Vivid (49 page)

Vivid and Francesca gingerly climbed
through the gaping hole and moved immediately to Maddie's side. Even in the
silvery shadows Vivid could see the blood pooled near Maddie's side.

"We need light, Mama." Vivid
quickly stripped off her coat, then leaned over her friend's chest in search of
a heartbeat, while Francesca hastily lit lamps.

The light showed that she'd been beaten
very badly but she was still alive. Her face was a mess of bruises and cuts,
her lips split and swollen. Vivid could feel the tears stinging her eyes as she
whispered, "Maddie, who did this to you?" Maddie's eyes were both
battered shut and there were knife slashes on the sleeves of her buckskins and
on the backs of her hands, but Vivid was more concerned with the serious wounds
in her side.

Francesca came out of the kitchen carrying
a basin of water and a clean cloth. Vivid sent her back for a large knife,
which she applied to the seams of Maddie's buckskin shirt. When she peeled the
material back she saw that the wound was serious. Maddie began to stir, and
Vivid, gently cleaning the wound, said, "Maddie, I'm here. Just lie
still."

Maddie moaned and twisted her head slowly.
She murmured, "Viveca..."

Vivid paused and said, "Lie still,
Maddie."

"Nooo," she whispered. Maddie
seemed to be fighting off great pain as she struggled to raise herself up so
she could look into Vivid's eyes. "Tell Nate..."

Her words halted as she grimaced with the
effort, "Tell Nate a man has the girls." She stopped again and forced
out the word, "Hurry..."

Sheer will had fueled Maddie for the past
few moments, but in the end her body won the battle. Before she could offer
more details, her eyes closed and she slipped back into unconsciousness.

Vivid stitched the wound as precisely as
she could, then she and Francesca carried Maddie into her bedroom and gently
eased her atop the bed.

Francesca decided she would spend the
night with Maddie and Vivid agreed.

"Did Maddie say who did this?"
Francesca asked as they covered Maddie with a quilt.

Vivid shook her head, angered at the sight
of Mad-die's bruised and battered face. "A man. Undoubtedly Cole."

The sounds of knocking at the door and
male voices calling her name sent Vivid running to the door.

Nate, Eli, Joseph, and Adam Crowley were
with a posse of men on horseback and atop wagons lit with lanterns and torches.

"Have you found the girls?"

"No," Nate said. "What
happened to Maddie's window?"

When Vivid described what she and her
mother had discovered, the three men hastily followed Vivid back to the
bedroom.

"Aw, hell," Nate swore
emotionally upon seeing Maddie's state. He went back to the doorway to try and
collect himself. "Who did this?" he asked coldly.

"She said a man. She said to tell you
a man has the girls. That was all she could manage."

"Well," Nate intoned, "I
need some answers."

"Where are the hounds?" Nate
asked as they stood in the night air on the front porch.

Vivid replied, "Mama and I asked the
same question. We've neither seen them nor heard them."

Vivid stood shivering in the chill while
Nate and the men searched the surrounding area. A few moments later. Vivid
could hear frantic baying. The hounds sounded fine. Now if only the girls could
be found so readily, she mused. Where are they? she asked herself for maybe the
hundredth time. She knew Magic could take care of herself out of doors, and
Vivid knew Magic would take care of Satin to the best of her nine-year-old's
ability, but the weather had turned very cold in the last few days, the nights
even colder. She prayed they weren't caught out in the elements. She prayed
even harder that they hadn't been harmed.

Nate came around from the back of the
house. "Found the hounds down in Maddie's root cellar. What
the—" Nate was nearly bowled over by Maddie's hounds bounding up on
the porch. One by one they crawled through the small tarp-covered opening cut
into the bottom of the door and disappeared inside. Winded, Eli ran up saying, "I
tried to pen them up but they wouldn't let me."

Vivid turned and went in after the
canines. Dogs had no business in a sickroom, not even Maddie's dogs. By the
time Vivid caught up to them, they were swarming over the bed licking Maddie's
bruised face and cut hands and whimpering like children in pain.

