Band business is slow business. Madda and I sit under a pine, listening to the men debate this, that, and the other, taking so much time that an onlooker might believe they were preparing for a horseshoe tournament, not a war. They’re lucky that time doesn’t spoil, because they’re wasting it in huge quantities.
Something behind the longhouse catches Madda’s attention. I look to see Paul standing there, a pack on his back, a rifle in his hands. He looks around as if the sunlight is blinding him.
Madda nudges me. “Go on,” she says. “Might be a while before you get to see him again.”
Paul is still standing in the same spot when I draw near. “Hi,” I say, tipping my head to one side. “You okay?”
“I guess,” he says, though he doesn’t look it.
“Hmm.” I turn and look back at the Elders. They’re laughing about something. “I missed you,” I say slowly, doing my best to sound casual. “Did you spend the night at Avalon’s house?”
I don’t have to look at Paul to know that was the wrong question. “What, exactly, is it that you want to know, Cass? If I was screwing her? What, should I have invited you along so you could tell me how to do it?”
“Paul!” I gasp.
“What?” He turns to me, and in his eyes I see something I haven’t seen in a long time. Anger, and hatred, and something darker, something without a name. This isn’t about me. I just happen to be the thing that’s closest, the thing that’s easiest to strike out at, but that doesn’t lessen the sting of his words at all. “I don’t need your help, Cass. Don’t you get it? I don’t need it, and I don’t want it.”
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything as Paul storms off. Just as tears start to well in my eyes, Paul stops, turns around, and walks back to me. “Look,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry too, I want to say, but he’s already stalking off to join the rest of the Band. Neither of us can undo what he’s said. We both know it.
I stare at my hands, thinking of when we were little, when we knew each other so well that we could finish each other’s sentences. Now I don’t know what Paul wants. I thought I did. I thought he wanted me to help him.
But I was wrong.
I was so, so wrong.
It’s midmorning before we get under way.
Bran meets up with us as we head out, falling into place at the back of the group so I can’t talk to him. He looks awful. His eyes are bloodshot and he walks bent, as if his pack is twice as heavy as it actually is. Paul falls into step beside him.
I focus on the road ahead of me. Paul and Bran are together. That will have to suffice for now.
Madda seems to know something’s wrong and decides to quiz me while we walk, as if that will help take my mind off things-“How much borage do you need to lift a mood?” “Digitalis-what dosage is lethal?” “Primrose- how do you distill the oil?”-on and on until I have no idea where we are or what time it is.
The green spirit stone bumps against my chest, keeping time as I walk-one, two, buckle my shoe; three, four, close the door. My pack is unnaturally heavy, as if someone filled it with stones when I wasn’t looking. The straps dig into my shoulders, worming their way down to bone, severing flesh from sinew, eating me alive…
Madda snaps her fingers under my nose. “Don’t you dare do that now,” she says. “Not when there’s people around.” She leans in close. “When we get back, we’re going to sort this out. Don’t let me forget.”
I nod as I blink myself back to the world of the living. Laughter echoes in my mind-not the laughter of a person, but of the raven. I almost had you, it says. Never forget that you belong to me….
We reach the estuary around noon. The group divides into two. Half take to the enormous war canoes that were once ancient cedars. They’ll go to the point on the water where the boundary is thinnest, the point where my family crossed. The rest of us, including Madda and me, will head south toward the land boundary, where waves ravaged the Island long ago and nothing now grows.
Bran and Paul are herded into a canoe before I have time to say good-bye. Bran stares at me and touches his hand to his heart. I draw the spirit stone out from under my shirt and press it to my lips. My brother rolls his eyes.
Then, with a shout, the men plunge their paddles into the water and the canoes shoot away, chased by a herd of shades, all vying to keep up.
“Come on,” Madda says, taking my shoulder and steering me away from the shore. “You’ll see them again soon enough.”
We find ourselves in the middle of the remaining men. Weapons can be fashioned, food can be caught, but healers are rare, and out here in the lands left behind, we are as precious to the Band as the blood in our veins is to the people of the Corridors.
