Fire Along the Sky Fire Along the Sky

  Then for a long time Lily had given Nicholas Wilde little thought, until Callie had come into the world and her mother had left it, in her own quiet way.

  Dolly lost on the mountain, the second or third or fourth time; they had stopped keeping count. Anyone who could hold a lantern and call her name went looking. The searchers came to Lake in the Clouds for coffee, soup, an hour's sleep, news. Lily was there alone half-asleep in front of the hearth when Nicholas came with Dolly cradled in his arms like a child. He had put her on the cot by the fire so gently, stroked her damp hair from her face, watched while Lily lifted his wife's head and fed her broth. When she was asleep Nicholas went out on the porch and wept.

  He had frightened Lily so with the terrible power of his weeping, beyond anything she had ever imagined. She was standing behind him, uncertain and afraid, when he turned and pressed his face into her skirts and wound his arms around her legs.

  For an hour or more she had held him while he talked and wept and told her things she had no right to know and did not understand, not really. Then he had raised his head to look at her and all her doubts and worries fled. She had comforted him, somehow, with the simple fact of her presence. They had been friends, at first. Nothing more.

  “My brother and Blue-Jay are going to join the fighting,” she told him now. “With Luke.”

  His expression softened. “Your parents?”

  “They gave their consent.”

  “You knew it would happen, sooner or later. He will not be satisfied until he goes.”

  “But you won't.” Poking at him with words as sharp as a nail because she did not want to touch him, could not allow herself to touch him. “You won't go.”

  “No. You know that I couldn't even if I wanted to.”

  The long list of things that could not be done, yes. Lily knew them well. She often went to sleep reciting them to herself: he could not leave his orchards, his wife, his daughter; Dolly could not be cured nor could she die.

  Thirteen years and innumerable laws of both God and man separated them. They never pretended otherwise to each other; they made no promises or plans. They had exchanged nothing beyond the occasional awkward and lingering kiss. They could not be together, and so finally Lily had made plans to go to the city, and he had averted his face when he might have asked her to stay.

  Such a good man, people said of him. Clever, a hard worker, always ready to help a neighbor, with a calm smile in spite of the burdens he bore.

  “Look,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders to turn her.

  A rain-soaked orchard alive with the churning wind, shadows that shivered and jumped. She waited for the lightning and then saw what he meant her to see. The bear stood on her hind legs swiping at the ripe apples. Her fur was beaded with light and her eyes shone red in the lightning.

  The men in the village shook their heads over Nicholas Wilde, a man who wouldn't shoot the bears who raided his orchard. If they knew, as Lily did, that Nicholas named his bears as a farmer named his cows, they would conclude that he was just as mad as his wife.

  “Which one is that?” Lily asked.

  “Maria,” he said. “I call her Maria. She likes the Seek-No-Further best of all.”

  A terrible sadness came over Lily, a sense of loss so strong that her body could not contain it. It was something she could not hide from him, nor even try.

  “Lily,” he said softly. “Tell me the rest of it. What are you planning?”

  “I don't know yet. Something. Anything.”

  “Montreal?”

  In the flashing light she saw his face and wished she had not. How was it he saw the very things she meant most to hide?

  “If Luke agrees.”

  He grunted softly. “Even if he doesn't.”

  She reached out toward him in the dark. “Will you kiss me goodbye?”

  “Ah, Christ. Lily.”

  She was turning away when he reached out and pulled her into his arms. Where they pressed together from hip to shoulder he was quickly as wet as she; Lily felt him shudder with cold or longing or both. His mouth on the curve of her neck, at her ear, his breath soft and warm.

  “You know I would marry you if I could.” It was something he had never said to her before and Lily was surprised to find that those words she had imagined so often could sound so hollow.

  He kissed her mouth gently, his fingers on her face. The kiss of a friend. She took his head in her hands and pulled him to her and took the kiss she wanted.

  Then she looked at his face as if to memorize it, and she left him for the waning storm.

