He was right. Of course he was right. Blaine found herself savoring the memory, less than a full day old as it was. She’d smiled with Dacey when Blue trotted back to their small fire and threw himself down, pressing his stomach against the cool earth, his tongue lolling far over the side of his mouth. His hoarse panting covered the baying of his packmates, the rhythms of which Blaine had just started to understand. Occasionally, as he cooled, Blue looked her way and gave a hopeful thump of his tail. Finally Dacey absently patted the ground and the dog went to curl up next to him and Mage.
The dogs had run for a few hours, and then their barking changed. Even Blaine could tell they weren’t moving anymore. “Are you going to kill the fox?” she’d asked as Dacey sat and listened.
“Not tonight. It’s for fun tonight.” He patted the horn at his side. “I’ll let ’em bark down that hole for a while and then call ’em in.”
And that’s what they’d done. Sat atop the mountain under the stars, listening to the night music until Dacey lifted the horn and made it moan through the trees.
Just recollecting the sound made her shiver even now, in full daylight — though not in the same way of the eerie howling that had started this whole adventure. It was a call of fellowship, one that had triggered Blue and Mage into howling along, and it made her shiver because...it was so right somehow. Primal, but right.
Blaine forced herself back to the present. She and Dacey had been traveling since early morning, after a surprisingly satisfying, if brief, sleep on the ridge. Burdened with supplies — even Blue carried a little pack, the only dog big enough to do so — they stopped for a full-blown lunch. They had things to eat before they went bad. And now she sat, full, her knife hovering uncertainly over the garment.
For she’d had it. She was full sick of hiking in these skirts, of tangling up in them and having to jerk them high to get any climbing done. She had Dacey’s needle, and his thread — she’d been thinking on this for days — and she’d determined to divide the full skirts down the middle and sew them up split.
Yet despite that determination, she hesitated, easily imagining Cadell’s scandalized cry and seeing Lottie mourn over good clothes ruined.
In sudden clarity, Dacey’s recent grim words came back to her. She’d never again see the very home she had left. Perhaps she’d never even again hear those familiar parental cries of objection.
The knife slid from suddenly nerveless fingers, but only long enough to fall into her lap. Then she snatched it up again and poked it into the wool, cutting carefully but steadily. When it was done she threaded up the needle and started the awkward process of mending the very clothes she was wearing.
Dacey stretched out longways on the hill — feet downhill, head up — and politely kept his gaze elsewhere while she sewed — big, rough stitches she promised herself she’d refine later — but Blue had no such manners. He wandered into their resting spot and straight over to the bit of high ground Blaine had chosen, intrigued by the unusual arrangement of the material — and of course without respect for the fact she was still wearing it, much as he had no respect for the fact that her braids were still attached to her head. He stuck his nose underneath the panel of wool and blew his cheeks out, tossing his head in the air to flip the cloth around.
“Hsst,” Blaine said, and waved a hand at him. “Quit, you old hound.”
Wffbt, he did it again, sending air through his nose and lips as he wagged his tail and played with the new toy.
“You’re rude,” Blaine hissed at him, ignoring Dacey’s quiet laugh. Blue left her to go to the amused, friendly sound, and she quickly bent back to her sewing. Uninterrupted, Blaine managed to finish her task without too much more time lost.
She stood and checked her handiwork. “What do you think?” she asked finally, looking upon herself. “Will Mommy faint?”
Dacey swiveled his gaze away from the treetops to cast a critical eye on her split-sewn skirt, looking like he’d known all along what she was up to. He was silent just long enough to start her hands on their way to her hips, and then shook his head. “Don’t reckon,” he said. “I’ve seen some fancy riding skirts like that, come from the south.”
“Woman wearing this in public, on purpose? I’d say that’s a great big fib.” But his gaze pivoted back to pin her, and she hastily added “’Cept I don’t reckon I’m worth that trouble.”
Dacey watched the trees — there were some kinglets flittering at one another, far above them — until Blaine had packed the needle away. Then he said, “Think highly on yourself, I’ve noted.”
Blaine backed against a slender poplar, her impulse to snap an answer quickly fading. She thought of her cousins — by the time you look old enough to marry, Blaine, you’ll be an old spinster, an’ your only bulges’ll be fat! She thought of her daddy, vexed at her sassy mouth or independent spells. And Lenie, trying so kindly like to make Blaine more like herself — more like she ought to be. At least Rand understood....or tried. And Mommy... if she wasn’t wondering whether Blaine was quite normal, she seemed too tired to care one way or another.
“I ain’t got no sense,” she told Dacey, though it was obvious the words were not her own. “And I’m as ugly as homemade sin.”
