Winterkill (35 page)

Voices build, rising in excitement.

“We aren't alone!” I call out, feeling bold. “And we don't have to fear.” I lock eyes with a woman who looks uncertain, confused. But real slow . . . she smiles. At my words, my Discovery.

There's movement at the top of the steps.

Brother Stockham steps away from the pulpit. And it seems my eyes are playing tricks on me, because his face has changed—from shock to wonder. He tilts his head, measuring me. And then . . .

Then it seems he's made up his mind. He steps toward the lacquered box that lies on the side table.

Inside is our commitment to life, or to death.

He reaches into the box. Pulls out a sawed-off shotgun.

My breath stops.

The crowd goes still.

“You are quite right, Emmeline.” His voice is clear in the quiet. Mild and deadly. He reaches into the box again. His eyes are soft, like some giant weight has been taken off his chest. “I can no longer lead.” His right hand loads the gun. One bullet. Two.

I'm frozen, staring at him as he hefts the gun from one hand to the other, his eyes tracing over the two short barrels. Then he draws back the hammer. He shifts his weight, grasps the gun solid in his right hand. “And I can't have you—”

Frozen thoughts, frozen tongue.

“Leave her be!” My pa pushes out of the crowd.

“Pa!”

Pa holds up a hand to keep me back, drawing his stooped shoulders up square. He faces Stockham. “You just leave her be.”

Stockham's eyes widen. He cocks his head, weighing something.

My father taught me many lessons.

There's a clatter of sounds inside my head: the roar of the river, the whispers of
les trembles,
the soft drop of Tom's fishing line onto the water, Kane's heartbeat.

Stockham holds the gun steady, looking between my pa and me. Then he smiles. A real smile. Like . . . like he's relieved. “You have lifted the burden,” he says.

Then he spins the gun and puts the barrel in his mouth.

I squeeze my eyes shut. A deafening crack shatters the air.

Someone cries out.

And then there's dead silence.

No whispers, no river, no heartbeat.

Salvation and survival can be at odds.

When I open my eyes, Brother Stockham has fallen and Brother Jameson is screaming. “Heathen! Devil!” He stares around at people, willing them to action. “She is back from the dead! She brings death! Seize her!”

But no one moves toward me; they begin to retreat, backing toward the doors like they want nothing to do with Jameson, with the horror at the pulpit. There's a ruckus at the back of the hall. My heart is tight, a heavy stone in my chest. That look in Stockham's eyes . . .

But then Pa turns back to me and I forget my despair.
His scruffy hair and crinkly eyes—he's confused, but underneath that is relief. Love. His mouth moves, silent.
My girl,
he says. He smiles that smile I remember from years ago. I want to stay in it forever, but a flash of movement distracts me.

Jameson. He disappears behind the pulpit and straightens back up with the gun.

Pa freezes at the look on my face. Turns. And as Jameson draws the hammer and takes aim at me over the pulpit, my pa surges forward. “No!” He scrambles for the stairs, his weathered frame an impossible blur.

A second crack echoes through the hall.

And Pa's body jerks backward before me.

My mind winds the spool of that moment backward a split second, lets it loose, winds it in again. Everything is mute, everything moves slow.

And then Pa is falling, falling, drifting to the floor like a poplar leaf, his trembling hands grasping at the air before him, his head striking the ground.

A low din in my mind now, a thousand bees angry in their hive. The crowd behind screaming, shoving, scrambling backward. Hands grab at my cloak. I pull free. I'm swimming through the river again, deep and thick, pushing hard as I can for the other side. For Pa.

My knees bang against the floor. His chest is a gaping wound, torn open like a withered, hollow tree. The boards beneath him are sticky with bright red blossoms. I take his head in my hands, search his glassy eyes for a glimmer of life. For any hint of that look I've been seeing for weeks but didn't understand until now.

You're worthy, my girl.

That look is gone; his eyes are dark as the coldest river. When I look up, Jameson is reaching for the box again, fumbling for more bullets. His hands shake as he grabs one and drops it in, reaches with his thumb to pull back the hammer.

I'm dead in his sights.

I cover Pa's body with mine and look away, back at the people who are scrambling every which way. Mothers grab children, men shout and shove. They surge away from Jameson, desperate to get to the back of the hall, to the doors that now hang open.

I see Kane.

He's pushing people behind him, straining to get to the front. People duck and stumble aside and I see there's a knife glinting in his hand. The look in his eyes is both desperate and dead sure. He shoves the woman in front of him aside and bursts through the crowd, leaping high and bringing his elbow up.

He whips his arm forward and sets the knife free.

And Jameson squeezes the trigger one last time.

LA PRISE.

Her winds sound like an animal. At times a shrieking eagle, at times a bleating lost lamb. Always there. Always battering the walls of our quarters, always blowing inside my head. Gusting, railing.
Always there,
until I can't tell silence from wind, whether it lets up, whether I'm dreaming.

Some days I go outside and stand in the ice-cold winds, let them slap at my cheeks and steal my breath. I hold tight to the lead rope that runs from our kitchen door to the woodshed. In this blinding snow, letting go would mean I might never find my way back. Just ten steps from our door, I might lose my way; freeze to death.

