12 

Moon Song, who seldom showed fear over anything, sprang up, whipped her knife out of her boot, grabbed Ayasha against her, and shoved her back against the back of the rock shelter, holding her baby with her left hand, her knife in her right.

He had no idea what was going on. “What’s wrong?”

“You hear?” Moon Song’s eyes were wide with fear.

“Hear what?” he said. “It’s quiet out. The wolves finally stopped that incessant howling. There’s nothing to hear now except the lake.”

Then he felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle, and even without turning around, he knew that something was standing directly behind him.

As Moon Song said, the wolves had quit howling.

This would not have meant a thing to him except for the fact that two women were cowering against the back of the shelter and something deadly was staring a hole through his back. He could almost feel the thing slavering as it anticipated the snap of its jaws around his neck. He’d heard many stories about wolves in the bunkhouses of lumber camps late at night and had discounted most of them. The veteran shanty boys enjoyed making up bloodcurdling tales to frighten greenhorns.

When he first came into the northwoods, he had made it his business to find out from a couple trappers he trusted just how dangerous these wolves were. He was told that they were relatively shy, incredibly intelligent animals and under normal circumstances did not attack humans.

Unless they were hungry . . . like right after they had gotten through a long winter.

Or unless the prey was a woman.

Or a small child.

The only weapon he had was fire. Slowly, he reached for one of the larger tree limbs they’d stuck into the fire earlier. With no axe to cut wood into smaller sections, they had been feeding the larger tree limbs into the fire a little at a time. Now he slowly grasped it in both hands and lifted it, dripping a trail of sparks and embers behind it while turning to face the thing standing behind him.

The wolf was gray, and up close, it looked like a rangy dog, except this animal was bigger than any dog he had ever laid eyes on. He had never seen a wolf close-up before, not close enough to measure against himself. The top of this wolf’s head came nearly to the middle of his chest, and when he looked into those yellow eyes, it was as though he were looking into an intelligent, malevolent force.

There was going to be a battle tonight, and it was a battle he wasn’t sure he could win. Except he had no choice. He had to win it. There were three lives behind him that he had to protect. His only weapons were this half-burned tree limb, the muscle and sinew in his arms, and his bare hands.

The large wolf was standing stiff-legged now, its ears forward, its hackles raised, and yet it did not attack. Instead, it looked almost as though it were smiling.

Then he heard a scream.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that it was not Isabella screaming this time. It was Moon Song, backed up against the rock wall, as far away as she could get from the outer perimeter of the shelter, and he saw why—several gray shadows were skulking toward her as she held Ayasha in her arms.

The large, leader wolf had chosen him as the biggest threat and was deliberately keeping him distracted while his wolf minions stalked the two women and the baby. These wolves were not shy, and they were not afraid of humans. They wanted food and saw an easy supply.

Her grandmother had worked hard to teach her to be courageous. Fallen Arrow said that women needed twice the courage of men. Unfortunately, she had one fear that she could not rid herself of—her terror of wolves. Where that fear had come from, she did not know, but it was very real, and right now, it was serious.

Her knees felt weak as she backed away from the silently moving shapes skulking about. They wanted her and they wanted her baby, and the more fearful and cringing she appeared, the more a target she became in their eyes.

She knew this—and yet she could not make the hand with which she held her knife stop shaking.

“Let me hold Ayasha,” Isabella whispered hoarsely. “Then you will be free to fight if they come.”

Moon Song gladly handed Ayasha over to Isabella. As young as he was, he seemed to sense the terror in the air, but instead of crying like many babies would, he kept silent and watched all that was going on with eyes too wise for his age. A faint part of Moon Song’s brain saw that even at eight months, her son had more courage than most. He would make a great brave someday. Perhaps he would even lead their people. Her life at that moment became unimportant compared to protecting his.