Our path snakes through dark woods. Nature has reclaimed this place, burrowing her roots through the burned-out shells of houses, ripping through asphalt. No one speaks, but it’s not from a need for stealth. Our silence is an offering to the spirits that live here, a sign of respect, a way to say that we will not stay.
We stop well after nightfall. Madda is summoned to a meeting with the Elders, leaving me to sit beside our packs and wait. For the first time, I notice Cedar. He’s knee-deep in ferns, looking for a place on the forest floor to sleep. The other men do the same, but all of us keep an ear turned to what’s going on with Madda and the Elders. They argue late into the night. I can’t make out their words, but the tone of their voices makes it clear that Madda’s not happy about something and the men don’t want to listen to her.
I clutch my knees to my chest and think of Bran and Paul. Where are they sleeping tonight? Are they together? Are they safe? For a moment I consider closing my eyes and reaching out to whatever seized me on the road. Perhaps the raven might tell me what I want to know. But I change my mind. It’s been only half a day since I saw them leave in the canoes. What could have happened to them in that time? Not a whole lot.
Madda stomps back just as sleep is settling over me. I blink myself awake.
“Bloody pig-headed men,” she fumes as she pulls her bedroll out from the top of her pack.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she grumbles. “Just go to sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
But now that I’m awake, sleep is the furthest thing from my mind. I watch the midnight sky, where stars appear, one by one. The big bear, and the little one, chasing each other through time. The Milky Way, a wash of white. Serpens, his sinuous form bending through the darkness. Paul taught me the names of these constellations. I wonder, Is he looking at them too? Is he caught in their light, or in their shadows? Stars, he once told me, don’t cast shadows, but how can that be? Everything has a dark side. Everywhere I look, I see outlines of trees, people, animals, and their shades, the hidden halves of their souls. All except me. I’m not vain enough to believe I’m so special that I don’t need a shade, but… where is mine? Why can’t I see that part of myself that connects me to the world of spirit? Maybe I’m damaged, I think, just like Grace Eagleson said the first time I met her.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Madda says as she rolls over. “Stop it. You’re keeping me awake.”
“Sorry.” I force myself to close my eyes. “Where are we going, Madda?”
“The boundary.” Her voice is raspy and sounds tired. “You know that.”
“Yeah, but I feel like there’s something else going on that no one’s telling me.”
“Honey, that’s life.” She draws her blanket up over her shoulders and closes her eyes. “Get used to it.”
I dream.
I dream that the sky is alive, that the stars are anemones in the ocean and they’re waving back and forth while waves wash over them. I try to touch one. Its sticky tentacles grip my fingers, and when I pull back, it doesn’t release me. I’m trapped, halfway to heaven, halfway to earth.
It starts to rain sometime during the night. I wake shivering. It might be summer, but under the trees the world is cold.
We pack our sodden blankets and eat hard, dry strips of oolichan. The oily smell makes me gag, but I force the fish down my throat. Madda pushes a canteen of water at me and I take a long swallow. Water mixes with the fish oil until all I can taste is wet dog, and then I really do gag.
Someone pauses beside me. Cedar. “You’re wet,” he says.
“So?”
He hands me a blanket. “I’m used to this. You aren’t. Put the blanket over your pack. It’ll help.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But we did get rain in the Corridor, you know.”
“Nothing like the rain here,” he says with a shrug.
“That’s true.” This rain is thick and healthy, if cold. I drape the blanket around my shoulders. It feels like a peace offering, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
Cedar takes a seat beside me-close enough to talk, but not so close that I’m uncomfortable.
“Did you like it there?” he asks.
“What? The Corridor?” I consider his question. Had he asked me this when I first arrived, my answer would have been very different, but now I can’t believe I ever saw my future there. What was it I was going to be? What hope for my future have I forgotten? “Life was different there-easier, I guess. But not by much.” I shrug.
“Hmm.” He shifts his rifle from one shoulder to the other and looks like he’s going to ask another question just as Henry Crawford shouts that it’s time to move out. Cedar goes to take his place near the head of the line.
