Crossing Over (4 page)
Authors: Anna Kendall
“Good food,” Hartah grunted, and belched.
In the morning the air had turned much colder. In another few weeks there would be frost on the grass. Hartah, to my surprise, turned the wagon south. As the sun warmed the day, he seemed in a very good mood indeed, whistling tunelessly. I rode in the back of the jostling wagon, sitting on the folded faire tent, and watched a fly crawl across the back of Hartah’s neck. After several hours of wordless travel, I risked a question addressed to his and my aunt’s back.
“Where are we going?”
“To the sea.” He laughed. “I have a desire for sea bathing.”
He barely bathed at all. I could smell him every time the wind shifted.
Over the next few days, there were fewer villages the farther south we went, and so fewer chances for harvest faires. The land grew wilder, less fertile. Fields of harvested crops gave way to pastures for sheep and then, as the ground became rockier and steeper still, to goats. After several days in the slow, creaky wagon, we turned east. For the last time we spent the night at an inn, a rough place full of rough men who did not look like farmers or herders. There were no women. Hartah paid the last of his money for a tiny room up under the eaves and left Aunt Jo and me there.
“Bar the door,” he said, “and don’t open it until you are sure it’s me.” He went back downstairs and did not return for hours. My aunt slept restlessly on the sagging bed. Rolled in my blanket on the floor, I could hear her light sighs, see her body twitch in starlight from the tiny window. Did she dream, even as I did?
Let there be no dreams tonight.
There were none, and the next morning Hartah was cheerful. “A good place for information!”
Aunt Jo looked at him, and then away.
After that, there were no inns, and we slept in or under the wagon, eating provisions Hartah had bought in Stonegreen. His good mood subsided, replaced by a restless tension I didn’t understand. But he didn’t hit me or Aunt Jo. He barely noticed us, until one night, over a campfire built beside a rocky landslide that hardly blocked the cold wind, Hartah looked at me directly. His eyes flickered red and gold with reflection from the flames, like a beast. “How’d ye like to be rich, Roger?”
For some reason, I thought immediately of Cat Starling, back on her prosperous farm. Of her clean black braids, her carefully ironed petticoat. I said nothing.
“Scared ye, have I?” Hartah jeered. “So much the better. There’s fearful work for all of us ahead, and all of us will share the spoils. That’s only right. You’re a great one for right, ain’t ye, Roger?”
Anything I said might provoke him. I stared at the fire. Hartah took another swig of the brandy he’d brought from Stonegreen.
“That’s good, stay silent, boy. Silence is what’ll be needed, mark my words. But you’ll stay silent or swing with the rest of us, eh? You’ll see that. I know.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, nor did I care. As long as he left me alone, as long as he kept his fists on the brandy and not on me. When he again raised the bottle, I slipped down into my blanket and prepared to sleep.
But then I glimpsed Aunt Jo’s face, her eyes wide and horrified, her withered lips parted in a silent scream.
The next day I could smell the sea on the wind, although I couldn’t yet see it. We left the main road and climbed a muddy track upward into hills even wilder, cut with deep ravines and falls of rock. The horse, old to begin with, faltered and strained. I thought the poor beast might drop dead in her traces, but still Hartah urged her on. The wagon wheels groaned, even though the load now consisted only of its driver. Aunt Jo and I walked behind. All of our provisions were gone except a half loaf of hard bread, and Hartah had dumped the ragged faire tent into a ravine. When I dared to ask him why, he laughed and said, “Rich men don’t need such sorry lodgings!”
We reached the top of the track with the horse still alive, pulling the wagon into a thick wood of old oak and wind-bent pine. Here the tang of salt air was strong. In a clearing beside a swift hillside stream sat a crude wooden cabin, its log roof sealed with pitch.
“Hallooooo!” Hartah called. Two men came out of the cabin, one young and one about Hartah’s age. The older leaned on a wooden staff, one of his legs bent and useless. He hobbled toward us.
“So you’ve come.”
“We have,” Hartah said.
“Is this your boy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, see that he does his share of the work.”
“He will.”
The younger man stared at me, scowling. He looked about seventeen or eighteen, wide-shouldered and handsome, with yellow hair falling over bright blue eyes. I found myself wondering if Cat Starling would have liked him, would have kissed him.
“Then come,” the older man said.
“Are the others—”
“Soon.”
Hartah said to Aunt Jo, “Make camp. There, under the trees by the creek. Don’t come near the cabin, or you’ll wish you hadn’t. You too, boy.” He and the yellow-haired youth strode into the cabin, the lamed man limping after them.
My aunt and I drew the wagon under the trees, tethered and watered the horse, made a fire. There was nothing to cook. As I gnawed on my share of the bread, hard and moldy, three more men arrived in the clearing. None had families with them. They disappeared into the cabin.
My aunt handed me her piece of bread. She had not touched it. When I looked at her in surprise, I gasped. Never had I seen a face like that. Whiter than frost and her eyes just as frozen, wide open and fixed in terror.
“Aunt . . . what . . .”
Abruptly she turned her head and vomited into the weeds. Thin strings of brownish green bile retched from her mouth. In truth, I was surprised anything came up at all, we had eaten so little. Even more surprising, vomiting seemed to hearten her, or at least to return her voice.
“Go, Roger. Go now. What they plan . . . you must not . . . run!”
I stared at her across the dying fire. Never once had she told me to escape Hartah, or tried to protect me from him. I said, “What are they planning? What’s going to happen?”
