CHAPTER
38
Stripping Outer Bark
WATCHER HAD TWO
rules. Only bring down what he could eat and stay away from the
Sull. They were good rules. They simplified his actions and made it
possible to live a peaceful life.
He hunted for small
game: wild turkey, opossum, ground squirrel, hare. When he needed
fat he fished for salmon in one of the streams that forked from the
big river. He wasn’t a good fisherman and could spend half a day
catching nothing, but he was learning. He had time.
He built and tested
fish traps, whittling wood and knotting strips of hide to form
lattices. While he waited to see if the traps would work he
gathered plants, tender new leaves of dock, fiddlehead and chicory.
Most of the time he ate them raw, folding them into his mouth and
letting the sweet greenness rest on his tongue before he chewed
them. Food tasted good. On the rare occasions he lit a fire and
roasted his game, he relished the tender juices and crispy
skin.
Most nights he slept
out in the open. He made beds of spruce, balsam and cedar and fell
asleep drawing their rich and soothing fragrances into his lungs.
When it rained he raised the simplest shelters, lean-tos and
bivouacs. The nights were cool but not cold. Even this far north,
the snows had passed.
He seldom camped in
the same place more than two nights. He did not question whether it
was restlessness or caution. It felt right to be moving. The forest
was large and contained many things; some were worth seeing, some
worth avoiding. He left it at that.
He knew he was in
Sull territory but saw no reason to leave. He had earned a right to
be here. They had made him who he was.
They had created what
they feared.
Most days Watcher put
effort into avoiding them—their fires, their horse tracks, the
stone circles where they erected their tents, their heavily used
trails—but he would not be gentle if they tried to take
him.
He no longer feared
them. It was not possible to fear a people after watching so many
of them die.
Reaching a fork in
the trail, Watcher turned north. He was heading along a deer path
through a section of forest that looked as if it had been thinned.
Elderberries and bearberries were in bloom and bumble-bees buzzed
from plant to plant. Sun touched Watcher’s face. His pack was heavy
with the remains of the turkey he had killed and smoked last night,
and that meant he would not have to hunt for two days. This pleased
him. Later, when he’d settled on a place to camp, he might work on
another fish trap. He had some ideas about modifying the design. He
was pretty sure his last one had caught, and then released, a
trout. Scales left on one of the interior posts had been his
clue.
He grinned at his own
stupidity, and words from another life sounded in his
head.
Us Sevrances were never made to fish.
Watcher’s heart
leapt.
He continued walking,
and after a while holding himself separate from the familiar voice,
the memory faded. It was for the best.
No good would come
from remembering his dead.
He spent the rest of
the morning moving north, more or less following the course of a
swift-running creek. Boulders on the creekbed made the water froth.
He didn’t think it would be a good place to test traps. He had an
idea he might might whittle a pole, fix the head from one of the
queen’s arrows to the tip, see if he could he could spear some
frogs. When he arrived at a small spill pond fed by the stream he
thought he might as well stop and do a few things. There was a
strip of dry bank on its north shore that seemed as good a place as
any to spend the night.
It was his habit to
prepare the camp early and then spend the rest of the day doing as
he pleased. Before he left the Sull camp he had stripped the queen
and her den mates of some belongings, and he now possessed a fine
Sull hand knife. He used it to cut-and-strip spruce and cedar
needles from nearby trees to form a bed. The trick was to use only
the soft tips of the branches. He had woken up the first few nights
with sticks in his back. Now he knew what he was doing, he worked
quickly, raising a mound of soft needles above the
bank.
Afterward he cleaned
the sticky resin from the knife with a scrap of hareskin and some
fat he’d pressed from the liver of the last salmon he’d caught. He
would have preferred to use tung oil but it would do.
Later he sat on the
edge of the water and whittled hardwood. It was almost warm so he
took off his cloak—also Sull—and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Scars
from his many fights made his arms look like maps. They were
healing, the skin dry, the edges paling to white. Looking at them,
he knew he would never speak of the fight circle to anyone. He
hoped it would pass into the area of his mind where memories
floated away.
Finished with shaping
the oak sucker into a spear shaft, he went to find some twine.
Earlier he’d spotted a basswood by the oak. Now he retraced his
steps downstream. The inner bark of basswood made good cordage and
he needed something to bind the arrowhead to the pole.
He would never
understand how the girl slipped into the camp while he was away. He
had thought himself vigilant. He was wrong. He had thought himself
prepared to deal with anything that happened to him.
He was wrong about
that too.
The work of removing
the outer bark was hard but not unpleasant. Some bit of a song came
to him and he hummed as he cut and stripped the tree. Deciding it
was a good policy to have extra cordage on hand, he took more than
was needed to bind the spear. Arms full of basswood bark, he
returned to the camp.