I hold tight to that rope, my fingers stiff beneath my mitts, my skin burning in the cold.

Trying to remember what I'm holding on for in this smothering dark.

Because there comes a point during the winterkill when
you can't remember it being any different. You can't imagine it being different.

You can't imagine you ever felt the sun-filled breeze warm your skin. Can't imagine that your heart swelled at the sounds of birds and trees around you. Can't imagine that you ever felt those warm hands in yours.

And you can't follow the thread in your mind back to those moments, because it's all too far away, and the days are too short and the darkness too long.

The despair is too deep.

Always there.
Gusting. Railing.

The loss is like a sickness. It hangs about you, pulls at your skin, muddies your thoughts. Makes you want to give up, let go of the lead rope, head into those death winds.

Give yourself over to
La Prise
for good.

And yet.

The very blackest depths of that sickness, the furthest bottom of that hole—it has something to tell you. Hollowness means there was once a fullness; suffocating absence means there was once a presence. And if you let yourself listen, and think on that, you remember that it used to be different. You realize something more was possible.
Is
possible.

And in that howling silence, you can hear it: your secret heart beating.

Hold on. Hold on
.

So instead of losing your path, instead of letting the winterkill have its way, you hang tight to that rope. You pull yourself hand over hand back to the warmth.

You wait out the dark.

You wait for the Thaw.

“EMMELINE!”

I turn slow from my perch on the bank, my eyes reluctant to leave the swallows that dip through the new cattails on the swollen river. The sun blinds me for a moment and she's just a shadow striding across the green flats in her calm way.

I pick myself up from the bank awkward-like before I remember I don't need to favor my bad foot so much. Matisa and Soeur Manon have figured a kind of tincture to help with the pain.

Matisa knows lots of things that can help us: ways to make stores last longer, cures for certain kinds of ailments. Most of her ways come from the land, though some of the supplies they brought have also helped with sicknesses and wounds.

Course, some wounds are beyond healing.

She reaches me and stops. “You've been out here all morning.”

“I know,” I say, looking at the woods beyond the flats. “Can't help watching everything green up.”

We look around at the trees budding out, the small pockets of snow melting slow in their crooks and shadows.

“Talks are in an hour.”

I sigh real deep. “Again?”

She smiles. “Talking is good.”

“If it gets us anywhere.”

She shrugs. “I'm sure we're close.”

We're quiet again. The swallows swoop and dip.

She tilts her head at the river. “Being out here—does it bring you peace?”

I swallow hard against the stone that settles in my throat. “Suppose.”

We stand there a moment, listening to the chirrup of the birds, the soft wind. Matisa turns to go. “You'll be needed at Talks,” she says over her shoulder.

“I'll be there,” I murmur, looking at the river. “Matisa?” She looks back. “You have that dream again?”

She nods, her eyes serious. I watch her turn and walk back to the fortification, carrying the weight of it on her shoulders. We'll have to speak on that dream at Talks.

Now that the Thaw is here, we've got some decisions to make. It was a hard Ice Up, even with Matisa's help; we lost three people and had barely enough stores to survive on. Can't imagine Jameson's family fared any better after being cast out—doubt they're still alive.

And Matisa's been dreaming on a war. A big battle, coming in along the horizon, setting the river on fire. She tells us there are bigger weapons out there—more deadly than rifles
and bows and arrows. There are weapons that can turn people to ash, poisons that can destroy their insides, addle their brains. She had the war dream all
La Prise,
and Isi's pushing hard for the three of them to return home.

I stare across the bulging waters and up the bank, picturing the sweeping prairies greening up in the sun. Matisa says the land is vast, bigger than we could ever imagine. There might be other places to Discover, other unknowns. I know Matisa's hoping I will go with her so she and I can figure our dreams.

But there are some people I won't leave without.

I look back at the fortification. Two forms stand on the top of the north wall. Tom's blond hair catches the sun as he bends to look at whatever Frère Andre is pointing out.

They're up there every afternoon now, looking at the woods, at the hills beyond.

He's Tom again, but better. That spark of curiosity I used to see in his eyes is back, and it shines when I talk about journeying beyond our settlement. He can feel change coming too. And he's looking toward it with his head high.

I close my eyes a minute and take a deep breath. The memory of
La Prise
lingers in the breeze, but there's the smell of new willow budding out and a softness to the wind that comes with the Thaw.

I head back.

When I reach the east gates, he's leaning against the wall, arms crossed, waiting for me.

“Find anything new out there?” Kane says, that funny smile curving his mouth.

I nod. “Everything.”

He takes my wrists and pulls me to him.

“Careful,” I say as he wraps my arms around his back. “Sister Ann's been eyeballing us. Fixing to bind us.”

“You can't be kept. She doesn't know that by now?”

I want to smile—it's there, deep down—but I can't find it.

His eyes search my face. “Em?”

I clear my throat. “She says . . . she says my pa would've wanted us bound.” It's been months, but talking about him still makes my chest ache.