Watching those animals milling about, stalking her, staring at her with the light of the campfire reflected in their yellow eyes, brought a great terror. Her heart pounded so furiously she wondered if it might explode, but it was no longer fear for herself. Her life had ceased to matter to her. The terror was for her son. The wild protectiveness that came with loving a child gave her the strength to face the wolves with steadiness and calm. She held her knife, ready to fight to the death.

Then she saw the leader wolf leap straight at Skypilot.

She had seen Skypilot swing an axe before. She’d admired the way he used those massive arms and shoulders to fell trees that would have taken lesser men days to chew through even with the sharpest of axes. There was power in those arms, and skill. There were those at camp who had boasted that Skypilot could split a toothpick with his axe.

She wished he had an axe now. The wolves would have stood no chance against Skypilot with an axe in his hands, but all he had was that tree limb. He swung just as the wolf leaped, and struck it square in the shoulder, making it spin out into the night.

The leader wolf was not used to being thwarted in its plans. With a vicious growl, it leaped again, as fast as lightning. Once again, Skypilot struck it a full blow.

The lesser wolves saw the attack and edged closer to Skypilot.

It was a scene she would remember for the rest of her life—the vision of that big man, his legs planted firmly in place, fighting off the wolves with nothing except a sturdy tree limb and his bare hands. He swung over and over. She saw wolves’ bodies flying through the air, but there was always another to take their place.

Then tragedy struck. The limb broke in half, and the stub was not enough for him to use for protection. There was nothing left in the shelter that was an appropriate length, and they were hours away from daylight.

The leader wolf saw the situation and began to creep closer and closer. One of Skypilot’s blows had made one leg go lame, and it limped as it went toward him while Skypilot looked around frantically for something to use as a weapon.

“Here!” She tossed him her knife. It left her defenseless, but all she could think about was getting a weapon into Skypilot’s hands. If he did not survive, there was no chance for the rest of them.

He caught the knife just as the wolf once again launched itself straight at him. Its great front paws hit his chest, knocking him over, and Skypilot was down.

Just as its great jaws were closing over Skypilot’s throat, she found herself standing over it with a large rock in both of her hands, ready to bring it crashing down on the wolf’s head.

Then she saw it fall over sideways, and Skypilot crawled out from under it.

“Thanks for the loan of the knife.” He stood up. “Looks like the rest of the pack decided to reconsider.”

Hardly able to believe her eyes, she glanced out at the darkness and saw no sign of wolves. As silently as they’d come, they’d melted back into the forest.

“Are you all right?” He tipped her chin back and looked deep into her eyes.

“I think you die,” she said. “I think we all die. I think we be food for wolves.”

He chuckled. “I’d have given those wolves a really big bellyache if they’d tried.”

No Chippewa or Menominee brave could have fought any harder. This big man had saved her and her baby’s life. Her overwhelming gratitude, combined with an enormous feeling of relief, overcame her good sense. She practically flew at him, grabbing his head, bringing it down toward her for a kiss. He was surprised, but it took less than a second for him to respond. He dropped the knife, wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet, deepening the kiss that she had initiated.

When they finally pulled apart, they gazed into one another’s eyes with a mixture of awe, surprise, and wonder. He was the first to break the spell.

“Where did that come from?”

She had no words. She did not know. That was the last thing she had expected to happen. He set her down gently, and she backed away from him, almost like she had backed away earlier from the threat of the wolves.

No one said a thing, not even Isabella. Moon Song grabbed Ayasha out of her arms and laid down on the ground and curled herself around her child as the silence grew thick and heavy.

She was staggered by what had just happened. That kiss was not just about relief and gratitude. That was the kiss of a woman who was in love with a man, and her actions and fervor had stunned and shaken her even more than they had Skypilot. She had fought her attraction to him all winter in the lumber camp, and with good reason. This was not someone with whom she could allow herself to fall in love. They were too different, their lives had been too different. There was no way Skypilot could fit into her tribe, and she had already failed to fit into his.

Besides, to fall in love with a white man was to leave herself open to more heartbreak than she had the strength to endure.

