Fire Along the Sky
Page 28

In their day Daniel and Blue-Jay and Ethan never allowed Lily or any of the girl cousins into the fort. But now Gabriel and Annie had claimed it for their own and made up new rules. They liked Lily, who drew them funny pictures and sometimes brought them apples or maple sugar, and so she could come and sit with them in the fort and listen to their stories.
She walked the mountain for most of the afternoon before she went to the fort where the children were waiting for her. It was where Daniel would come looking, and because she could not avoid him forever she sat down to wait for him. Lily felt the chill of the approaching storm on the nape of her neck, and in the lengthening shadows she saw the coming of an early dusk.
Annie caught sight of Daniel first. She flung herself out of the fort and ran at him, climbed him like a tree to take a seat on his shoulder where she held on to his head and balanced precariously. As Lily had once done with Runs-from-Bears; that memory came to her now bittersweet.
Gabriel stood too, but kept his distance. “Is it true you're going off to war tomorrow?”
Daniel nodded. “It is.”
“And my brother too,” Annie said, thumping Daniel companionably on the head. “So you can keep each other out of trouble.”
“That's the way of it,” Daniel agreed. His gaze had never left Lily's face. She felt it like a touch.
“Sister's pretty mad,” Gabriel said, as if Lily were not there at all. “I don't know if you can talk her out of it this time, brother.”
“He's got to try,” Annie said. She swung down from Daniel's shoulder and landed with a thump.
She produced a hopeful smile and turned it on Daniel full force. “Can we stay and listen?”
He looked out over the valley and the bowl of the sky brimming with storm clouds. Heat lightning flickered in the distance. “Better get home before the rain comes,” he said.
And when the threat of rain did little to move them Daniel said, “There's a prize for whoever gets back to Lake in the Clouds first.”
They were gone in a flash. Daniel stood right where he was for a full minute and then another.
Finally he said, “I don't know why you have to make this so hard, sister.”
His expression was almost comical: outrage and righteous indignation and confusion. If he were closer she might slap him. Her throat cramped closed.
“I'd like your blessing.”
As if he were hungry and she were refusing to feed him. Lily blinked back tears.
“You can't have it,” she said.
“I'm going anyway,” he said. “I've got to go.”
“No, you don't.” She kept her voice as quiet and calm as she could; it was the only way to make him listen. “You're going because you want to. It makes no sense to put yourself in harm's way like this.”
“Not to you, maybe.” He looked away, the muscles in his throat working. “Just the way you do things that don't make sense to me. But I ain't ever tried to stop you.”
Words like cold water, like diving into the lake under the falls at first light: a revelation. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, and what came out shamed her.
“I don't know what you mean.”
The hardest thing, the one thing she had not counted on: her brother's sympathy and understanding.
“It's only a matter of time before somebody else figures it out, Lily. I think Ma half suspects now.”
“I don't know what you mean.” Her voice creaked like an old lady's.
“You're headed for heartbreak,” he said.
“And you're headed for an early grave.” The words choked her but they did their work: he jerked as if she had reached across the ten feet that separated them and struck him. They looked at each other like that for three heartbeats.
w“I have to go, sister. I wish I could make you understand.”
“So do I,” she said, and turned away.
I may never see you again. The unspoken words trailed behind her like smoke.
Lily ran, her skirts kilted up through her belt; she ran until her breath came ragged and her lungs were on fire, and then she pushed, dug herself into the pain and ran harder. The rain came first in stuttering waves and then it steadied and in a matter of seconds she was soaked to the skin.
There were two ways into the village without a boat: she could take the long way around the lake through the marsh or she could go over the bridge.
It's just a matter of time before somebody else figures it out.
She hesitated for a moment, her face turned up to the storm.
What did it matter anymore? She went the quicker route, still running until she came to the bridge where she stopped. Beneath her feet the wood thrummed with the running river, a living thing that would take her away from here if she let it.
She stood under the pulsing sky, arms outstretched, and then she began to make her way across the village by the way of back lanes. At the edge of the Wildes' orchards she paused to watch the trees, leaves snapping and fluttering in the wind. Apples thumped to the ground with each gust. The darkening storm had taken all the color out of the world but the lightning brought it back in quick bright pulses.
Then a double fork of lightning lit the sky with a million candles and showed her everything: the neat rows of trees, the cabin at the far end of the orchard, its windows shuttered against the storm. Smoke drifted up from the chimney to be caught by the wind and scattered.
The barn door stood open just wide enough to show her the man standing there, his arms at his sides. When the light was gone Lily closed her eyes and saw him still, burned into her flesh.