Under the Same Sky (6 page)

That was when one of his fellows made a noise like a crow, grabbed his throat, and fell face first into the fire. The men were suddenly on their feet, pistols aimed into the forest, eyes searching the shadows. A short
thwick
came from the trees and another man fell, clutching at his belly and howling in agony. The throat of a third man was pierced by an arrow and he collapsed, hitting the earth with a dull thud. The clearing filled with men’s screams and the hissing of arrows.

I watched with dread as a moving wall of dark-haired men advanced into the clearing. Their faces were painted in black stripes, their hands swung axes and knives. Over their shoulders hung the fragile curves of bows. The shrieking noises they made sounded wild, like the forest around them. Indians.

The horses near us stamped and snorted, yanking at the ropes. The gray mare tossed her head and Blue Shirt, eyes wide, sprung up from behind her. He lunged toward me, grabbing my arms and wrapping his rough sleeve around my neck.

I made a garbled sound of protest, but his arm was tight. His voice was scratchy in my ear. “Godammit,” he muttered. “I ain’t leavin’ empty-handed.”

He dragged me backwards into the trees, barking at me to be quiet. Adelaide still lay on the riverside, her open eye wide and liquid. I couldn’t let him separate us. I kicked at his shins and dug my shredded nails into his arms. The sound of thunking axes and dying men drove Blue Shirt forward and he tossed me, sack-like, over his shoulder. Adelaide disappeared from my view. The momentum knocked his hat off, and I saw he was mostly bald, save for a ring of curly red and silver hairs. He stumbled through the trees, swerving in and out of branches, following the winding path of the stream while I bumped against his back. I lifted my head to see what was happening, but the brush blinded me.

I could hear, though. The air was alive with death.

As much as I feared and hated our captors, I had been brought up to fear Indians more. The stories were always the same: Indians killed and tortured white people for entertainment. They dined upon their victims’ still-beating hearts. Indians were barbarians, barely more human than the animals with which they shared the forest. For those reasons I didn’t struggle as Blue Shirt carried me away. At least I understood this man and had some vague hope of survival with him.

Eventually he stopped running and dumped me onto the ground. His pock-scarred face was streaked with sweat, his shirt a patchy blue. His hands shook, either from exertion or fear, and he panted so loudly I was sure the Indians would hear us. He staggered ten feet to the river’s edge, where he crouched and plunged his hands into the water, splashing his face and body. My mouth was so dry my tongue felt swollen. I longed to taste the water, but could barely move my legs. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, trying to ignore the thirst.

Then something in the air changed. My legs, my tongue, the water—nothing mattered. It all disappeared with the realisation that Wolf was there, waiting for me. I opened my eyes and saw him standing halfway between Blue Shirt and me, more lucent than solid in the sunlight. His hair was tied back into a tail, exposing his cheekbones and his mouth, which was set in a tight line. He tilted his head, motioning me closer. I hadn’t been able to stand before. Now rising to my feet felt effortless, and I felt no pain. He filled me with his strength, and my fear melted into relief.

I glanced toward the river’s edge, where Blue Shirt had collapsed onto his back, eyes closed, chest rising and falling in quick breaths. One of his hands dipped into the current, soaking one sleeve to the elbow. I could see the sweat on his cheeks, the lines of strain cutting across his forehead. Pale, almost invisible lashes rested on his cheeks.

I stepped toward Wolf, walking easily, as if he held my hand. In fact, his hand was open, gesturing toward a large boulder beside him. On its surface lay a broad hunting knife, long forgotten by an anonymous hunter. Time had whitened its handle, rust had dotted its blade, but it was still sharp. When the breeze stirred the leaves overhead, the knife’s edge glinted in the sun, winking with encouragement.

The knife offered both escape and vengeance. But at what price? I had never killed anyone—nothing beyond the small creatures we hunted for food. Could I do it? Could I kill this man whose band had ended the lives of both my mother and my sister? Who had left Adelaide and me forever scarred? I glanced toward Wolf, questions in my eyes, and he nodded. Yes, he thought I could. He pressed his lips tightly together, then gestured toward the knife again. I reached toward it and closed my fingers around the smooth wooden handle, staring at it with uncertainty. Wolf’s hands folded over mine, curling around my fingers, reassuring. I felt a sense of both losing myself and finding a strength I never knew existed.

I could tell Blue Shirt didn’t see or hear me approach. If he had, he would have leaped to his feet and grabbed me. But he still battled for breath, still closed his eyes to the sun. He never saw the knife. In one swift motion I drew the blade deep across his exposed neck, pressing hard, allowing no room for error. Blood arced from a severed artery, shooting two feet away, and Blue Shirt’s eyes flew open in disbelief. His hands jerked to his ruined neck, one arm springing from the river, trailing a sparkling curtain of droplets in its rush. The wound widened swiftly, filling with blood. His breaths bubbled through the chasm in his neck. The dark red blood overflowed, looking almost black as it soaked into the faded blue fibres of his shirt.

I backed a few feet away and squatted, watching him die, feeling a sort of detached fascination. Death didn’t take long. His hand splashed back into the water and began to ride the endless ripples, darkening the current with the liquid remains of his life.

I inhaled a combination of smells: the metallic tang of blood, the sweet, soothing breath of surrounding pines, and the lingering scent of his panic. I held my breath, stretching my lungs until the ground beneath me wobbled. Every one of my muscles began to tremble at the shock of having killed a man.

But while my body reacted, my mind felt nothing. No regret, no disgust, no horror. Nothing except perhaps a vague pulse of satisfaction. One day had changed everything about the person who had been me. Because of him, I had killed. Because of me, my life continued. Any evidence of this was stiffening on the grass beneath his neck.