“You ain’t,” he said in a practical voice. “And what does that have to do with how you think on yourself?”
Blaine stuck her chin in the air. It was supposed to be defiant, but even she knew it was only to hide a permanent hurt. “They don’t tell Lenie things like that.”
“I’ll bet Lenie don’t pay ’em no mind if they do.” He gave her one of those see-right-through-you looks. “It’s what you think of yourself that matters, Blaine, not the trouble others give you for being you.”
She didn’t answer. Even if she knew what she thought of herself, she’d be hard put to stand against what she heard from the others day after day.
“Do you think,” Dacey started again, his voice cutting the still air as though he’d never paused, “that Lenie could have made the walk from your home to mine? Would she have come back to that camp to see if I was all right? How ’bout your cousins? Would any of ’em have slid down that hill in the rain to cut me loose?” He looked at her, and he sounded almost angry. “Let ’em talk, Blaine. Let ’em talk.”
~~~~~
Ascending to the Sky Mountain Gap hit them both hard, and they rested an extra day at the summit. It was a rugged, wearying climb, and Blaine hated to think about going over the ridge proper. But after that, after their supplies had dwindled and they started foraging along the way again, the going seemed almost easy — back to ridgeline travel that quickly carried her toward home. And Blaine found that she had other things to sustain her, now, things she clung to as she got closer to a home that wouldn’t ever be as she remembered. All she had to do was think of the look on Dacey’s face when he’d said those words. Let ’em talk, Blaine. If he believed in her, maybe one day she could, too.
And in the meanwhile they closed in on Shadow Hollers. Except —
“This don’t look familiar,” she said as they stopped to get their breath at the height of the afternoon a fair week after they’d set out. “I don’t remember coming down this big ridge when we were going to your cabin.”
“Right you are,” Dacey said, pausing with his hand on Mage’s head, as ever. He gave her a brief and tired smile. “I’m bringing us around to the west of your area instead of the east, where we left from. Didn’t seem real smart to stumble right back in the way they chased us out.”
“Are we close, then?”
“Day or so,” Dacey shrugged. “But we’re not going in as soon as we get there.”
“How can we help if we just watch?” To be so close, and not do anything...
“We can’t help nobody if we blunder into the Annekteh first thing. We got to take stock of things, Blaine. Got to see how things stand, what’s the best thing for us to do.”
Blaine sighed, leaned against a thick oak and rubbed her shoulder where the pack strap had done a good job of making a raw spot over her collarbone. “You got something up your sleeve, Dacey Childers, and I wish you’d tell me what it is.”
He raised an eyebrow; it was meant to profess ignorance, even if it fooled neither of them. Blaine said crossly, “You know what I mean. One minute we don’t have any defense against them and the next we’re waiting so’s to best get at ’em. Anyway, you wouldn’t have come all the way back here if the best we could do was chuck stones at ’em. I been real good about this, waiting for you to tell me. But now I’m asking.”
“Don’t trust me no more?”
“No. Well, yes, but...give a body some peace, Dacey!” Blaine thumped her heel into the tree behind her, awkward under his gaze but determined.
“There are reasons, Blaine.” He watched her frustration a moment, like he might say something else, but in the end ended their respite by shaking his head again — once, regretfully — and following Mage’s limp along the mountain.
Reasons. She scowled at his back, and impulsively stuck her tongue out at it. Childish it may have been, but she felt so much better she did it again. She waited until he was just out of sight, and pushed herself away from the oak to follow. Unlike their first journey, she was entirely comfortable following the slight trail scuff of his soft-soled boots in the winter-dampened groundcover of last fall’s leaves. If she ever lagged too far, Blue came back to see if she was doing anything interesting — all proud, with his silly half-filled packs — so there was no worry about getting lost. And she liked walking alone as much as walking with Dacey’s silent company.
It was, after all, something she’d been doing for years.
The next day Dacey left her to scout ahead, so she knew they were close. Although she couldn’t identify the individual ridges around her, they had a familiarity, a pattern she had always seen and would always recognize as home. But now she had other hill formations in her mind, as well: the intimidating rise of Sky Mountain, abrupt and clifflike on one side, sloping and more accommodating on the other. The wider valleys and less sharply sloped hills of Dacey’s home hills, rambling along in less well-defined ridge formations. And in her mind and dreams, a new awareness of a place where there were no hills, where the ground was flat and grassy.
