The Endless Forest
Page 23

Just past dawn, and Elizabeth watched Nathaniel dressing to go down into the village. Into what had been the village. There would be search parties and salvage parties. Everyone strong enough to lift a shovel would be set to work digging what was left of Paradise out of the mud.
Elizabeth had dreamed of the women from the village wading through the mud, pulling out fine silver spoons and porcelain chargers rimmed in gold, beeswax candles by the dozens, delicate little mantel clocks, shoes with sapphire buckles, portraits of laughing children in ornate frames. Everything beautiful, sparkling clean.
She had come to give credence to dreams over the years. More often than not there was the spark of truth in them, but presented from such an odd angle that her waking mind could dismiss them. Many-Doves would have had much to say about this dream. It had been her gift, the ability to reach inside the images Elizabeth recalled in bright snatches, and pull out a single truth hidden among the silver and jewels.
In the village women would be digging in the mud for fragments of far simpler lives. Tin plate ware and barn clogs much mended. An old Farmer’s Almanac handed down from grandfather and father. A family Bible, a spinning wheel. Even the smallest thing precious.
She sat up suddenly.
“Boots?” Nathaniel half turned toward her. His hair was still unbound and it flowed over the bulk of his shoulders, black and silver in the firelight.
“I can’t stay abed, not with—not with the trouble in the village. I’m going with you.”
For a moment he considered arguing with her; she could see it working in his face. And then he gave it up as a lost cause.
When Nathaniel had a choice, he walked. Raised up by a father who looked like a white man but thought and acted like a Mahican, he had learned to value the silence of the forests, and the things that could be learned from them when a man was on foot. A horse was a fine creature, but of little use to a man who was out looking for game.
In fact, Elizabeth couldn’t remember the last time she had seen him mount a horse for so short a distance. But today he insisted on riding. And it made sense; the mud would be a foot deep and more.
Nathaniel rode Romeo, named by Birdie for his beauty, and for Elizabeth he saddled Pepper, a mule as dependable as the sunrise, and devoted to Elizabeth.
“Because you feed him apples.” Birdie wanted it recorded for posterity that her mother was willing to bribe mules for their good behavior, a tactic she never employed with children.
It was good to be out in the weather in the early morning, even such gray weather as this. And the birds were coming back. There was bird-song all around; veeries, thrush, phoebes, robins, all announcing their presence and claiming territory. She was very glad to be home.
The trip to Manhattan had been unusually difficult. First waiting for the ship to dock—three days, listening for the messenger who would bring word—and then so overwhelmed with the fact of her daughter that her mind could not be still, even when she slept. If things had gone differently—
Beside her Nathaniel said, “The best-laid plans.”
Elizabeth made a face at her husband. “It’s very rude, the way you read my thoughts.”
He grinned at her. “How does the rest of it go?”
“I can’t recall. How odd.” She frowned. “Once I would have remembered the whole poem, word for word.”
“You’ve got a lot less space in that head of yours than you used to. Close to thirty years of raising up a family and teaching don’t leave much room for poetry.”
He always knew how to distract her. Elizabeth straightened in the saddle to relieve the ache in her back, and said as much to him. “I don’t like to think of it that way, in years. Thirty years! That can’t be correct.”
It was a conversation they had often, but she had never been able to adopt Nathaniel’s matter-of-fact way of looking at things. Time moved on, and so must they.
They passed the Downhill House, and the smell of wood smoke and baking bread drifting from the chimney. Curiosity came to the kitchen window and waved a floury hand to them as they passed.
“I’d like to stop by to see Lily,” Elizabeth said suddenly.
Nathaniel made the thoughtful face, the one that meant he had reservations but would keep them to himself. That one expression was more effective than any argument; as much as Elizabeth liked to depend on reason in her deliberations, Nathaniel was far better at holding that line when it came to dealing with the children.
Then they came around a corner and saw the village, and for the moment all thought of Lily left her.
Elizabeth had imagined a flood as a lot of water pouring into a basin that eventually drained away through a plug at the bottom; the receding water would leave dirt and scum and unpleasantness. But what was before her was nothing as simple as that. What she saw before her was disaster.
The river had retreated far enough to release the schoolhouse, the smithy, and a few other buildings, but the meetinghouse and the trading post were closer to the Sacandaga and still stood in four good feet of water.
Between the new waterline and the place the horses had come to a stop, the ground was littered with debris. Whole trees, branches broken like toothpicks, great tangles of roots. Stones too big for a man to lift; slabs of ice, mud-covered and leaning together. Heaps of gravel that had yesterday been buried in the riverbed. Beaver traps, shingles, a pitchfork already rusting, a window frame with most of the glass knocked out, a half door. A whole henhouse, intact, filled with muddy carcasses. A piece of railing from the bridge that had been washed away. On top of a table half submerged in mud sat a battered tin cup. A length of linen, twisted like a ribbon. A child’s shoe.