Bell Weather (2 page)

From the shore, the flowers had seemed to form a smooth, gentle surface, but in fact they clumped and bobbed, often rising over his head. They made it hard to recognize the whirlpools and waves. He was battered more than once by unseen debris, and even floating backward with an unobstructed view, he couldn’t spot the branch and worried it had passed.

He drifted to the ferry line: a thick twist of rope, suspended over the water, that extended bank to bank from columns on the docks. He floated underneath it, raised the gaff, and hooked the rope. The jerk was so strong, he almost lost his grip. The current forced him several extra feet beyond the line and there he dangled as the floodwaters surged up against him.

His breaths came in quick, light snatches at the air. His legs were numb, his wrist sprain a growing streak of flame. There were flowers in his eyes and petals in his mouth, sickly sweet and slippery when he tried to spit them out. Seven miles downriver lay the Dunderakwa Falls, and if he missed her—curse Silas and his God-rotting murkfins!—nothing but a miracle would pull her from her doom.

He finally saw the branch upriver, dead ahead. It was bigger than he’d realized, dangerously splayed like a wide black claw and coming fast, very fast. He hopped the hook along the line, half paralyzed with cold and moving to the side so as not to be impaled. There’d be one brief chance to get her off the branch. Here it came—he could see the little flowers on her gown, the whiteness of her scalp along the parting of her hair.

A limb beneath the surface cracked him in the ribs. The blow knocked him sideways, fully out of reach, and only fury at the pain allowed him to recover. With a wild bolt of energy, he grabbed her by the armpit, holding one-fisted to the handle of the gaff. The branch continued on, tearing at her gown. She was limp and almost naked when he pulled her free and clear.

The flowers swarmed around them, covering their heads, until his panic spiraled up to something like euphoria. Her body pressed against him, cold as any corpse. She was facing him and buoyant with her head lolling back, hair floating to his chin, breasts rising from her gown. Her slightly open mouth was her captivating feature—what a thing it would have been to see her take a breath.

The woman belched a lungful of water in his face.

She coughed herself awake and looked at him, amazed, as if confused to find the branch was suddenly a man. She squeezed him around the middle, murdering his ribs.

“Don’t let go,” he said.

She clutched him even harder in surprise, legs around his hips, hands fastened to his back. Her irises were dark—he couldn’t see her pupils—and she seemed about to talk but coughed herself delirious. He realized only now, having caught her in his arms, that he didn’t have the strength to get her to the bank. He would barely save himself if he tried swimming back and so they held each other close, stranded in the flood.

He couldn’t hear a thing except the noise of rushing water, and he couldn’t feel his hands or verify his grip. Any moment they’d be loose and headed for the falls. He looked at her with false reassurance to console her. Once he did—once she stared at him and seemed to understand—he knew for certain, falls be damned, he would hold her to the end.

A long wooden pole cracked him on the noggin. When he turned to see its source, it struck him on the nose. He bled again and blinked, smarting from the blows, and there was Ichabod the ferryman at last, right beside them.

He was balanced on the tethered raft, lanky and disheveled, reaching with his driving pole and almost falling in. The raft was broad and strong, railed on either side and stable enough for horses, made of planks atop a sturdy pair of dugout canoes. Ichabod was sweating from his fight against the current. He was a lifelong mute and now he spoke with his expressions, subtle changes in his close-set eyes and bony jaw that Tom interpreted to mean, “Grab the pole. Only choice. Any closer and I’ll knock you underwater with the raft.”

He was right. The raft was bobbing too erratically to trust. Tom dropped the gaff and lunged to get the ferry pole. He caught it but the woman’s limp weight pulled him down. She was fading out of consciousness and dragging on his neck and Ichabod, though wiry strong, could barely keep his footing. Tom inched along, hand over hand. The woman started slipping underwater through his arms.

“Grab her hair,” Tom yelled, finally at the raft.

Ichabod wove his bony fingers to her roots and kept her head above water, high enough to breathe. Tom hauled himself up and didn’t let her go, aching from his injuries and growling like a winterbear. They pulled her up together to the safety of the deck. Ichabod removed his shirt and handed it to Tom, who wrapped her up and held her, cradling her head. They shuddered close together in the cold, misty breeze. She had flowers on her throat and petals in her ears.