  By the time Lily had got home the sun had come out again to simmer on the edge of a sky washed clean of clouds.

  Gabriel came bolting out of the house to tell her the news: Jennet was to stay with them at Lake in the Clouds when Daniel and Blue-Jay went to join the fighting. It was good news, of course. It meant company for Hannah and distraction for Lily's mother. These thoughts she kept to herself, for the time being, while anger had the upper hand.

  “You're not surprised,” Gabriel said, deeply affronted that his news should garner so little response.

  “There are surprises and surprises,” Lily said. “And more to come.”

  She had meant to speak up during the going-away supper, but the conversation at the crowded table was quick and lively and full of laughter and Lily could not find it in herself to put an end to it. Instead she kept busy passing plates and refilling bowls, laughing with the others when laughter was called for.

  Finally Many-Doves simply took a bowl out of her hands and pushed her back to her place at the table, where she had no choice but to let herself be studied.

  They were all watching her when they thought she would not notice. Her parents, Daniel, Many-Doves, even Gabriel, each of them concerned, not all of them able or willing to hide it. Simon Ballentyne sat across from her and he watched too, silently. His admiration should have pleased her, she knew, but instead Lily felt only irritation: yet another man who was willing to keep his distance.

  There was apple grunt for dessert and then Gabriel wanted to hear the old story of the gaol break at the Montreal garrison the winter that the twins were born. Just at that moment Lily realized that if she did not speak up now she must scream. She stood suddenly and the room went silent.

  “I have something to say.”

  Nathaniel had been waiting for this, but it seemed to take Elizabeth by surprise. Or maybe, he corrected himself in the small silence that followed Lily's announcement, maybe it was not so much surprise as simple fear.

  Daniel put down his fork and folded his hands in front of himself. “Go ahead then, sister.”

  He was expecting a lecture at best, but there was something else coming. Nathaniel could smell it in the air. He said, “We're listening.”

  Lily pulled herself up to her full height, ready to do battle. Sometimes when she held herself like this Nathaniel saw his own mother in the line of her back and the set of her jaw. Which was both a comfort and a curse; he loved his mother and he missed her still every day, but Cora Bonner had been a force to reckon with when she made up her mind.

  Nathaniel watched his daughter gather her courage together. “I'm leaving tomorrow too. If I can't go to New-York City, then I'll go to Montreal, with Luke. If he'll take me.”

  It wasn't a question, and nobody mistook it for one. Elizabeth looked almost stunned, but she held her peace for the moment. Sometimes dealing with Lily was like finding a bear rummaging around in the larder. It could end in laughter or bloodshed, and it usually wasn't the bear who made the decision on how it would go.

  Luke looked his half sister right in the eye, his expression doubtful. “What is it you want to do in Montreal?”

  “She wants to study painting,” Gabriel offered. He was looking uncertainly between Lily and Luke.

  Nathaniel smiled at the boy and then leaned over to him. “Let your sister speak for herself, son.”

  “What she wants,” Daniel s
aid, matching his sister's tone, “is to get away from Paradise.”

  Lily's whole body jerked with that, but before she could turn on her twin Elizabeth spoke up. She was angry now, but not at Lily.

  “Daniel,” she said calmly. “Do not put words in your sister's mouth.”

  Lily's throat and face were flecked with bright color, as if a sudden fever had come over her. “That's exactly right. The decision is mine and mine alone.”

  “There's a war on,” Nathaniel said. He said it because if he didn't, Daniel would, and that would be the start of another kind of battle, where words would cut as true as any knife.

  “I'm aware of that,” Lily said. “My brother is going to join the fighting, after all.”

  With a voice that wavered only slightly Elizabeth said, “If we are unwilling to send you to New-York City in time of war, daughter, what makes you think that we would let you go to Canada, of all places?”

  Hannah made a sound, not quite a laugh or a cry but a little of both. “She's not asking for permission, Elizabeth.”