Blaine waited for what seemed a whole day while Dacey scouted, though the sun above her seemed to think it was still only just past noon. Blue stayed with her, and Dacey had left his coat on the ground, to which the other dogs periodically returned. His pack was there as well, considerably bigger than hers. She poked through both of them, dispiritedly noting that unless she supplemented the mid-day meal, it would be cornbread and dried meat for their dinner again.
The sleeping lump of Blue caught her eye. If that big dumb hound could occasionally supply them with fresh meat, she ought to be able to do the same. She knew enough to recognize a rabbit run when she saw one, and could at least make a few snares. Blaine rose to her feet and secured the packs in a tree — not good enough to keep them from bear, but enough to discourage the dogs — and she trusted them to discourage anything else. She tried to creep away without attracting Blue’s attention — free of his packs, he was looking for amusement — and for a while she thought she’d succeeded, but soon enough he lumbered from the trees to fall in beside her, plenty pleased with himself.
“Come on, then,” she said ungraciously, as if she had a choice. She walked the ridge in his company, trying to put everything — Annekteh especially — out of her mind, thinking only about rabbits and rabbit terrain, and not about the fact that these hills were no longer quite the sanctuary that they had been. She hadn’t hiked long when a slash of sun through the trees caught her eye.
Without thinking she pointed it out to the dog and he thudded happily down the slope, used to directions from Dacey. She followed more carefully, and discovered the cause of the clearing while Blue was eagerly snuffling around in the thick berry briars that had grown up in it. A lightning-struck oak lay scattered, its grave washed in the sunlight; young oak saplings reached up for the patch of sky, sharing the space with intermediate growth like the briars.
Rabbits. No doubt about it. She crossed her arms and contemplated the best spot for her snares.
Blue’s yelp startled her, annoying and alarming at the same time. Now where had he got to? More important, what had he got into? Blaine circled the briars with some haste, searching out his whine.
There he was, in the thickest of it. “It’s a rabbit run, Blue,” she said. “You’re a dog. A big dumb one, at that.” He’d been trailing one of the creatures, no doubt, forging through the thorny labyrinth until he’d hit a tight turn and found himself suddenly jabbed from all directions. From within the thicket he gazed mournfully at her, his eyes rolling white and the tip of his tail wagging with much hope.
It was the tail that did it, the way its white-flagged tip wiggled at the sight of her despite the way the rest of it was held fast. Her mouth twitched in a smile. “All right,” she muttered, already knowing that she would regret it.
Knife in hand and cutting herself free along the way, she carefully moved in on him, shedding blood of her own for her trouble. Twice she had to cut her clothes free of the tough canes, but when she finally reached him, it was the work of moments to get him loose. Blue backed out of the run with her, and only hesitated long enough to rub against her once, shake off, and trot to the head of another run.
“Oh, no you don’t.” She grabbed him and used the phrase she had heard from Dacey. “No good, Blue, no good.”
He plumped his bottom on the ground, his brow wrinkling in sorrow. With the burn of her own scratches to strengthening her resolve, she easily ignored him, putting herself between him and the briars as she pulled a few strands of wool from the ragged seam in her skirt, braided them, and began the construction of a snare with one the of oak saplings around the edge of the briars.
“What’re you doing?”
Blaine jumped back from the snare, catching her skirt on a briar and stumbling over her own feet. She ended up on her rump, staring up at the boy who had spoken.
She didn’t recognize him. He was of her own height but sturdier, endowed with nondescript hair and features — aside from a pair of ears that stuck out just a mite too far. But his clothes and short bow were of the sort she’d seen all her life, and she was sure he was from around here. She might have even seen him once or twice at gatherings.
“I’m setting a snare,” she said finally, not without some indignation. “Which is a lot better than sneaking up behind somebody.”
“Sneakings the only way to move around these hills lately,” he drawled, with a great show of being relaxed while he kept his distance. “Say, ain’t you one of Cadell Kendricks’ girls?”
“What iff’n I am?” Blaine spoke with much airiness, trying to offset the fact that she was sitting on her bottom looking up at him. Getting up didn’t seem to be a great idea, considering that she was still snagged. Wouldn’t that present an amusing picture.
Then she thought of the Annekteh, and Dacey’s caution that she wouldn’t be able to tell who was and who wasn’t Taken, and she began to pick at the briars that held her, trying for a casual air, even more casual than the boy.
Not an easy task. He said, as indifferent as she could imagine, “Then you’re a piece from home. I’m Trey Mullins. Seen you a couple o’ times at the meeting hall, I reckon, but not many. Suppose you tell me what you’re doing in my parts?” And, finally, his posture had stiffened; the request was just a touch on the far side of politeness.
“Ain’t none of your business, I don’t reckon,” Blaine said, panicking inside. Annekteh, he had to be.
