The Endless Forest
Page 131

“What do you mean, ‘if’?” Callie frowned. “Of course we need to keep him here. He’s your half brother as well as mine. Surely you can see that.”
Martha started to say something, but Daniel put a light hand on her shoulder.
Ethan said, “If we try to hold him back now and fail—and I think we would have to fail—we might never see him again.”
Callie had on her most stubborn expression. She said, “We can’t leave him with her. God knows what kind of monster she’d make out of him.”
Daniel felt Martha startle, but Callie didn’t notice, or maybe, Daniel had to admit, maybe she meant to strike out.
“I think we could give him a good home,” Ethan said. “But it will take some planning to make that happen. As strongly as you feel about this, it’s plain reasoning we need right now.”
Daniel resisted the urge to ask Callie if she was seriously considering kidnapping the boy, because he could see the answer on her face, and it unsettled him. He was tempted to say as much to Martha as they made their way up Hidden Wolf, but then his own common sense got the upper hand.
Instead he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to set out for home.”
That got him a smile. “It would be nice to just stay put for a while, but I don’t suppose that will be possible. We’ll have to fetch my things up from the village sooner or later.”
“My da took care of that already,” Daniel said. “He’s got a couple more loads. Maybe you were too distracted to notice him going by.”
“That is a relief,” Martha said. “Did you ask him?”
The question surprised him, but he took a moment to look at it from her perspective. Then he said, “He didn’t need to be asked, Martha. He saw what needed to be done and he did it. He would have done the same for any of his daughters.”
He saw the emotion rise up in her face, and then settle again, slowly.
“I see I’ll have to remind you where you married into once in a while,” Daniel said.
She gave a strangled half laugh. “And Callie will remind me where I came from. Who I came from.”
“Do you think she meant to be unkind?”
“Yes,” Martha said without hesitation. “I do.”
“I’ve got a suggestion. Let’s not talk about any of that until tomorrow evening when we sit down at Ma’s. Just let it go.”
After a moment she said, “We’ll have to leave the horses with Ben tomorrow.”
“Do you mind?”
“Not really. I like the walk.”
“You may well change your mind in January. I’ve been meaning to put up a stable, anyway.”
They talked about stables and horses and hens, and if Martha wanted a cow or would rather buy milk; whether she would put in a garden and if she needed a washhouse, and if she might want a girl to come up from the village to help. It took a lot of work to keep a household going, and it was work she hadn’t turned her hand to in quite some time.
“Which reminds me,” she said. “I need to get pennyroyal ointment from Hannah.”
“You can’t be bit already,” Daniel said. “The blackfly won’t be out for a while yet.”
“Well, you neglected to tell them,” Martha said. “Because I’ve got bites on my ankles and they itch.”
Daniel said, “I’ve got some bear grease that would do the trick.”
She laughed at him. “I hope you can do better than that.” And: “Daniel Bonner, you are hatching some kind of plan. I see it on your face.”
She didn’t protest very hard, and if she was entirely truthful with herself, she had half been hoping for something like this. For Daniel to lead her off the path into the woods, where they’d be out of reach and could really leave everything else behind for a short while at least.
The horses began to huff as the climb got steeper.
“Where are we going?”
“Wait and see.”
Martha didn’t know the mountain as Daniel did, and she doubted she could ever learn as much, even if she dedicated every waking hour to that pursuit for the next twenty years. He seemed to recognize every tree and rock, and found his way without even the vaguest trace of a trail. At times he held branches out of her way and then she could see how pleased he was to be showing her the places he loved. For her part she knew better than to ask a lot of questions. Woodsmen preferred silence in the bush, and she understood why. Though the horses made noise enough, the birdsong continued all around them and small things rustled, unimpressed by their presence.
Daniel pulled up and let her come next to him. Martha was about to ask him what he meant her to see, but from that spot it was too obvious. It looked as though someone had taken a dull knife and hacked a wedge out of Hidden Wolf. A rift had been gouged out of the forested mountainside, from a point near the top all the way down. Trees lay scattered like a child’s building blocks tossed hastily aside. The stark white of the exposed trunks worked like a thousand bone-deep slashes.
She hadn’t thought it could be so very bad, but now she realized that things could have been so much worse. If the main thrust of the flood had come a half mile farther west, the whole village would have disappeared. And, she supposed, that might still happen one day.
They sat there for five minutes, and in that time Daniel said nothing. He trusted her to understand for herself. It was a gift he gave to her.