The girl was standing
waist-deep in the water, washing her hair and face. She turned her
head at his approach, acknowledging him with a single look, then
returned to her task. Her long dark hair glinted with oil in the
sunlight. The fine linen shift she was wearing was soaked and
pressed against her skin.
As Watcher walked
through the camp he noted the sturdy little pony pulling dandelions
from the shore. He saw the boots, dress and wool stockings the girl
had discarded to enter the water. He spied two saddlebags in a
nearby sumac bush and decided that they, and he, shared something
in common. All three had been inexpertly hidden.
Because there was
nothing else to do, Watcher set down the load of bark. Although he
had not planned on a fire, he set about building one from unusable
pieces of bark, stripped cedar branches and discarded oak suckers.
He tried, unsuccessfully, not to watch the girl as he
worked.
She seemed in no
hurry to leave the water. Arms stretched out, she walked deeper
into the pond. Her hair floated behind her, fanning out on the
surface. Watcher was dimly aware of the calm, strong beats of her
heart.
He shredded inner
bark for kindling. Using the Sull queen’s shortbow and one of her
arrows with the head removed, he drilled into a piece of oak. The
oak was damp and he had to work the bow hard to generate heat. He
raised some smoke, but when he threw kindling on the hot spot it
didn’t catch. As he repositioned the bow and arrow for a second
attempt at firelighting, the girl spoke up from the
water.
“There’s a flint and
striker in one of my packs. They’re in the bushes.”
He looked at her and
could not think.
“Do you know who I
am?” she asked, wading toward him.
He did and did not.
It was no kind of answer so he remained silent.
“Mallia Argola,” she
said, emerging from the water. “I’ve come a long way to find
you.”
She was the most
lovely thing he had ever seen. Her skin was the color of raw honey
and her eyes were deeply, greenly brown. The wet linen shift
revealed her round high breasts and the dark down between between
her legs. Watcher set down the bow and went to her. She waited for
him, sure of her own worth.
She smelled of spicy
ferns. Her lips were soft; they opened quickly when he kissed them.
The pond water drying on her skin was a shocking coolness that had
to be penetrated to reach her warmth. Her breasts and buttocks
filled his hands. When she pulled off her shift and showed herself
to him he wept.
She was that alive
and that beautiful.
They lay down on the
bank. She bit his shoulder as he entered her and called out a name
he had left behind.
Afterward they dozed
under a fading sun as dragonflies skimmed the water. She woke him
by taking his hand. “Come on,” she said, smiling as she pulled him
up. “Let’s swim.”
They ran into the
water. It made him catch his breath. Diving, he went under. She
didn’t follow him down but swam to him when he surfaced. Wrapping
her legs around his waist, she kissed him and laughed. “I’m so
happy,” she said.
He pressed her hard
against his chest, feeling her softness and vitality and half her
weight. When they returned to the shore they made love
again.
He cooked for her
later and she ate with appetite and appreciation, grinning and
asking for more. He was delighted. To sit opposite her across the
fire and watch light from the flames shimmer across her skin seemed
like a gift. When she shivered, he brought her his cloak to keep
her warm.
“This is beautiful,”
she said, running her fingers across the soft midnight-blue hide.
“Is it Sull?”
“Yes.” It might have
been the first word he spoke to her.
“And the knife and
bow? They’re Sull too?”
He did not understand
why this mattered.
Perhaps something in
his face warned her off, for she said, “It’s not important. We’re
here. We found each other.”
Watcher knew he had
not found her so said nothing.
Rising, she went to
tend the pony. He used the time to feed the fire and reshape the
cedar bed so it was wide enough for two. The stars were out and
there was no moon. Far, far in the distance he was aware of a moon
snake winding north. He didn’t pay it any heed. It had sensed him.
It would keep away.
The girl returned to
the fire and brushed out tangles from her hair. “It took a long
time to get here. I lost track of the days.”
Watcher remembered
marks scraped on a cage and then a stone wall. Her words could have
been his own.
“Do you know how I
found you?”
He shook his
head.
Smiling softly she
looked him in the eye. “It was khodo,
the magic of my homeland.” She raised her fist to her mouth and
mimed biting it. “Tooth and hand. Do you remember?”
He did
not.
“I bit you. I struck
a claim.” She was watching him carefully. He had nothing to say in
response but this did not appear to worry her. “In Hanatta when a
woman wants a man she bites his left hand. If there is no prior
claim, khodo may occur. And then when
the man and woman are parted for the first time the woman will know
where he is.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t work the other way. It’s
women’s magic. Very strong.”
He stood and took her
to the cedar bed. He understood from her words that she wanted him
and that was enough. She kissed his face in the starlight, covering
every part of it with tiny little brushes of her lips. They fell
asleep.
He awakened before
she did, and he was happy to lie on the cedars with her warm,
fragrant body next to his. When she stirred they made love. He
wanted to crush her and keep them both in this moment.
