LITMIR.BIZ

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practiced eye, they stopped every half-hour or so. Lily felt better but very weak. When she rose to signal she was ready to go, Papa touched her shoulder with one finger, and sat down. Just before their midday meal she shamed herself utterly by drifting off to sleep. A trek of four hours stretched much longer. The shadows around them thickened and grew aggressive. So did the mosquitoes. Papa paused to examine a configuration of blazes on a huge hickory tree.

      “The river road’s only a half-mile away,” Papa said. “But it’s too late an’ we’re too tired to walk the five miles after that to the Partridges,” he continued. “We’ll make camp right here on the high ground.”

      Lily was sure she could hear the River tuning up for its nightsong.

      With his swift, sharp hatchet Papa cut down several saplings, bent them into a frame and covered it with cedar boughs. The lean-to was just big enough for two, with a sturdy elm-bole to rest their backs against. More boughs were spread on the ground to serve as a bed when they were ready for sleep. But not just yet. In the opening of the lean-to, Papa built three small fires ringed by stones, two of which he smudged with damp evergreens, leaving the middle one to flicker brightly below the steaming tea. Papa and Lily were scrunched inside with the blanket over their shoulders, the smoke keeping the mosquitoes at bay and Maman’s raspberry tarts sweetening on their tongues. Papa’s left arm was raised and Lily snuggled in against him, relishing the muskiness of his rough shirt. She was about to slide down into sleep when she realized that Papa was talking.

      “Bridie was the eldest. Eighteen and a local beauty. To us, she was a second mother. Then one day, just like that, Pa announces she’s gonna be married up with an older man, a crony of his. Bridie says noin that iron-willed way she had. There was a terrible row, I can tell you. Ma hid in the stairwell cupboard. Next day without sayin’ good-day-to-you or by-your-leave, she’s gone. ‘She’ll come back,’ I said to Ma, ‘she loves us.’ Pa ranted and raved for three days, ‘Let the harridan be and be damned! She’s no kin of mine.’ The case is closed. He refuses to say her name an’ forbids us to. She’s drummed out of the tribe. Dead.”

      Papa lit his pipe. “I felt terrible,” he said in a lower, different kind of voice. “I felt she’d abandoned me. When you’re only twelve, somethin’ like that seems like a betrayal. You put all your trust in a person an’ then, like that, they’re gone.”

      Papa drew the blanket around Lily’s head. She snuggled close again, gripping his left hand with both of hers.

      “It was two years later, Ma was quite sick, an’ this letter arrived addressed to her. We all recognized Birdie’s writing. She was a beautiful writer. She taught me to read, as best she could. So I read the letter, after Pa had headed for one of his meetins’, of course. Bridie was in a place called Toronto, Upper Canada. She was well. She was goin’ off to a town somewheres in the bush to work as a domestic.. She didn’t name the town. She said we wasn’t to bother tryin’ to find out, she loved all of us dearly but she just had to do things this way as it was the only way for her. When I grew up, I knew what she meant. Back then, I hated her even more.”

      The moon slipped out from behind one of the high, breezy clouds feigning interest in the world’s affairs.

      “When your Mama an’ me come out here some years later, we made no attempt at findin’ her. As you’re gonna see soon, this is a big country. But nobody ever put one over on Bridie, not even Pa with all his political shenanigans and bluster. Just after you was born we got a letter hand-delivered from Port Sarnia. From Bridie. She welcomed us to the county an’ said the door was open to her house anytime. We always intended to go up there but your Mama was never well enough. We thought it best, for a while, not to get your hopes up.”

      He poked at the smudges, scattering the swarms.

      “’Course that’ll all be rectified soon. You’re gonna see your Aunt Bridie and Uncle Chester at last, you are.” Papa gave her an extra squeeze. “Yes, my Lady Fair Child, you’re gonna have the time of your life up there. Before you know it we’ll have a chunk of that cleared land and a white clapboard house to live in. We’ll only be a mile from the town, too, with stores and mills and meetin’ halls. First thing I’m gonna do is take you into town to Cameron’s emporium and buy you your first store-bought dress – calico or lawn or kendall, take your pick, you’ll be as pretty as a butterfly in a flax field in August.”

      Papa squeezed again. Lily gripped his hand to let him know she was still awake. The main fire was in its mellow, amber phase.

      “Naturally your Aunt Bridie, bein’ an’ educated woman herself, will want you to have some proper schoolin’. They’ve got a school in Port Sarnia. You’re gonna grow into a genuine young lady, I reckon: there’ll be no stoppin’ you once you reach that town.”

      Papa took his arm from her shoulder, shook the fire vigorously until the flames jumped again, and then reached into his pack. In his hands he held something small and leather-covered, a book.

      “I don’t want your Aunt Bridie thinkin’ your Mama an’ me didn’t bring you up properly,” he said, as Lily looked directly up into his face. “This here’s a New Testament, a Bible. It was a gift, long ago, from my mother. I wrote an inscription to you in the front cover. My spellin’s not too good so I had Mr. Millar write down the actual words. Someday real soon you’ll be able to read it, an’ the Bible, too. I want you to keep it an’ treasure it, no matter what happens to you in this awful, tryin’ world.”

      Papa had to stop to clear his throat. Lily reached out and took the Testament, its covers carrying the warmth of Papa’s hands into hers.

      “I’ll tell you what it says, for now,” he went on. Once again he cleared his throat. “To my dearest princess, the Lady Fair Child, from your Papa who loves you forever.”

      Lily tucked the precious book into her pouch, and slipped drowsily into the care of Papa’s arms. He rocked her, gently, to sleep.

      The sun, well above the tree-tops, woke Lily with a start. She was not in the least surprised to look over and see that she was alone. Papa had left her the food, water and utensils. And a note, on folded, thick, yellow-white paper. Lily did not open it. I can’t read.It must be for Bridie.

      Another voice said: the new road is a twenty-minute walk across a blazed trail; there will be travellers on that road; they will help. Mrs. Partridge is five miles up that road; she will remember me and everyone in Port Sarnia will know who Bridie is. I have nothing to fear. Papa loves me; he expects me to go to Bridie’s.

      But then maybe he’s gone to scout the new road? Besides good folk, there are pedlars and bounty-hunters to beware of. It would be terrible if I wandered off and Papa came back to find me gone. He’d be so worried. I’ll stay here till he comes for me. That’s why he left the food and water. He thinks I’m sick. He loves me. It says so in this little book, it’s written there, forever.

      When she finished the last of the water, Lily began to worry. It was past five o’clock. Papa was not coming. He expected her to get to that road and find the Partridges. Still feeling dizzy and very weak (what was wrong with her? she thought), Lily gathered their belongings and looked westward for the next blaze. The shadows were massing even now, and it was not easy to pick out the year-old slashes from trunk to trunk or the modest impressions left on the trail by its mocassined patrons. An hour or so later Lily admitted reluctantly that she was lost. She was not scared of being alone in the woods; she never had been. The mosquitoes were bad but she had matches, she could make a camp of sorts. What concerned her was that she didn’t know where she was. Nor would she be able to find her bearings in a terrain bereft of familiar landmarks. Desperately she tried to keep to the westward by the sun but it disappeared for minutes at a time in the closed canopy one hundred and fifty feet overhead.

      When she stumbled into a beaver meadow, she looked up and saw in despair that it was now fully night-time. The stars winked invitations at her. Then she saw the dipper – the Silver Gourd – shining clear in its northern berth. She turned due left into the darkness. Ten minutes later she emerged from the dense forest onto the roadway. The fresh planking hummed beneath her feet. Inside

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