I’m struggling with my pack when he makes his way back toward me.
“You ever seen a searchcraft before?” he says.
“Once. Why?”
“If we see them, stay close to a man. They look for women first, but then, you’re a half-breed. Your blood’s diluted. Maybe that’ll make a difference.” He stalks off, his muskrat scampering at his shoulder, leaving me to wonder what that was all about.
Madda arrives back just as I’m hauling Cedar’s blanket over the top of the pack. I’m not so sure I want it anymore. She eyes it. “Where did you get that?”
“Cedar,” I say, nodding toward him. “Weird, huh?”
“Yeah,” she says, narrowing her eyes as the first of the men head out. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” She twitches the edge of the blanket so it drapes over my shoulders to keep me dry. “Still, it was a nice thing for him to do.” She pulls her knife from her belt, digging a fern from the moss on a maple before setting off. “Licorice root,” she says. “Gather anything you think might be useful along the way.” She cuts off the frond and starts to chew on the rhizome. “What’s Cedar’s shade?” she asks suddenly.
“A muskrat.”
She nods. “And Henry Crawford’s?”
I stare ahead at the man with the scarred face. “A weasel.”
“And mine?”
“I still don’t know.” I feel my cheeks burn. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. That’s what I hoped you’d say. So,” she says with a deliberate pause, “have you seen yours yet?”
“No.”
“Figured,” she says. “We might have to address that while we’re out here. There’s not enough time to do everything in the proper way, you know.” She stops to draw breath and then heaves herself over a fallen log. “Never enough time to do anything properly anymore.”
Her voice disappears as a hemlock groans and topples to the forest floor before us, taking a man down with it. We both stand there, frozen in shock, until Madda comes to her senses and pushes me down into the ferns. Above us, wind parts the cedars and the sleek, bipod body of a searchcraft hovers over us like a great silver wasp, waiting to sting.
Madda drops down beside me. “Your gun,” she says. “Get your gun!”
I fumble for it while the men start shooting at the searchcraft, though as soon as I’ve dug the pistol out of my pack, I drop it. My breath comes in short, rasping snatches as I fish for the gun, and when my hand finally falls on the grip, I shoot at the sky, hoping I don’t hit anyone.
The sound of gunfire rips through the air, hissing and screaming as the searchcraft fires back, its energy weapons cutting across the forest, slicing trees in two. This isn’t what I was told about searches. My father said they didn’t want to hurt us, that they only wanted to stun us because a dead Other is no good to them, but now I see that’s not true. I watch a man fall to the ground a short ways away, one leg severed from his body, his precious blood spilling on moss.
Madda scrambles past me, rushing over to the man, dropping down beside him, the blanket Cedar gave me pressed to the man’s wound. She thinks she can save him, but she can’t. Even through the smoke and the gunfire, I can see he is fading. “Madda!” I scream as sparks begin to block my vision. Still, I grope for her, to draw her down to hide in the ferns. She’s going to get killed. The only way to survive is to get down low, hide, become a stone, a worm, a root…
And then the searchcraft’s engine starts to whine, and thick black smoke billows into the air. A cry goes up from the men as the searchcraft banks and vanishes from sight. A few moments later, the sound of its impact reaches our ears, and then, the forest goes still. Rain drops onto tree, onto leaf, onto fallen body. No one moves.
Henry Crawford stands, slowly, and speaks. “Tom, Ron, Cedar-go chase it down. It won’t be far.”
Cedar catches my eye as he jumps up. His face is flushed with excitement as he follows the older men off into the underbrush.
Madda touches my arm. “You okay?”
I nod and brush the last of the sparks away from my eyes.
“Good,” she says. “We’ve got work to do.”
I start to take a step after her, but my feet won’t move. Sparks return to float around my face while beneath my feet, the earth shudders. Breathe, I tell myself. Just breathe. The sparks recede. The shuddering stops.
Madda frowns at me but doesn’t say anything. What is there to say?
We step out of our hiding place to find an arm waving at us, except it’s dangling from a cedar branch. The owner of the arm is nowhere to be seen.
