East of the Sun and West of the Moon 6 page

hurt to swallow. Indigestion was better than dehydration. Dehydration would kill her faster.

Kneeling, she swirled her hand in a pool of light brownish water. Water bugs scattered. Algae

bobbed in the ripples. She tried to think of it as iced tea. It had the same color and consistency. She

scooped some into her hands and sipped. It spilled over her chin. “Oh, ew,” she said. It tasted as vile

as she imagined raw sewage would taste. She wiped her mouth with a muddy sleeve. Her stomach

churned. But she needed the water. Her baby needed it.

Midway through the day, she drank again, and then she drank again in the evening. Thinking

constantly of water, she had trouble concentrating. Jab the stick down, walk forward, jab the stick

down, walk forward. She repeated it to herself as a litany.

During her second sunset in the bog, she found a patch of cloudberries. She fell to her knees in

the muck. She tore the fat yellow berries from the bushes and shoved them into her mouth. Berries

exploded like fireworks on her tongue, and the juices slid down her throat, as sharp as liquor. She

tasted mud from her fingers, but she did not care. She ate until the bushes were bare, and then she

slept beside them.

Her feet tingled, waking her near dawn. Reaching awkwardly around her stomach, she rubbed

them. They were clammy to the touch. Skin that showed through the mud was red. She had to find dry

land soon.

She combed through the patch of cloudberries. She found three uneaten berries, no more. The

night before, she had been thorough. This morning, her stomach hurt. Taking up her walking stick

again, she slogged on.

Cassie saw a phalanx of spruces, shooting tall into the air. She leaned on her stick and hobbled

on numb feet. Her stick sank five inches, then two, then one. The carpet changed from sphagnum moss

to spruce needles. Ferns and club mosses replaced orchids. She hesitated five feet from the first white

spruce. Dripping from her skirt in clumps, mud plopped irregularly to the ground. The forest could

hold a thousand spies. Father Forest himself could be waiting for her.

She told herself he would not recognize her, caked with mud. Even if he did, he would keel over

from the stench of her. Slowly, painfully, she climbed up a hill, out of the bog. Needles stuck to her

feet, crackling softly.

At the top of the hill, Cassie stopped again and lowered herself onto a fallen log. Dark spruce

green, broken by autumn leaves, stretched for miles and miles over the foothills of the mountains. The

mountains, outlined in the sun, crowned the horizon. Honey golden and brushed with glacial white, the

mountains were beyond beautiful, but it was hard to care when everything hurt.

Bending awkwardly around her stomach, Cassie wiped mud from the soles of her feet with ferns.

Her feet were swollen and cold. As she wiped, she saw skin. It looked waxy and was mottled with

burgundy splotches. She touched it, and it felt as spongy as moss. “Lovely,” she said, swallowing

back bile. She dried her feet as well as she could. She knew she should not walk on them, but the

longer she stayed in one place, the more likely Father Forest was to find her.

She stood and winced. She felt the baby shove its knee (or elbow) outward. “Don’t worry. I’m

not giving up,” she told it. “I’ll keep you free.”

Using her stick, she picked her way over rocks and roots down the hill. In spots, the hill was

sheer. She had to snake down it, avoiding the drop-offs. Below her, she could see the reflected blue

of a stream. If she had to, she told herself, she could move river to river, bog to bog, across the

forested foothills. So long as she did not have to move faster than a shuffle.

She made it to the bottom. Her feet felt like blocks of wood, and she moved painfully slowly as

the terrain went uphill again. Something rustled above her. Wind or munaqsri? Squirrel or spy? Heart

thudding in her ears, she scanned the trees. She saw nothing.

Cassie sank against a spruce. “I hate this,” she said to the tree. “I just want you to know that I

hate this.” She bent around her swollen stomach to examine her feet. Blistered now, they felt like they

were burning. She picked off needles and dirt that had stuck to the blisters. There was nothing she

could do for her feet, except hope that the trench foot did not worsen into gangrene. She felt her

stomach skin ripple as the baby squirmed like a bird bashing its shell. It did not like her bending.

“Just a little while longer,” she said to it as she straightened. “We can do this.”

Limping, she made it another mile on the strength of bravado before the rain began. On the slope

of the next hill, she heard it before she felt it. Rain pelted the coniferous canopy. Aspens quivered.

Rain burst through. She tilted her face up, and water spattered over her. Mud streaked down her neck

as the bog muck sloughed off her. She caught drops in her hands and mouth and drank. Rain washed

over the forest floor.

Needles underfoot became as slippery as soap. Cassie hurried to the shelter of a fallen spruce.

She huddled under it as rain soaked the trees.

A steady trickle ran down her back, and Cassie shivered. She pressed against the cold bark. She

imagined the baby inside her shivering too. She wondered if she was hurting it, being out here—and

then she wondered when she’d begun to care what it felt. She couldn’t remember a moment. It had

sneaked up on her gradually with each kick, each hiccup, each shift she felt inside.

Cassie curled into a ball. Resting her head on a root, she wrapped her arms around her stomach

as if she could cradle the baby within. Water pooled under her head. Her wet hair chilled her neck. In

fits, she slept. She dreamed about Bear; she dreamed about Gram; she dreamed about a child with

wide eyes and a distended stomach. The child stared at her without speaking until Cassie’s eyes

snapped open.

She was hot and shivering. Arms shaking, she struggled to sit. Water dripped onto her. Outside

her makeshift shelter, it drizzled. She lurched out.

The world spun as she stood too fast, and she had to close her eyes. She put her hand on her

forehead—hot to the touch. She knew she had a fever. Gram used to take care of her when she had a

fever.

Opening her eyes, she looked for Gram.

She stumbled forward. “Gram, I don’t feel well.” It came out as mush. Her ears rang, and her

vision blurred. She felt as if she were underwater. “Gram?”

Gram was a white bear. Then she was a starving child, eyes as wide as Father Forest’s tea

saucers. Cassie held her arms out.

The bear-child ran.

Cassie ran. Her head pounded and her feet throbbed. She saw fine white lines imposed over the

forest. She saw a flash of darkness.

Cassie cradled her forehead in her hands. She wanted to outrun the throbbing in her head. She

ran faster and, blind, burst through the trees.

She did not see the drop-off.

She did not see the rocks.

She fell. Sharp rocks hit as she somersaulted down the slope. Pain lanced through her.

Screaming, she rolled.

She hit bottom. A stream gurgled beside her. Her hand dangled in it. Wet, she thought. She lost

consciousness.

She had fever dreams: blood and heat and searing cold. As the dreams and the fever faded, the

pain jolted her awake. She lay, twisted, on the rocks. Her skin felt tenderized. Her ears rang. Her

head spun. Her stomach… She writhed and gasped for air. Her guts squeezed.

Oh, what have I done? Please, please, don’t be dead. Cassie tried to sit. She could not seem to

get enough air. Please, live. Live, damn you.

Blackness swam up in her eyes as she moved. She vomited. Sharp pain sliced through her body

as she heaved. She brought her hand, shaking, up to her mouth. And she saw the blood. She spread her

fingers. Neon scarlet blood. It was all she could see. It consumed her world.

She was vomiting blood.

Cassie closed her eyes. Still saw red. She shuddered. She knew what it meant, alone and hurt.

She had not only killed her baby. She had killed herself.

PART 3

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 627