He wrung the water from her hair and rubbed her shivery skin, summoning whatever faint warmth she had left, his swollen nose and broken ribs and reasonable questions overpowered by the wonder of beholding her alive.

Chapter Two

“Hours in the dark catching murkfins and you come along, steal my gaff, and catch a woman.”

Silas Booker, smiling broadly at the curious passersby, stood in the mud of Center Street and blocked Tom’s way. He wore the same fishy breeches he’d been wearing at the river—possibly the only pair of breeches Silas owned. The season’s first horseflies twirled around his legs. Townspeople noticed Tom and Silas in the road; they were active with the business of a fair-weather morning—airing houses, running errands, trading for supplies—but they had all heard the story of the rescue in the flood.

“I’d gripe again about that bellywallop,” Silas said loudly, “but there isn’t any question that you went and took the brunt.”

No, there wasn’t, Tom agreed. He had a bandage on his wrist, a wrap around his rib cage, and grape-and-ash bruises underneath his eyes. The river chill had left him feeling feverish and brittle. His fatigue had only deepened from the necessary tavern work, especially now in spring when travelers braved the road again, no longer hindered by the valley’s great snows.

They would soon arrive from Grayport, seventy miles southwest, or from Liberty, a hundred-odd miles northeast. Root was in the middle of the wilderness between—four hundred people in profound isolation with the river up the side and the forest all around them: a miniature town with a small, common green and farmland radiating outward from the center. If not for the road that linked the cities, they would likely be forgotten. As it was, they almost were. There were safer routes between Grayport and Liberty but none were so direct in the drier, warmer seasons. Swamps and gorges riddled the south; the northern passages were safer but a good deal longer. Several days could be recovered by the wilder way through Root, which made it a popular road for mail and urgent trips between the colony’s two major settlements.

Soon the year’s first travelers would emerge from the forest, and the Orange would be busy straight through to the frigid season of deadfall. With beer to brew, stores to fill, and countless daily chores, nothing would have prompted Tom to venture from the tavern but a summons to meet the woman he had rescued from the flood.

Her identity was fodder for a host of shifting rumors. She had been called a woman and a child, golden-haired and dark, destitute and wealthy. She was said to have floated from the distant northern mountains or emerged like the murkfins from underneath the river. There were rumors she might be a victim of the Kraw—a fierce tribe of women so bonded to the forest, they were said to be part of the flora, only semihuman—but the Kraw had not been seen around the valley since the war.

Her name was Mary, Martha, Dolly, Georgiana, or Elizabeth, and her death had been assumed with somber regularity as no additional news of her condition came to light. She had been kept in the care of Dr. Benjamin Knox and his wife, Abigail, since the hour of her rescue. After prohibiting visitors for the first two days, Benjamin had summoned his friend from the tavern that morning, and Tom had done his best to look respectable in polished buckle shoes, a fresh shirt and coat, and a tricorne as crisp as Silas’s was limp. Tom never wore a wig—few in Root saw the need—and he kept his shoulder-length hair tied behind him with a ribbon. It was a perfect white ribbon from his younger cousin Bess, who had embarrassed him with smiles over the effort he was making.

“Now you’re dandy as a jay,” Silas said, and grinned. “Off to see her, I expect, and claim her as a prize.”

“God damn it, no I ain’t. You’re as frivolous as Bess. I didn’t save her life to warm my ruddy bed.”

“She’s better than a murkfin,” Silas said sincerely. “People seem to think—”

His words were interrupted by a passing group of sawyers, one of whom complimented Tom’s shiny buckles.

As owner of the tavern, Tom was wed to the community, and everyone in Root presumed to know his business. He was popular and didn’t spurn the neighborly regard, but at the age of twenty-seven, he was tired of attention—for his valor in the war, for the scandal of his father—and now, in a year when public interest seemed finally on the wane, here was Silas spreading gossip that would set the town talking.

“He’s off to see her now!” Silas hollered out, turning heads and sending Tom, hot as smoakwood, on his way.