  “That's right,” Lily said. She gripped the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles went the color of milk. “I'm not asking for permission, just as you didn't ask for permission when you left England. Just as Jennet didn't ask for permission when she left Scotland, or Hannah when she went west. I will go to Montreal and live under my brother's roof, and I will study art there, and someday when I am ready, I may come home again.”

  It might have ended just there, for the moment at least, but Luke wasn't happy and he wouldn't keep it to himself, no matter what warning looks Nathaniel sent his way.

  Luke said, “Maybe you ain't asking Da for permission, but what about me?”

  “Ah,” said Lily. Her face had gone very still. “I see. You'll take their side in this. In that case I will find a way to go on my own.”

  From anybody else this would have been an empty threat, but Nathaniel knew his daughter. Daniel was going and she would go too, unless they tied her down. She had the money she had inherited from Elizabeth's aunt Merriweather, after all, and she would use it to get what she wanted.

  Daniel sat perfectly still and said nothing at all, though his gaze was fixed on Lily. He knew her better than anybody, and he was too clever by far to jump into a fight he knew he couldn't win.

  Luke, on the other hand, hadn't spent enough time with Lily to read the signs. He reached for the bowl of beans and made a sound deep in his throat. “This is between you and your folks,” he said. “I won't go against them.”

  “I will,” said Simon Ballentyne.

  Ballentyne was the kind of man who never spoke up unless he had something to say, and Nathaniel had almost forgot that he was sitting at the table until he heard his voice.

  Everyone was looking at Simon. Luke irritated, Daniel uneasy, Jennet intrigued. Nathaniel couldn't read Hannah's expression, but he saw that Elizabeth was ill at ease and confused, both.

  “Mr. Ballentyne,” Elizabeth began in her most polite tone, “I'm sure you mean well—”

  Lily held up a palm to interrupt her mother. “You will what, Mr. Ballentyne?”

  “I'll see you to Montreal, and make sure that you're settled there.”

  For the most part Nathaniel liked Ballentyne, a competent man, hardworking and quick, a little dour in the Scots way but not without a sense of humor when it was called for; he could laugh at a joke at his own expense. But this conversation was taking an unexpected turn, and Nathaniel wasn't easy with it. Neither was Elizabeth, who had gone very pale.

  For her part Lily looked just as surprised as Nathaniel felt, which was some kind of relief: at least she hadn't planned this.

  “Ballentyne,” Luke said. “This is none of your business, man.”

  Lily turned on her eldest brother furiously. “This is none of your business,” she snapped. “And I'll thank you to stay out of it.”

  “Lily!” Elizabeth could barely contain her embarrassment or horror.

  “I'm sorry, Ma,” Lily said in a calmer voice. “But this is between Mr. Ballentyne and me.”

  “As is any marriage proposal,” Jennet volunteered. And then, in response to the shocked silence around the table: “What did you think he was offering? The use of a horse?”

  Daniel was on his feet suddenly, all his pretense at calm gone. “Are you offering for my sister's hand, Ballentyne?”

  Lily picked up her plate and banged it down on the table so hard that the cutlery jumped. “And if he is, what business is it of yours, Daniel Bonner!”

  “Da!” Daniel turned to Nathaniel. “Stop this nonsense!”

  They were all looking to him now. Elizabeth and Daniel demanding that he take charge and put an end to the discussion, Hannah and Jennet and Many-Doves suspended between surprise and curiosity, the children hopping with excitement. Runs-from-Bears and Blue-Jay were amused, and Lily was plain mad. Only Simon Ballentyne was oddly calm. A man not easily riled, then; something in his favor.

  Nathaniel said, “I'd like to hear what Many-Doves has to say about this.”

  Many-Doves had once been his sister-in-law, but over the years Nathaniel found himself turning to her more often as he would have turned to a clan mother, for her insight and good sense. She had been listening to the whole conversation with interest, but her expression gave away nothing. Now that she had been asked, though, she stood and looked around the table.

  “A brother may hunt for a sister who has no husband to bring her meat,” she said. “But he does not make decisions for her. This is a matter for the women to settle among themselves.”