Both young people froze at the sound of an ominous rumble, looking to each other with accusation and suspicion. A slightly louder rumble made them both look to Blue. The noise reverberated in his chest, and with raised hackles and curled lip, he was nothing Blaine wanted to be on the wrong side of. “Blue!”
Then she thought again, and smiled at Trey. “I really don’t have any control over him,” she explained, with all the regret she could muster.
Dacey’s clear baritone rang down into the sunlight. “Blue.”
Blaine sighed, muttering, “But he does,” not caring if Trey heard her.
“Blaine?” Dacey questioned her with the single word, giving Blue another stern look as he closed in on them. The dog quieted, although his hackles remained spiked above his shoulders. Mage limped down and sat next to Dacey in his perpetual spot at the man’s right, regarding Trey with only a moment’s interest.
“I’m setting a snare so we might could have something other’n dried meat for dinner,” Blaine said.
“And just look what you caught,” Dacey said dryly. “Who is he?”
“Lives a couple hollers away from my folks. I don’t know what he’s doing here... maybe he’s Annekteh, Dacey?”
“I am not!” Trey said hotly.
Dacey shook his head, passed his hand over Mage’s head. “No, I don’t reckon he is.”
“How do you know?” Trey and Blaine asked at the same time. They glared at one another.
“Ain’t you the one that’s missing?” Trey said to her, still sporting a fine hateful face. “What’re you doing here? Don’t you know your folks has give up on you?”
“If they’d only ever listened to me in the first place —” Blaine snapped back, but stopped. That wasn’t fair. It was Rand who hadn’t listened, and it just pained her so much to think about her folks that striking out was easier than facing up to it. She picked at a briar, freed it from her skirt.
Trey let it pass; he’d honed in on Dacey. “Who the Spirits are you? Someone fancies himself an expert on the Annekteh? Don’t mean nothing to me. I’m telling you now, I don’t aim to let you cause trouble for us.”
Dacey eyed him back, and there was something about his look that made Blaine think of Mage when he was about to show Chase or Blue their true place in the dog pack. “Let me put this plain. I’m the only hope you got of freeing yourselves from the Takers. You’d best think about how to help us, not about throwing threats at us.”
Trey waited, arms crossed. “You ain’t told me nothing, yet. Who are you? You got some stake in this, you better convince me of it.”
“I got the same stake as anyone else,” Dacey said, and his voice grew hard. Didn’t like to be pushed, Blaine thought, surprised at this side of him, and even proud of it. “More so, maybe. No one forced me to come up here and take your part in things, but I come, and you’re a fool to walk away from that. I’m from the old seer’s line is all you need to know, and where I met up with Blaine don’t make no never mind.” He looked Trey up and down. “You’re smart, you’ll see we’re your best chance to save Shadow Hollers.”
Trey snorted. “You take yourself too serious.”
“That’s my problem. You going to help?”
“How?” Trey asked, suspicion narrowing his eyes.
“Meet me regular and tell me about their doings — of their habits, or any plans you get wind of. Take a look at your neighbors and make sure they ain’t Taken, let me know if they are.” Dacey paused, but Trey didn’t say anything, just waited. Blaine, riveted to their conversation, forgot that her bottom was growing damp from the ground, ceased worrying at the briars. “Some food’d make it easier to hide up here, if we ain’t have’n to traipse around looking for it ourselves. Oh — and I need to know if they got pistols.”
Trey stared at him a moment, taken back. “You don’t ask for much. How do I know you’re not —” the thought was occurring to him too late, and he knew it.
Dacey grinned. “Let me touch you.”
“No need,” Trey said hastily, and then gave Dacey a troubled look. “It don’t really matter. I don’t trust you, one way or the other.”
Dacey gave him a hard look. “And I don’t trust you, either. For all I know you’ll go running down that mountain and tell the Annekteh of us. You want to make it back home, you’d best convince me you’ll work with us.”
Trey startled; he’d clearly not even considered this possibility. Finally, he said, slow and careful, “I don’t reckon I have to trust you just yet. Iff’n you ain’t nothing, you’ll do no harm out in these woods. Iff’n you’re something...well, then, maybe you’ll be of some help after all. I ’ll give you that much.” And he squared his shoulders some, waiting to see what Dacey would make of it.
Dacey gave him a grin, one that clearly startled him. “That’s a might better answer than playing like you’ll throw right in with us.” Us, he’d said. Blaine liked that. “Don’t reckon I trust you, either. But it’s a start. You go off and see if you can round up some of the things we need. And tell me — they got guards around, or patrols?”
