Stony River (6 page)

Sevana laughed in merriment, her eyes dancing with a light new to them. The lambs’ cavortings mirrored the feelings she had in that carefree place: she wanted to run and join in the fun. “Could you tell me their names?” she asked, irresistibly on her feet.

Joel obliged her, taking her through the flock to introduce her to Glacier, the bellwether, and the other fifteen or so bucks and ewes. The lambs he saved for last, for they were off playing by themselves—the frolicking pair he had just called back, along with Thistle, Goldthread, and the cunning Gyrfalcon who measured the newcomer to the meadow with a calculating stare. It was a lot to learn, he knew. But Glacier and Goldthread were easy—the biggest and smallest respectively. Woodrush had a notch in his ear from a dispute with Hemlock. Arrow had a scar on her muzzle from a dispute with a thornbush. She would get them all in time.

Wandering there on the slope, Sevana tried to miss nothing that magical place had to offer. The mountains were beautiful, astonishingly so, and the meadow was so clean and sweeping and open that it gave her a feeling of freedom—even, curiously, of peace. As they returned to their sitting spot, she was already plotting how best to immortalize it on canvas. “Would it be all right if I came up here to paint?” she asked.

“Anytime you wish.”

“Thank you. I’ve never painted outdoors before, nor used a real-life subject, so this will be quite a challenge,” she said, wishing she could start that very second. “Having this to paint will almost make up for—” She stopped with an odd look, and made no attempt to finish her sentence.

But she didn’t have to say the words, for Joel studied her face with keen perception. “You don’t want to be here?”

“Not exactly—out here in the sticks.” She shook her head with a disbelieving little laugh. “Fenn doesn’t even have running water.” Then it occurred to her that Joel probably didn’t, either. But it was too late to make pretense of her true opinions, and the words tumbled on recklessly, “And he eats
bear meat
.”

Joel was gentleman enough not to smile as he inquired: “Do you mind if I ask why you’re here then, Sevana, if you’d rather not be?”

“Because my father wanted me to stay with Fenn after I graduated.” She plucked a fragile yellow glacier lily from the grass. “I’m not sure why it made such a difference to him, whether I moved to Lethbridge now or in the fall. But to his way of thinking, being four months closer to eighteen mattered a great deal as far as me living on my own.”

Joel nodded as if he might agree with such fatherly logic, but only remarked, “So it’s Lethbridge you’re off to. That’s where I bought my sheep when I was first starting out, from a breeder over there. And I have a friend who moved there from Cragmont about five years ago.”

She was interested that he knew of it. “What’s the town like?”

“It’s a good-sized city on the plain. It’s not bad, if you like open country.” The inference was there, ever so slightly, that he did not. “Do you have friends or relatives there?”

“No, I just chose it for the art school.”

“Where does your father live?”

“He’s on a restricted military base in London. He’s a special intelligence analyst and goes from place to place—and I have been in boarding school until now.”

“What about your mother?” he asked, if a bit hesitantly.

“She left my father when I was very young. She married again soon after and broke all ties with us.” There was no pain in Sevana’s clear eyes as she spoke, for to her it was merely a fact to be related. “My father never remarried. He’s always been too busy with his career to have much time for anything else. Fenn and I spent a few years with him when we were young, and some of the summers, but mostly we lived at school. Fenn came out here when he graduated from military academy, and this is the first time I’ve seen him since then.”

“I confess, for all the years Fenn’s been here, I don’t know him very well.” Joel’s voice took on a guarded tone. “Are you very close to him?”

“I don’t know him very well myself,” she admitted, adding a tiny, pink-striped spring beauty to her fairylike bouquet. “But it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, it’s bound to take some time to get caught up.”

“Reckon so—” and if Joel had other opinions on the matter, he did not speak them. But out of a silence he’d lapsed into, he asked, “Sevana, has your father ever been out to visit Fenn?”

