The Endless Forest (25 page)

He was sweat-soaked but not so weary that he didn’t hear the sound of his mother coming through the woods, a full five minutes before she stepped into the clearing.

The sight of Ma out here in the open always surprised him, though he knew it should not. Thirty years ago she had gone into the bush a new bride and come out again changed. Able to care for herself in the endless forests, if need be. The wife of a backwoodsman.

“You could cut a few more branches,” she said to him. “And put them in your classroom. They smell so sweet.”

Daniel had to laugh at this suggestion. All her years in Paradise among trappers, and she had never resigned herself to the stink of sour clothes stiff with grime. She never gave up on trying to improve what she called the miasma of the classroom, and retiring from teaching hadn’t dampened her ongoing dedication to a problem that Daniel could live with.

He said, “Ma, I’ll cut some for you if you like. To put by your window for when you’re working.”

“That would be lovely.”

A woodpecker rattled overhead. Daniel went about caring for his weapons; his mother would raise whatever topic sent her looking for him soon enough. But she surprised him, reaching out to take his grandfather’s tomahawk from him to run her fingers over the carving.

“Hawkeye told so many stories,” she said. “And most of them had to do with war. This is the hatchet that saved your grandmother Cora’s life on more than one occasion. But that was three wars ago.”

She seemed to be talking more to herself than to him as she traced the carving.

“You are very pensive today,” he said. In his mother’s company his vocabulary began to stretch and grow and words he never used anytime else—except in spelling lessons—would come out of hiding.

“Am I?”

“You’ve got all of us together in one place; what is there to worry about now?”

“Lily. Lily worries me. Her health and her state of mind both.”

Daniel wished now he could take back the question. His mother did enough worrying without his encouragement.

“Ma,” he said. “Did you come to talk about Lily?”

She cast a frowning glance and then turned away to look into the trees, her arms folded over the ends of her shawl and her head canted forward, her gaze focused on the ground beneath her feet. She was patient, and demanded the same of her children. The words would come when they presented themselves in the proper order, and not before.

“There is a letter,” she said. “It came with the post yesterday, for Hannah. She asked me to talk to you about it.”

Elizabeth was braced for what must come next, and so she watched the animation leave his face and his jaw settle hard. Inscrutable. The very image of his father when he sensed a battle ahead.

He said the one word.

“No.”

“Daniel,” Elizabeth said quietly. “I want you to listen until I’m finished, without interrupting me. Will you please do that for me?”

Oh, how he wanted to deny her. She could see it in the way his gaze jerked away into the woods. But he was a good man and he had been trained well by his father. It took a concentrated effort but he calmed himself.

“Go on.”

She sat down on a fallen log and took the letter out of her bodice. Fine paper, closely written. Not a watermark or crease beyond the folds. It had come in a chest with medical supplies and books, and a manuscript written in the same clean, tight hand.

“Do you remember Hakim Ibrahim?”

“Only from stories,” Daniel said. He would not volunteer anything, and in some ways that made her task easier.

“Hakim Ibrahim and Hannah have been corresponding for many
years, before she went west with Strikes-the-Sky, and again since she came back from New Orleans after the war.”

Hannah corresponded with so many doctors and healers of every stripe. Sometimes she recited bits of their letters when they had a meal together, but for the most part the tone and subject were of interest to Birdie and Curiosity and no one else.

“Apparently she asked his advice about your nerve damage,” she went on. “Some years ago.”

The muscles in Daniel’s jaw jumped, but he stood his ground.

“Hakim Ibrahim is recently returned to his home in India after five years in China.”

She paused then, searching for the right words, and with that he let out a sigh.

“What is it? Another herb? Another tea? I’ve had enough, Ma. A few green things steeped in water can’t fix what’s wrong with me. I’ll never have the full use of the arm again. If I can live with that, why can’t you?”

It was an old argument, and one they both hated.

“Let me ask,” she said, her voice firm. “Have we brought anything to you recently? In the last two years, even. And let me remind you, we have not. If Hannah and I are willing to risk your anger and another week’s long disappearance, does it not seem reasonable to you that this time what we have to propose must be something very out of the ordinary?”

She was breathing rapidly and made an effort to calm herself. When she looked up again, some of the tension had left his face. His expression was still aggrieved, but there was a good amount of reluctant acquiescence there as well.

“So,” he said. “Go on and tell me about this miracle cure that comes all the way from China by way of India. I’ll listen, but that’s all.”

“Very well. Hakim Ibrahim spent his time in China studying a medical procedure that involves targeting specific nerves. The evidence indicates that this treatment will have a positive effect in the majority of patients.”

“But not all,” Daniel said.

“Not all,” Elizabeth echoed. “But there is some reason to believe it might help your symptoms. There is no tea or herb or ointment, no medication in the traditional sense.”

His mouth contorted. He was interested in spite of himself.

“A scalpel, then,” he said.

“No,” Elizabeth said quickly. “No surgery.”

His patience was at an end. “What then, Ma? Will you spit it out?”

“Needles,” Elizabeth said. “Long, very thin needles. Hakim Ibrahim has sent Hannah a full set of these needles in a beautiful ebony wood box, along with a hundred-page treatise on their application and use. Dozens of illustrations. Hannah was up until very late studying them, and today she has a headache. She should know better than to read by candlelight—”

She stopped herself, because the corner of Daniel’s mouth was twitching.

He said, “And Hannah would like to try this procedure. She’d like to turn me into a pincushion to see if she can put things right.”

“Hannah would like to sit down with you and Curiosity, if you agree, to talk it through. And then, if everyone is agreed—”

“What?”