“Some. They don’t range as much, since...well, they kept tangling with trap lines.” Trey’s answer was reluctant, his belief in Dacey shallow.
“Do they know everyone? Would they know if someone new showed up?”
“Reckon they would — the Taken, at least. They seem to swap knowing stuff pretty easy, an’ if one of ’em don’t know us, another ’un would. The regular men know most of us by sight, I’m thinkin, iff’n you don’t count the children.” He shifted, twiddled with the knife strap some more, an uneasy expression coming over his face; he glanced quickly at Blaine and then away.
“That’s a start.” Dacey gave a single nod, his thoughts going inside for a moment. Blaine knew the look, knew he’d be quiet with those thoughts for some time now. But he gave Trey one final look, his eyes clear in the bright sunshine. “You keep in mind — you go home and tell what you’ve learnt today, you won’t be doing anyone any favors.”
“Still think you take yourself kind of serious,” Trey said, making a face. “But I’ll keep hushed. It ain’t worth the trouble I might cause even if you ain’t no one.”
“That means Blaine’s folks, too. Don’t let on she’s alive.”
“Dacey, no!” Blaine lifted her head, stricken.
“I’m sorry, Blaine,” he said gently. “But you know I’m right. You ain’t put yourself in no safe place by throwing in with me. And we can’t give them any cause for wondering about us.”
“But —” she started. “But —” But he was right, even if he didn’t say right out what he meant. She might yet be dead before this was over.
“You mean go on letting ’em think they’ve lost two?” Trey said, scowling and unwilling.
“Two?” Blaine said blankly. “What’re you talking about, two?”
Trey’s dismay knocked the scowl right off his face. For an awkward moment he didn’t say anything, and when he did speak it was to Dacey. “I’ll keep hushed,” he repeated.
“Two?” demanded Blaine.
Dacey shook his head at Trey. “You’ve done stuck your foot in it. You’d better tell her all.”
Abashed, Trey spent a long moment staring at the ground. When he did raise his eyes, he looked more through Blaine than at her.
“It was your brother,” he said. “They used him as an example, so we wouldn’t give them no trouble. He’s...dead.”
Dead! Blaine’s hands curled into fists, scrunching up the skirt she’d been trying to free. “Rand?” she said faintly.
Trey’s forehead wrinkled. “That don’t sound right,” he said. “It was William or some such... he was the only one. That’s all it took.”
“Willum!” Her voice barely raised...but inside, something screamed. Tears spilled down a face which felt dead and strangely expressionless. “He was only a baby,” she said, as if it would make Trey change his words.
“I know,” Trey said, still not looking at her. “We all know. It’s part of what’s kept the rest of us in line.”
Dacey drew Trey a few steps away from Blaine’s grief. “You mean to tell me that’s all they’ve done? They’ve killed one child, and touched no one else?”
Trey grew abruptly withdrawn, and fiddled with the thigh strap to his knife. He deliberately kept his eyes on Blaine as she finished untangling herself, carefully and thoroughly slicing the offending branches to slivers as she ignored the tears on her face. “No, that ain’t all they’ve done. But mostly they leave us be...as long as things are going the way Nekfehr likes it.”
Dacey digested the information, shook his head — this time to himself — and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, lost in thought. “Blue,” he said absently as the big ticked dog sniffed anxiously at Blaine and made a hesitant move in her direction; she ignored them all, dazed, taking in events like she was using somebody else’s eyes. At Dacey’s voice Blue sat next to Mage, plainly worried; Dacey gave his ears a quick, absent rub.
Blaine carefully folded her knife and climbed to her feet. She barely noticed Trey’s attention to her odd skirts, and had little interest in his comment to Dacey as she moved out of the briars. Willum. That’s all she could think of. Willum. Hardly old enough to do more harm than squash a bug and they’d killed him.
With a sudden, nearly physical blow, Blaine’s old dream rushed in on her. The trees built momentum, crashing to the ground, tangling, rolling — rushing down toward the Kendricks homestead.
Willum was there, his chubby face contorted in fear. “Blaine!” he shrieked, terror distorting his voice into a high keen.
“Willum!” she cried, and ran for him, reaching out to scoop him up as each step forward took her further and further away. “No! Willum!”
Deeply startled, she stared at Dacey. If you’ve got seeings, you’ll learn to sort them out... What other dreams had she had, the ones that seemed too real? Hadn’t he been in one? And Rand? She scrambled around her memories, trying to find visions she had once worked hard to forget. She thought...she thought —
Trey’s voice scattered the tenuous recollection, as he cleared his throat and tried to move past the moment. “I can get you food,” he said, and something had changed in his voice, as if being a part of Blaine’s grief had tipped his trust their way. “Be hard to bring much without getting questions from my ma, but I can get some. And no, they ain’t got pistols. They barely take to bows — afeard of ’em, the Takers are, even if they don’t say it.”
