She had to stop—the growing shadows made it impossible to distinguish between the bottomless pits and the harmless puddles. Cassie curled up on a moss patch as Orion’s belt poked through the deep blue. Hours later, she woke three inches deep in muck.
She extracted herself with the aid of her walking stick. Mud made her skin itch. Her hair was clotted. She stretched her back, and mossy mud slid off her shoulders.
Cassie eyed the muddy water. Do you know how many bacteria are in that water? her father’s voice said in her head. Could one sip hurt so much? she argued with him. Her tongue felt swollen. It 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.