THIRTY-SIX

Mary helped Joan down through the trees, in the direction of the smoke. Thimbleberries pulled at their scratched and bleeding legs, as if begging them to stay in the sanctuary of the ridge. They pushed their way down through the prickly branches to emerge in an old-growth forest.

“Jeez, these trees are tall,” said Joan, gazing up at a hundred-foot hickory.

“The timbermen never got up here.” Mary breathed easier as the air felt cooler, the earth springier beneath her feet. She squinted at the wilderness below, but saw nothing beyond the understory of the forest—young maples and hornbeams sprouting from a knee-deep evergreen carpet of galax and trillium.

With Joan following close behind, Mary crept on from one tree to the next. After a few minutes she gestured for Joan to stop behind a clump of locusts. Ahead, glimmering through the sun-dappled shadows, lay a broad expanse of tall yellow weeds. Could that be where the smoke was coming from? They crept on to a huge bass-wood that rose just in front of a weedy meadow lying like an island in the middle of the dense woods. Suddenly, Mary caught her breath. At the very back of the field stood a run-down cabin with a tendril of smoke wisping from the stone chimney.

Her muscles tightened. Was this just some hunter’s remote cabin? Or had they stumbled upon the lair of Ulagu?

Mary slipped from behind the tree and was just about to pull Joan forward, when a flicker of a motion caught her eye. Quickly, she threw both of them back against the trunk and peeked out.

A figure emerged from the cabin. A man, wearing an old army camouflage suit and a Yankees baseball cap. A long hunting-knife scabbard hung from his belt. He raised his arms high above his head, as if stretching, then slung a bulging sack over his shoulder and stepped off the porch. Mary’s heart froze. Though she and Joan crouched a hundred yards away, she could still see the dark beard and deep-set eyes.

“I see him!” she whispered, not believing their luck.

“Where?” Joan tried to peer around the broad tree trunk. “I don’t see anybody.”

“There!” She pressed Joan against the tree, barely daring to breathe herself, praying the bearded man would not walk toward them. He paused, lazily scanning the perimeter of the field, then strode away at an angle, into the woods that bordered the northeast side of the meadow.

“Come on,” urged Mary. “Let’s see if we can get closer.”

For a moment Joan looked as if she might weep, then she closed her eyes and made the sign of the cross. “Okay,” she said, sighing deeply. “I’m ready.”

“Crawl from tree to tree now. Remember, he’s out here somewhere, so we need to be quiet.”

“No kidding,” muttered Joan as she dropped to her knees and began to follow Mary through the lush forest floor.

They reached a tulip tree, then crept on through some spicy-smelling sassafras. Once they thought they heard footsteps behind them. They froze, trying to press themselves into the damp earth. For an eternity they lay motionless, listening, scarcely breathing. Whatever it was came toward them, paused, then rustled slowly away.

Mary raised her head and looked toward the meadow. She saw a low pile of rotting logs just inside the edge of the forest—a perfect shelter if they could get there undetected.

“Over there.” She mouthed the words and pointed her finger. Joan nodded. Her face was pale and her lips tight.

Inch by inch, the two women snaked through the underbrush. Thorns ripped at their skin; yellow jackets whined around their eyes and mouths. Crawling ten feet seemed to take ten years, and all the while Mary kept waiting for a shotgun to click and a male voice to bellow “Hold it!”

The woodpile logs were cedar, cut years ago and forgotten. Now silver with age, they afforded a knee-high shield behind which two people might possibly conceal themselves. Mary reached it first, then Joan crawled up beside her, breathing as if her lungs were clogged with sand.

“Thank God,” she rasped. “I was sure I heard him fifty times.”

Silently, Mary studied their situation. If they lay on their stomachs and craned their necks, they could peer through a gap between two logs that offered a narrow view of the cabin beyond. Cautiously, she raised up and peeked through the slit.

The cabin was barely standing. Both windows on the side were broken. The chink had crumbled long ago from between the logs; planks gaping in the front porch gave it the snaggletoothed look of a piano with missing keys. Smoke still rose from the chimney, but beyond that, nothing moved.

Then Mary saw a shadow melting through the woods on the far side of the cabin. She grabbed Joan, and they both turned back to the slit, trying to see everything and not be seen.

The dark shape shifted through the trees: Joan gasped as a green-clad man ambled into the clearing.

“That’s him!” she cried, her voice a thin squeal. “That’s the one who hurt me!”

“Shhh!” Mary pressed Joan down hard. At last, she thought with a strange satisfaction. I’m going to gaze upon the face of Ulagu.

He stood lankier than she’d imagined. The sun cast no highlights upon his snarled beard and his eyes glittered out from beneath the cap as a lizard might peer from under a log.

With a hitching gait he carried his sack to a rickety gambrel attached to the porch. Mary studied his walk. Could his odd, shuffling steps be the same curious tread she’d heard on the porch that afternoon, moments after finding her mother?

A brown bullet of tobacco juice flew from his mouth, then he knelt on the dirt and pulled a limp raccoon from his sack.

Mary knew what was coming as he hung the creature from the gambrel by its hind leg. “Turn away, Joan,” she warned.

“Why?” Joan asked, still watching. “What’s he going to do?”

With his knife flashing in the sun, he made one swift cut along the underside of the coon’s legs, then began to peel the skin away from the flesh. Once something attracted his attention. He looked up and seemed to stare straight at them. Not now, Mary pleaded, unable to tear her gaze away from his face. Please don’t see us now. He stared at the forest, unblinking. Then he spat again and turned back to his work.

“He must have a trapline somewhere,” Mary muttered as he tugged the animal’s pelt down from the fatty white carcass. When he began to make tiny cuts around the coon’s eyes, Joan made a retching noise deep in her throat and rolled away to vomit.

“Close your eyes,” Mary told her. “Sing Puccini in your head.”

Joan obeyed, curling herself in mute misery against the logs. But Mary waited intently as the man untied the skinned carcass, then made quick work of another big coon and a small dun-colored rabbit. When he’d finished, he carried the skins and carcasses into the cabin. Mary waited, but he did not reappear.

Finally, she sagged back against the woodpile, feeling the small fire of hope she’d kindled for Alex die. She knew trappers loved leaving nasty little surprises everywhere they went. Leghold traps, deadfall traps, underwater traps. She studied the meadow that stretched between them and the cabin and felt her heart sink in despair. The field might as well be ringed with razor wire and land mines.

She looked down at Joan. Her friend’s mouth was slack, her breathing shallow. She had taken herself far away, indeed. Maybe she was singing at La Scala, the notes soaring from her throat clear and beautiful, just as they had at Atagahi, so long ago. Mary gave a rueful smile. If she had somewhere else to go, she would be doing exactly the same thing.

She decided to keep watch on the cabin and let Joan sleep for a time. Then they could take turns watching until dark. The adrenaline rush that had carried her here had dissipated, leaving her shaking and exhausted. She settled back against the log, her eyelids gritty, her scratched arms and legs heavy as lead. The Old Men have given me Ulagu, she told herself as the warm sunlight made her drowsy as a shot of whiskey. Now if only they’ll give me Alex.