The wolf stood before me now, watching. I dug my fingers into the fur on his cheeks and gazed into his dark eyes, flecked with gold. I closed my eyes and let him go, then summoned the faces of my mother and baby sister.

“They’re gone,” I whispered into the breeze.

I had to find Adelaide. The last time I had seen her, she was lying helpless by the shore. I turned toward the trees, holding the knife tightly against my body and trying to find the vague path Blue Shirt had followed. When I lost my way among thorny clumps of brush, I stopped and strained my ears for direction. That was when a raven sang out, calling me.

I followed the bird’s voice without question, and it led me to the remains of the camp. I squatted behind a bush, listening to men talking in a strange, singsong language. I barely recognised the camp. The bodies of our captors lay scattered and motionless, blood-streaked in their filthy shirts. Indians had taken their place and were busy retrieving arrows and wandering the site.

The courage that had carried the knife to Blue Shirt’s throat deserted me, though I still held the weapon. Adelaide lay on the other side of the bush, but I couldn’t call to her for fear of being heard. She seemed untouched, though in plain view of the Indians. I wanted to pull her away, drag her somewhere safe. I gripped my knife tighter and looked for a possible break in the bushes. Getting to her was going to be difficult. I tried to see a way around the Indians, but they seemed intertwined with the trees.

Large hands grabbed my arms from behind, and I swallowed a shriek. The hands forced me to stand, urged me ahead, and sat me firmly on the ground beside my sister.

I looked up into the face of an Indian and my stomach dropped, weighted by fear. He returned my gaze, wearing an expression of calm interest. Strong cheekbones framed a full mouth, and he had deep, dark eyes. His skin wasn’t red as we had been taught, but a kind of dark honey brown. He motioned with his hands that I should stay where I was and uttered some short words I couldn’t understand. He left us there and walked toward the fire, where the others had
gathered. They glanced toward us, their expressions attentive, but not threatening. I took Adelaide’s cold hand in mine and she gave me a weak squeeze.

The sun slid farther to the west, dipping fingers of light through the tangled branches as it passed. The Indians didn’t try to move us. Instead, they built a small shelter over us using animal pelts, and brought us water to drink.

A while later, two women arrived at the camp and knelt beside Adelaide and me. Their hair was drawn from their weathered faces, braided into cords of black and silver that hung down the backs of their deerskin tunics. They leaned in, examining our wounds with a gentle but frank approach. One of the women looked into my sister’s swollen eye, lifting the lid as gently as if it were a butterfly’s wing. Adelaide looked back into the woman’s eyes, and tears began to flow down her bruised cheeks.

The women brought out balms and herbs from small leather bags at their waists and tended our wounds with infinite care. The ointment was soothing, as were the reassuring caresses of their fingers. So were their jumbled words, tripping through my head like a child’s rhyme. Between sips of tea, the women spooned a kind of porridge into our mouths that warmed our bodies and filled our stomachs. When they were done, they smiled, touched us gently, then left.

I rolled onto my side so I faced Adelaide’s profile. Her eyes were closed, but I could tell from her breathing she was awake. I needed to speak with her, to talk about what had happened. She and I had shared a bed for so many years I knew she could sense the questions spinning through my mind.

“Sleep, Maggie. We’ll be all right now,” she whispered. The words sighed through her swollen lips, whistling in my ears like a song.

Hours later I awoke and shivered. Darkness was settling over the clearing, bringing with it the first cooling breaths of air. Adelaide
slept beside me, her long lashes resting on her cheeks, small tangles of hair lifting with the breeze. The shadows camouflaged most of her bruises and cuts, leaving only the image of an innocent, sleeping child. The picture was a lie. Her innocence was gone.

And our mother was gone.

And somewhere in the forest, in a nameless grave, was the body of our baby sister, destroyed and abandoned.

I had no more tears. I closed my eyes and burned the impression of Ruth’s sweet face into my heart.

“Don’t forget me,”
she whispered.

“That would be impossible,”
I assured her, smiling weakly at the thought.

That had been Ruth’s gift: the way she could coax a smile from even the bitterest person. I thought of how she had once brought me a broken bird, trusting me to fix the damage. She had wept for its tiny soul when I explained I couldn’t save the creature. I remembered so many things and let the memories trickle like a river through my mind. How she laughed, how she sang, how she danced. Her murderers were dead, but their lives could never be equal payment for hers. They were nothing. Ruth was everything.

I looked up as the leaves near my head crackled under the feet of an Indian woman, about the same age as I was. She smiled and sat beside me, then smoothed the hair back from my forehead as if I were a child. She hummed a strange lullaby, and the forest voices of early evening joined her. I thought I heard Ruth’s sweet voice singing among them, but couldn’t be sure. I closed my eyes and let the music rock me to sleep.

PART 2: ANDREW

The Search

Sunny days like this were rare in the Highlands, and the beckoning warmth made indoor work almost unbearable for a twelve-year-old boy. The air inside Invergarry Castle’s stable was hot and sticky, something that didn’t often bother him. Usually the weather was so cold it wasn’t a problem. Today, though, he couldn’t help wondering why the builders hadn’t had a tiny thought for the poor stable boys. After all, it was 1738. Over the past hundred years, they’d already rebuilt the place twice after the English had taken it apart.

Andrew’s mouth was dry from working in the dust, and the midges were biting terribly, buzzing over his head in clouds as he cleaned the stalls, lighting on his neck and cheeks. He considered running to the other side of the castle when he was done, just so he could climb down the rocky shelves and jump into the freezing, bottomless waters of Loch Lomond. Then he remembered he had other plans.

He finished mucking out the last stall, then tossed in fresh straw
with a pitchfork taller than he was. A chestnut mare lolled against the wall on three legs, waiting for him to finish.

“That’s better then, is it?” Andrew asked her. “Certainly smells better.”