“Hoped as much,” Dacey said. “Can’t grab hold of someone and Take ’em, iff’n you can’t get close enough to touch ’em.”
“About them other things — well, I’ll do my best. Don’t know what good it’ll do you.”
Dacey didn’t take the invitation to elaborate. “We’ll be here early morning. Will you?”
“Can’t get away every day. I got hunting to do. And they keep track of us, sometimes.” But he nodded, and his face showed reluctant agreement.
“You’ll have time enough to hunt.” Dacey cast a concerned eye on Blaine, touched her arm, seeing if she were ready to go and practically turning her to do so even as he asked one last question. “You got any dogs?”
“Couple o’ hounds,” Trey said. “Mostly tree.” He nodded to the top of the ridge; for the first time Blaine saw a redbone, hanging back as aloof as Mage could be, watching them.
“Plainsfolk won’t know the difference. Iff’n you hear ’em asking about dogs running the hills, you tell ’em yours got loose. Don’t want ’em to wonder about mine.”
Trey nodded, and moved uneasily, and ducked his head. “I’ll come back tomorrow, then, with some food. Just don’t do nothing to change my mind ’bout you, hear?” He gestured to his dog, and headed up to follow the ridge north.
Blaine barely noticed him go.
~~~~~
Blaine spent the afternoon fiddling with the fire and trying to warm her toes, quietly crying, full of unbidden images of Willum. Willum at three, and never the chance to get any older. Willum with his bugs and boasts, all boy, keeping the whole family running to make sure he stayed out of trouble.
She simply couldn’t imagine that she would never see him again. That she hadn’t even have the chance to say good-bye, to be with her family when they’d consigned him to the ground, his young spirit to join the rest of those that lived among these hills.
Dacey foraged through the afternoon, dropping off more wood for her fire, offering a hand on her shoulder, dropping off a mess of young nettles to boil up for supper. He settled in at camp when the hounds took off after an early fox, making the hills ring, and gave her what privacy he could, immersing himself in the construction of a lean-to, pausing only when the trail cry faltered. When the hounds worked out the puzzle and took off again — even Blaine could hear it was Whimsy in front, with her clever nose — he smiled to himself and returned to work.
Blaine wiped her eyes then, annoyed and even surprised when they immediately welled up again with tears, as if off on some mission of their own and not paying any attention to the fact that she’d decided to boil up those nettles. Blue was still off on his halfhearted chase of the fox, and Mage had long since moved away from her awkward patting to pace around the camp area, lifting his nose to the breeze and licking it to freshen the scent he winded. Pining after the chase, she figured, wiping her own wet nose.
But Mage found the scent he wanted, and his hackles rose. His head lifted, his jaw dropped just enough to let the sound out. At first she heard no sound, just a prickling at the nape of her neck. Then his voice lifted in a clear, rising moan that was at once beautiful and terrifying.
Blaine froze. She’d heard that sound before, the one that had haunted her up out of sleep and inspired her to go check on those strangers again. Dacey, too, stopped to watch his dog, wearing a grim sort of pride that Blaine couldn’t understand.
Blithely unaware of the scrutiny, Mage repeated his statement twice, then went to curl up where Dacey knelt by the lean-to.
“Why’d he do that?” Blaine asked after the quiet that followed, her voice still thick from all her tears. Only the faint, distant baying of the other hounds disturbed the silence. “I heard him before, too. Before...all this.”
“It’s just his way of saying he’s scented his prey and is ready for the hunt.” Dacey gave his dog a speculative look, one that told Blaine he wasn’t so sure as he sounded. He tossed some dried bark fuzz into the air and watched it drift with the slight breeze. “More homesteads that way, Blaine?”
“I’m still not just sure where we are,” Blaine said. “But if we’re due east of my homeplace, then north of us is the mouth of the creek and the river, and where our meeting hall is.” She imitated Dacey’s actions and watched three times as the fluff of bark floated away from the north. “I guess being up here on this ridge puts us clear, though...they ain’t gonna get none of our smoke.”
“I’m hoping not.”
Of course he’d already taken the vagaries of the wind into account. Of course. She closed her mouth tightly and vowed to quit trying to help someone who didn’t really need it. “Don’t understand why you keep me here. Ought to be a way to get me back home, secret-like. I ain’t any help to you.”