He walked toward the Knoxes’ house, avoiding people’s faces to discourage any questions but intuiting—he felt it in their overlong stares—that they suspected he was going forth to meet his future wife. The sun at his back lit the houses he approached, but the unlit sides were shadowy and grim, caked with old snow the morning couldn’t reach. Winter hung tough in spite of warmer air, yet the town’s growing bustle had the energy of spring and the walk began to soften Tom’s hard-packed spirit, which had seemed for many weeks impossible to thaw.

The Knoxes’ modest house stood at the corner of the green. He had begun to cross the road when a sunshower fell, altering the hues of everything in sight. There were marmalade sheep grazing in the common, indigo trees, houses rippling blue. The air looked alive with shimmering gold and green, touched with spectral colors difficult to name. The colorwash was another of the town’s native marvels. Tom felt as if a rainbow were pouring down around him, filling him with hopes he didn’t quite believe.

The shower had ended by the time he reached the Knoxes’ door, and it was only when he knocked and felt the water in his stockings that he realized just how bedraggled he’d become.

Abigail Knox opened up to let him in. She was a devout Lumenist whose faith coexisted with unembroidered fact, and she composed herself and dressed in rigorous accordance. Her frame was sharp and lean—the most Tom had ever seen her eat was half a dinner—and she covered herself completely in an ankle-length gown, bed jacket, ruffled cap, and, according to rumor, two layers of underclothes regardless of the season. Children ceased laughing in her presence, dogs cowered when they saw her in the street, and however much anyone disagreed with her in secret, no one saw the need to openly defy her.

“If you had come on time, you might have avoided the rain and kept yourself presentable.”

“I didn’t see a cloud.”

“Or a clock,” Abigail said. “At least you were invited. Do you know how many busybodies have come to the door in the last two days?”

“I’d imagine—”

“Twenty-nine, and those were only the ones who had the impudence to knock. Everywhere I go, they want to know the
news,
and everyone who comes receives the same answer: show me blood or broken bones or you have no Lumenous reason to be muddying the steps. My husband is a doctor, not a storyteller. There, they’re looking now. Come inside before they think it’s open house. And wipe your shoes. You should have worn boots.” She pulled him inside, closed the door, and said, “Sheriff Pitt is here.”

In any other household, Tom would have cursed.

“He thinks incessant questioning will finally win the day,” she said. “Never mind that our enigma has yet to speak a word in self-defense.”

“Defense of what?”

“Now you’re talking like Pitt,” Abigail replied, knowing the comparison would rankle Tom to silence.

She walked upstairs, expecting him to follow. Tom wiped his feet and wished he hadn’t come, but by the time they reached the top and turned the corner into the hall, his curiosity was greater than his private reservations. They entered a small, bright room crowded with a bed, a night table, a chest of drawers, and one spindly chair that nobody was using. The bed faced the hall, but with the sunlight glaring after the darkness of the staircase, Benjamin leaning over his patient, and Abigail pausing just inside the door, all Tom could see was Sheriff James Pitt. He stood in his scarlet coat and yak-hair wig, skinny-legged but mutton-faced, as if whatever he ate and drank congealed above his neck. His wee protruding eyes were ardently suspicious but betrayed a constant panic that they might, at any moment, spot an actual offense.

“Out!” Pitt said.

He was a baritone who often tried speaking as a bass. Tom grinned wide and stepped inside the room. Before he knew it, Pitt’s palm was firmly on his chest, pressing on his broken ribs and holding him at bay.

“Tom,” Benjamin said, turning from the bed and smiling at his friend.

Pitt dropped his hand but didn’t move aside.

Abigail inserted herself between them with a frown. She might have sighed if any part of her was ever less than rigid. “The two of you are worse than unbreeched children.”

The Knoxes were childless after fifteen years of marriage, had never been known to kiss or embrace, and were generally viewed as siblings: sharply unalike but unmistakably related. Crueler whispers in the town called their childlessness proof of God’s mercy, sparing unborn souls from such a bitter-apple mother. Benjamin, a popular man, was pitied for his lot, and yet he generally seemed content and wasn’t given to complaint.

“I’m sorry, Abigail,” Pitt said, “but I won’t be interrupted in the middle of my questions.”

“Saints support us, are you only at the middle?” she replied.