He stood three feet away, his back turned to her, leaning with one shoulder against the cherry tree. It struck her almost as comical, that he would think to turn away while he pissed. She choked back something that might have been a laugh.

At her side was his rifle. The gleaming barrel, more than three feet in length, the long, polished cherry wood stock with its inset patch box and hinged brass lid. Something etched in the brass plate in ornate script. Her vision doubled but then cleared:

VOUS ET NUL AUTRE

You and no other. Elizabeth's fingers curled around the cold metal.

Wake up now! she heard Curiosity's voice say clearly. You can't always be daydreaming when the fat's in the fire.

As he began to turn back toward her, Elizabeth lurched to her feet with the rifle barrel in both hands like a cricket bat. Her scream seemed to paralyze him, tearing up from the gut, every ounce of her strength and rage in it. His expression was almost resigned: one brow frozen high in reluctant admiration as his eyes traced the arc of the swing.

The edge of the stock met his head over the left ear. The cracking bone resounded like nothing Elizabeth had ever heard before and she felt his skull pop like the shell of a beetle underfoot. The force of the blow traveled up her arms with a jolt that forced her backward, the gun dropping out of her hands just as Jack Lingo hit the ground, folding in on himself.

She stood looking down at him, her hands tingling at her sides.

Petals were falling. They made intricate and lovely patterns on the spreading crimson lake; they spangled the wild tangle of his matted hair. His eyes were open, and his expression quizzical.

A woman who had always taken pleasure in a task well done, Elizabeth turned her face upward and sent a howl of satisfaction spiraling into the sky.

* * *

She left him as he was, and went on without weapons, without provisions. A half mile away, she stopped to listen, and hearing no sound of him, she sat down on the forest floor. After a good while, Elizabeth rose to her feet, wiped her swollen face with her own hair and checked the compass. She was off course, but not badly. She began to walk.

At Little Lost she stopped, and stumbled, and walked into the water, submerging herself for as long as she could bear it. The cold was a mercy on her cuts and bruises. She drank until she could drink no more, and finally came up on the shore where she lay with her throbbing cheek against the firm, cool sand. A loon swam by, its ruby eyes turned blindly toward her. She wondered how loon might taste.

The path to Robbie's camp was immediately familiar. It would be safe to run, if only she had the energy. Her feet hurt, and her face was a misery. She wondered if Robbie would recognize her.

The clearing, then. Finally. The worn log benches and stone—lined cook pit, the neat rows of traps hung under the roof, the woodpile. No fire burning, no sign of Robbie. She called, and got nothing but a crow's raucous cry in return. Elizabeth looked into a stand of pine and saw the bird balanced delicately on a sycamore branch, its dusty black breast spotted with yolk and eggshell. Around it, the robin darted and shrieked while the crow reached into her nest again.

Elizabeth wondered if it was possible simply to die of despair.

Chapter 38

She dreamed of Runs-from-Bears, but in her dream he had grown young, his face smooth and unscarred. As always, though, he smelled quite distinctly of bear grease and hard walking. She huddled in on herself, seeking a deeper sleep in which dreams did not rely on scent to send their message.

But her stomach was growling, and under her hip a spray of pine needles had worked themselves into a most uncomfortable spot. And the smell of bear grease was still there, now accompanied by a voice, one she recognized. Elizabeth bolted upright and knocked heads with Otter.

"My God," he whispered. "It is you."

"Otter," she said, and drawing in one deep breath to steady herself, Elizabeth reached out and grasped both of his forearms with her hands.

"Do you have any food?"

His look of surprise and shock was quite suddenly replaced by a sense of purpose. He disappeared for a moment but was back before she could rise to follow him, putting a piece of dried venison in one hand, and a great hunk of ho cake in the other. Her mouth filled instantly with saliva.

Otter watched her eat. She saw his eyes moving over her face tentatively, as if he could not quite believe what he saw.

"Is it so very bad?" she asked finally, between mouthfuls.

He blinked in affirmation.

Suddenly exhausted again, Elizabeth slumped. She looked at the sky and was surprised to see that it was still very early, long before noon. She could not have been sleeping for more than an hour.

"Nathaniel?" Otter asked, warily.

"He's alive," she said. She did not often weep; she had always prided herself on that, the ability to control excesses of pain or anxiety until they could be digested in private. But now, even as she found the necessary words and told the story in a fairly calm and quite comprehensible way, tears ran down her face and drenched the remains of her shirt. She finished as quickly as she could, leaving out only what she could not bear to relate: how Nathaniel had received his wound, and what had delayed her. Otter was young, but there was a reserve about him that reminded her of Bears. She was infinitely grateful not to be asked to explain her battered face.

"We have to go after Nathaniel, and Todd." His eyes flashed at this last name, and Elizabeth remembered that there was unsettled business between Richard and Otter. She tried to remember what Nathaniel had told her of the march to Canajoharie, but her head was muddled, and the world seemed bent on a lopsided spin.