“You ain’t in the way, either,” Dacey responded easily. He gave her a wry smile, a touch of self-deprecating of humor in his eyes. “Truth be told, iff’n it was safe to take you home, I’d have it that way, but it ain’t. And having you here...keeps me from feeling alone.”
Alone? Dacey? But he was that kind, wasn’t he? He chose to be alone...didn’t he?
Then he grinned, just a little bit of tease lurking there. “Besides, you can take right good care of yourself, I’ve noted. I reckon I’ll need your help before it’s done.”
Blaine stared into the fire and didn’t answer him. She longed to be doing anything besides sitting here, thinking. About Willum. About her role in the days to come — dreading it, and at the same time, dreading the thought that she didn’t really have one.
The shelter caught her eye, almost done, with the long evening twilight dimming its back corners. Empty back corners. It seemed Dacey hadn’t thought about bedding.
That was something she could do.
“Going for bedding,” she announced abruptly, and took his big sheath knife. Circling north of the point, she went in search of hemlocks and some fine, springy branches. The north-facing slope held a grove of them, as was often the case; Blaine set to work, cutting a few selected branches from the younger trees and leaving them scattered around the grove as she went, breathing deeply of the fresh sap. When she reckoned she had enough — which she judged more by the fact that her fingers were as sticky as she wanted them to get than by an accounting of branches — she shoved the knife and sheath down against the waistband of her skirt and found a piece of forked deadwood. Dragging it from tree to tree, she jammed her boughs against the fork, hurrying as the twilight faded. When she had so many they spilled off her stick no matter how careful she was, she turned back for the campsite.
And hesitated. She’d come further than she’d meant to. And as she paused she caught a sudden lungful of spilled bowel and bloody meat, startling herself with the discovery of a deer carcass just outside the grove. Deer carcass, but not with the skin torn up and eaten along with the rest of it, but with that turned inside-out look that a bear left to its meal.
Oh, spirits. Hungry spring bear.
A low, coughing growl made her stiffen. Behind her. Unhappy sounding.
Blaine peered cautiously over her shoulder and wished she hadn’t. The sight of the bear was enough to take the strength from her legs. From anybody’s legs. It wasn’t a huge bear — downright skinny bear — but it looked big enough, staring at her from those small, cold bear eyes and making an irritated noise deep in its throat.
“Nice bear,” she said, from a dry mouth that only let half the sounds out. Stupid, the same dry-mouthed voice squeaked inside her head. Stupid, so close to a bear claim and not even knowing it. The bear stood tall on its hind legs, shifting from one to the other, clacking its jaws at her, working up some foam, nodding in a jerky, spookily human way.
She trembled, afraid to move, afraid not to. Maybe just one, quivering, uncertain step....
Wrong. The bear dropped down and snarled terribly at her, slinging its head, slinging spit.
Blaine shrieked and darted forward, her hemlock forgotten, the noise of the bear’s pursuit filling her world. Tree, tree, tree!
With the bear’s breath warming her heels, Blaine spotted the black barked spire of a small black cherry and she leapt for it, shinnying up its rough skin. No lower branches, they’d all been broken off by —
Black cherry. What was it that bears liked more than anything, would climb plenty high to get? Black cherries. And what had her daddy always told her? Bear comes around, don’t you run. Set up a ruckus, squall at it. Black bear don’t care enough to come through that.
But she’d already run. And she’d already climbed — was still climbing, fast as she could.
Oh, spirits...
She had to get further up than the bear would go. Young tree, skinny trunk...surely she could do that. Surely she could —
“Get away!” she screamed mindlessly at it, digging knees and ankles and arms against the rough bark, blessing her split skirts, and not daring to look down. The tree swayed with their weight; she ignored it...until it gave an ominous creak, dipping wildly against the slight bend in its trunk. She clutched it convulsively, squeezing her eyes shut, waiting to feel either claws or the sudden crack of the tree.
Nothing. Blaine dared a glance down and discovered the bear had stopped, too, its furry arms wrapped around the tree, for the moment looking as uncertain as she. Until it saw her looking, taking in the black glitter of its harsh coat, the soft brown of its face — even that was skinny — the furious curl of its amazingly mobile lips. Then it cared again, and lurched up at her.
I’m going to die. Either way, I’m going to die. Blaine glared downward, hurling an ineffective curse at the bear’s upturned face, kicking at its nose. It snarled back and swiped at her, snaring the heel of her boot and ripping leather — ripping the boot right off her foot. She shrieked, digging her toes into the bark as she scurried out of reach.
