Fire Along the Sky
Page 40

Hannah sent her a sidelong glance. “There are medicines to encourage a child, yes, and songs to summon one. You will ask me when you are ready, and together Many-Doves and I and you will prove the old women in Carryck wrong.”
At that Jennet smiled, and leaned forward, and pressed her forehead to her cousin's cheek, damp with perspiration and tears and hope.
“I'm ready now,” she said. “If only your stubborn brother would come back for me.”
Jennet was determined to learn everything she could about living in the wilderness, so that when Luke did come back he would find her a worthy wife. No one was safe from her quest; she sought out strangers to ask questions with such complete sincerity and interest that no one ever thought to deny her. Whatever resentment there may have been in the village—and there were some young women who were not happy to learn that this interloper from Scotland had snatched Luke Bonner for her own—it disappeared in the face of Jennet's resolute goodwill and generosity. Jennet was in love and the world was not strong enough to resist her; it must love her back.
She had her favorites: Curiosity was one of them, Joshua Hench, Curiosity's son-in-law and a blacksmith, was another. She made fast friends with the children, who competed for the honor of teaching her the things they knew and showing her their secret places.
In short time she had learned how to make biscuits, how to forge a nail, how to grind corn into the finest meal by hand, how to distinguish between the tracks of raccoons, fox, dog, cats of different kinds; she had thrown herself into the harvest without hesitation and laughed when Hannah insisted on treating the scratches and blisters that resulted. She knew where the children went to search for arrowheads and she took lessons in skinning rabbits, loading a rifle, and walking a trail with the quiet watchfulness that was the true sign of an accomplished woodswoman.
On a Sunday in the late afternoon Hannah and Jennet set out together for the village, the tarot cards tucked safely into the basket Jennet carried with her everywhere. Almost everyone had asked for a reading, once it was understood that she asked nothing in return except answers to her endless questions. When she came back to Lake in the Clouds it would be full of the things she had gathered, from pinecones to mushrooms to spent bullets, but at the moment it was empty and light enough to swing.
When they left the glen Jennet raised her head and sniffed the air, her nose wrinkling.
“A frost tonight,” she said, pulling her shawl around her shoulders. Jennet's eyesight was only average, but her sense of smell surprised and impressed everyone.
Gabriel had made a game of testing her by covering her eyes and passing ever stranger items under her nose: a rusty nail, an apple stem, corn husks, a piece of cherry wood, a scrap of fur from the old pelt the dogs slept on. Only rarely would she be unable to put the right name to a scent, and thus far Hannah had never known her to mistake a change in the weather.
For her own part, Jennet seemed to take this talent of hers for granted. She made announcements and then moved on.
“You did say we could go by way of the marsh?”
“A half hour more won't make a difference,” Hannah agreed. In truth she was just as happy not to go by the bridge under the millhouse, as Jemima Kuick would no doubt be keeping watch, as she did most evenings. Her biweekly visits to the widow were bad enough as it was. Jemima stayed in the shadows but she hovered like a spider over a web.
“Good,” said Jennet. “I haven't been to see the beaver today.”
She had taken a huge interest in the dam that crossed the narrowest point of the marsh on the west end of the lake. It was the biggest beaver dam that Hannah knew of, and more than that, it was a rare collaboration between man and beast. The dam was wide enough for two people to walk abreast without disturbing the animals who lived inside and worked so hard to maintain it. Jennet called it a miracle of natural engineering and one that would have delighted her father.
She spent many evenings long past dusk sitting near the dam with Gabriel and Annie, who could identify each of the beavers and answered all of Jennet's questions.
Jennet had early sought out Runs-from-Bears, who told her the story of the Kahnyen'kehàka who lived on the lake before the whites came, and how they had made a pact: Brother Beaver would maintain the bridge across the marsh and his Mohawk brothers would do what they could to protect him from the wolf.
The men in the village had a different take on things, which they also shared with Jennet. The beaver dam was a bridge that cost them neither time nor money to maintain, and more than that: it gave them some level of protection against spring floods.
“To make hats out of such wondrous creatures.” Jennet always ended her visits with this muttered condemnation.
This Sunday evening as they crossed the beaver bridge the dusk was already on them and a light rain had begun to fall. The high keen smells—mud and rot and fish—made Hannah think of Elizabeth, who could not keep her nose from wrinkling even after so many years.
But Jennet did not mind the stink; she had grown up in circumstances far richer and grander than even Elizabeth's, but she had spent all of her girlhood running wild in the Lowland hills, and she was more likely to investigate the cause of a stink than to turn away from it.
Underfoot the dam was solid and thick with many new layers of dried mud patted into place. It made crossing the marsh quick and clean and still Hannah was bothered.
A hard winter was coming by all the signs, and the thought of it made her break out in gooseflesh where the cold rain had not.