Maryanne swallows. “I hope she just fell asleep. Died quietly. If not…” Another swallow, harder. “Something got her. An animal. Either it scavenged her dead body or it killed her. That’s what they brought me to see, and that was a message. Drink your tea and behave, and do not even think of running, or this will happen to you.”
“So you stayed?”
“I still planned to escape. I’d give it a month, even two, until they trusted me. I’d be fed and strong, and I’d have clothing and weapons, and I wouldn’t end up like Lora when I ran. Then they gave me the other tea. There was no peaceful trance with that.”
She looks at me. “I’ve never been an angry person. No matter what my husband did, I stayed calm and looked for solutions. I had anger, though, and that tea brought it out. It induced hallucinations and violent frenzies and…”
Her face reddens. “It induced all the impulses. It unleashed the id, and it was addictive. Not so much the drug itself as the experience. Cathartic. In my already confused state, it felt as if I’d discovered something I’d been looking for all my life. Like our family friends dreaming of walking into the wilderness and reuniting with Mother Nature. I embraced it, and I’m ashamed of that now, but when it happened…”
She looks at me. “Most of the time, we drank the first tea, the same as you’d have your morning Earl Grey. Then there were the rituals with the other one, so you went from a sense of tranquil unreality to those wild, primal frenzies. There wasn’t anything else. After a while, it became harder to focus, harder to think straight. All that mattered was surviving. Hunting, finding shelter, protecting territory, satisfying needs and urges.”
She shifts position again. “When I met you and Eric in the forest that first time, I was in what you might call a down phase. We all were. In a frenzy, we’d have attacked and taken what we wanted, but in the down phase, they could think it through enough only to threaten you.”
“They’d still have killed us, though,” I say. “That’s why they asked Eric to remove his clothing. So they wouldn’t ruin it when they killed him.”
She nods. “Yes. They’d have killed him and any other men in your party. They’d have taken you. Young, strong men seem like an asset, but they’re also competition for goods and women. A young, strong woman is the truly valuable asset.”
She inhales. “I didn’t recognize Eric. That’s no excuse. I was still watching them do exactly what they’d done to my own party from Rockton, and I wasn’t lifting a finger to stop it.”
“You couldn’t.”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t have either. In that phase, I would regret what happened, but it would never occur to me to stop it. When I did recognize Eric, though, it was like a light in the darkness. That one tiny pinprick that cut through the fog. Once I started remembering, I couldn’t stop. It helped that I didn’t go back to the tribe. That wasn’t really a choice. Our entire hunting party had been wiped out, including our leader. I’d lost my mate a few months before, and that left me vulnerable. I had enemies, including the shaman, who was the dead leader’s mate. Not returning turned out to be my salvation. My mind didn’t clear overnight. Even now, sometimes I wake up, and I can’t remember how I got where I am. I’m alive, though, so I’m clearly not wandering around in a daze. I think it’s more like blackouts, lost memory.”
“Effects of long-term drug use,” April says. “My doctoral advisor had a subspecialty in hallucinogens. What you are likely looking at is something that produces effects similar to PCP. Long-term use leads to long-term effects, as with most drugs. Blackouts or loss of memory would be one of them.”
“Will that stop?” Maryanne asks.
“While I believe that ‘long term’ implies it isn’t permanent, I can’t say that without further research.”
“Which we will do,” I add quickly. “If it isn’t likely to clear up on its own, there must be treatments.”
April gives me a look. Brain damage isn’t something that heals like torn tissue, and she doesn’t want me sounding so certain, but thankfully, she doesn’t say anything. Maryanne isn’t a child needing sunshine and roses, but she is fragile, and if I lean one way, it’ll be toward convincing her that a normal life is possible.
It helps that I believe it. I’ve seen people come back from situations that I’m not sure I could have psychologically survived. Determination and optimism might not solve every issue, but it gets you a good chunk of the way there.
