“Gotta talk to Dacey,” Trey said. “We gotta decide what we’re gonna do...the Takers got reinforcements and workers on their way!”
“They what?” The voice was Dacey’s, and it was startled. He was at the edge of the pine shadow, almost steady, his attention riveted on Trey.
Trey squinted against the sun to examine Dacey’s lean form. “So,” he said in evident relief, “Estus didn’t mash your head too hard after all.”
“Not for lack of trying,” Dacey said dryly, affording Estus a brief glance of annoyance, and — like Blaine — not mentioning the tea. Trey knew, if he’d think about it; the others didn’t need to. Dacey shed his jacket in the warmth of the sunlight. “Limber up your tongue, Trey. There’s no reason for them to bring in reinforcements now — they got things under control. The loss of two men ain’t enough to be calling for help.”
“Point of fact, these ain’t the first two they’ve lost,” Trey said. “But I think these new ones been on their way for a time longer than since those men died.” He hesitated, as though he wanted to ask about that, but met Blaine’s gaze and then looked uneasily away. She knew, then, that he’d given up on demanding anything from Dacey, was down to asking — and hoping, and glad for the help. “They had us in the meeting hall today, called us early. That’s why I took so long getting here.” Then he paused, stuck at what he wanted to say, until it finally came out in a rush. “Those extra men are coming cause they’ll be needed to watch more workers! They’re bringing in a whole bunch of plains folks, just up and moving a whole village. They ain’t planning on going once they get this wood!”
Dacey’s voice was tired as he sat down on his jacket. One hand rubbed at the bridge of his nose, the other arm dangled over his knee. “Humans give ’em more than trees, Trey.”
“I —” Trey said uncomfortably, “I thought if we give ’em a hard enough time — an’ we have been, don’t you make no mistake about that — they’d get what they wanted and leave.”
Dacey’s eyes flashed up; suddenly he was full of energy, full of anger. “You don’t know nothing. After all you seen, you still don’t know nothing! You think they don’t want us for more than any damn wood? Even suktah? You think they don’t want you for what they can do with you, what they can feel through you? What do you know of Breeder towns and Feeler towns and Feeders, and living your whole life under Taker chains? What do you know of what they can do —” He faltered then, inner pain flickering across his face, resistance to it and then surrender to it following one on another. His head dropped; she saw his jaw work.
Blaine threw herself down before him, taking up his face between her hands to say most fiercely, “That ain’t happening now, Dacey, none of it’s happening. It’s past you!”
His hands shot up to grab her wrists, a startlingly tight grip, and she couldn’t tell if his deep down groan was from his pains or his memories. “It ain’t ever past,” he said, barely audible.
Unbidden, Blaine thought of her brief terror in his dairy, thought of her dreams — no, say it, her seeings — of Willum’s death. No. Maybe it wasn’t ever truly past. She touched her forehead to his, and whispered, “But you ain’t alone,” and let him hold her that way.
After some moments his grip eased, and he pulled away to meet her gaze, just to look at her. She couldn’t tell what went on behind those eyes, just met them, honest and wet-lashed. When he let her go and looked back to the boys, somehow he’d made that interlude a private one.
Except for Trey, who looked at Dacey with a strange kind of understanding, and acceptance. “They Took me oncet,” he said, his voice as low as theirs had been. “Reckon I ain’t liked to think on it. But all of a sudden I got a better understanding of it.”
No one said anything; even Estus was purely at a loss. Blaine sat back on her heels, found Blue at her back, and twisted to put an arm over his sturdy shoulders.
Eventually Dacey gave Trey a nod, and went to rubbing the bridge of his nose. “When are the others supposed to get here?”
Trey answered in a voice not quite steady. “They said eight days.”
“Eight days,” Dacey repeated. “All right then. That means we got to make our move in less. That’s some sooner than I had planned, and I’m gonna need all your cooperation. All of it.”
Trey swallowed visibly and looked away. “I ain’t gonna cause any more trouble.”
