem to think so.”

“Is that what's bothering you?” she asks, keeping pace with me. “He has always been impatient to get home.”

“It's the fact we're here at all. You teaching me to ride didn't sit too well, remember.” Matisa spent several days getting Kane and me comfortable on her horse while we waited on Soeur Manon. Isi had watched us circle the sheep paddock, his face a thundercloud.

She sighs. “I know.” She gets a sly smile on her face. “But maybe it was because you took so long to learn.”

“I did not!” I protest. Except she's right; I don't ride very well.

“Your boy, though, he's another story,” Matisa says, appreciative-like. It's true: Kane took to riding horses like it was a memory he'd stored in his bones long ago and finally remembered.

I crane my neck to look at him. Dark eyes, new-shaved head, shirt open at the throat. He looks easy out here, natural. Like he was meant to be outside the fortification all his life. He catches me looking and holds my gaze. He puts his hand to his heart, pretending to adjust the leather pack on his back. It's a secret gesture:
You are here
, it's saying.

My steps falter. I feel his ma's stare and snap my head forward.

“Ah,” Matisa says, like I've explained everything.

“‘Ah' nothing,” I say, keeping my face blank. I pick up my pace.

“‘Ah'
everything
,” she says. “You two will be field mice under an eagle's watch.”

“Well, then,” I say, not meeting her eyes. “Need to find a burrow.”

“Would you two mice know what to do with yourselves in a burrow?” She nudges me with her elbow.

“I have ideas,” I mutter.

Matisa's laugh rings out clear through the woods.

Flames crackle bright and orange, casting long shadows on the trees at our backs. Kane's little brothers sit with their ma. Daniel's head lolls against Sister Violet's shoulder, and Nico rubs his eyes, fighting sleep.

Across the fire, Kane sits next to Andre, who I think is busy describing the strange new birdcalls he heard today. Kane's only half listening; his eyes keep rising to linger on my face. I can't stop the smile that tugs at my lips.

His ma peers at me, so I busy myself with feeding the fire another stick, though it's already roaring good.

Our bellies are full of venison stew and the tea Matisa prepared—the remedy—and we're all wrapped tight against the quick-cooling night. Our tents and bedrolls are tucked away in the trees, waiting for our tired bodies.

Beside me, Nishwa tilts his head, checking the tops of the trees, the sky.

“What are you looking for?” I ask him.

“The clouds will clear soon,” he says.

I frown. I'm about to ask how he could possibly know that when a sound rises up from beyond the trees. Shrill. Keening. Like a lost and terrified child. The hair on the back of my neck stands.

The chatter around the fire stops abrupt.

“Sacrament,”
swears Frère Andre.

Kane is on his feet in a heartbeat, hand flying to his knife.

Matisa raises a hand. “Please, sit,” she says, calm.

I throw a look to Isi and Nishwa, who haven't moved a muscle, despite the ghost-cry.

“
Mescacâkan
,” Matisa says. Our faces must be comical-blank, because she grins. “Like a wolf, but smaller.”

An animal—one that doesn't make its home near the settlement.

“Is it dangerous?” Sister Violet asks.

“They are not.” Matisa smiles. “But their song is strange to the new ear.”

We listen, and more voices join. Sharp and shrill, coming, it seems, from every direction, all around us. And, true to Matisa's words, as the cries blend and weave they become a kind of song. Sorrowful, beautiful. I can feel my face matching the others' as we stare around at each other, wide-eyed. Daniel is rapt. Nico's brow is furrowed, but a small smile pulls at his mouth.

We sit still as ice, listening.

“The stars,” Nishwa says, nodding his head heavenward.

I look up, and my breath stops.

Out here, away from the glare of the burn baskets in the fortification courtyard, more stars than I ever thought possible stream across the dark sky above us. So many stars. Dancing apart and crowding together. Large streaks of white; smears of frost upon a dark wood. Glowing, glimmering. Like they're alive.

Soeur Manon used to describe the night sky as though the Almighty himself had sprinkled bits of silver upon a black
cloth. Sitting here, I remember her knobby hands, remember them soothing my brow, and I feel like she's reaching toward me from her resting place.

And I feel the goodness of these woods sinking into my skin. My skin, bathed with the starlight that shines and pulses and echoes the
mescacâkan
song.

AS WE PRESS THROUGH THE DEW-KISSED FOREST,
the wild song from last night trills in my mind, my heart. I catch Kane looking at me. The low brush touches our legs and hands with its drenched fingers, drawing soft, wet patterns on our leggings and skin. The trees above stretch tall with leaves that twist lazy in the morning breeze. As we walk, the beauty of the woods becomes dizzying—like one too many cups of saskatoon wine. And seeing Kane out here, beauty in beauty—

“Where are you?” Matisa's voice snaps me from my reverie. I turn my head. She's beside me, leading her horse, one eyebrow cocked.

“Here.” I flush, embarrassed at being caught doe-eyed. “Just . . . distracted. By the . . . trees.”

“Ah yes, the trees,” she says, throwing a glance to our right, where Kane walks. “They cast a spell.” Her lips twitch. “On some.”

I clear my throat and look around.

To our left, Nico sits atop Isi's horse; Daniel, atop Nishwa's. Matisa's cousin and brother are leading the beasts, casting glances at each other that verge on irritation and amusement at once. The little boys are arguing over which horse is smarter.