For all my sister’s challenges, she understands this. She would never tell Kenny that he won’t walk again, and nor will she tell Maryanne her mind might never fully heal. Her glare just warns me to watch my step, because I’m such a sunshine-and-roses person myself that I might blithely lead poor Maryanne down the happy path of delusive hope. Yeah, my sister really needs to get to know me better.
With that we reach the end of what Maryanne can tell me for now. I have more questions—so many more—but she’s tiring, and that trip down memory lane wasn’t a joyful one. As eager as I am to take her to try identifying the dead woman, she needs a rest first and, again, I’m otherwise stalled until Dalton returns, hopefully with information on where to find the baby’s parents.
NINETEEN
As Maryanne naps, so does the baby, while I make notes on Maryanne’s story. As I watch the baby soundly sleeping, I marvel at my maternal skill. All those stories about babies crying constantly and moms never getting a moment to themselves, and here I am, with time to write down all my notes and then make coffee and even leaf through a novel I’d accidentally left under my old sofa. Clearly Edwin is right, and I’m a natural mother.
Yeah … I’m not that delusional. The baby deserves all the credit for this. I’m guessing that, at this age, they sleep a lot of the time, like Storm and Raoul did as puppies. Also, having lived in the wilderness, born in winter, the baby wouldn’t be accustomed to a cushy life where Mom and Dad can jump to fulfill her every need. She’s curled up with Maryanne on the sofa, snuggled deep into a soft source of body heat, and she’s happy.
The baby does eventually fuss, and I take her from Maryanne, who is so deeply asleep that if the house caught fire, I’d need to haul her out. Alone in the wilderness she’s probably done little more than nap for months now, staying just warm enough to doze without drifting into the endless slumber of hypothermia.
When Maryanne does wake, I summon Jen to take the baby while I finally escort Maryanne to the clinic, where I hope she can identify the dead woman.
* * *
We’re at the clinic, having come in the back way. April has made sure it’s empty, and I ask her to stay in the front room, in case anyone arrives. Maryanne and I walk in to find the dead woman on the examining table. Maryanne takes one look and stops midstep. I resist the urge to jump in with questions. I can see mental wheels turning, and I don’t want to do anything to put on the brakes.
Maryanne walks to the table. She looks down and whispers, “I’m Ellen.” She looks over at me. “That’s what she said. I’m Ellen. I met her…”
Maryanne looks around, and I push over a chair. She eyes it, this simple object that would once have been so familiar. Then she gingerly lowers herself onto it.
I pull another chair from the next room and sit in front of her.
“‘Met’ isn’t quite the right word,” Maryanne says. “I encountered her. It was…” She shakes her head. “Time is difficult to judge. I remember it was warm that day. It might have been last summer. It could even have been the one before. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific.”
“That’s fine.”
“We were gathering berries. If you need the exact time of year, that could help. They were crowberries. I was with the shaman and the two other women from our group. She”—Maryanne gestures toward the dead woman—“came out of the woods. Carefully. I remember that. She made enough noise so we’d hear her, and she had her hands raised so we could see she wasn’t armed. She did everything right.”
“And?”
“The shaman tried to kill her. It was like the men with Eric. He’d be an asset as a worker, as a fighter, but all they see is competition. Our power, as with most patriarchal tribes, came from our mates.”
“Fewer women means more opportunity to snag a powerful man.”
“Yes, and I would strongly suspect that freeing Lora was the shaman’s idea. Lora was young and strong and pretty. If she’d survived, she could have taken the best mate, become the most powerful woman, possibly even become shaman. This woman”—she nods at the body—“wasn’t young, but she’d still be competition. The shaman ran her off and tried to get us to hunt and kill her, as a supposed threat to the group. We were in a down phase, though, so myself and the other women pretended to give chase but didn’t put much effort into it. She got away easily.”
“Do you know what she wanted?”