"Mama, they can't be in here."

"I know, darling, but they know
something is wrong. Look at them. Listen to them."

They were howling mournfully. Some were
still atop the bed and others were seated on their haunches on the floor. All
were keening.

Nate came up behind Vivid in the doorway,
and for a moment neither said a word as the grief continued to flow from the
dogs. Eli entered the room, as did Adam Crowley and the men who'd come along on
the search. When Maddie stirred. Vivid moved over to the bed. One of the dogs,
one Vivid knew to be Maddie's oldest and most beloved, took up a defensive
position in front of his mistress, bared his teeth, and growled menacingly at
Vivid's approach. Vivid stopped immediately. She heard Nate say, "Settle
down, Blue, she's only trying to help. Come here."

The dog eyed Vivid, then Nate.

"Come here, Blue," Nate said
firmly.

The dog reluctantly bounded down and sat
by Nate, never taking his eyes off the bed.

Vivid moved to her side as Maddie began to
move fitfully, calling out, "Run, Magic! Run!"

Nate came quickly to the bedside, and
while Vivid poured some of the ground willow bark she'd been given by Anna Red
Bird into a cup of water, Nate asked his childhood friend, "Where's
Majestic, Maddie?"

"No! Don't hurt them!"

Vivid moved around Nate and lifted
Maddie's head so she could drink. Vivid could feel the heat now burning
Maddie's skin. She looked over at Nate's stoic face and said softly,
"Darling, I don't think you're going to be able to get any answers
tonight. She really needs to rest."

Nate nodded, but Vivid could see the worry
and concern haunting his eyes. "We'll find them," she told him.

Vivid and her mother decided to spend the
night sitting with Maddie until the fever subsided.

Reluctantly, Nate agreed with Adam and Eli
that the darkness prevented any more searching that night. Tomorrow at dawn the
search would resume and everyone prayed there would be more answers by then.

Nate held Vivid tightly as they shared a
goodbye. She told him, "Promise me you will go home and try to get some
sleep. You'll be no good to anyone if you don't rest.

Nate smiled through his sadness,
"That sounds a bit like my speeches to you."

"You're right. So take your own
advice."

"Yes, Doctor." He then looked
down into her tired eyes and said, "When this is all settled, will you
marry me? Right away?"

"Soon as we find the girls and I take
a bath, yes. I will marry you so fast the speed will make your head spin."
She kissed him lightly. "Now go home. We'll speak in the morning."

M
addie spent a fitful night fraught with nightmares that made her
cry out and thrash around, bringing either Vivid or Francesca to the bedside to
ease her back to sleep. Vivid worked on bringing the fever down with the aid of
cold water from Maddie's well. The well drew on the swift-moving Dowagiac River
flowing on the outer acres of Maddie's land. Nate had explained to Vivid just
the other day that in a few more weeks the river would begin to freeze, and
once it and the other small lakes and ponds in the area were frozen solid, he'd
promised to teach her to skate on the ice. As Vivid sponged Maddie down, Nate's
promise seemed to have been made months ago. So much had happened since the
fire, it made Vivid wonder if this place she called home would ever return to tranquility.

At dawn, Vivid forced herself out of the
chair she'd slept in and walked bleary-eyed around the sleeping dogs and over
to the bed. The skin on Maddie's forehead still felt a bit warm beneath Vivid's
palm, but not as heated as before. Vivid was pleased. However, she was not
happy that Blue was lying next to his mistress. She had spent most of the night
getting him off the bed, but the moment she turned her back or left the room,
he'd go right back to where he wanted to be. Vivid understood the dog's
sentiments, but Maddie was ill and Blue was a dog.

Vivid made her way out to the front room
where Francesca slept on the settee under several quilts; the air streaming in
through the broken window made the room quite cold. Her snores rose softly on
the dawn silence. Vivid smiled wearily and offered up a quiet thanks for her
mother's spirit and guidance over the past few weeks. She'd been so
unflappable, so gracious, she'd endeared herself to everyone around and had become
part of the community. Vivid couldn't imagine having her leave and be thousands
of miles away again.