Madda kneels. A man lies in the rich humus, his head cradled by bracken. He has two arms, so the one in the cedar isn’t his, though a livid burn crisscrosses his chest.
Madda touches my hand. “I need my medicine bag. It’s in the top of my pack.”
I bound away. Medicine bag, medicine bag, I must find her medicine bag. I repeat the words to stave off the sparks that chase after me. Their drone fills my ears, making it hard for me to think.
The pack sits in the mud, half open. I root through the top for the bundle that contains Madda’s most potent medicines. Why doesn’t she have it with her? She always carries it with her. And then I see it poking out from under the pack. I seize it and I’m back at her side within a few quick strides.
The rain has stopped. Mist descends, wrapping the forest in a shroud. Men walk back and forth, half-ghosted, carrying the wounded closer to Madda. She still sits beside the man with the burn, stroking his brow, and she doesn’t look up when I approach. I open the medicine kit. She waves her hand at me, as if I should know what she needs, but I don’t. This man is dying. Nothing will stop that now.
She reaches across, retrieving a bottle herself. WATER HEMLOCK, the label reads. And then I know. Madda doesn’t mean to heal this man. She means to ease his passing.
“Hold on, Ben. Open your mouth,” she says. “This might be a little bitter, but it will kill the pain.”
I turn away, but Madda yanks me back. “Get over here,” she hisses. “You’re a healer. Act like one.”
So I kneel next to Madda, remembering the day she told me I’d face difficult decisions, that there’d be times when I’d have to do things I’d rather not.
Yes, she told me, but maybe deep down I didn’t believe her.
But I’m here now, with a dying man beside me and none of that-what I believed, what I wanted, what choice I made-matters. If it were me lying there, what would I want? I’d want someone to stay with me, to talk to me, to take my hand and wait until I left this world. So I do that. I pick up the man’s dirty hand and cradle it in my own. Madda nods and walks off to find her next patient.
The man stares at me with vacant brown eyes. He’s about my father’s age. His hand is ice-cold. I have to force myself not to shiver. He has no shade. “Cassandra,” he says. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. And yours is Ben?”
“Yep. Never got a chance to know you. I’m sorry about that.” His eyes flutter closed as his breath rattles in his chest. “So much I never got to do.”
I don’t know what to say, so I sing “Alouette,” like my father used to sing to Paul and me when we were little, and smooth Ben’s hair away from his eyes. Death is coming. I can feel its arrival, this raven that walks the spirit world with a black mask and a cape of rattles. I can hear him dancing, shaking his cape.
Ben clenches my hand. “I’m not long for this world. I hear the Great Spirit calling my name.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and nod. I hear it too. Don’t go, I want to say, but the decision isn’t mine. Ben wheezes, “It’s time.” A smile pulls at his lips and then, he’s gone.
I don’t know how long I sit there, singing, holding his hand. Long enough for his skin to take on a tinge of yellow. Long enough for his mouth to fall slack. There is no beauty in death. Ben is no longer Ben, but a husk sloughed off by his soul.
All around us people rush back and forth, setting guards, slashing bush, tending fires, bearing hastily made stretchers. I know they’re busy. I know there is much to do, but the fact that no one stops by, no one marks Ben’s passing, leaves me feeling so sad. These men knew him better than I did. They would know if he has children, a wife, someone who might be waiting for him to come home.
I pull a strip of bark from a nearby cedar, and then pick ferns. I will weave Ben a garland to wear. My hands make the knots as part of me starts to withdraw. I see the mist hanging in the air, but I don’t truly feel it. I know rain falls on my head and drips down my neck, but I am not cold. I see the men moving through the undergrowth, their faces grim and serious, but I don’t hear them. The rain. The mud. The forest. The broken tree, stabbing up from the earth.
Ben, lying on the ground, except he isn’t. Only his body is. The rest of him is gone, off on the long journey to the land of our ancestors.
And then, blood rushes in my ears. Something snaps, and the cocoon protecting me from the noise and the cold and the truth breaks.
It’s Madda, calling me.
Reluctantly, I let Ben go.