“That’s what I’m struggling to remember. She spoke to us, but while I would have understood her at the time, the memory faded quickly. What I remember isn’t the conversation but the gist of it. She wanted to help us. I was confused at first, because she said something about help, and I thought she needed help, but that wasn’t it. She wanted to help us.”
“But before that, you didn’t know her. She wasn’t from your tribe.”
Maryanne shakes her head. “She was a settler, not a hostile.”
“Could you take a look at this?”
I rise and fold back the sheet to show the woman’s—Ellen’s—upper-chest scarring. Before I can say anything, Maryanne sucks in breath.
“Oh!” she says. “That’s … Yes, that’s the other group.” She looks at me. “There are two tribes in this area. I don’t know if there are more farther afield, but we only had contact with this other one, and as little of that as possible. It was like two wolf packs, equally matched in size, with enough territory that they didn’t need to cross paths. My feeling is that the two groups had been linked at some point.”
“One initial group that split,” I say. “Like Rockton and the settlements.”
“Yes, but that’s just my presumption. It wasn’t as if we sat around talking about our tribal history. I don’t know if it was the drugs themselves or the result of living that way, but everything was very focused on the now. Any discussions we had were the simple exchange of information needed in the moment. The fire is too small. We need more kindling. Hey, that’s my meat. Even things like hunts or gathering expeditions were very in the moment. We’re running low on meat, so we need to hunt. It’s blueberry season, so we should pick blueberries. When someone died, we buried him and divided up his things, and rarely referred to him again.”
She takes a deep breath. “And that’s the very long way of saying that there were two tribes, but we didn’t interact, and if there was any connection between the two, no one ever mentioned it to me.”
Maryanne runs her fingertips over the woman’s raised scars. “This is definitely their work. When I met her, though, I had no sense she was a hostile. If anyone had suspected she came from the other tribe, that would have been far more worrisome, being so deep into our territory.”
“My guess is that she’d been a hostile and left them. She has facial markings, too, which she covered with dirt. The chest ones seem unfinished, but they aren’t fresh.”
“Left her tribe to become a settler. That would also explain why she’d reached out to us as a party of women. Like an ex–cult member trying to help those still drinking the Kool-Aid.” A wry twist of a smile. “Or, in our case, the tea.”
She steps back for a broader view of the woman. “If she did leave her tribe and stumbled onto them again, that might have explained how she died. They would have killed her. I see you’ve shaved part of her head. I’m guessing that was what did it? A blow to the skull?”
“Is that a common attack method for hostiles?”
A humorless chuckle. “Their murder modus operandi is ‘whatever gets the job done.’ They have knives, but they’d grab a rock if that was closest at hand.”
“She did suffer blunt-force trauma,” I say. “But cause of death was a shotgun pellet.”
“Well, then that’s not the hostiles. Some use bows and arrows, but no one would ever get access to a gun, much less ammunition.”
So I have a name for the woman. The fact that she’d tried to help Maryanne and the others gave me some small insight into her. While she could have stolen this baby for herself, I’m leaning harder now toward other possibilities.
If the baby’s mother belonged to the trading family that Edwin dislikes, then perhaps Ellen thought she was saving the child. With Maryanne and the others, rescue would have been warranted. With the child, though …
We were back to the problem Dalton and I discussed yesterday. At what point do you declare parents unfit? The baby is healthy, showing absolutely no signs of neglect or abuse. Yet, according to Edwin, the family prostitutes its daughters. If he’s right about that, then looking after a baby girl is little different than treating your sled dogs well.
What if that is the sort of situation we find? A child who will grow up to that sort of life?
For now, I need to focus on finding the baby’s parents. I hope Cypher can shed more light on that.
TWENTY
I talk to Phil about Maryanne. I’m trying to play fair with all parties, especially in light of the “Whoops, guess the council “isn’t responsible for hostiles” revelation. I’m feeling sheepish about that, and in response, I decide to be aboveboard regarding Maryanne’s presence.