French-Canadian men didn’t count. Many—although not all of them—were a little more liable to treat their Indian woman as a true wife and lifetime companion. Most had no desire to live anywhere else except the North. Some of them were more Indian than white.

Even though her husband had had a weakness for alcohol, when he was sober they got along well enough. They had much in common and she had never been afraid that he would abandon her.

Yankees or English men? Without realizing it, she made the same grunt of disgust her grandmother always made when she talked of this. They had a reputation of building families with Indian women while they were in the North country, but the minute they could go back to their homeland, they abandoned them. Sometimes with hardly a backward glance. It was called a “country marriage,” and since it had not been sanctioned by the church, the men figured there was no legal reason to worry about the wives and children they left behind.

Some of the men had a little more conscience than others. They would “trade off” their woman to another man, giving her and their children as a sort of gift to someone without a family. The woman, unless she was very strong willed or had a family that could take her in, had no recourse but to go with whomever her “husband” gave her to.

Moon Song finally fell asleep to the sound of the crackling fire, waking up from time to time to see Skypilot sitting vigil, keeping the fire alive. From what she could tell, he didn’t close his eyes all night.

The carcass of the wolf did not look appetizing, but he figured meat was meat.

“Are we going to butcher this thing?” he asked when Moon Song awoke.

“To eat?” Her eyes did not meet his.

“Of course to eat. We could roast it over the coals like you did that rabbit yesterday.”

“No.” She wrinkled her nose at the thought. “Wolf meat taste like mouse nest smells.”

Mouse nest? That was a puzzling thought. “Why?”

“Wolf lives on mouse in spring.”

“How do you know it hasn’t been living on other animals?”

Moon Song shook her head. “If he could find other animals, he not need to eat us.”

As they packed up to leave, he stood over the giant wolf for a moment. He supposed some men would take a souvenir to remember the battle they’d fought, but he had no desire to do so. He would be happy if he never remembered those blazing yellow eyes ever again.

He would much prefer to remember that kiss from last night. He was as surprised by his own response as he was by the fact that Moon Song had flown at him like she did. That had never been part of their relationship, and yet when their lips had touched, he felt as though some floodgate within his heart had been opened, and he wasn’t all that sure he could ever shut it again.

This journey, even apart from all the dangers, was turning out to be a lot more complicated than he had ever dreamed. He tried shoving away the feelings he’d had when he’d held Moon Song in his arms by trying to remember Penelope. Her lovely dresses. The smell of her expensive perfume. Her father’s library.

It didn’t help. No matter how hard he tried, he could not forget the way Moon Song had looked at him with such passion in her eyes. It made the few chaste kisses he’d shared with Penelope pale by comparison.

No, he would not be forgetting that kiss. Not soon. Not ever.

In some ways, it was hard to leave the rock ledge that had sheltered them and strike out for the unknown. He did not know where they would shelter come nightfall or what dangers they might be facing as they trekked north.

He felt a bit as he thought Moses and the Israelites might have felt as they faced the wilderness with no idea what challenges they would face.

“Lord, protect and keep us in the hollow of your hand,” he said as they departed.

“Amen,” Isabella responded.

Moon Song simply looked at him quizzically for a moment, then lifted Ayasha to her back and led them at a steady pace along the lakeshore.

Isabella tried hard, but she was not used to walking long distances. She didn’t complain, though; he would give her that much. There were much worse companions with whom he and Moon Song could have been left.

No one talked much as they walked. Hour after hour they followed Moon Song through the woods, on the lip of a cliff, down on the shore. Always with the lake in view. He agreed with Moon Song that their best bet was to follow the lakeshore. It would be foolhardy to take off cross-country even if it would cut off some miles. He hoped they would find something or someone who could help them long before they actually made it to Marquette. He did not think Isabella or her shoes could hold out for long.

At one point, Isabella began to hum a little tune.

“That’s nice,” he said. “What is it?”

