The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series) (16 page)

I jogged past the black field almost ready to be planted, wondering what life would be like now that my sister had run away. Would she ever come back to me? Would her husband let her? What if I was all alone in this world now?

Of course I had Mathew, my soon-to-be husband, whom I never gave enough credit. I had taken him for granted time and time again. I’d betrayed him by loving another. No matter how I had ended things with Jacque, I’d let myself fall in love with someone other than my fiancé. Mathew was a good man, but I’d always thought of him more as an end to a means. I knew I
had
to get married. There were no other choices, no other options. I was a woman who couldn’t be seen forever in breeches, plowing her field. I knew I had a place in society, and I was already risking so much because I just didn’t know how to fit into my station, whatever that was.

I decided, as I began to run in earnest, hardly paying attention to where I was running, that from there on out, I’d love Mathew. He deserved my love. He was a very good man, very intelligent, very giving.

But I needed my sister back. I needed Hannah.

She gave my life purpose, my lovely sister Hannah.

It was then that I realized I had started to run on the trail that lead to the forked walnut tree, the heart-tree as my sister and I had called it when we discovered it when we but children. She somehow trotted through the forest in the dead of night to find her love.

I stopped myself suddenly, almost tripping in my haste to halt. From my periphery I thought I saw a gem as I ran by it, but now standing in front of it I recognized my sister’s blue ribbon that she always wore with one of her favorite white dresses. It shone in the early morning light, making it stand out and the background appear dreary, dead. The ribbon went around her waist and she had a smaller matching one that looped through her hair. The ribbon was the exact same color as her eyes.

I picked up the limp satin and noticed the chill on it. I threaded the fabric between my fingers until I came to a blotch in the material. A dark mark smeared my sister’s ribbon.

Oh God.

I looked up, expecting an answer, but found only the cold forest. I searched the floor of the woods. Indeed, I found the track of my sister’s silly shoes, because of their little heel that would make for walking through the copse difficult. I wondered if she’d taken a torch or lamp, for her tiny heel prints were strong and never veered off the trail. But soon enough I couldn’t see any more prints. I looked up and around, searching, hoping. What darkened my sister’s ribbon?

I kept walking toward the heart-tree, the tree of my secret meetings with Jacque, where I fell in love for the first time in my life, where my sister was going to start a new life. As I walked, I searched the ground for her tracks. Then I saw beside the trail the grass had been broken. It was a large area of grass that lay down and the frost had grown on the grass in an odd way. Did a moose rest here? I looked up. Then I saw one of my sister’s dainty shoes. Empty of its owner, lying on its side.

My heart ascended to my throat as I raced to the shoe and picked it up. It was one of her best shoes, but still the heel was worn and painted over by my sister in hopes no one would know that I couldn’t afford to buy her newer ones. I searched the ground for its mate and bent down to crawl on the frozen earth. What felt like an hour later, but was more likely just a few minutes, passed, and I finally found her other shoe.

As soon as I found the missing shoe I looked up at the tree, the loving tree. I saw her white naked legs first.

I flew the rest of the way to her, cooing, “Hannah, oh, oh, Hannah.”

I knelt beside her bare body. Dried black blood covered her nose, mouth, neck and chest, and a little more of the blackness was smudged between her legs and stomach. As gently as I could, I reached around her arms and waist to pick her up enough to lay her head on my shoulder. I stilled my breath as I waited for movement from her chest against mine.

Finally, I felt my sister inhale. I clutched at her corn silk hair and cried, so hopeful.

“I’m here. I’m here now, Hannah. I’ve got you. I’m getting you home now. You’re safe,” I whispered.

Her clothes were close by, scattered and torn. She had indeed worn her beautiful white dress. She was going to get married in her most exquisite dress, but instead—I couldn’t focus on what happened to her. Just to get her home.

She never opened her eyes, but painfully moaned while I tried to dress her. The dress was in shreds, but with the use of my coat, she was properly covered enough to gain some heat, I hoped.