“Go. Go. Go.” She was moaning now, like an animal in a trap, as she rocked back and forth by the fire on her skinny haunches. How could I go, leaving her like this? She was my aunt, my mother’s sister, and I could not leave her here alone with whatever she feared so much. . . .
No. That was not true. The truth was harsher, more shaming: I was afraid to run. To go off into that wild country, without weapons or money or food . . . and Hartah had threatened to . . . if he came after me and caught me. . . .
I felt shamed by my own cowardice, and shame turned me angry. “You’ve lost your wits! I can’t go! Be quiet or I’ll—” I stopped, appalled. I sounded like Hartah.
Aunt Jo stopped, too. No more moaning, no more rocking. She sank onto her blanket, her face turned away from me, and lay quietly. But one more sentence came from her side of the fire, and it was clear and cold as sea air.
“Your mother died at Hygryll, on Soulvine Moor.”
I went still. It seemed the whole world had gone still: leaves didn’t rustle, wind didn’t blow, embers didn’t snap in the ashes of the fire.
At Hygryll, on Soulvine Moor.
After years of refusing to tell me anything of my parents.
My mother.
At Hygryll, on Soulvine Moor.
After years of refusing to tell me anything of my parents.
My mother.
“Where is Soulvine Moor?” I demanded. “And how? How did she die?”
Aunt Jo said nothing, rigid as stone.
“
How?
And what of my father—Aunt Jo!”
How?
And what of my father—Aunt Jo!”
But Aunt Jo would say no more. She lay down, as stiff and unresponsive as if it were she and not her sister who had died at that unknown place. Unknown now, but I would find it. Now that I had a name, I would find it. And for the first time ever, I would cross over with gladness.
My mother, in her lavender dress . . .
It was a long time before I could sleep. I watched the stars between the branches of the trees. I watched the clouds drift in and cover them. Toward morning, it began to rain. I crept under the wagon. The cold rain didn’t matter; tomorrow I would go. My aunt had told me to run, and now I had a reason, a place to run to. Tomorrow I would go, and I would find the place my mother had died, and I would cross over and find her.
But toward morning Hartah woke me, and everything came crashing down.
“Boy! Get up, curse you, get up now!”
I started awake, sitting up so fast that I hit my head on the bottom of the wagon, a sharp crack that sent spears of light through my brain. Hartah seized me by one arm and pulled me from beneath the wagon.
The little clearing was bedlam. Men ran around cursing, hitching Hartah’s old horse to a wagon that must have arrived in the last few hours. The rain still fell, a slow, cold drizzle that soaked through my wool tunic as if boring inward. Through the gray curtains of rain the men’s lanterns gleamed fitfully, illuminating now a clenched face, now the load upon the wagon bed, which was unseen beneath a tarp.
“Come!” Hartah roared, dragging me with him.
Someone else yelled, amid a row of curses hot enough to blister rock, “She be too early! She be too early!”
We ran behind the cabin and then kept going. There was a second track here, leading steeply downward. As Hartah and I descended in the darkness, I tried to keep my feet on the muddy ground, desperately watching by the light of Hartah’s swinging lantern for firm footing amid the streaming water. The smell of salt grew sharper. I could hear a wagon close behind me, the horse led by someone. We left the trees, and the wind hit me so hard I almost fell. All at once I could hear the sea surging below.
At the bottom of the track we reached a tiny, pebbled beach. The sky was pitch-black, but as lanterns came down with the men, I saw that the beach lay between steep cliffs and the sea. The pebbles were dotted with large rocks, and even larger ones jutted from a wild sea. Dark waves rose and crashed on the boulders, some sending spray inland to dash against the cliffs. Rain fell steadily.
“There!”
“Hurry, damn you!”
“She be too early! Too early!”
“We can still do it. . . .”
Do
what
? The yellow-haired youth pushed me out of the way, so hard that I fell on the rocks. I staggered up, dazed; no bones seemed to be broken, but I shrank back against the cliff, peering desperately around. No way back up to the cabin except by the one track, and men stood there, swinging their lanterns.
what
? The yellow-haired youth pushed me out of the way, so hard that I fell on the rocks. I staggered up, dazed; no bones seemed to be broken, but I shrank back against the cliff, peering desperately around. No way back up to the cabin except by the one track, and men stood there, swinging their lanterns.
Yellow Hair pulled the tarp from the wagon and tipped it. Such strength! A load of dry firewood spilled onto the beach in an enormous pile. Someone lit a brand soaked in oil and tossed it onto the wood, which flared instantly. Dry, cured, oiled—someone had prepared the wood with great care. The flames mounted high into the windy sky, a great bonfire.
And all at once I saw a light far out on the surging dark sea.
She be too early! We can still do it—
No. No. They were going to—
I had heard of such things. I hadn’t wanted to believe them. It was like witches or like sick-curses, too monstrous to be believed. But here, here and now, my uncle—
Three lights flashed in rapid succession out on the dark sea, and the men on the beach shouted.
“She sees us!”
“She’s coming in—”
“Get ready!”
The ship out there thought the bonfire was a guide-light, the kind made to lead vessels toward safe harbor. She was sailing blind, out there in the wild storm, and this fire would lure her toward the rocks. How far out did the rocks extend from the beach . . . how soon would the captain realize what was happening . . . ?
I didn’t know. I had never been on a ship. And there was nothing I could do.
Time passed. I don’t know how much time. The rain lashed me as I huddled against the cliff, and out there on the sea, the ship fought the storm. Her lights seemed to come closer, then to recede. In the rain and darkness I couldn’t judge distances. I couldn’t judge anything.
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