She tilted her head at him. “Out here? No, he never has.”

“So he has no knowledge of what Fenn’s life is like?”

“You mean—like not having electricity, and being so far from town?”

“Well, not so much that. It’s more—well, the loggers out here are a rough bunch, and their lifestyle—” He was trying to be diplomatic, placing the blame on the whole class of loggers instead of one in particular. “It’s just not something I’d necessarily want my seventeen-year-old daughter in the middle of.” As if regretting having spoken at all, he got abruptly to his feet. “Are you thirsty?”

After the long trek up the trail—“A little,” she admitted.

“I should have asked you sooner,” he apologized. “I’ll fetch some water from the spring.”

Not inclined to sit idly by when there was something new to see, Sevana followed him. Just within the trees in a shallow draw, a spring had carved out a small rocky hollow in the hillside. From this cavern, a miniature stream freefell a few handbreadths into a gravelly pool. “Here’s my running water,” Joel teased her. He unhooked a tin cup from a hemlock branch and held it under the spill. “I’m afraid it’s a community cup,” he gave fair warning as he handed it over.

She remembered his cryptic reference to a ‘she’ at his first greeting. “Do you have a family up here?”

“No, I live alone. I just meant it’s the cup I use, also.”

“So, a community of two.” Sevana found herself teasing him in turn. “That’s a pretty small town. I think I’ll take my chances.” She took a reckless gulp, and instantly felt her mouth and throat ache with the excruciating cold. “That’s ice water without the ice!” she gasped. She drank the rest much more cautiously, then gave the cup back so he could have a turn.

When they returned to the sheep, Joel opened his knapsack. “I didn’t bring any company fare for lunch, but you’re welcome to share what I have.”

When she refused out of politeness, he insisted, saying he had plenty. So she accepted portions of his homemade brown bread and cheese and dried apple rings, and thought how good it tasted—out where food was so much more precious because it was so hard to come by, so far to get more.

There was such a stillness when no one was talking. A wind stirred the grasses lightly, and now and then a sheep called to another, but those little sounds were swallowed by the large presence cast by the overlooking mountains. And in that silence, Sevana felt something calling to her—drawing her toward something unknown or far away. It was almost as if the mountains themselves were calling her, beckoning in some inexplicable way.

But her reverie was forgotten as one of the sheep turned suddenly and bolted down the hill. For a minute it seemed the rest of the flock would follow, for they all stopped eating and looked after him, and some took nervous steps that direction. While Sevana was still staring in surprise, Joel had gone after the runaway with long strides. One of the lambs followed until he turned and spoke to him, not unkindly: “Stay, Thistle.” The lamb halted, and watched Joel disappear down the slope.

Sevana jumped up to see if she could catch sight of them—and spotted Joel walking the errant sheep back up the hill. She went down to meet them. “He must not have gone too far,” she said, glad Joel had gotten him back without trouble.

When Joel stopped, the sheep also stopped, looking back at him so indignantly that Sevana burst out laughing—and Joel, too, had to grin. “Never seen a sheep with such wanderlust,” he said, with a rueful shake of his head.

“Is that the one who squeezed under the fence?”

“The one and same. I’m going to sell him this fall, for a straying sheep can teach others to do the same.”

“Oh no, don’t sell him!” she objected instantly, with round eyes.

“I have to sell a few back to the breeder this year, because for the first time I have more than can winter in my barn,” he explained. “But he will sell them to other people who are looking for that same specialized breed of wool-bearers.”

Sevana felt better then. “Won’t it be hard to decide which ones to give up?”

“I do get pretty attached to them,” he admitted. “But in Brook’s case, the decision will be easy—if I can manage to hold onto him that long.”

Sevana considered the troublesome sheep, who had returned to grazing as though having done nothing amiss. So that was Brook. She remembered Joel calling him a yearling. He was at a gawky stage, too big to be a cuddly lamb and too small to be impressive like the stronger, full-grown rams. There were several others in that same inbetween stage, and she felt sorry for them as well. She couldn’t think of their names, though.