  “But Mr. Ballentyne never even asked for her to marry him.” Annie's voice trembled with energy. “Maybe he was just offering her the use of a horse.” She sent Jennet an apologetic look, and ducked her head.

  Lily, still standing, turned to the man who sat across from her. “Are you asking for my hand, Mr. Ballentyne?”

  Runs-from-Bears grunted softly. “He is now if he wasn't before.”

  It took everything Nathaniel had in him to hold back a smile, but Jennet wouldn't be silenced. “Will you no speak up, man?”

  Ballentyne hadn't taken his eyes off Lily. Now he said, “It's no how I meant to go about it, but aye, I'm offering for your hand, Lily Bonner. Should you care to have me.” He glanced at Nathaniel and then at Elizabeth. “I would have come to you first, had there been time.”

  Luke pushed back his chair so abruptly that it squealed. For Nathaniel to see him standing over the table, his temper barely in check, was to see himself at seventeen, the year he had left home against his mother's wishes and his father's advice. The winter Nathaniel had gone to Montreal and met Giselle Somerville; the winter Luke had been conceived.

  He might never know this son the way he knew the ones he had raised himself, but at times flashes of understanding came to Nathaniel as pure as rain. Luke did not want the responsibility that would come with taking his sister north, just as he was anxious about taking a wife. Because he was afraid he couldn't keep them safe; because he knew what it would mean, that double yoke, given the life he must lead.

  Luke's gaze was fixed on Jennet, who had her chin pushed out at an angle that could bode no good.

  “I want to speak to you right now,” he said. “Outside.”

  Then he strode to the door, opened it, and waited there. For the first time, Nathaniel saw indecision and something like guilt on Jennet's face. Finally she got up gracefully.

  “If you'll pardon me,” she said. “I apologize for the rude interruption. My lady mother and his took pains to teach him manners, truly they did.” She walked to the door without hurry, nodded to Luke as a queen might nod to a lesser being, and went out onto the porch.

  Luke said, “I'll be back. Don't make any decisions without me.” And he shut the door behind him.

  Jennet walked fast, but she couldn't say exactly why. It wasn't as if she had anything to fear from Luke Bonner; she was no longer a schoolgirl to be scolded, after all. He was j
ust a few steps behind her when she rounded on him suddenly to say just that, but he took her elbow and kept her moving.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “For what?” she asked sharply. “If you're planning to beat me, Luke Bonner, I assure you they'll hear my screams on the Solway Firth.”

  It was not a good sign that he had nothing to say to that, and in fact Jennet had rarely seen Luke so angry. His whole body trembled with it, but while the look he gave her would have made most men reach for a weapon, Jennet found herself oddly at peace. How many weeks now had she been waiting for him to show his feelings? If it must come out in a temper, so be it.

  She let herself be propelled across the clearing to a corner of the fallow cornfield that smelled vaguely of fish. There they were out of sight of the cabins, and there he let her go, abruptly.

  “What in God's name were you thinking?” he thundered, thrusting his face toward her. “Putting Ballentyne up to such foolishness!”

  At that she had no choice but to laugh. “First of all, there's no need to shout at me like a banshee. And second, I put Simon up to nothing at all. Do you think I cast a spell and made him fall in love with your sister?”

  Luke ran a hand through his hair, turned away in frustration and back again. “You read his fortune in those damn cards of yours,” he said in a voice that was only a little calmer. “You said he was lonely!”

  “And so he is!” Jennet said, drawing herself up. “Something you could see for yourself, if ever you thought to look. And if I did, what then?” She poked him in the chest so that he took a step backward. “You said yourself that the cards are naught but foolishness.”

  “You put the idea in his head,” Luke said, but some of his bluster had gone.

  “Ach, ye great gomerel. Did you not tell me yourself Simon was in love with your sister? And had you not said a word it would make no difference. Anybody with eyes can see for himself the way Simon looks at Lily. Much in the same way you look at me, Luke Bonner, try as you like to deny it.”