Vivid quietly added more wood to the fire
in the grate, then made a quick dash out into the cold morning air for a trip
to the privy. She ran back and had almost reached the door when she heard a
familiar bird cry. She looked up, searching the trees. The cry pierced the dawn
again. Her heart leaped as she finally spotted Hector, soaring against the
pearl-gray sky. If he was near, could the girls be far away? She glanced
quickly toward the road but saw no one. She did see Hector begin one of his
spectacular bullet-swift dives in her direction, and as he neared, Vivid ducked
defensively. However, instead of flying by as usual, Hector hit her in the back
of the shoulder and nearly knocked her to the ground. She spun to see where the
next pass would come from but he was already streaming over her shoulder and
again bumped her hard as he went.

Vivid wondered if the bird had finally
lost his mind. Hector was nearly full-grown now, and thanks to all the hares
and vermin he consumed, was of good size. The talons could rip the flesh from a
person's face and Vivid had personally witnessed how efficiently the hooked
beak could tear at the flesh of prey. She'd also seen him play this game with
the girls before—they called it "Duck!" But Hector didn't seem
to be playing. The cries were different, angry-sounding, as if the bird was
agitated or upset, and Vivid couldn't remember him attacking anyone this way,
ever.

Hector had ceased his assaults and now
soared high above, calling with a skin-chilling cry that, to Vivid's ears,
sounded very similar to the keening sent up last night by Maddie's dogs. She
thought that if she were a character in one of Nate's myths, she'd conclude
that the hawk's strange behavior somehow related to the disappearance of the
girls, but in real life there were no magic ravens offering guidance.

Or were there?

Vivid ran into the house and grabbed
Maddie's shotgun. She fished out a handful of cartridges from the tin on the
edge of a book-filled shelf and fed some into the gun. The rest she stuffed
into the pocket of her shirt.

She could hear her mother stirring on the
settee behind her. "Trabrasera? What's the matter, have the girls been
found?"

In rapid Castilian, Vivid explained the
situation.

Francesca moved to the broken window and
tried to peer up into the sky. "Hector is here?"

"Yes, and I'm praying he knows where
the girls are. Somehow, I don't know how, but you must get word to Nate. I
don't know where I'm going, but I'm going."

They spent a precious minute discussing
how Vivid could mark her trail, then Vivid ran to get her coat and gloves. She
was halfway out the door when her mother called, "Take some of the
dogs!"

"Good idea, Mama. I'm going to hitch
Michigan and the wagon, you bring the hounds out front."

Vivid had no idea how her mother did it,
but by the time Vivid and Michigan were ready, Francesca came out of the house
with all but one of the hounds. She even had Blue.

Her mother asked, "Do you have
anything in the wagon that belongs to either of the girls? Preferably something
they've worn fairly recently?"

Vivid climbed back into the wagon bed to
see. She tossed aside tools, tarp-covered blankets, a cot, canteens, and other
miscellaneous items, but found nothing. Then she remembered. Quickly she went
back to the bench, stuck her hand beneath, and groped blindly until she found
Magic's blue bonnet and handed it to her mother. "It's all I have."

She watched her mother let each of the
dogs sniff the bonnet in turn. Francesca saved Blue for last and let him get a
good smell of the bonnet's wide strings.

Her mother said, "I don't know if
this will help them, but I don't know what else to do."

They were now ready to leave. Hector had
been soaring in the sky overhead while Vivid was hitching up the wagon, but now
he stood perched high on a branch of a nearby leaf-barren tree, observing the
proceedings. Her mother called up to him and then extended her covered arm. At
the command, Hector flew down just as he'd been trained to do, and landed as
gently as his large curved talons would allow. She kissed him on his golden
curved beak, and speaking in Castilian, told the bird, "Bring back my
granddaughters Magic and Satin and I'll buy you rabbits for the rest of your
life."