Into the Wilderness
Page 180

He took the bowl from her hands and drank it in two hasty swallows, grimacing. Beside him, Elizabeth stirred, and he saw the old woman squinting at her. Then she met his gaze, and her mouth hardened.
"You are not yet healed," she said, not bothering to lower her voice.
"But with your help I will heal, Grandmother," he said, hoping to work a small opening in her resistance. Elizabeth's arrival did not please her; he had anticipated that. But then, nothing much did please her.
She grunted, and narrowed her eyes at him. Poked a hard finger in the direction of his wound, so that he twitched.
"Breathe deep!" she hissed at him. "Or your lung will rot like a bad plum, and you will drown in your own fluids."
Nathaniel did as he was told. She watched him for three breaths, and then smiled sourly as he coughed, shaking her head.
"I will send your food," she said, turning away. And then, over her shoulder: "And clothes for her."
"Her name is Elizabeth," Nathaniel called after her.
She turned back. "Erisavet." The old woman's mouth twisted around the unfamiliar sounds, and she shook her head. "You gave her the name Bone—in—Her—Back?"
"Chingachgook gave it to her."
"Ah. Well, the biggest bone that one has is in her head. Stubborn as the sun in the summer sky." And she went off.
He turned back to Elizabeth, and found her eyes fixed on him.
"Bone in my head?" she asked sleepily. "Bone—Head. Yes, it feels appropriate right now." For a moment the look on her face was much the same as the one the old woman had given him. Then she sat up and with quick hands she touched his forehead, his cheek, his shoulder, ran her fingers down his arms and then gently touched his chest. Her gaze fixed there, at the wound.
He leaned back on his hands so she could see and watched the emotions moving over her face, pressing her lips hard together. He was taken up by the strong urge to gather her to him and rock her until she could smile at him again.
"Richard told them I shot you and ran away," she said, her voice hoarse with anger.
"I told them otherwise."
"But they believed him." She glanced up at him, and away. He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and brought her gaze back to his own.
"They did not believe him," he corrected her. "They were testing you."
"She doesn't trust me," Elizabeth said. "The old woman—Ohstyen'tohskon."
"Made—of—Bones," Nathaniel translated. "And she doesn't trust anybody. She nursed me well," he added. "So she couldn't dislike me too much."
"Nathaniel ...," Elizabeth began, and then her voice trailed away.
He put a finger to her mouth, shaking his head very slightly. "Not here," he said. "Not now. First we eat—you can't afford to miss a meal, Boots, from what I can see. And then we'll go down to the river—is Robbie here?"
Elizabeth nodded. "And Otter. And—" She almost smiled. The relief of this, her almost smile, took away a little of the surprise at Otter's presence.
"And the red dog," she said. "I call her Treenie." He watched her thoughts moving across her face, and the small promise of a smile fade away.
Nathaniel leaned toward her, brushed her mouth with his own, felt her start and then come to him. "The world will be right again," he said. "Together we will make it right."
* * *
It was a busy time in the village, Nathaniel told her as she discarded the ragged clothes she wore and dressed in the buckskin overdress and leggings a young woman had brought her. The moccasins were very fine, decorated with beadwork and porcupine quills; Elizabeth took it as a sign that the clan mother was not completely set against her.
Elizabeth found herself wondering about her pack, and provisions, and the weather and the trails, and then she remembered, with something between relief and disappointment, that they would not be on the trail today. She had completed her task, she had found him, and for the moment they were not going anywhere.
She walked with Nathaniel, and looked at the things he pointed out. The new crops in the fields demanded a great deal of attention, and it seemed that every woman was there with a hoe, many of them working stripped to the waist. Elizabeth wondered if the ability to be shocked had been taken from her for all time, or if it simply required more energy than she could spare.
Nathaniel walked very slowly, and his breathing was labored at times so that he would stop, as if taken by some unexpected thought. She stopped then, too, and watched him. Content that he was in fact mending, Elizabeth felt herself beginning to relax.
"Richard?" she asked, although she meant not to. The thought of him, and what he had said to these people about her, would make her go pale with anger, if she let it.
Nathaniel shrugged. "He is still pretty bad off, I think. I don't see him. They keep him over there—" He jerked with his chin toward the last of the long houses where boys played with small baggataway sticks in a noisy game.
"They saved his life."
"Not yet, they haven't. I don't think he's cooperating much, but then he never thought to come back here. That much I know."
Elizabeth stopped. "Here? This is where he was brought as a child?"
"I thought you realized," Nathaniel said. "I thought Otter would have told you. He was adopted into the Bear clan. They mourned him when he ran away.