I picked up my sister in my arms and began to walk as quickly as I could out of the forest. Cursing my arms within a few moments time as they were shaking, I knew I wouldn’t be able to carry my sister the whole way back in my trembling limbs.

“Forgive me,” I asked to my sister’s brutalized face, then rearranged her to splay across my shoulders, taking her weight in my capable back and legs, while I held onto one of her legs and another of her arms. She let out a slight groan, and I begged her to forgive me again.

As we made our way out, I watched for branches that would reach out and further tear at my sister, but they never tried to slash into her skin. They seemed to slink away from us. The sun was shining on the field when I emerged from the woods, and I saw in the far distance Mathew and his fast sorrel, Cherry. Both Jonah and Mathew must have beat records for running their horses so quickly, but I was grateful.

Mathew finally saw me and rode hard up the drive. He tried to keep the pace as he raced Cherry over the deep soil of the field, but it was wet and thick. Cherry’s pace slowed to a struggling walk when Mathew leapt off his horse mid-stride and kept running toward me.

Upon reaching me I could only utter, “She’s hurt. Very badly.”

Mathew didn’t say a word, but pulled Hannah from my shoulders and cradled her in his arms. He turned and raced with her into the house. I don’t know when, but I had somehow fallen after Hannah was lifted from me. I tasted the earth and my own blood as I must have bit my tongue while I’d tumbled.

I tried to get up, wondering if any of this was real. I must still be asleep with Hannah lying next to me in our shared bedchamber.

But the next thing I saw was Jonah’s face hovering over mine. He asked me something in a language I no longer understood, then picked me up and walked a few yards before I jumped from his arms so I could fly to Hannah. I entered our bedchamber and saw my mother soothing Hannah with her voice. Mrs. Jones was crying, and Mathew was trying to remove himself from the room.

I entered as he left.

I couldn’t understand the language anyone spoke anymore. Mother asked Mrs. Jones to do something then removed Hannah’s white dress. My mother gasped at the blood. Her eyes reddened when she looked down at Hannah’s body, and her lips trembled and crumbled into a wail. Mother’s hands stretched to my sister but stilled before she actually laid a finger on Hannah, as if she couldn’t move anymore, as if she thought that if she moved one more inch, made contact with the white skin of my sister, then it would be real, this nightmare would become reality. Mrs. Jones shook her head, cried, but found a basin of water and a cloth to clean my sister.

“No, she’s cold,” I whispered.

Mrs. Jones said some kind of ancient words I didn’t know, then shook her head again and produced a woolen white blanket. I helped her wrap my sister’s body in the blanket, but then Mrs. Jones set to Hannah’s visage to wipe it free from the blood. I heard Mrs. Jones humming a tune that Hannah had been singing for the last two weeks. Then, I tucked myself close to my sister and nestled her under the bedding.

I pulled her into my arms, looking at her skin, so pale it reflected lavender and blue around her eyes and lips.

“Don’t leave me,” I begged of Hannah. “Please. Please. You can’t leave me. You’re all I have in this world. Please.”

My tears fell on her beautiful blonde hair as I picked leaves from her tresses, and Mrs. Jones handed me our shared boar’s bristle brush. I gingerly swept her hair free from all of the wood’s debris.

My sister’s lips were swollen to the size of a goose’s egg, and there was a deep cut on her lower lip that looked like a black crevasse set in a perfect white setting. I kissed it.

“I’ll ask the midwife for a healing salve. She has one that she says helps with cuts and wounds. We won’t even know it’s there in a little time. It won’t exist.” My tears fell on her forehead, where I wiped them away.

I reached through the blanket for her hands, and placed them in mine, warming them. Then I removed my boots and stockings and placed my feet on hers, trying to warm them too.

I settled my body next to hers and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I saw that Dr. Prescott was there. He gently inspected her body while I guarded her. He would look at me for approval before he examined any area. I clenched my teeth but would nod my head as he made his thorough investigation.