“She will turn you into a pincushion.”

He turned his head away sharply. “I need to think about this.”

“Of course,” Elizabeth said. She got up and brushed her skirts. “Would you like to read the letter? Hannah thought it might answer some of your questions.”

“I’ll read it,” Daniel said. “But that’s as far as I’m willing to go.”

It was hard to suppress her own relief, but Elizabeth closed her mouth hard on the things she might have said, promises that would be worse than any knife cut and take longer to heal. She held out the letter, and after a moment, Daniel took it.

Elizabeth knew that there would be no more discussion until Daniel had had time to think through this new information. Which meant that the other subjects she had wanted to raise would have to wait. But he surprised her.

“Did you want to ask about Martha?”

“Actually I was thinking more of Lily,” she said and for that she earned a narrowed look, one that said he didn’t believe her, not for a moment.

“She was expecting a visit from you yesterday,” Elizabeth said.

“Martha—” he stopped himself. “Lily was expecting me?”

Elizabeth couldn’t hide her surprise. Daniel himself was surprised; he looked away, rubbing his beard stubble with the flat of his good hand.

“Lily would like to see you, but I think Martha would also be glad of
a visit. Have you made a decision, then, the two of you? About the second classroom?”

“Haven’t had the chance to talk to her about it.”

When he was a young boy she could usually read his state of mind from his posture. Over the years he had learned to mask his thoughts more thoroughly, but just now she saw him as a fourteen-year-old, unhappy with the direction a conversation was taking.

Should she withdraw the question, or push, ever so carefully? She still hadn’t reached a decision when Gabriel came into the clearing. Daniel wasn’t surprised to see him, which was more evidence that Elizabeth’s woodcraft had declined past the point of return; she hadn’t heard him approaching. She pushed that thought away and focused on her sons, the two surviving sons of her body. They were tall and strong and handsome. Pleasure and pride rose in her so that for that moment all the other things to worry about fell away.

“You make more noise than an army in the bush,” Daniel said, but he was smiling. “Has marriage got you so turned around?”

Gabriel’s color was high, his eyes bright. He looked happy, and Elizabeth was sorry that she had ever stood in the way of his marriage. He understood his own needs, even when she did not. A recurring theme for the day, she pointed out to herself.

Daniel was saying, “I had the idea you never came off the mountain unless it was to hunt.”

“Ma,” Gabriel said. “Would you tell my big brother he’s being rude? He could at least pretend to be glad to see me.” And he winked at her.

“Oh, no,” Elizabeth said. “None of your games. If there’s a message we’ll hear it now, and not be made to jump through hoops first.”

Gabriel put a fist to his chest with mock surprise. “You cut me to the quick, Ma. And here I am to say tonight’s the ice-out party.”

Elizabeth’s first thought was for Lily, who would miss this annual party to celebrate the spring. There was no viable way to transport her all the way up Hidden Wolf. Unless she were to ride, which Hannah and Curiosity had strictly forbidden, and a wagon on the bumpy path was out of the question.

“Short notice,” Daniel said. “But I’ll be there.”

“You better be, or we’ll track you down and force-march you all the way up.”

As a boy Gabriel had found ways to distract Daniel when everyone
else had given it up as a bad job, and it seemed he didn’t intend to let that advantage go.

He was saying, “Blue-Jay wants you to know you had best bring along a woman of your own. He plans to be the only one Susanna pays any attention to.”

The corner of Daniel’s mouth jerked. He said, “Blue-Jay mistakes me entirely. It’s your wife I intend to monopolize tonight.”

“You can try,” Gabriel said. “But I think you’d have better luck with Martha Kirby.”

L
ily roused from a light sleep to find Simon sitting on the edge of the bed, grinning down at her. She turned her head to scowl into the pillow, and turned back again when he leaned down and kissed her shoulder.

“I brought you a tray.”

She yawned. “How am I ever supposed to work up an appetite, spending three quarters of the day asleep? Curiosity won’t be satisfied until I’m as fat as a Christmas goose.”

But Simon knew her too well to be drawn into a discussion like this, when she was half asleep and cranky.

“What a horrid crabbit old witch I am these days. I apologize.”

“There’s naught to apologize for. Come, take some tea.”

To Lily’s disgust, there were great fat tears running down her cheeks. She buried her face back in the pillow and wailed.

When it was over she was glad of Simon’s warm presence and his calm.

He said, “Scootch.”

“You mean to come back to bed? But you’re dressed.”

“And you are not. Scootch.”

“Your shoes.”

“I promise not to kick, no matter how you provoke me. And if you’ll recall, it’s no the first time we’ve been in this very bed with clothes on. Some clothes, at least.”

Against her will Lily laughed, and then she gave in and moved. The bed was narrow and Simon was very big. It had always been a comfort, the long length of him like a wall between the world and her small spot in it.

“I remember that,” she said to the ceiling.

“I should hope so,” Simon said. He put his laced hands behind his head and stretched. “We had some memorable times in this room, if I do say it myself.”

Lily put her face to his shoulder. She was mortified, embarrassed, angry, and there was nowhere to go with any of that, except to pour it out on the people who loved her best.

They settled into a silence that was less than companionable. Simon would wait her out; Lily knew that. He had that talent, as did most of the men in the family. She might just drift off to sleep waiting for him to say the first word, and when she woke, ten minutes or ten hours later, he would still be there, waiting.

“I want to be here.”

“Aye.”

“But I can’t keep myself from snapping at people, like a—like a—”

“Like a lioness in a cage.” Simon turned on his side to look at her. “I thought you might take Hannah’s head off yesterday. It’s a good thing she’s so quick on her feet.”