Dacey gave him an even stare. “There’s only one way to beat the Annekteh, an’ that’s if you can tell who to stay away from in a fight, when they’re jumping from body to body. You can’t, but I can. That’s a fact you’d better make sure everyone understands — especially them with rocks in their hands.”
The boys gave what amounted to a communal gulp; not one of them could meet his gaze. But Blaine was staring right at him, thinking, how? and wondering why he hadn’t told her. Because you can be Taken, Blaine Kendricks, that’s why. But it didn’t seem fair, somehow, that she should have been the one with him all this time — the one to rescue him — and still get her information in cautious dribbles, just like anyone else. That he couldn’t be Taken. And now, unlike everyone else, somehow Dacey could tell the Taken right on the spot. And he still, she was very aware, hadn’t told them just how he did it. Not the seer way, not considering he claimed to have no real seer skills, and only the occasional seeings....
After a moment, Dacey pushed his hair back — careful, he was, about it — and said, “The only ones free of constant watching are the older boys, am I remembering right?”
Trey nodded.
“Then I need to see ’em. Make an excuse to have ’em come here together — big cat tracks or some such. I want ’em here tomorrow. Don’t tell none of ’em why ahead of time — we can’t chance any more problems.”
“I can get ’em here,” Trey said confidently. He hesitated, then asked, “An’ then what?”
“The less anyone knows, the less chance of it getting out,” Dacey said evenly.
Trey’s face reddened and he looked away, but the color faded fast. “I guess I deserved that.”
“I was speaking of the chance that the Annekteh might Take anyone, at any time, if they’re still trying to clear up the killings,” Dacey said, tipping his head against some inner pain. More tea, Blaine thought. The bundle ought to be good for a weak third steeping; she’d already gotten more of it down him earlier in the day. The way he struggled with himself, without that tea, he’d not even be opening his eyes at all. Damn Estus and his rock.
“You ought to go lie down,” she said. “You’ll be in the thick of it soon enough.”
“I’m fine, Blaine,” Dacey said, tilting his face back to catch the sunlight, closing his eyes. “In a day or two I’ll even be fit for killing Annekteh.” The boys made enough sheepish shuffling noises to scare off all the game in the area. Blaine glared at them.
“I ain’t gonna cause no more trouble,” Estus mumbled before Trey could prompt him. “I don’t reckon I understand this so clear any more.”
Ignoring him — it was getting easier — Blaine said, “I need to get some goods from our camp, Trey. Don’t give me no trouble over that, neither.”
“You can go,” Trey agreed, “but Burl’s bringing some stuff. Most anything you’ll need, I’d say.”
“We had a mess of bear meat drying by our fire, but I suppose the critters have got that now.” Blaine tried to recall how they’d left the camp. “But we’ll want his pack, and whatever meat’s left, so we can feed the dogs....”
“I’ll help, iff’n you like,” Trey said.
Blaine stared suspiciously at him before deciding the offer was sincere, then shook her head anyway. “We might need to fall back to it, iff’n they get ’aholt of you,” she said decisively. “It won’t be much to carry.” She glanced at Dacey and moved across the clearing, gesturing for Trey to follow. Surprised, he only hesitated a moment, then followed her uphill to the log where she’d first waited for him.
“Listen,” she said, pinni
ng him hard with her gaze, “you leave off bothering Dacey about those men.”
Trey looked troubled, but nodded. “It’s done. We got more important things to handle, now. He’s...he’s right convincing, in what he knows of Takers.”
“What he does, he does for good reason. You just trust him on that. I’ve staked my life on it.” She couldn’t help a little smile. “Don’t mean I always understand what he’s up to, that’s for sure. But do you think he’d have risked coming up here again iff’n we didn’t need him?”
Trey scowled and scratched his nose, glancing back down at Dacey. Finally he said, “It’s a good thing he’s got you watching over him, Blaine Kendricks.”
Blaine snorted. “He don’t need me, nor anyone else.” But she thought of the way he had gripped her arms, held on to her. Taken strength from her.