He and my mother cleaned the other spots of blood from Hannah. Her body had started to warm, and she smelled like lavender through the process. The doctor looked relieved, and said something to me, which, again, I had no understanding of.

The doctor covered her with the blankets. I wrapped my arm around her thin shoulders and let my feet be close to hers to absorb all my body’s heat. I closed my eyes as I whispered, “I love you, Hannah, and I’ll make this all better. I promise. I love you. I love you.”

I woke in the dead of the night a few hours after Dr. Prescott had left. There were no noises in the house. I looked at Hannah. Color was emerging on her cheeks—light cherry blossom pink. I cried and smiled. “I love you. I’ll make it all better.” I nodded as I promised again.

I looked just past Hannah and saw Mrs. Jones sleeping on a chair. She laid her head on the bed, and had an arm protectively around Hannah’s waist.

I left the bed, checked on my mother and a clock that let me know it was just after midnight, then crept out of the house. Mathew’s horse was no longer tethered to the usual spoke.

I walked to the barn. With every step, I saw her, over and over again. Laying so pale against the frosty ground, her hands had been beside her head as if she had kept on fighting even during her unconscious state. She had been so colorless, except for all that blood dried on her body. So much blood. The black blood, the white frost, the gray sorrow.

I would make it all better.

In the barn, I stored many tools on large shelves that reached up to the ceiling. I had to climb some of those shelves, but within a few seconds I drew down a tomahawk and my father’s long rifle. I hadn’t thought of bringing a candle to see, but my eyes had adjusted to the coal night that spilled into the barn through the open door. I checked the rifle first. It needed a good cleaning. It was over a month now since I’d fired it, the day I met Jacque. I winced from the remembrance.

The gun powder was dry; I could tell from smelling into the horn. The powder singed my nose, and I sneezed, then coughed until a tear escaped my eye. Angrily I threw the moisture away with the back of my hand, then fingered the tomahawk with my eyes burning. Both the tomahawk and Kentucky rifle were gifts from the same Mohawk family.

When I was a young girl I claimed Deganawida, an Indian boy and my closest friend, as my husband. His father and mother merely laughed as I dragged the tall boy around every time I would see him. His father and my father had become friends in Boston, since Daganawida’s father was educated in Dartmouth, then Harvard, where he’d met my father. It was when I was six and ten that Daganawida no longer needed prodding to be with me, play with me in the forest. He gave me the tomahawk as a future wedding present. It was lovely with turquoise colored leather thongs decorating the handle and a hawk’s feather dangling from the butt, but the blade itself was where the craftsman had accomplished setting a Celtic band with an eagle’s face. It was our two tribes coexisting, Deganawida had told me. He’d embraced me with a chuckle, lamenting how I’d finally won him over; his heart was mine.

His body and spirit were not. The following day Daganawida’s father came to my father with the long rifle, a gift to pay for Daganawida’s forced rejection. His father told my da that less than a generation ago he would have approved of the match, but with so much hostility between the Iroquois and English, he would only worry over our marriage. Daganawida was rushed north, far from me. I never saw him or his family again.

The tomahawk needed sharpening, and in the dark I found the stone that I used for the scythes during harvest. I grated at the ax, and found that within twenty minutes time I had a lethal weapon and a well-oiled musket. I laid the rifle on a counter and let my fingers dance with the Celtic weaving, then the sharp blade of my tomahawk.

I threw it against the barn’s door, then picked it from the wood.

I had been thinking only of my sister while I was with her, but now, as I stood in the barn, checking the tomahawk’s blade again, I thought about the man who had raped my sister. It had to have been her lieutenant. No one else knew where she had been. He had lured her to him, like a monster would its prey.

I fingered the thin edge of the ax. I wouldn’t let anything happen to my sister ever again. I would never let my sister out of my sight. I would protect her constantly. I couldn’t let anything or anyone hurt her.