“Oh, it’s just a little lullaby Archibald likes.”

He noticed she still spoke of her baby in the present tense.

They camped, if it could be called that, in a small glade around noon. Moon Song built a fire and fashioned a fishing spear again. A half hour later, she came to the fire empty-handed.

“Fish hide,” she said. “Try again later.”

Isabella didn’t complain about hunger, or anything else. Except for that short exchange about the lullaby, she didn’t talk or even seem to notice that she had companions.

They all kept an eye out for another place to camp that was as protected as the rock shelter they’d left, but nothing presented itself. By late afternoon, their hunger was so great that Moon Song halted their trek and went back out into the shallows of the lake again, standing in that cold water for over an hour. That hour produced only one fish, which she quickly cooked and divided into three pieces, all the time using her words sparingly, communicating only what was absolutely necessary. He would have talked with her about what had happened the night before, but the effect on him had been so profound, even he didn’t know how to give words to what he felt.

Isabella ate her portion of fish quietly, also without initiating any conversation. The woman he had met on the boat seemed to be disappearing.

He wondered if the change in Isabella’s behavior might be a delayed reaction to her grief.

The wisest choice for all of them as far as he could see was to keep putting one foot in front of the other until they got to a place where they could make sense of all that they had been through. Now was not the time for words. When it came to what had happened between him and Moon Song last night, he wasn’t sure there were any words.

The emotional terrain through which he was traveling was not an easy one, but neither was the physical one. He guessed they would do well to cover ten miles a day. With Isabella limping along on her broken shoes, probably less. At that rate, according to his very rough calculations, it could take them more than a week to make it to Marquette, assuming he was even close to correct on how far it was.

He prayed that they could continue their journey with no more visits from the wolves. He intended to continue to stop early enough to gather plenty of wood each night to keep a fire blazing—just in case. He also intended to sleep in the late afternoons while Moon Song foraged and fished, so that he could keep watch all night over the baby and women.

Each day consisted of the same thing: walking until Isabella gave out. They were starting to camp wherever Isabella lay down on the ground and refused to move. This was hard for Moon Song to accept because everything within her wanted to keep going.

Still, it was strange how quiet Isabella had become. Now, she seemed barely to notice she had companions. Moon Song wondered if fatigue and hunger could completely change a white woman’s personality. The one positive thing about the shortened days was Moon Song had more daylight every afternoon in which to fish.

Walking and fishing kept her from having to look at or talk to Skypilot. The easy camaraderie they had enjoyed for months had evaporated in that one moment. Unfortunately, she could still feel the kiss on her lips, could still feel the roughness of the short beard he had grown in the few days since he had appeared, clean-shaven, to keep her from killing old Stink Breath back in Bay City.

They camped early enough each afternoon to give her time to build a fire, fish, and forage for their dinner. They had fallen into the habit of Skypilot pulling out his water-stained, misshapen Bible, untying the leather string, and reading a story each night. This became a comforting routine. It felt familiar to her, hearing stories of great men and women. She had grown up hearing her own people’s stories around the campfire every night.

Tonight, she cuddled a sleeping Ayasha and waited eagerly for the story Skypilot would choose as he riffled through the Bible pages, looking for something to read to them. She had known little about this book until she met him, except a vague knowledge that it was sacred to some of the white people she had met.

She used to think the book held a list of rules, or even incantations. It had never once occurred to her that it was mainly a book of stories. She had shared this discovery with Skypilot as they walked along the shoreline, and he had told her that at heart, the book was a love story bridging thousands of years—a love story about the Creator and his great love for mankind. Skypilot told her that the Bible taught that the Creator was love and that in putting the need to love and be loved in people’s heart, he had shared a piece of himself.

This was something she pondered long and hard. The idea of love was high on her list of things to think about as they plodded along. Her affection for Skypilot was growing in spite of her determination to ignore it. It was getting harder to shove it away, though.

