BADFISH CREEK wasn’t a place used to change. Deep in the Illinois Territory, it had been settled shortly after the Second War by a group of what came to be called Foresters: a mix of fur-hunters, anarchists and a handful of rebel slaves that had abandoned the land they had been bound to. That was 1820, when the Foresters committed to building their houses around trunks of trees, never borrowing money, and never tilling the earth.
Elwyn’s leaving caused no small stir in the community. Everyone had an opinion, and in the months before he set off, they seemed to talk of nothing else. It’s what comes of marrying outsiders, was a common whisper (Elwyn’s late father had been a handsome, well-liked person, the sort of man a town hates to see marry anyone but their own daughters). The older women, with their lace and superstitions, said it was Elwyn’s mother’s fault for bundling him in too many blankets and keeping the windows closed during his infant naps. But Elwyn had supporters, too. His older brother Allun, who was engaged and feeling the squeeze of responsibility, thought it was prudent to make a little money while young. Teilo, the youngest brother, hoped Elwyn would send back some livestock he could keep as pets. And the distiller, Aelred, was also a surprising ally. His daughter Whim and Elwyn had been friends for most of their childhood. Aelred thought it was time they went their separate ways.
For his part, Elwyn didn’t pay much attention to other people’s opinions. It was said that he looked like his father’s line, and Elwyn liked to think he also had their free-minded ways. That spring he did what he always did: hunted and read and made mild mischief. If there was any difference, it was only the unquenchable light of possibility he carried inside him. His other brothers and sisters spent what remained of their time together teasing him about going to Hill Country, but this only added to the pleasure of his preparations. He was the fourth of seven children; teasing wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to.
‘But, Elwyn, why can’t you just study at home? Why would you want to go to Liberty?’ his sister Enid said as they sat up in a branch of an oak with their slings, waiting for a cottontail. ‘It sounds so boring! Stiff and prim and proper. And Mam says Aunt Piety was always so strange and serious. You want to live with someone like that?’
Elwyn shrugged. He thought he saw a rabbit behind a nearby tree and stood to get a better look.
‘I mean, we all know you like a challenge. But going to Hill Country, Elwyn? It sounds terrible. And leaving us all. Leaving Whim. How can you leave her? The two of you are practically an old married couple already.’
‘We’re friends, Enid,’ Elwyn said, slightly annoyed. His sister had spoken too loudly, the rabbit had slipped away. Or maybe it was just staying still, hiding. He moved to another branch to get a better view. ‘This is an opportunity.’
‘An opportunity. Ha! I can just see you with those stuffy old Hill people, your collar buttoned high, sipping your tea.’ Enid imitated her image of him, eyes laughing, but Elwyn was standing still, waiting for any movement from under the dogwood bush. Enid scrunched her nose, plucked an old acorn, and shot it at his shoulder.
‘Elwyn, you know I can’t stand people who don’t pay attention to me while I make fun of them!’
Elwyn took another acorn and threw it back at her with a sly grin, jumping down from the tree.
‘Hey! That hurt!’ Enid said, but she was grinning and already running after him, another acorn in her hand. Below the trees, green things were pushing up in all the familiar ways. Inside Elwyn, there was nothing but readiness.
Or so it was until his last night in Badfish Creek. That night, Elwyn had intended to sleep well. The days were lengthening and the air was warm. While the rest of the town was out for a ‘good wrestle with this spring air’, as they used to say, Elwyn was climbing into bed. He shut his eyes, but sleep didn’t find him. Even though he could hear laughter from outside the window – kids playing tip-the-tin and mothers gossiping – the room was still unnaturally quiet without his four brothers breathing and turning in their sleep.
At first Elwyn thought it was their absence that kept him up. But one by one, the boys found their way to their beds like foxes to their den, and the usual hum of their night-time noises returned to the little room. Elwyn still lay awake in bed. He lay, and he lay. The music and chatter faded. The night grew deeper, quieter. He still couldn’t sleep.
And then he understood. Long after stillness had settled over Badfish Creek, Elwyn threw off his sheets and crept into the forest, stepping over the wood violets and through the nettles to the creek, a book under his arm.
Along the bank, a house made of river stones was huddled on the earth. Rabbits nibbled on young lettuce and a few ducks pecked in the yard. Elwyn walked along the path until he arrived at Whim’s house. He knocked on her window.
‘Whim? Whim Moone? Are you awake?’
He waited a moment and knocked again.
‘Whi––’
She was there. She opened the window.
‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you. You are always so quiet,’ he said.
‘It’s the middle of the night.’ Her eyes were bleary with sleep.