But her skin was torn, her arms were tired, her grip was loosening. The bear, enraged to see her just out of reach with the tree swaying in increasing, alarming circles, snarled at her, coughing hot breath on her ankle. “Gitgitgit!” she hollered, slipping down with the effort. She lifted her head and closed her eyes and bellowed, “Dacey!”
There wasn’t even a chance he would hear her.
She pressed herself against the crispy black bark and felt a new chill travel her spine as the cool handle of Dacey’s knife touched her stomach. A chill, and sudden hope. Blaine hugged the tree trunk with one arm, easing the knife out of her waistband, movement that triggered the bear into another round of frustrated threats; its wild swipe caught her hanging skirts, ripping out a chunk of material, sending the tree into violent movement; they both clutched at it. Perversely, half out of her mind with fear, she growled back at it. And then she slipped again, and there was no more choice —
With a yell for courage, she dropped back and drove the heavy knife down, into the bear’s eye.
The bear stiffened. It jerked and slid and fell away from the trunk, landing with a thump and crack that Blaine felt through her suddenly tenuous grip. She was nearly upside down, torn away from the tree with her effort. Only one hand was close enough to scrabble at the bark; for a moment she thought she would come down the tree and land headfirst on the bear — unmoving, was it dead? — but she managed to right herself, wrapping each limb tightly around the trunk no matter the cost to her skin. She put her face against the cool, rough bark and hugged it, hugged it until she knew she had to climb down or fall down, no matter what waited below.
Slowly, with respect for her scrapes, she descended the tree.
On the ground she fell to her knees and simply stared at the bear. It was a big, black lump of fur that moved bonelessly under her tentative shove. Dead. Tears of blood oozed down the bear’s face; the knife still jutted out of its eye, an insult. Blaine stared, and wiped her nose against her sleeve, suddenly aware of the many tears on her own face. Then she smoothed back the hair that had pulled out of her braids, straightened her homespun shirt, and stood.
“Stupid bear,” she muttered, with only the smallest sob. She kicked it. As an afterthought, she jerked the knife out of its eye socket, and kicked it again.
A joyful roar of challenge rang from the hemlocks and Blaine whirled, shoving the knife out in front of her. Blue charged out, hauling Dacey with his braided leash, and pounced on the bear, roughing it mercilessly.
Blaine dropped the knife, sagged against the tree, and covered her face with her hands, moaning. “Blue.”
“Down, Blue,” Dacey commanded. He dragged the dog off the bear, giving his collar one good shake. “That’s enough!” Blue, shaking and whining, barely managed to restrain himself, but Dacey ignored him. “Blaine, you hurt?”
“No,” Blaine said, although she frankly wasn’t sure. She let herself slide to the ground, and moaned again. That last shock had been the last she could take. “Damn bear. Damn dog.”
Dacey relaxed a little, though his eyes searched her, as though he didn’t quite believe her. “Spirits, you put a scare on me! I heard that squalling and shrieking all the way to the camp. But Blue had to track to every doggone tree you cut.” He eyed her again, apparently finally convinced that she was indeed whole, for he relaxed some. “You give that bear some insult?”
“Why, I walked right up to it and slapped it,” Blaine said. “Told it to stay outta my way. Spirits, Dacey! I reckon I got too close to a kill.” She nodded in the direction of the deer.
He went to take a look, back in short order. “Bear don’t kill nothing that big, but he’s sure enough been eating on it.” He hunkered by the creature, running his hands over it. “Damn skinny thing. Sickly, I’d call it.”
“Didn’t look so sickly when it was charging after me,” Blaine said sourly.
He grinned at her. “No, I reckon it didn’t. Treed you, did it?”
“Better’n Blue could’ve,” Blaine sighed, pulling up her skirt to look at her shins and the black chips of bark embedded there.
Dacey rolled the bear’s heavy skull around to check out the injury done to it and let it flop back to the ground. “Broke its neck when it fell — though it might well have been dead before it hit the ground. Damn, you done good with that knife.” He stood and wiped his hands on his pants, and he was grinning that quiet grin. “Yup, Blaine. You can take right good care of yourself.”
She didn’t see what was so amusing; her expression must have said it, though he didn’t give it any respect, and kept right on being amused.
“Give over that knife and I’ll gut it. Bear meat’s tough, but it’s food.”
Blaine tossed the knife to his feet. She stood, settled her skirts back in place, and shook out her legs, snatching up the damaged boot and jamming it on.
“Where you off to?” he asked, looking up from the bear.
“I spent all that time cutting those hemlocks,” Blaine said. “I’m not leaving ’em.”
Dacey shook his head. “Take Blue with you.”
She thought he was hiding another smile.
~~~~~~~~~~