Skypilot was the most patient man she had ever known. Her husband had been handsome and brave—good traits in a husband—but he had also often been dismissive, abrupt, and easily annoyed. There had been times when she tried to share her thoughts with him about things that troubled her, and he had grunted and walked away.

This big white man listened as though what she said held importance to him. Each time she came back to their camp from fishing or foraging, he was happy to see her and listened carefully to every word she told him about her small excursion. It was obvious that the big lumberman respected her, and that knowledge made her walk just a little taller.

“Ah. Here’s a good one. I think you’ll like it,” he said. “Especially after what we’ve been through.”

He began reading the story of a man named Noah, who built a great boat and saved his family from a great flood. The more she heard, the more excited she became.

“My people tell same story,” she interrupted. “My people tell about a flood so big it cover the whole earth. Higher than mountains. Very, very long time ago.”

“I had no idea your people believed that.” Skypilot paused and stuck one finger in the Bible to hold his place. “Tell me more.”

Moon Song felt proud to share her people’s story with him. “A bad, evil snake cause a flood to fill world. A good man build big, big raft and put family and animals on it. Save lives. They on raft many days before floodwaters go away, but evil snake never come back. Great flood kill it and other evil things.”

“That’s really interesting,” Skypilot said. “Do your people have any other stories?”

“Oh, so many!” Moon Song exclaimed.

“Like what?”

“Lots of stories about Gitche Manido and others.”

Skypilot smiled at her enthusiasm. “And who is this Gitche Manido?”

“Gitche Manido is the Creator, or the Great Mystery,” Moon Song explained. “First sound he make is thoughts. His thoughts make moon, sky, stars, earth. Then he make other sound. His heartbeat. Life. Heartbeat put in every living thing. My people use drum to make heartbeat and honor Gitche Manido with ceremonies.”

Skypilot looked at her for such a long time that she thought she had said something strange. Perhaps she had been wrong to share so much of her people’s beliefs.

“I had no idea you believed in one Creator, Moon Song.”

“Somebody make all this.” She waved her hand around. “We call him Gitche Manido.”

“Does Gitche Manido have a son?” Skypilot asked.

“You mean like the man you call Jesus you talk about when we at the lumber camp?”

“Yes. Like our Jesus.”

“No, but we have Nanabozho.” She grinned. “Nanabozho is great trickster. Sometime he turn into big rabbit. We tell children many stories of Nanabozho.” She paused. “But I think he not real.”

Skypilot chuckled. “Well, our Jesus was not a trickster, and he definitely did not turn into a giant rabbit, and I’ve pretty much based my life on believing that he is real.”

“Could you two please stop talking now?” Isabella said. “I want to go to sleep.” Those were the first words Isabella had spoken all day.

“Of course.” Skypilot tied the string back around his Bible and put it in his pocket. “I apologize. We all need to get some rest.”

They had found a place on the beach where they could sleep on sand with their backs against another rock cliff and the fire throwing heat and flickering shadows against the stone. The beach was a softer place to sleep than they’d had previously, and exhausted by the walk and feeling comforted by the security of having the cliff behind them, Moon Song fell sound asleep while Skypilot kept watch for wolves.

Moon Song slept so deeply, she did not awaken until after the sun had crept above the horizon and found Skypilot shaking her.

“Do you know where Isabella and Ayasha are? I dozed off for a few minutes around dawn, and when I woke up, they were gone.”

Moon Song was instantly on her feet. She did not see Ayasha or Isabella. She searched in her mind for a good reason this should be, but there was nothing. Isabella had left their side only for the few minutes it took each day to relieve herself. Had she alone been missing, Moon Song would have assumed she was answering a call of nature, but there was no reason for her to take Ayasha with her.

The cradle board lay empty beside Moon Song. Isabella had evidently taken him in her arms. As Moon Song looked around, a trail of footprints led off toward the west.

“Look!” She pointed.

“Let’s go get them,” Skypilot said grimly.