Then she got up, and looked over the rock.
The water was still now, and the sky was clear. There was a tiny bit of moon up there. It was just a little crescent, like the cut on her head, like a bite mark, and it didn’t give off very much light. There were a lot of stars, though, and the dim moon let them shine all the brighter. Janie could see a long swath of them across the middle of the sky. Stars had names, each and every one — but Janie didn’t know any of them.
She cast her eyes down, and looked instead at the rock-face she’d near licked clean. She was pretty stupid, she guessed — couldn’t even find something good to eat when her belly needed it. Not but butter and mustard and dry old lichen from the side of a rock.
Stupid dumb hoo-er! hollered her stomach. If it were a bear it’d have bitchya!
“Quiet, stomach,” said Janie. She leaned closer to the rock, squinted at it now instead of the sky.
There was something written on it where she’d cleared away the lichen. No, she thought as she looked closer. Not written.
Drawn.
It was a picture — of some kind of animal it looked like. But it was no animal she’d ever seen, not altogether. There was a snout, and a big twisty horn coming out the middle, like the horn had come out of the middle of the horse’s head in the story magazine. But there were wings too — open wide like it was flying, or pinned, like on the cover from ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD! THE DEAD BIRD — and a snaky tail that turned around twice coming out its behind. There was someone reaching for that tail, but below the wrist was covered up in lichen still.
For just a second, Janie wondered what else she’d find, when she licked off the rest of the lichen.
But her belly wouldn’t have any more lichen, it’d had more than its fill of that dry old awful stuff. And her mouth wasn’t about to make no spit to soften it, neither. So she would just have to keep wondering.
Maybe, she thought then, that butter and mustard wouldn’t be so bad to eat after all. Her stomach didn’t complain much at the thought of it, so she got up from the rock and clambered up over the lip of the circle.
It took her hardly no time to get down this time. It must, she thought at the bottom, be the lack of a breeze.
Janie didn’t go straight to the lodge, though. Because now that it was clear and the water was still, she got a good view of the dock. And she could see a canoe there.
It was a pretty big canoe — near to three times as long as the ones she’d seen folks using in the lakes near Fenlan. Whoever’d brought it had hauled it up onto the rock rather than leave it in the water, and turned it over on its top — to keep any rainwater out of it, Janie guessed.
Janie tromped down the side of the rock to look at the canoe a little bit closer. It was bark — made out of birch-bark, like those little souvenir toy canoes you could get for ten dollars at the Indian Trading Post on the highway. But those canoes’d break like matchsticks and paper if you squeezed them too hard, and Janie didn’t think that this one would give in that easily.
Lordy, breaking this canoe’d bring down a beating like she’d never felt before.
If Ernie were here to give it, that was.
Janie felt herself grinning.
Ernie ain’t here. I’m on my own now. Just me and my hungry old belly.
Janie bent over and picked up the end of the canoe. It was pretty heavy, but Janie could lift cinderblocks all day and not complain. The wood at the other end complained some, as it scraped against the wet rock. Janie lifted it over her head, then stepped back and let go, and the canoe-end landed at her feet with a bang.
She walked around to the side of it. She kicked it, and it rocked back and forth. She kicked it again, harder, and it nearly rolled over upright before it fell back down in its old spot. It rolled, but it didn’t break. That is some strong birch-bark, thought Janie.
Save it, said her belly.
“Who are you,” said Janie, “to tell me what to do?”
She kicked the canoe again. This time, however, rather than kicking out, she raised up her foot and brought it down with her weight behind it. And that seemed to do the trick. The canoe didn’t roll this time — it stayed put, and there was a great crack as one of the wooden ribs underneath the bark gave way. When she lifted her foot to look, there was a dandy-looking dent in the bark, although she hadn’t holed it yet.
Don’t break it, said her belly. I’m warning you, Janie…
And to make its point, Janie’s stomach spewed a little acid, and some of the lichen that wasn’t digested yet along with it, in a thin stream back up her throat.
“Yech!” Janie spat and swallowed and did it again and again until the taste was nearly gone. But her throat still burned when she stopped, and she felt all out of breath.
“Goddamn stomach,” she said — daring it to try it again. Nothing happened, though; if Ernie didn’t like swear-words, her belly didn’t seem to mind.
Janie looked at the canoe and stepped back from it. Ernie’d always said she could use some self-discipline. She wondered if this was what he’d meant.
Janie turned away from the lake — she didn’t feel as much like making mischief on the canoe anyhow. She went up the steps to the lodge, and as she went, she wondered just who it was who’d bring that canoe. Could have been the funny man, but he was a dream-thing, and that canoe was pretty real, so it probably wasn’t the funny man.
Janie’d just started to wonder if maybe the owner of that canoe wasn’t hiding up in the lodge waiting for her, thinking to do her some mischief, when she heard the shaking. It sounded like the wind had sounded outside when she woke up — like the bone rattle where it shook the eaves on the outside, with a crack! when it broke something and a bong! when it knocked down a drum.
But now, she was on the outside. And it sounded like the wind was on the inside. “Isn’t that something?” she said, and hurried up the weather-worn steps to the front of the lodge.
She peered in through the big front window, and sure enough, that seemed to be what was happening. There was a fierce Georgian Bay blow whirling around the rooms of the lodge. As she watched, maybe three paperback novels bounced off the window as the wind drove them across the room. Some of the pages of the story magazine Janie’d been looking at were stuck to the window, and if they weren’t all upside down she might have read them. Mr. Swayze had a little iron hanging light, and it was swaying back and forth in the breeze — occasionally swinging so high that the side of it hit the ceiling with a thunk! noise.
Janie pressed her ear to the glass. Oh, it was cold! Seemed like the wind had taken all the cold it’d brought with it outside, and moved it inside. As she listened, she could hear the yowl it’d brought with it too. And she could hear something else. It sounded like—
—a chopping.
Janie closed her eyes, and caught the rhythm. Thunk! Then a moment while the axe-head pulled out of whatever it was cutting. Then thunk! again. And the same all over. It was just like Ernie would get, when he was cutting wood for the stove.
“Yep,” she said. “Someone’s chopping.”
Then there came a crack! and Janie jumped back and held her ear. She hadn’t been looking, and it had taken her by surprise.
Something had hit the glass hard, hard enough to crack it. She glared at the glass, and the little spider-web of cracks in it. Something else hit the glass, in the same spot, and the cracks spread.