I explain to Phil. He responds with a shake of his head and zero questions, as if he’s beyond surprise when it comes to Rockton. He’ll tell the council Maryanne is here and sees no issue with that. It’s a humanitarian gesture.
At one time, I’d have thought Phil incapable of understanding that concept. While he doesn’t exactly trip over himself to offer her hospitality, he doesn’t question giving her a house for the night, food, fresh clothing and supplies come morning.
I’ve brought the baby back from Jen’s, and Maryanne is resting, so I’ve requisitioned a men’s parka from the supply shop, put the baby into the front sling we fashioned yesterday, and tucked her under the jacket. We’re both restless, and walking with her seemed like a fine solution, though it might suggest that I have far more experience with puppies than babies.
She doesn’t sleep, but she settles in with only the occasional grunt to let me know she’s there.
Walking through town means more stopping-and-greeting than actual movement, especially when I have a baby strapped to my chest. It’s like walking Storm—even after a year, people still stop me to give her a pat. The baby doesn’t want to be patted. She conveys that with a yowl the first time a resident’s icy fingers touch her cheek.
So I take her out of town. There’s a path that runs just beyond the forest edge, one that residents are allowed to use if they really feel the need to commune with nature. I can go farther, of course—perks of being law enforcement—but with the baby, I’ll stick close. It’s also dark. Not night yet—not even dinnertime—but dark nonetheless.
I see the glow of Dalton’s flashlight first, bobbing along like fairy-fire. Then Storm gives a happy bark and thunders down the path. I drop to one knee before she bowls me over. While I pet her, she dances and whines as if we’ve been separated for months. Then she sticks her big nose into my parka and licks the baby. The baby’s head rolls back, as if trying to see. Storm snuffles the black-fuzzed head, and the baby only grunts in surprise.
Dalton approaches with a guy half a head taller than him, a burly bulk of a man with a snow-crusted beard halfway down his chest.
As I stand, Cypher says, “Either that’s a baby under your coat, kitten, or you’ve taken up serious snacking.”
“My snacking habits are none of your concern,” I say. “But yes, it is a baby.”
Cypher gives me a one-armed hug, which I return. Then he peers down at the baby, who whimpers in alarm.
“Still sc
aring dogs and small children,” Dalton says. “You might want to trim that beard.” He pauses. “No, I guess at her age she can’t see more than shapes. It must be the smell.”
“Ha!” Cypher jabs a finger into Dalton’s chest. “You’re getting better at the jokes, boy. They’re even close to being funny. Also, you really gotta stop letting this girl of yours wander around the woods. If she’s not tripping over dead bodies, she’s rescuing wolf pups and throwing bear cubs, and now she’s bringing home lost babies. Must be a talent.”
“I don’t find the dead bodies,” I say. “I make them, to liven things up.”
“Hey now, that’s my line.”
“You make any dead bodies lately, Ty?” Dalton asks as we head for home.
“Just the kind I can throw into a stew. And, before you ask, that doesn’t include people. My hit-man days are behind me … unless you need someone put down, and then I’ll make an exception.”
“For a lifetime supply of coffee creamer?” I say.
“Hell, no, kitten. I want the coffee, too. I’m a skilled tradesman. I don’t come cheap.” He looks over at the baby. “Mind if I hold the tyke when we get inside where it’s warm?”
Dalton and I exchange a look. Cypher sees it and sputters. “What? You think I’ll drop her on her head? My own girl grew up just fine. Twice as smart as her old man.”
“You have a daughter?” I say.
“I do indeed. She’s a lawyer down in Hawaii. Not the profession I would have chosen, but she isn’t fond of mine either, so we agree to disagree. She married a few years back, and she’s got herself a pair of twin babies. I haven’t broken them yet.”
“You’ve … seen them?” I say.
“Only once so far, but I plan to get down again this spring. Fly south with all the other snowbirds, work on my tan on Waikiki.”
Alone in the Wild Page 12
