The Endless Forest
Page 148

But today Birdie was lost in her thoughts. She was working herself up to ask a big question, and Hannah thought she knew what it was going to be. And then Birdie surprised her.
“Can we go home the long way?”
There was a question within the question that Hannah heard quite clearly.
“You want to see how the beaver are coming along?”
There was a line of beaver dams at the far end of Half Moon Lake, an arc that stretched more than three hundred feet and was as tall as a man in some places. All of that had been destroyed in the flood, and Birdie had been worried about the beaver as much as she worried about her neighbors. Despite the assurances of her father and brothers and uncles and cousins that the beaver would rebuild.
“Not the ones trapped in the dens,” she had said darkly.
Birdie was at the mercy of her imagination, as Hannah had been as a girl.
So they changed direction and started down the path that would end far from the village, where forest gave way to marsh and marsh to lake.
Hannah had work at home and this detour would cost them an hour or more, but she was glad to be in the forest where the heat—because it was unusually warm for May—gave way to cool shadows. The smells that rose with each footstep took her back to her childhood, when she had spent much of her time in these woods.
Birdie was still very quiet and her expression was grave.
“What is it?” Hannah asked. “Are you worried about Daniel?”
Birdie seemed surprised by the question. “No, not overmuch at any rate. Do you think the needles will do him any good?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah said. “The treatment has to be repeated many times before we’ll be able to tell.”
“It was kind of disappointing overall,” Birdie said.
“Oh, really?” Hannah tugged on the younger girl’s plait. “Bored, were you?”
“Not bored. But you hardly put those needles into him at all. Just the very tip. Not even a drop of blood.”
“You look distinctly put out,” Hannah said. “But it would have been a strange way to try to relieve him of pain, sticking a dozen two-inch-long needles into him.”
“But it would have distracted him for a while at least.”
Hannah laughed. “He wouldn’t sit still for that.”
“He would,” Birdie said. “If Martha asked him.” After a long moment Birdie said, “I’m glad they got married.”
“So am I.”
“They were fighting before we got there.”
Hannah stopped and Birdie turned to face her.
“What makes you think that? What did you think you heard when you were at the water pump?”
Birdie could produce a look of dry disbelief that exactly mirrored their father’s. “Nothing,” she said. “It wasn’t anything anybody said. It was the look on Martha’s face. Or maybe, that she wouldn’t look at him. You didn’t see that?”
Hannah thought for a moment. “I did. But it doesn’t mean that they’re fighting. Married people disagree.”
“You can say that again. Don’t laugh, you know it’s true,” Birdie said. “You and Ben get into arguments all the time.”
“And we get out of them again.”
“Yes,” Birdie said, her mouth twisting. “I know how you do that too.”
In her surprise Hannah gave a full laugh, but Birdie wasn’t at all put out.
She said, “Daniel likes getting Martha a little mad. He was thinking about it all the time you were putting those needles in.”
“Are you in the habit of reading Daniel’s mind?”
“Sometimes,” Birdie said quite seriously.
Hannah said, “Are you worried about Lily? You know she is doing very well. If we can keep her in bed, I think she will come through this pregnancy with a healthy baby.”
“Lots of women don’t,” Birdie said.
That was true, of course, and Hannah didn’t try to deny it. They had lost a mother and baby just months ago.
The path grew very steep and narrow, and so for the next part of the walk they were too busy staying on their feet to talk.
The woods gave way gradually until they were surrounded by speckled alder, silver maples, and elm. The ground got wetter and wetter underfoot and then they stood in the clear, on the edge of the swamp.
It should have been very familiar, but it was not. The storm had come down hard and the shoreline and water were littered with debris from the flood. Shattered trees piled together like a game of pickup sticks, boulders, and uprooted bushes.
“Look.” Birdie pointed to the remnants of a canoe hanging from a maple limb. “Gabriel’s.”
In spite of the damage, there was some comfort to be taken here in the certainty of another growing season. Human beings were the only ones who seemed to hold on to disaster. Birdie wondered why she hadn’t thought to come to the lake to watch the birds. It was her favorite thing about this time of year, to keep an eye out for mallards, white-winged scoters and all-black ones, teals and buffleheads and loons.
A black-winged duck was moving across the water with a dozen ducklings fanned out behind her. There would be nests tucked out of sight, but many of the birds they saw today would be gone very soon, continuing on their way north.
Hannah and Birdie went on, moving carefully over or around deadfall toward the sound of the beaver at work, great flat tails thumping the water. The debris and marsh stopped them just short of the point where the large stream that came off Hidden Wolf joined the lake.