But she remembered Goldthread, the littlest lamb, standing apart from his mother, Lightning, who ignored him while she grazed and kicked him if he tried to nurse. He seemed resigned to it, and stood watching her out of quiet eyes. Wanting to comfort him, Sevana knelt down and called to him—but even though he looked her way, he wouldn’t come. “Doesn’t he know his name?” she asked Joel.

“He knows it.” He called to him, and Goldthread came running over at once. Hunting in the grass, Joel pulled up a yellow violet and fed it to him, leaves and all.

Then the other lambs crowded in to see what favor Goldthread had received, cocking their heads and looking up with beggars’ faces, so that Joel looked helplessly to Sevana. “Now I’m in trouble with them all, for favoring one. And how am I going to find enough violets on this hillside to give them each a treat?” And though he spoke wryly, laughter was in his eyes.

Sevana smiled back at him, realizing more all the time what a good nature he had. Jumping up, she went in search of more violets, and brought back a double handful for the lambs—who pressed in eagerly to receive a share.

“There!” she said when all the flowers were gone, opening her hands to show she had no more. “Now you can go back to grazing, for you’ve all had a treat.” But they crowded in closely as ever, waiting expectantly for more.

“It seems you have made some friends.” And Joel, who had been looking on in amusement, had to send them off with a wave of his hand.

Sevana could have lingered with Joel much longer in that wonderful place, but she didn’t feel she should stay. It was his pasture and his flock, his scenery and his life—and she was only an onlooker who had a long walk ahead of her. Reluctantly she said she should go, and thanked him for lunch and the view.

Perhaps he sensed what she was thinking, for he told her she must find a way back whenever she wanted another look at the mountains. She thanked him gratefully—touched by his kindness—and set off, leaving him on that high slope with his well-kept sheep beneath the shining backdrop of the snow-drifted crags. Slowly she walked down the trail, wondering what it would be like to live up there day after day, and never leave at all.

CHAPTER 4

As Sevana neared the homestead, her thoughts returned to the day at hand. She had planned to make dinner for Fenn, for it seemed the one truly useful thing she could do for him. Up to this point in her life, all that had been required of her was to do well in her classes and find reasonably constructive ways to occupy her free hours; and she thought it was high time she learned how to survive in the real world—if indeed that was what this present circumstance could be called. The fact that she didn’t know how to cook daunted her not at all: she only wanted plenty of time for a first attempt. So as soon as she had brought in half a bucket of water from the spring—after discovering she couldn’t lift it full—she went straight to the cookstove; but at once saw she was in trouble, for the woodbox was empty.

Not to be deterred, she stepped onto the back porch and surveyed what was left of the woodpile. One big round was set off by itself, with an axe leaning against it. Numerous cuts marred its top, as if Fenn had attempted to split it without success. If he couldn’t split it, Sevana knew she certainly could not. She chose a smaller round, set it beside the unmalleable one, and carefully attacked it with the axe.

The tentative blow merely imprinted a faint line across the surface, as the blade bounced lightly off the wood. Mustering strength, she swung the axe harder and knocked the log over. Setting it upright, she raised her arms high and hit the log aggressively, sinking the blade fast into the round. Then she couldn’t get it out, even though she tried wrenching it with her hand and kicking it with her foot. Finally she took the maul and beat it out.

Composing herself, she took careful aim, and got the axe stuck once more. But with the passing of time, she succeeded in quartering not only that round but also another—not by any special skill or strength, but only stubborn perseverance. Setting the axe down then, she stared regretfully at the chipped fingernail marring her manicure. She took time to run upstairs and trim all her other nails down to match before she carried in the wood, filled the stove,—and was still on her knees much later, coaxing a smoking fire that wouldn’t burn, when Fenn kicked the dirt from his logging boots and walked in the open door.