Burl put an end to the conversation by arriving, huffing and puffing, at the bottom edge of the clearing. It was little wonder that he’d not been able to keep up with his smaller friend; he was burdened with a leather, basket-bottomed pack that Blaine sized up purely by how much food it might hold. Burl grinned up at her as he unshouldered his burden, and she moved downhill with haste. Estus already crowded close.
Burl slapped Estus’s hand away from where it fumbled at the rawhide ties, and took over the task. When Blaine got there he was groping around in the small pocket set atop the pack, his broad face impatient. Finally he extracted a palm-sized clay jar, which he extended toward Blaine. “It’s my Mommy’s own salve,” he explained as Blaine tentatively accepted the jar. “For him.” And he jerked his head in the direction of the pines.
Blaine held the cool clay in her hand and cocked her head at him. He was a little like Blue, she decided — once he accepted you, there was apparently no halfway. “I’m grateful,” she said finally, and didn’t mention that the tea had already done most of what Dacey needed.
“Now can we eat?” Estus said, peevish.
Although his sharp features probably always appeared hunger-pinched, Blaine empathized with his eagerness to be at the food. She reached for the pack, and Burl tipped it her way.
“What about Dacey?” Trey asked. As one, they looked at him, discovering him asleep with his face still tilted to catch the sun.
Blaine shook her head. “Let him sleep,” she said. “He’ll be the better for it. Time enough to get food in him when he wakes on his own.”
Burl was nodding his agreement. “’Member that time I fell outta the ol’ apple tree?’ he asked Trey. “Food weren’t no welcome sight for two days, till my stomach settled.”
“Only time I can think of you turning it down.” Trey grinned, a regular boy again, if just for a moment.
Dacey was some better off than that, Blaine knew — and would be even better once she re-steeped that tea. “You all go right on talking,” she said, turning on the pack and tugging at the ties to the main section. “I can’t stand it no more.” Estus pitched in beside her and the two of them discovered an oilcloth bundle of cornbread and chicken, sweet molasses cake and a few of last year’s grubby carrots. When Blaine lifted the bundle, Estus pulled out the waterskin beneath, and they sat down together, too interested in the food to maintain their animosity.
It was her first meal in...well, it seemed like days. Never mind that the chicken was greasy and the cornbread crumbly with age; the water had sat in the skin too long but it was sweet to her throat even so. She quit reaching for more before her stomach wanted to, looking at the ample remainder longingly but knowing Dacey had yet to eat — and that they had at least another day before they would be able to provide for themselves.
Estus blithely reached for more chicken, but a stern look from Blaine brought him up short. “We gotta save some.”
He opened his mouth to protest; Burl murmured his name and the younger boy subsided without a word, although his expression said much.
Blaine stood and straightened her ragged skirts with a shake. “Believe I’ll get those things from our camp,” she announced. “I’m taking Blue, so don’t none of you follow, or I’ll know it.”
“We’ll stay right here,” Trey said dryly.
She called Blue to her side — he could just as well wear his packs and help her out on the way back — and started across the clearing and up the ridge, stopping only once to peer back and see the boys sitting just as she’d left them. Satisfied, she struck out at a good pace.
She ignored the faint trace of the path she and Dacey had forged from camp to clearing and went straight up the hill, using Blue’s back as a brace when the going was steep and wishing she had his four tireless legs. Halfway up she looked back, satisfied that none of the plainsmen could follow the trail.
The roundabout route made the going hard, and when Blaine finally reached the little shelter she was more than ready to throw herself down on the hemlock bedding — an impulse she made no attempt to resist. She rolled over to her back and waited for her breathing to ease and her heart to stop pounding in her ears, her vision filled with the woven shelter above her — a sight her memory somehow turned into a fond and seemingly long-standing thing.
There had been a sort of timelessness to the days of travel with Dacey and his crazy dogs — of learning their voices on trail, of learning to relax with Dacey’s company, of realizing that he truly didn’t care about her differences, didn’t set any impossible, un-Blaine-like roles for her to fill. He just demanded that she be the best Blaine she could. And as quiet as he was, he shared himself in a dozen different ways.
As if she truly mattered.
Trey’s attack had ended that timelessness and now things were moving again, and at a pace much too quick to suit her.
