Mercy (21 page)

He almost misses the bike. But for a glint from the roadside cattails he could easily have passed it by. She’s trampled a wake through the sedge. He tracks her into the trees, where springy moss and the dark eliminate any sign of her trail. “Mathilda!” he yells. When the bog offers no answer, he plunges on.

Time and again Mathilda stumbles, thrusts her hands out to clutch blindly for a branch or take the brunt of another fall. This time she hits moss, wet and cool about her fiery wrists. Accustomed to being belly-heavy, she remembers the baby only because it squeaks. Her brain simmers in its
juice. She could’ve crushed it, the poor thing, gone lurching on with it bound to her, smothered and still.

She can’t be trusted. Struggling to her feet, she tears at the knotted bedsheet, worrying the little bundle free. It whimpers, and as if in answer the cloud cover parts to reveal a full-faced moon. The baby lights up. For the first time Mathilda really looks at it, finding no trace of its father, only a shadowy resemblance to herself. It’s practically bald, its eyes anonymous, a milky, newborn blue.

Mathilda looks up as though somebody’s spoken her name. Not ten paces away, a tall, hairy evergreen stands slightly apart. Halfway up its trunk, a branch beckons like a human arm.

It’s mostly pines up here, higher, drier ground. Castor stands on unsteady legs, gazing down on the shaggy, sway-backed expanse of the bog. Black spruce dog, he thinks, grinning at the idea.

“Ya miss me?” he shouts. “Been waitin’ for ol’ Castor to come home?” Then stumbles forward into a bald spot, slips on the long, slick needles and falls flat on his ass. He’s not hurt. Truth be told, he can’t even feel his behind, like when you pass out sitting up in a car.

“Sonofabitch.” He giggles, tipping the brandy to his mouth. The sky’s dirty with clouds, but just now there’s a fair wedge of moon showing through. It glints in the sloshing amber, flashes in the glass, and before Castor can blink, his eye has broken away.

It lands in a drop of sap, opens on a timber wolf up on its hind legs against a tree. There’s something above it in the branches, but the angle’s bad—a blob of white is all Castor can make out. The wolf drops to all fours. It’s a loner, a stranger to the local pack, and therefore skittish, snout lifting, ears pricked to the threat of its own kind. The moss under its feet is pale. The wolf lowers its nose to a dark patch, sniffs, then snuffles. Draws its lips back and licks.

Castor’s eye snaps back. He slumps forward, hanging his head. Run up a tree, he thinks mournfully. Trapped.

He knows the tamarack—it’s one of several with deformed tops, the mark of the sawfly grub. This one like a slender, headless woman, arms raised as though she’s looking to dance. But where? He searches his brain, squinting inwardly through a yellow, soupy mist.

Thomas faces the killing-room wall, where a dozen headless domestic rabbits hang by their right hind legs. He cuts off twenty-four small front feet at the first joint, moving rapidly down the row. Carves off their tails on the way back, then scores around the hooked feet, leaving each a fuzzy white sock. One by one he slits all twelve pelts along the inner legs. The first comes loose with a tug, pulling free of the rabbit to hang flaccid in Thomas’s hand.

Chances are the Varguses will be glad to let him keep a couple of pelts in lieu of pay. He smiles, picturing little arms circling a fluffy grey neck. How hard can it be to make a bear? He’s a fair hand with a needle and thread, having practised on hundreds of roasts. He’ll sew two arms, two
legs, a belly, a furry-eared head. For stuffing, he can tear up a few old cloths, ones that are stringy or stained.

A sudden racket sounds next door in the shop, someone hammering hard on the storefront glass. It irks him. He pictures Mathilda upstairs, perhaps startled from a heavy sleep.

“Hold your water,” he mutters, tossing the pelt on the table and wiping his hands. He steps out of his high slaughter boots at the threshold of the shop and pads quickly to the glass door, still shaking under some idiot’s fist. He yanks on the blind, sending it flying up wildly around the roll.

It’s a nun. A goddamn, honest-to-god nun.

Thomas holds a finger to his lips, fumbling with the lock while she gestures at him through the glass. The bell jangles wildly as he hauls open the door.

