“Mrs. Brown, why won’t you look at me?”
Adelaide rode alongside Bertie; Fiona trailed just behind.
“You can’t tell what I’m looking at in the middle of the night,” Bertie said.
They approached the Bear Paw Mountains and all that might be hiding there. Why did Bertie’s opinion matter to Adelaide at all? But it did.
“I can tell,” Adelaide said.
Bertie rode quietly and Adelaide thought they would reach the base of the mountains soon. There were trails up ahead, accessible only by foot. They would have to tie the horses up. She wondered if the trader, Mr. Cardinal, had been right about the white men on horseback and the direction they’d been headed. If so, maybe they were already at her cabin.
“I was born in Perry County,” Bertie said, catching Adelaide’s attention, drawing her out from her own thoughts. “This is Missouri I’m talking about. The first job I remember having was to stand by Master Joseph’s bed at night, keeping the flies off him with a fan. There was a punishment if I fell asleep and the flies bothered him. I believe I was six years old. By that point the Great Rebellion had been over for five years. We were emancipated. Slavery had ended, but I was still enslaved.
“The problem is that I had no people left. My mother had been raising us kids on one plantation and our father lived on another, not too far away. But he died, then she died, then Master Joseph sold off every other child. I was the last born. Don’t even have a memory of my mother’s face, not any of my sisters or brothers. Master Joseph kept me on out of loyalty to my mother. That’s what he said. But I think he needed someone to work the house. Still, he was the one who taught me how to make a home brew. He was too impatient, though, never fermented the mash for quite long enough. I improved on his recipe.”
Fiona had caught up to the pair and then rode past them, ahead of them. Adelaide saw her look up at the summit of the mountains and then, for a moment, slightly higher and to the west. What had she seen?
“Maybe you’re right, Mrs. Henry. I have held on to conflicted feelings ever since you told us about your family, about that sister of yours. Now, I don’t know what we’re going to find when we track her down. To be as honest as I can, I’m not expecting no creature with claws and wings. I’m expecting a child of God, who has been abandoned and neglected. Whose family didn’t pull her into their warm embrace. And why? Because she was born in some way that troubled the rest of you? Is her leg game? Or her mind not quite calm and collected? For that you would hide her away? For that you would lock her up?
“You have to excuse me, Mrs. Henry, because I’m becoming angrier with every breath. And maybe it hurts me most because I would have loved the chance to know any one of my siblings. No matter how they were, no matter who they were, I like to think I would’ve embraced them. I needed someone on my side, let me tell you. It’s why I’m so grateful for Mrs. Wong now. I needed someone on my side. And it sounds to me like your sister could’ve used the same thing.”
Adelaide might’ve said something, looked like she was about to speak, but then choked back the words instead.
Ahead of them, Fiona now turned backward in her saddle, shouting, waving, but it hardly had time to register.
“What are you on about?” Bertie shouted to Fiona.
That’s all Bertie had time to say and then she got an answer, of a kind, as Adelaide Henry flew off her horse.
To be clear: Adelaide Henry flew. Her horse, on the other hand, went flying.
Obadiah cracked in half, folded over himself. Not even enough time to whinny or cough. Where there had been one horse, the old gelding called Obadiah, there were now two large portions of flesh that would soon fill the bellies of a nearby pack of wolves.
And there was Mrs. Henry.
Aloft.
Receding into the distance.
Bertie stared upward without comprehension. Something had happened, but it existed so far outside her understanding that it was difficult to believe. Mrs. Henry’s arms and legs dangled, about twenty yards ahead of them, and ten yards above.
Mrs. Henry wasn’t flying; she was being carried.
“Fiona!” Bertie shouted. She wasn’t calling for help, but out of concern.
“I’m here,” Fiona said, closer than Bertie realized. “I’m—”
They both watched the shape moving up through the night sky, headed toward the summit of the nearest mountain.
“I thought she was telling tales,” Bertie whispered.
The enormous wings. They beat louder than the sound of Bertie Brown’s own heart. Were they supposed to go up there and rescue Adelaide? Did they have a fucking choice after the speech Bertie had just made to Mrs. Henry?
Fiona reached out and grabbed Bertie’s wrist.
“I know,” Bertie said. “We’ll go up. We’ll do it.”
“No,” Fiona said. “I don’t think we will.”
Six men appeared on horseback. They surrounded Fiona and Bertie.
Bertie found her composure as she focused on their leader.
“Mr. Reed,” Bertie said, steadying her voice. “Can I interest you in a night of cards and all the brew you boys can drink?”
Jack Reed took a deep breath; a decade of patronage, one would even dare to call it friendship, passed between them in that glance.
“No time for games, Mrs. Brown.”