Blaine sat up and drew her knees to her flat chest, wrapping her arms around them. She stared out at the mountains unwinding before her, where the dull colors of winter had suddenly been replaced with an uneven mottling of green — poplars first, bursting into full leaf and making green points against the dull brown of the other dormant trees. The vibrant pink splashes of the redbuds had faded, but the dogwoods still made splendid puffs of white across the hills.
She wondered if the beauty of the mountains would ever again seem so piercing and bright. It occurred to her that when this ordeal was over, she would be once more chained by her father’s rules, her parents’ expectations. She’d likely never walk the hills again.
When this was over. The thought repeated itself, then modified. If this ever ended. What if they could not defeat the Annekteh? What if the people she had grown up with remained enslaved, Annekteh labor and...toys? Trey had found a sassafras grove, she was sure of it — what if the Takers got their hands on it? What if Blaine herself could never go back to them, but was forced to the mountains, running the ridges with a pack of dogs and their master, and the faint hope that maybe someday they could help?
Freedom. Of a sort.
But the freedom she longed for would be no freedom at all if the way of life she left behind was destroyed. If she had to think of Willum’s death and know it went unavenged, unspoken for.
Blaine heaved a great sigh and climbed to her feet to survey the camp for the first time. She wasn’t surprised to find Dacey’s drying racks reduced to twigs and scattered throughout the site, the meat gone. There was, however, one big haunch that had yet to be cut into strips for drying; Dacey had hung it at the end of a high, slender maple limb, counterweight to his pack. High enough that he needed to hook the pack with a stick to pull it within reach.
High enough that even with the stick, she couldn’t quite reach it herself.
Blaine sighed, and picked up what she could. She refolded the blankets, and fitted Blue’s packs to him. Her own small pack sat, undisturbed — no food in it, so that wasn’t surprising — in the high crook of a tree. After she had tugged it down, crammed the contents of it into Blue’s packs, and shoved the blankets into her own, Blaine stood beneath the meat, unhappily considering her options. She ruefully inspected the barely healing
scrapes from her last exploit in a tree, and then finally hoisted herself into the maze of maple limbs. Getting to the level of the meat was easy, but there she stopped, staring at the mostly horizontal branch and the rope looped over it.
Can’t believe I’m doing this for a bunch of dogs.
But she did. She crept along the branch, wishing it felt more substantial beneath her. When she could finally reach the braided rawhide rope, she tugged the pack up, lowering the meat until Blue took notice and made a few half-hearted leaps to reach it. Surely that was far enough. Blaine quickly backed off the branch and descended to reassuring solid ground.
She turned from the tree to discover that Blue had beaten her to the meat, had latched on and pulled it down with his weight. Blaine didn’t begrudge him a bite. The more he ate, the less she had to carry, and she had yet to figure out how she was going to carry any of it.
Reluctant to cut the rope, she hauled on it, lifting the pack in little jerks until it hit the tree limb and she had to perform all sorts of antics — running this direction and that with the rope, hoping a different angle and her weight hitting the rope would pull it up and over the top of the branch — before it hit the ground next to the haunch, barely disturbing Blue at his meal. In the end she couldn’t manage the knot at the pack and had to cut the rope there. She pulled a few more things from it to add to her smaller pack — what little food was left, mostly — and, grunting and grumbling, jammed it up in the crook where her own pack had stayed safe.
Then she turned to the haunch. She gave it an exploratory nudge, a half-hearted attempt to lift it. Not a chance. Besides, it was greasy, and bordering on rank. Blaine made a face at it. Well, she’d drag it. It was only fit for the dogs, anyway, and knowing the way they ate, they’d probably gulp it down, embedded rocks and sticks and all. Blaine made one last circuit of the camp, found nothing else worth taking, and shouldered the pack, tying a loop in the middle of the rawhide and coiling the rest so she could drag the meat more easily. Even so, it bumped and caught on every little stick or root in its path, and if it wasn’t for the thought of hungry dog eyes watching her while she ate her own food, Blaine would have abandoned it a hundred times over.
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