Already he knew she
had come to bring him back.
Still, he could not
help himself. As he washed in the pond, he made plans. He would
need to hunt more. He could live on small, lean game but it would
not do for the girl. He would bring her deer, fat with spring
grasses. And he would use their hides to make a tent. The pony
meant they could carry more, and he wondered if he should chop some
logs. It occurred to him the girl might have a hand ax in her pack.
He turned to call her.
She was standing by
the small pile of his possessions. She had drawn Loss. When she
realized he was looking at her, she hesitated, froze and then
raised her chin defiantly. The sword was so heavy, she had to rest
its tip on the ground. “I wanted to look.”
“Put it back,” he
told her.
He watched as she
struggled to return the blade to a sheath that had not been made
for it. Leaving the water, he went to help her.
“I’m not sorry,” she
said when he took the sword from her grip. “Anyone would be
curious. It’s the one, isn’t it? The sword from Red
Ice?”
He sheathed the sword
and closed his eyes. He wished there was a way to stop hearing what
she said.
“What happened to
Addie Gunn?”
Her heart was four
feet away and there was nothing but clear space around it. He could
destroy it in less than an instant, make it stop. Aware that his
hand muscles were twitching and afraid he would do her harm, he
laid the sword on the grass and walked away. Did she not understand
that the words that hurt most in the world were all
names?
As he passed the
campfire he picked up the bow and arrow case. He could not recall
the last time he had wanted to hunt large game.
He moved east,
crossing the creek upstream and heading deep into the woods. It was
spring and the days were growing longer. Animals were on the move.
A lynx was padding through the trees on the scent of a newborn
fawn. Pack wolves to the north were idly tagging a moose, and a fox
was returning to her set with something still alive in her jaw for
her kits. Watcher kept moving. He had perceived a powerful deer
heart to the north and hoped it might be a stag.
It was. Watcher
stalked it for hours through pine and hardwoods. The Sull bow did
not have great range so he had to get close. For the final six
hundred paces he was belly-down in the pine needles, bow parallel
to the ground, drawn and ready. The stag was a tawny red color and
its antlers formed an eight-foot spread. Its heart pumped blood
around its body at a swift and elevated rate. It suspected the
danger. Its head came up as Watcher angled the bow. It leapt into
motion, but Watcher had anticipated the movement. He claimed the
heart.
He ate part of the
liver while it was still warm. While the carcass was draining he
made a travois from spruce saplings, cutting and weaving the wood.
It was good, hard work but he did not enjoy it. When the stag
carcass was loaded and secure, he dragged it back to the
camp.
It weighed twenty
stone and took half a day.
Sweating and weary he
approached the camp. The girl came tearing toward him, her face
streaked with tears.
Dropping the poles of
the travois, he waited for her to come. She was shaking as she fell
into his arms, breathlessly murmuring his old name. “I was so
frightened. I thought you’d gone.”
He wondered what had
happened to her magic. Had she said it worked only
once?
She kissed his neck
and he felt her tears against his skin. “I’m sorry I unsheathed the
sword. Forgive me.”
Taking her by both
shoulders, he set her a foot away from him so he could look at her.
Her eyes were red and her skin had the blotchy look of someone who
had been crying for some time. A little hiccup made her entire body
jerk.
“I love you,” she
told him.
He did not understand
why. Because it was the only thing that was important, he said,
“Why have you come?”
She was beautiful and
clever and he was not sure he expected the truth from
her.
“We need you. You
can’t just live in the woods and forget about us. You have to come
back and help us fight.” Watcher let her go and she stood,
breathing hard in front of him. “You promised. You spoke an
oath.”
Watcher knew that
oaths did not matter. They were words; they could not bind a life.
He did not tell her because she was young and almost sincere, and
the hard truths you learned for yourself.
He looked over her
shoulder at the little camp. The bed, the fire, the trail already
worn between the camp and the water. This was a life worth living,
a quiet, self-reliant life. He wanted to see the woods in summer.
He wanted to lie in long grass and bake in the sun. He did not want
to use the sword, didn’t want even to look at it.
Why didn’t you drop it in the big river, then, let the
current sweep it to sea?
Watcher had no answer
to that beyond, It’s mine.
He returned his
attention to the girl and decided it did not matter if she came of
her own free will or had been sent. He wished she had come sooner
and said nothing, or later when he was . . . ready.
He smiled hard at
that. Who would ever be ready to wield that sword for the purpose
it was intended? Ready did not exist in such a world.
He did.
Do not forget who you are. Addie’s final message,
the one that had not been spoken, claimed space in Watcher’s head.
He heard love for himself and love for clan in it.
Watcher stood in the
forest and listened to the cardinals call and forced himself not to
wish for another life.
This one would do. He
would reclaim it.
At dawn the next day
they were on the move.