“Someone’s deigning to move at last, then?” snarled Meena’s voice from the far side of the stove.
Tilja heaved herself up. She seemed to be still in her underclothes.
“Where’s Ma?” she whispered. “Is she all right?”
“I don’t know about all right. She’s here and warm and breathing, that’s all I can say.”
Tilja scrambled up and staggered round past the stove. Ma was lying on her back with her mouth slightly open and her eyes closed. Even in the dim light Tilja could see that her face was not quite ashen; and there was warmth in her hand, but her fingers didn’t move to return Tilja’s grasp. Meena was sitting with her back to the wall between the bed and the stove.
“And I don’t know what that mark on her is, neither,” she said. “Only I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Tilja peered. The dark round patch on Ma’s forehead was about as large as her thumbnail, and seen close was nothing like a bruise, sharp edged and all the same blue-purple shade, without scar or swelling. It didn’t look like a hurt or wound, but more like part of one of the patterns with which the apple pickers painted their faces for the cider feast each fall.
“Do you think . . . ?”
“Not if I can help it,” snapped Meena. “You can hope if you want to. I don’t know that hoping ever did much harm.”
Tilja looked at her and realized that after yesterday her feelings about her grandmother had changed. Though Meena sounded as cross as ever—crosser—really she was worried sick about her daughter but she wasn’t going to admit it to anyone, so she covered up by snarling. Now she was glaring at Tilja, her pale blue eyes glinting with seeming rage. Tilja smiled back.
“Glad somebody’s got something to laugh about,” said Meena. “What’s so funny, then?”
“You, Meena,” said Tilja. “You were wonderful yesterday. That must all have hurt horribly, but you never said anything.”
“No point, was there? I don’t mind bearing provided nobody asks me to grin. And while we’re throwing posies around I may as well tell you you didn’t do so badly yourself.”
“Is your hip sore today?”
“Been better. Tickled it up a bit with all that banging around. But I’ll do.”
“Meena, that thing that bellowed at us when we were coming away from the lake—do you think . . . ?”
“No I don’t. I’ve told you already. And that’s enough of that.”
This time Meena’s snarl was genuine. Her glare was stony. With a gulp Tilja changed the subject.
“Where’s Da? And Anja?”
“Feeding the beasts. They’ll be starving by the time they’ve done, so you get a move on and get yourself washed and all, and then you can finish seeing to their dinner. After that you can run down to my place and get the cat fed, or I’ll never hear the last of it from him. I’ll be staying on here awhile, till I’ve some idea how your mother’s doing.”
Ma didn’t stir for the next five days. The only change in her that they could see was that the mark on her forehead faded from its dark blue-purple to a deep red and then a fiery orange and a softer yellow, until on the sixth morning it was almost gone.
Meanwhile Tilja had her hands and mind full with helping on the farm, doing all the endless things that Ma usually dealt with, while Anja did her best to take over some of Tilja’s tasks, and did them very well, provided someone kept telling her she was doing them marvelously. Tilja was glad to be kept too busy to brood. She didn’t want to think about the adventure in the forest, or to puzzle about the “little wretches” that Meena had seen by the lake, or the invisible great creature that had bellowed its challenge at them as they were leaving. The whole episode had been terrifying, but now it was over, that momentary fear was replaced by another, far deeper and more enduring. What had happened in the forest had been something new, something that had never happened before. To Tilja it seemed a sign that her world was changing, a sign, perhaps, that everything she loved—Ma, Da and Anja, Brando and the animals, Woodbourne, the whole Valley—was somehow going to be taken from her.
Tilja was by Ma’s bed, feeding the stove, when Ma woke. Tilja heard the rustle of bedclothes and looked up. Ma’s eyes were open and she had raised an arm and with her fingertips was caressing the place on her forehead where the mark had been.
“It touched me with its horn,” she murmured.
Her eyes closed, her arm fell away, and she was asleep again. When she finally woke that evening she couldn’t remember even that. She could recall riding Tiddykin out through the forest in the dawn light, reaching the lake, heaving the barley sacks out of the panniers and spilling the seed in heaps beneath the cedar branches at the top of the meadow, where the snow wouldn’t at once bury it. Then she was walking back down to the shore of the lake to start her singing. After that, nothing.
It was a long while before she had her strength back, but in a few days she was up and doing what she could around the farm. It was hard to say whether she was more silent than before, because unlike her mother and daughters she had never been much of a talker, but silent she certainly was, and sometimes Tilja would find her halfway through some task, standing stock-still, with a blank, lost look on her face. At the interruption she would sigh and shake herself and go on with what she’d been doing.
But it was all clearly an effort for her, and Tilja and Anja had to do as much as they could to make up. One day they were up in the forest inspecting and resetting traps, and collecting firewood, when Tilja needed the hand ax and found it was gone, though she was certain that last time she’d used it she’d slotted it back into its notch on the logging sled just as carefully as Ma would have done.
This was a disaster. Metal was scarce in the Valley. For small coins they used counters made from the hard, dark wood of a tree that grew only in one narrow glen in the foothills. Mostly they traded by barter and cooked in clay pots. In the old days iron had been brought in from the Empire, but when the Valley was closed off they could only use and reforge and use again the things they already had, hoarding every scrap. Iron still became increasingly scarce, and now was used almost solely for working tools. Even a small hand ax would be hard to replace.
Tilja tethered Calico to a tree and they started to work back along the way they’d come, scuffling the fallen leaves aside with their feet, but there were long stretches where the sled had left no traces on the leaf litter, and soon Tilja couldn’t be sure they were still on their track. She was already miserable and furious with herself when Anja caught her arm. Tilja shook her off.
“No, please,” said Anja. “Stop. I want to listen.”
With an angry sigh Tilja stood and stared around. No, this was wrong. They hadn’t come past this cedar. It must be over there. . . .
“This way,” said Anja, and scampered off between the trees. It was the direction Tilja had decided on anyway, so she followed more slowly, scanning the ground for runner marks. Anja had stopped and was standing by another cedar with her head tilted to one side, listening. Before Tilja came up with her she was off again.
And there were the sled marks! Tilja followed them slowly, searching beside the left-hand runner, where the ax notch was. There would need to have been a stump or a root or something to jolt the ax loose. . . . She almost bumped into Anja hurrying to meet her with the ax in her hand. Her whole body flooded with relief.
“It had hooked itself onto a holly branch,” said Anja. “The cedars told me.”
“That was nice of them,” said Tilja, humoring her. Then her heart seemed to stand still. She remembered her visit to the lake last summer. And something Anja had said that day when Ma hadn’t come back from singing to the cedars . . .
“Anja,” she asked. “Do you know where the lake is?”