The ground softened as she neared the stream, and Cassie sank into it like it was a sponge. Mud sucked at her feet, slowing her. She spotted the stream. Oh, no. It wasn’t wide enough! It wasn’t safe. The narrow stream was still within Father Forest’s reach. Balsam poplars and alders leaned over it. Horsetails and ferns draped in it. Cassie plowed through them and splashed into the water.
Bare feet on the wet rocks, she ran through the stream. She clenched her teeth as the rocks pinched. Miniature rapids swirled around her toes. Please, let it lead to a river, she thought.
Cassie saw a fern unfurl. Her gut tightened. He knows. Bushes rustled, and horsetails whipped her ankles. Branches stretched to scrape her skin. How could he know so quickly?
She heard the red squirrels chittering from the treetops—spies.
Branches waved like octopus tentacles. She kicked through them. She jammed her toe on a rock, and winced, slowing. Branches snagged her hair. She wouldn’t get another chance at this. She had to make it now. She yanked. She felt strands rip from her head as she splashed downstream.
Shadows fell across the stream. Cassie glanced up to see branches weaving and bending into a net. She chucked the pitcher at the tree. It recoiled. She ran under it. Shrub willow seized her skirt. She heard it tear.
“Little mother, wait!” Waving her arms, the tree-girl sprinted through the spruces. Father Forest could not be far behind.
Holding her bouncing stomach, Cassie bolted down miniature waterfalls. Rocks and twigs flew under her feet. She had to run faster—for Bear, for Dad, for Gail, for the baby inside her.
“Stop!” Leaping over bushes, the aspen raced beside the stream. She stretched out her stick arms to Cassie. “It’s too dangerous!”
Avoiding the aspen’s arms, Cassie tripped over loose rocks. She fell, and her hands slapped the rocks. She clutched her stomach and propelled herself onto her feet.
In the distance, she heard a crashing.
“No, no, no,” the aspen cried. “Danger! You must stop!” Her voice rose, approaching a shriek. “Stop!”
Cassie heard the sound of a waterfall. Suddenly, she saw it through the spruces: the river! Blue, beautiful, and wild, it rushed through the forest.
Branches slapped her. She shielded her face as she ran. Up ahead, the stream narrowed between boulders, spilled through them, and tumbled down ten feet into the stormy water below. Squatting on the boulders, Father Forest waited for her.
Cassie lowered her head like a bull. Father Forest was ten feet ahead of her. She barreled into the gap. As if scolding a toddler, he said, “No, Cassie, no. You’ll hurt yourself. You’ll hurt your baby.”
Five feet ahead of her.
He held out his gnarled hand. “You must trust me. I promise you will be safe with me. I’ll take care of you. I’ll raise your child like my own.”
Inches ahead of her.
“Think of your baby, its future,” he said. “That’s a good girl, take my hand. Come home with me.”
She was there. “Like hell I will,” she cried, and ducked under his hand and slid down the rock face. Scrambling, the aspen tried to stop her. “No, little mother!” Her fingers scratched Cassie’s arm like claws.
Cassie spilled over the rocks. She hit the water feet first. Her bare feet slammed down on the sharp rocks of the river floor, and she doubled over, hissing. The stream crashed down onto her back. She heard the aspen scream.
Cassie straightened, and water tumbled over her shoulders and down her stomach. Her feet throbbed. Blood tinted the water and then swirled with the fast-moving current.
“Oh, please, come back!” the aspen called, again a little girl’s voice.
Cassie fought the churning water. She lifted her foot, and the current grabbed it. She forced it down and wormed it between stones. She lifted her other foot. Wet, her skirt pulled with a weight that smacked against her legs. She raised her arms as the water deepened, and she gasped when the wet coolness licked her stomach.
Reaching the middle of the river, she forded downstream. Pleading with her, the aspen and Father Forest followed onshore. Mouth pressed into a grim line, Cassie focused her eyes on her feet over the broad curve of her stomach. Blood stopped swirling around her toes after a few minutes. Salmon darted through the clear water as passing streaks of silver. She hoped Father Forest was not on speaking terms with their munaqsri. How soon until the river was also her enemy?
The shore was suddenly quiet. She spared a glance at it. Father Forest and the aspen were nowhere to be seen. Bracing herself between the stones as the current pushed against her back, Cassie scanned the trees. Was it paranoia if the trees really were watching? She managed a grim smile.
Cassie waded to a boulder midriver and pulled herself out of the water like a whale beaching. In protest, the baby in her writhed. She stroked her undulating stomach and leaned back on one elbow. “Rest first. Then stage two,” she said to it.
She should not have difficulty finding a bog. In a boreal forest, it was harder to not find one. In fall, the woods were riddled with them. Cassie rubbed her aching thighs, chilled into gooseflesh in the wind. The trick would be after the bog.
She knew where she was going; the aspen had told her: Some trees on mountainsides can speak to the winds. She remembered seeing the Mackenzies back when she’d been in the tundra. But the journey there…
First things first: Find the bog, lose her pursuers. Cassie slid off the rock. The water felt almost warm after the chilling air. She waded downstream of the boulder, then lowered herself in up to her shoulders. She lifted her legs. Her stomach buoyed with her torso. Floating, she was swept downstream.
“Charming,” Cassie said, half to herself and half to the bog. Steam rose around her from the rotting ferns and logs. Hell could not have more humidity. Or smell worse. She wrinkled her nose. The bog smelled cloying, the sweet-sour of decomposing vegetation. “Whose bright idea was this?” she asked aloud.
She waded across the muck. It squished between her toes and oozed over her bare feet like melted tar. Stepping into a patch of rotting leaves, Cassie sank to her knee. Mud slurped as she lifted her foot out. She grimaced. It was nearly impossible to distinguish depth. One false step, and she could drown in mud.
Cassie looked across the bog. Straggly spruces clung to the muck like sickly scarecrows stuck in an abandoned field. Roots need ground, she thought. The mud will be shallow near the trees. But were these trees in Father Forest’s domain? She did not want to risk it. But she did not want to risk sinking into bottomless ooze either.
Mosquitoes descended en masse as she debated. In a cloud, they rained down on her unprotected skin. She swatted the air. “Bloodsucking vampires,” she said. “This just gets better and better.” She wondered if her slapping was attracting the attention of the mosquito munaqsri. Anything could be an enemy, she thought. She stopped slapping. Quickly compromising, she tugged a sapling out of the mud. Waving away mosquitoes and poking the ooze, she slogged forward.
She used her makeshift walking stick as a guide. If it sank less than two feet, she waded forward; more than two feet, she went in another direction. She did not bother to test the pools of black water. Purple orchids and pitcher plants marked those bottomless pools. She steered wide around them, and worried she was doing figure eights through the bog. She missed her GPS.
By the time that sunset flared across the sky, she missed her water canteen even more. Cassie wet her lips, and she tasted mud. Her throat felt like sandpaper. The baby squirmed, and she felt an elbow in her rib. “Sorry,” she said, patting her stomach. “It’s not purified.” The bog water looked like chocolate syrup in the fading light.