Fire Along the Sky
Page 19

Now Nathaniel watched his wife sleep, at peace in the world of her own imagining, where she had only to speak the words to end a war and bring her son home.
He touched his forehead to hers to breathe in the scent of her and left the room without a sound.
Runs-from-Bears was already climbing up out of the lake under the falls, shaking himself so that the water flew off him in sheets. Then he waited in the sun while Nathaniel swam the length of the lake and came to join him on the broad expanse of rock where they met every morning to discuss the coming day. They had been doing this since Many-Doves took Runs-from-Bears as her husband and he came to live on Hidden Wolf. When they were both on the mountain they met here, no matter what the weather.
“We must let them go.” Runs-from-Bears started the conversation in mid-thought. He spoke Mohawk, as they always did when they had important matters to discuss. “They must test themselves as we were tested at their age.”
There was no blood tie between the two men but they had fought side by side as young men and brought up their families the same way. Over the years friendship had grown into partnership, one with no name but just as strong a bond as brotherhood.
“Elizabeth is reconciled,” Nathaniel said. “At least she thinks she is.”
Bears let out a soft sound, an acknowledgment.
Nathaniel said, “Many-Doves has given her permission?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “She knows she cannot stop them. And even she has heard of Jim Booke.”
“We survived our share of battles,” Nathaniel said, mostly to himself. “And they will watch each other's backs.”
In the light of the new morning he studied Bears, still lean and heavily muscled and as quick as the son he was about to send off to fight yet another white man's war, this one even stupider than the last. On one thigh Runs-from-Bears bore the pucker of a healed bullet wound; a scar as wide as a man's finger and shiny pink arched across the expanse of his chest like a ribbon. There were a dozen more scars, each with its own story. Nathaniel rarely bothered with mirrors, but he knew that he looked much the same.
“I've been trying to remember what it was like at that age,” Nathaniel said. “Wanting to go to join the fighting that bad.”
“Like an ache in the balls,” Runs-from-Bears said, and Nathaniel snorted in agreement.
Bears said, “They are waiting to hear our decision.”
“They will have to wait a little longer,” Nathaniel said. “There's somebody else I have to talk to first.”
“Lily.”
“Aye.” Nathaniel ran a hand over his face.
Runs-from-Bears was looking at him with an expression that Nathaniel knew very well, one that said he had advice to offer but knew it would not be welcome.
“Go ahead, say it.”
“You know she'll find a way to get what she wants,” Bears said.
Nathaniel got up with a groan. “That's exactly what I'm afraid of.”
Hannah woke when she heard her father leaving the cabin for his morning swim under the falls, and then she lay perfectly still, listening. Jennet slept deeply, her back turned to Hannah. Lily was watching her. Hannah felt the blue of her eyes like a cool hand.
“Little sister,” she whispered across the room. “Do you hear the mockingbird calling?”
It was the question she had used to wake Lily as a child, and now it brought a smile to the beloved face, true and sweet. When Hannah closed her eyes she could call forth the picture of Lily in her first minute of life, wide-eyed and curious, bloody fists waving. Even then she had been at odds with the world. Her Mohawk girl-name had been Sparrows, for her size and quickness and the way she must argue, even with her own kind.
For the moment, though, she was at peace, this little sister who had grown into a woman while Hannah was in the west.
“Many-Doves will be looking for me,” Lily said. “It's already time to go down to the cornfields.”
There was a watchfulness about her as she said this, a waiting. Hannah recognized it for what it was.
“Not this morning,” she said. “This morning you and I must show Jennet the mountain and the village too.”
“I thought you had to go visit patients with Uncle Todd,” Lily said.
“I do, but that won't take long. You can come along, both of you. And then you can show her the meetinghouse.”
“What about Many-Doves?” Lily asked, hardly able to contain her smile.
“I will tell her,” Hannah said. “And we'll all go to the cornfield this afternoon to help.”
Jennet sat up suddenly, clutching a blanket to her breast like a child. She blinked in the morning light and then a smile transformed her face.
“I feared it was all a dream,” she said, leaning over to hug Hannah. “And that I would wake with Ewan snoring next to me.”
She colored even as she said it, a sudden blush that reached even her earlobes. “Och, I'm as wicked a lass as was eer born, Lily. Pay no mind to the things I say. I must say a rosary for Ewan's soul, puir wee mannie as he was.”
“Did you not love your husband then?” Lily asked and she sat up and slung her arms around her knees.
Jennet's mouth puckered. “He was a good man, and harmless enough.” Her Scots was already giving way to English, like sleep that could be rubbed from her eyes. “I wish I could say that I loved him. My father promised me on his deathbed that I would learn to do just that. But I never did.”