Fire Along the Sky
Page 208

The criminal known as O'Neill is a man a full six feet tall, strong of build, about fifty years old. He wears his black hair long to cover the fact that his right earlobe has been severed. Nothing is known as yet of his real name, his place of origin, or his destination, except that he meant to go south when he left Canada, probably by ship.
For any reliable information on this criminal the subscriber will pay generously, in proportion to the usefulness of the report.
Luke Scott, Forbes & Son,
Rue Bonsecours, Montreal
The text was repeated in French, and in the margin Luke had written a few short sentences. He was putting an advertisement with similar wording in every newspaper from Halifax to Saint Domingue. What he didn't write, what he didn't need to say, was that his search had been less than fruitful in its first days.
“Ma,” came Daniel's voice from just behind her. Elizabeth, lost in her thoughts of Luke and Jennet and the man called O'Neill, jumped a foot into the air. She hid the broadsheet in the folds of her skirt even as she scolded herself for such foolishness.
Daniel put his hand on her shoulder and held it there for a moment.
“I've been calling your name, didn't you hear me?” He settled down next to her on the log and stretched out his legs, strong and lean and burned brown by the sun.
“Lost in my thoughts,” Elizabeth said, patting him on the knee. He was wearing a hunting shirt, breechclout, and summer moccasins and he carried only a knife on his belt and no other weapon, not even a rifle. Because he could make no use of one, though he spent hours every day trying to relearn the things he had been doing without reflection since he was a boy.
In spite of all that, and even with an arm in a sling, her firstborn son looked to her to be a perfectly made human being. He was too thin, but that would soon be remedied. His color was much better already.
Elizabeth touched the eagle feather that hung from the cord that bound his hair. He caught her hand and held it away from himself.
“Ma.”
“Yes, I'm sorry.”
Something else that had changed: the son who had once loved to have his scalp rubbed, who had climbed into his mother's lap when he was far too big for such things, all traces of that boy were gone. Daniel disliked being touched, as he disliked being indoors or in any confined space, as he disliked sleeping in a bed. He slept outdoors, on a pallet he put down in a different place every night.
They were silent for a moment.
Finally he said, “There's a few trees down in the wind just beyond Eagle Rock.”
“Ah,” Elizabeth said. “You've been far today.”
“My legs still work just fine.”
She caught her breath and let it go. It would do no good to lecture him about hope and perseverance, and even less to humor his mood. But there was something that must be said, and so she did.
“You know,” Elizabeth said slowly. “If I were to find myself in your position—” He stiffened, but she carried on. “For example, if I were to suddenly lose my sight and be unable to read, I know that I would be less than stoic about it.”
But eventually I would move on.
That sentence hung unsaid between them, words dancing like dust motes in the shafts of light that slanted through the branches.
“Ma,” he said. “I need time to think things through.”
“There are many options open to you.” She said it with more certainty than she felt.
“I know that.” He stood abruptly, and held out his good hand to help her to her feet. “I know that, I do.” And then: “I know you want me to take the school, and I'm thinking about it.”
“I never was very good at hiding my thoughts,” Elizabeth said. “Though for years I've been trying to learn that trick.” She forced herself to stop talking, though it cost her a great deal.
They stood side by side in the silent woods where dragonflies shimmered in the heat. Elizabeth had the sudden sense that something unexpected, unwanted, was coming. She raised a hand to stop him even before he had begun, but there was no force in nature that could silence him once he had decided to speak up.
“I'm moving back to Lake in the Clouds. I know you and Da have to stay here in the village, but I . . .” His words trailed away.
“You what?” Elizabeth said, as calmly as she could manage.
“I need to be on the mountain,” he said.
She said nothing, because she could not trust her voice.
He said, “I was hoping you'd understand.”
The things she understood were many. Her son was a grown man who wanted, who needed, to be out on his own. Lily had left them and now Daniel must too. He would never come back again, not in the way she wanted him to.
“Have you spoken to your father?”
He nodded.
“And he gave you permission.”
“Unhappily.”
“Well, then, I can do no less.”
She pressed her handkerchief to her forehead. “You will come to supper this evening?”
His hesitation was so very slight that Elizabeth could almost overlook it.
“Of course,” he said. “Of course I'll be there.”
She said, “You must still live in the world, Daniel. You understand that?”
He managed a grin for her, and in it she saw something of his old self. “You'll see me pretty much every day,” he said. An answer to the question she had asked, and one she hadn't.
“The sad truth is, we can't laze around here all afternoon.” Lily made this announcement around a great yawn, as she stared up through the trees to the sky. “There is work to be done yet today.”