Violet and Andre are quite a ways behind, distracted by examining the tall trees and strange new plants that are coming up through the forest floor.

“Are we losing too much time, do you think?” I ask her, in part to change the subject.

“We are slower than I thought we would be,” she admits. “But the season of rains is still in the night air.”

I hope she's right. Matisa made this decision so I didn't have to ask Kane to refuse his family. I don't want it to mean she's sacrificed anything more than patience, than time we can safely lose.

She notices the worry on my brow. “I have said it before: Isi and Nishwa can ride on ahead.”

“Leaving you won't sit well with Isi,” I say.

“We will deal with things as they come,” she assures me. “For now, we are headed home, and you are with me, and it is a beautiful day.” She looks to the blue sky stretching above the treetops.

I follow her gaze, taking a deep breath of the fresh-smelling air, and feel a rush of fierce love for this girl. This girl who followed her heart to find me and brought us the freedom I'd always longed for. This girl who knows so much more than me but never makes me feel foolish.

It
is
a beautiful day.

I risk a glance at Kane again—he's walking with the boys now.

Last night, lying in the makeshift tent with Matisa, I could feel him lying awake like me, far across the coals of the fire, tucked away in his tent. Could feel his breath, soft on the night air, winding over to me, hot on my skin that burned with the memory of that day on the riverbank.

I'll go anywhere with you
.

His voice when he said those words, husky, honest. My pulse skips into my throat now, remembering.

And watching him now as he walks in that easy way, watching him throw his head back and laugh at something Nishwa says, just watching him do anything—it's unbearable.

Matisa looks over at me and squints at my face, then looks over to where Kane is walking. She shakes her head. “Still haven't found that burrow.”

I flush and sigh deep. I'm not foolish; I know that getting in a family way would be a disaster. But more of those woodshed moments wouldn't be so bad.

Matisa smiles in sympathy. “There is a place, back home, where we go to get away from”—her eyes sparkle—“disapproving eyes. It is a secret place, far beyond the first spruce, back in a crevasse of the mountain. Warm water springs from the rock into deep pools.”

“Warm water from the rock?” I ask.

She nods.

“And who is
we
?” I raise my eyebrows.

She laughs. “Not me and someone special. I meant
us
.” She gestures between her and me. “My friends. We go to be by ourselves.”

Matisa told me many things about her home over the
winterkill. She described valleys teeming with animals, warm winds, a glistening lake, groves of tall trees. Surrounding that, huge walls of rocks, capped with snow, dotted with spruce. Some of those things I feel I know from my dreams. Some of them are things I can only imagine.

“I'd like to see that.”

“You will.” She smiles at me.

I return the smile. Being around Matisa makes me feel like I'm brushing up against the life I was always meant for. She makes me feel at ease and bold at once, like I can learn those things she knows. Like I can decide things for myself.

“Em!” Nico calls from atop Isi's horse. “Watch!” He has something clenched between his thumb and fingers—a leaf or some such—and as he snaps his fingers it leaps into the air, swirling up on an invisible breeze. It drifts, spinning, toward me—a seedpod from an ash tree. He beams. “Isi taught us!” It's the first full smile I've seen on his face since we left the settlement.

Daniel tries to do the same, but he can't snap, so the seedpod falls limp from his fingers. He furrows his brow and pulls another one from a low-hanging branch.

My eyes linger on Isi. Unlike Matisa's easy wisdom, Isi carries himself with a knowing that unsettles me. He's mayhap a bit haughty, and full of pride, which is something I've never felt and don't full understand.

I know, though, that underneath his stony surface is a softness. I've seen it when he speaks with Kane's brothers, when he's helping them do something they can't do themselves. I saw it over the winterkill with Tom's little sister
Edith. Isi would sit in the common room and spin stories from nothing. Matisa told me he's like that with the young ones at their home, too.

“Teach them something useful next time!” Matisa calls to Isi.

Isi waves her off, the ghost of a smile on his lips. Nico snaps one pod after another. Daniel fails again, but his face only becomes more determined.

“He stopped their bickering,” I point out.

“I am teasing him because he is teasing me,” Matisa says. “I have been dreaming about a tree seed and Isi. In my dream, he follows it in a big wind, even though the places it goes are very dangerous. I've told him about it.”

“And now he's playing with seedpods to show you they aren't so scary?”

“Probably,” she says, a soft smile on her face.

I've only ever seen that smile when she's looking on Isi.

As we crest a hill, Kane has the spyglass to his eye. “Isi says there are people up ahead.”

Isi slaps his horse's neck. The beast's ears are pricked forward, and he nickers, his neck stretched out in the direction Kane is looking.

“Can't see much. A ramshackle camp of sorts. But there's smoke, signs of living,” Kane says.

We look at each other.

“Everything looks weatherworn—they have been there some time,” Isi adds.

Some time
. A flicker of familiar curiosity lights in my chest. Feels like when I used to look out at the woods from
the Watch flats. When I finally got out into those trees and couldn't help but go farther still.

“First Peoples?” Sister Violet asks.

Isi shrugs.

“Do you think it's safe?” I ask Matisa.

“We could skirt to the south,” she says. “But we would need to backtrack several hours.”

We look around—the forest is climbing and dipping with little gullies. We've been pressing west with a large ravine to the south for a long while. The most direct route is straight through that little camp.