“Sister,” he begins, “uh, Mother, please, my wife isn’t well upstairs.”

“She’s not upstairs.”

“What?”

The story comes apart in his ears. Bicycle. Convent. Baby. He takes leave of his senses. Takes the old nun by the shoulders, lifting her like a goose-down pillow. For several seconds he can neither hear nor see.

The nun’s sandalled feet dangle in the air. Thomas lets her down easy but doesn’t let go, sagging forward as though her sinewy frame is all that’s holding him up. “I’m sorry,” he croaks. “Where is she?”

That’s it, all right. That’s the tree. Slim and curvy with a missing crown, uppermost branches held high. No sign of the wolf, but Castor’s no fool. It will have heard him and slipped away between the trees. He yanks his knife from its sheath—it’s no small thing to come between a wolf and its food. It’s probably watching him right now. Or else he’s too late. What about that? What if the wolf and whatever it was after are already gone?

He’s well and truly loaded. With only the moonlight, and that coming off and on, he should be flat on his face by now. Thank the Lord for bog legs. He’s a sailor on a mossy sea.

He makes the tamarack, holds a hand out to steady himself against its trunk. After that it’s a good minute before he remembers why he’s there and looks up, startled to find neither animal nor bird after all. It’s more like the cocoon of a giant moth. He reaches for it, rises up on his tiptoes, even jumps, half a dozen jester leaps before he falls. The knife grazes his numbed belly. Another mark to find in the morning, run his finger wonderingly down its length.

He pulls himself up by a low branch, spots the soiled knife in his hand and, forgetting the wolf, shoves the blade peevishly away. Climbing’s not really his strong point. The first branch is a picnic, but the next is a stretch. His fingers aren’t up to it. They clasp too soon and clutch the air, unbalancing him so he teeters and tips. His face meets trunk. It hurts him bluntly, somewhere distant, the bridge of someone else’s nose.

Another near fall, and then it’s third time lucky and his scabby hands catch hold. It’s darker among the boughs, but the thing gives off an eerie glow. Hauling himself up level
with it, he suddenly feels unsure. What if it
is
a cocoon? What the hell kind of bug spins itself a basket like that?

The thing lets out a sound, halfway between a gurgle and a squeak, which in turn rings a bell in his head—Renny beside him on the mattress, waving his little fists.

“Jesus,” Castor breathes. He lifts the swollen bundle from its crook. Another squeak, a splutter, and it lets loose with a hair-raising wail. Castor lets out a yelp of his own, presses it to his chest and somehow monkeys his way down.

Back on land, he parts the mess of cloth for a peek at its face. A howling mouth, the rest still red and pruney. The little beggar’s brand new—still used to a belly, and God only knows how long it’s been wedged in that tree.

A splotch on the white startles him. Then another, spreading and merging with the first. Blood?
Blood!
He panics, fumbles and almost drops it, horrified by what’s seeping through. Then a breeze touches his face. Nosebleed. He laughs out loud. Dammit, he ought to know the feel of one by now.

The cloth’s no good anyway. It’s too thin, all lumps and loose threads, and it must be wound around the poor mite a dozen times. He lays the screaming parcel on the moss and struggles out of his mangy fur vest. It might be old, a little grubby even, but it’s the softest thing he’s got.

He unwraps the newborn slowly, loop after loop, the over-careful hands of a habitual drunk. She’s flawless. He gazes at her—all that tiny, unbridled rage—then folds her in the vest, lifts and holds her close, feeling her quiet against him.

His nose is bleeding freely now. He wipes it on one end of the knotted sheet, then reaches up into a nearby spruce for a hunk of old man’s beard. Shoving it up his nostrils,
he gives his baby a gentle squeeze. Gets his bearings and heads for home.

Hell-bent for the monastery, Thomas hits a washboard on a turn, foot to the floor. No time to correct—the tires slip sideways in their ruts, meet the dirt shoulder, spin out of control. A sickening lurch, a squeal, and the truck’s belly up in the ditch.

He crawls from the wreck and hauls himself up through the cattails, miraculously unharmed. A little disoriented, maybe. Stars in his skull and overhead, marring the country dark. He looks right, then left. The road exactly the same both ways.