‘I forgot to return this to you,’ he said, holding out the book. She looked at it blankly for a moment, then back at him. Elwyn felt her reading his face. She seemed to know how to read everything.
‘Do you want to talk about something?’ she asked.
He didn’t have to reply. Whim wrapped herself in a coat and climbed out the window without a sound that could be heard above the pickerel frogs and grey tree frogs singing in the reeds. She sat beside Elwyn on the bank, and they watched the moon on the water, reflecting off her pale face and his dark one. He pulled a little cloth pouch of shelled walnuts from his pocket, and set it between them to share while they talked – a tradition of theirs that neither of them could remember the beginning of. Whim took some, keeping her eyes on Elwyn all the while.
‘I leave for the Blackwells’ tomorrow,’ he said.
‘I know. You’ve talked about it all spring.’
‘But I was wrong, Whim.’
‘Wrong about what?’
‘I was wrong thinking I could go without you.’
Whim looked at him, reading, again, but Elwyn didn’t want to be distracted.
‘You’re my best friend. We haven’t been apart for more than a couple of days since we were six. What am I going to do without you there?’ he said. Whim looked away and half-smiled, but it was an amused sort of smile that irritated Elwyn. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said.
‘What did you think would happen when you went away, Elwyn? I can’t magically appear at your side whenever you want some company.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. You know how I can be sometimes.’
‘I do.’
‘Whim. I want you to come with me.’
‘To Liberty? Elwyn, you’re going tomorrow.’
‘I’ve thought it through—’
‘Elwyn.’
‘Okay, maybe I haven’t thought it through completely. But just think about it. You don’t need to come now. Take some time. Talk to your father, pack your bags, do whatever needs to be done. Then come. Get on the train. Come find me.’
Whim was quiet, a bit of the amused smile still standing on her lips. But maybe there was a bit of wistfulness, too. Elwyn thought he saw it around the edges of her eyes, and it encouraged him.
‘Come in a week. Or two. Or three. Whenever you can. Just come. There’s a whole world out there for us, Whim. You’re twice as smart as I am. You could do anything. We could do anything, Whim. And then someday we can come back to Badfish Creek, come back together, with some money in our pockets, having actually done something.’
‘Elwyn—’
‘I know. I know what everyone is saying. But, there’s this whole world out there. It might not be perfect, but it’s ours. Don’t you want to even see it? Run around in it? Don’t you want any of it?’
The wistful look grew on her face for a moment, like the moon grows.
‘Of course I want it, Elwyn. Some of it.’
‘You could paint cities. Find new plants. Read all kinds of books, thousands of books. We could do it together. The two of us. Out in the world.’ Elwyn felt young and alive as he smiled at Whim. She called it his ‘impossible smile’ because he made it so impossible not to smile back. But this time she didn’t. She just sighed and looked at the water.
‘Elwyn, you’re my best friend—’ she began with the care and intelligence that was so natural to her.
‘And you’re mine—’
‘But you know that I can’t come with you.’ There was something honest in the way Whim spoke. It was as familiar to Elwyn as the trillium that still grew on the cool side of the creek.
‘Why?’
‘Not with Mother gone.’
‘That was ten years ago, Whim. I know your dad isn’t crazy about me. But he loves you. He’ll come around. He’ll understand. I can’t let you just stay here, trapped in the same life, doing the same things year after year. Stuck someplace where only this tiny sliver of things are possible for you.’
‘I’m all he has, Elwyn. And this place is all any of us have.’
Elwyn looked down. He picked at the dirt with his finger. ‘I wish you weren’t such a good person, sometimes.’
They were quiet. The space between them seemed to grow.
‘Do you remember when we were kids? We said we’d buy Old Finchy’s house together,’ Elwyn said. ‘I’d get the right side, you’d get the left.’
‘And you had plans to build a toboggan run from the roof for winter, and a swinging rope for summer. Just because Finchy would hate it,’ Whim said.
‘We always promised we’d do everything together.’
‘You’re the one who’s leaving, Elwyn,’ Whim said. The wistfulness had left her eyes. Elwyn opened his mouth, but he found he didn’t have anything he could say.
‘We aren’t kids any more,’ Whim went on, looking out at the creek. ‘We each have our place in the world, Elwyn. We need to take the course laid out for us.’
That was something Elwyn didn’t believe, not even a little. But he knew that when Whim got philosophical, the conversation was over. Elwyn picked himself up off the riverbank, unsettled and unhappy. But when he arrived back home, he slept well. And he woke the next day with only a shadow of regret and the full lightness of that unquenchable feeling that his life was just beginning.