Into the Wilderness
Page 122

In fact, she had just finished her courses—an event which had taken her by surprise, for she had lost all sense of time, except for the eight days since she had last seen Nathaniel. The clutching and first trickle of it had reminded her of time passing, and then presented her with a new challenge; it was one that had preoccupied her for a good day until she had found ways to cope with the materials at hand. Once this had been addressed, Elizabeth had been a little relieved: she was not ready for the idea of a child quite yet, not until she felt more of a wife. But she had been sad, too, thinking that it would have pleased Nathaniel, and proved Richard quite decisively wrong.
It seemed a long time ago, that tousled conversation in their wedding bed, but Elizabeth wondered if satisfaction, or the relative lack of it, had something to do with the fact that she hadn't got with child. She thought of what had happened in that bed often, piece by piece, of the touch of him and his ferocious need, how different that had been from the first time under the falls. How complex the whole undertaking was, and how much there was to learn about it. She admitted to herself that she missed Nathaniel's touch very much, and thought that he wouldn't be disappointed to find in her a new curiosity about him. It was this thought that was in her head when she came to the river's edge and looked up to see the bear not twenty feet in front of her. She stood tall in the sun with her coat glistening wet, her attention fixed on Elizabeth and her soft black nose twitching. Elizabeth knew it was a female, because a very small cub played at her feet.
Her mind went very still and blank, and then in a flurry she turned and lunged at the nearest tree, scrambling up it as she last had as a twelve—year—old with a vengeful cousin in full pursuit. Even as she climbed, she knew the stupidity of this gesture, for bears climbed trees, and this one could come after her if it chose to. But she climbed anyway, the sound of her breath ragged in her own ears, drowning out what else there might be to hear. She climbed until she could climb no farther, and the young beech threatened to bend and deposit her back where she had begun.
It wasn't until then that Elizabeth stopped and looked down the trunk. The bear stood there, looking up at her quizzically, her nose still twitching. They were about as far apart as they had been on level ground, but now Elizabeth had nowhere to go. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe deeply until her vision cleared and she could hear something besides the rush of her own blood. When she looked down again, the bear was still there, but she had turned her attention back to foraging.
It took a good ten minutes for Elizabeth's heart to come back to a normal rhythm. In another ten, she noted that she had scraped her hands quite badly, and that they were sticky with sap as well as her own blood. More blood, she thought with dismay. The creature would never go away. And it seemed the case. She was playing with her cub now, batting at it and rolling it back and forth good—naturedly, while it squawked and mewled at her, and then finally rooted and found what it wanted.
Elizabeth sat in the fork of her branch with her knees tucked under her chin and watched them. The bark against her back was smooth, and there was a natural indentation here which provided a secure seat, if not an especially comfortable one. When it seemed sure that the mother had forgotten about her, she could watch them with interest. They were beautiful creatures, with deep, glossy coats and bright expressions. The cub was droll and absurd in its attempt to gain its mother's attention, squeaking and howling in an astounding range of sound. The mother ignored it placidly to disappear through a stand of pine. Elizabeth saw her emerge on the other side and walk into the river. She stood there staring down into the shallows, and then, faster than the eye could follow, with a wing of water flying, she flipped a fish onto the bank with a great swipe of her paw.
Elizabeth had a good view from her perch: a winding stretch of the river, and the canopy of trees, filled in now completely but still tender with spring color. On the eastern horizon storm clouds were gathering.
The bears seemed to like the little clearing at the river and were in no hurry. Elizabeth wondered if this was intentional on the mother's part, if she waited purposely for Elizabeth to come back down. Just when this idea was taking on unfortunate detail in her mind, the animal rolled to her feet and swayed off into the bush with her cub running behind her. Elizabeth let out a sigh of relief and prepared herself for the climb down, which seemed much more imposing now than it had when she had feared for her life.
There was more rustling from the underbrush; she froze, and decided that she had better stay where she was until it was clear that the bear wouldn't be coming back. Impatiently, she settled back into her hiding place and looked down at the river.
And there was Nathaniel, just pulled to shore in a small canoe loaded with provisions.
* * *
She dropped out of the tree in front of him, but he didn't start. Nathaniel didn't seem surprised at all to have his wife appear so suddenly from overhead with her face scratched and her hands bleeding. Elizabeth stepped up to him, and put her arms around his waist, her face on his chest, and she felt herself tremble, and then, slowly, stop trembling.
"Good day to you, too, Boots," he said softly, his mouth against her hair. The pack he was carrying slipped to the ground and his hands moved to her back.
Elizabeth pulled away then, looked at him hard.
"You've been a long time," she said. "What happened?"
He shook his head, smoothing her hair. "Time enough for that later," he said, bending down to her. But she dropped her head, as much as she wanted him to kiss her.