Mom always said that doctors are rare, impossible to find. It’s why I never went in search of one when she became sick. It was pointless to try.
Pa shows me how to haul up buckets of water from the river, then pour them into the cast-iron pot hanging over the fireplace. We boil five jars at a time—to sterilize them. And once they’ve cooled, we fill each one with river water. Pa crushes the pills on the old wood table near the fireplace, then pours a teaspoon’s worth into each jar. Next we add the honey that Pa bought from the old woman—Imogene—who stared at me with an itch of fear in her eyes. “We’ll put a little in each jar,” Pa instructs. “To sweeten it.” Now I understand why he wanted to save the jar of honey; it was always meant for the tonic.
We divide the honey into the waiting jars, a dollop in each, and the air instantly smells sweet. By the end, we’ve filled twenty-five jars, and used only a single bottle of aspirin from the crates. He has enough aspirin in the cabin to make a lifetime’s worth of tonic. Two lifetimes’ worth.
“Well done,” Pa says, surveying our full jars of tonic and giving me an approving look. “We’ll have plenty to sell at the market.”
I wipe the sweat from my temples, tired, but relieved we were able to refill his supply so quickly. And I wonder suddenly if Pa brought me here not only out of necessity but because he wanted me to know his method, and the location of his supply hidden deep in these hills.
He’s teaching me how it’s done, in case someday I need to do it on my own. In case someday, like Mom, he’s no longer around.
But if I make it to the ocean, as I intend, then I won’t ever be coming back here. To these hills and this miners’ cabin beside a strange river.
“Let’s get them loaded,” Pa says, hoisting up a crate and carrying it out through the doorway into the waning daylight. But I hesitate, looking back at the stack of wood crates and the bottles of pills.
I move swiftly, my feet hardly making a sound on the wood floor, and I snatch one of the small bottles, tucking it up into the sleeve of my sweater.
We camp beside the river, under the stars.
I don’t bother asking Pa if we can sleep inside the cabin—I understand now that he prefers to be outside, without walls or a roofto mask the sounds of the trees and the wild creatures who stalk close in the dark. And maybe in case other things creep close as well, more dangerous things.
We eat grilled wheat cakes with slices of hard goat cheese and tomato that Pa traded for back at the wheat town. I eat until I feel so full and round that I sink onto the quilt, hands cupped against my stomach to dull the ache.
My eyes scan the surrounding pines—they feel closer than they did during the day, towering silhouettes that loom and stretch over us—and I feel hemmed in, trapped in a way that makes me nervous. “I don’t like these trees,” I say aloud.
Pa scrapes out the bottom of the skillet with his knife to clean it.
“It doesn’t feel safe.”
He slides the knife back into the sheath at his ankle, then places the skillet upside down on a rock. “Nothing’s safe out here. Best place for you was back in the valley.”
I ignore his comment and tug at the collar of my wool sweater, the fibers itching my skin. I feel restless, jittery, and I long for my old bed back at the cabin—now burned to ash. But I long for other things too: the smell of wax candles burning in the evening, Mom and I lying on our backs beside the river, tracing constellations with our fingertips while she told the stories of the sky—of the first Astronomer who mapped the stars and made sure we wouldn’t forget. I’d catch glimpses of the tattoo on her neck, dark ink shining in the moonlight.
But I don’t allow these memories to pry me open. I close my eyes, watching the sparks against my eyelids, little stars erupting and dying.
Sleep comes in strange fits: I dream of the rope we saw in town, swaying above me while someone hisses in my ear.Vega, Vega.But then I see the deer, wandering up the dusty main street of town, its wild, pale blue eyes focused on me, moss sagging between antlers, and then the thundering of its hooves as it darts away back into the woods. It was trying to tell me something, warn me to go back. Danger lurks beyond the valley walls. Danger is close.
Snap, snap.I hear the breaking of limbs. The stirring of leaves. The deer followed us into these mountains.
Something breathes in the trees, breathing in the dark.
Footsteps.
Footsteps that don’t belong, that are too loud.Not the deer at all.The ground beneath me trembles with footsteps.
I shudder awake. The sky is still dark, but there is a shadow standing over me. A figure that isn’t Pa.
Three men are visible in the circle of light made by the campfire.
They might only be ghosts, remnants of a dream, except one of them grabs my shoulder and shoves me down to the ground to keep me from standing. Dirt in my nostril. Heart thudding in my ears. I blink across the firelight and find Pa standing a few feet away from one of the men, hands rolled into fists.
Not a dream at all.
I recognize them—they’re the men I saw back at the wheat town, standing in the shadow of the blacksmith’s shop, watching us, watching the wagon.
From the edge of my vision, I catch a shiver of movement in thetrees, a shadow slipping just out of sight—there are more men skulking back in the pines, circling the cabin. Hidden. More than just the three I saw back in town. But I can’t tell how many.Too many.
“I’ve seen you before,” the man closest to Pa says, leaning in like he’s trying to make out the features of Pa’s face, calculate if Pa’s going to put up a fight. The man wears a wool jacket over his pressed collared shirt, a wide belt notched with bullets, and he’s the only one of the three who’s clean-shaven. But when my eyes fall to his hands, hooked on his belt, I find no ring. The other two men are less civilized in their appearance: dirt in their hair, foreheads slick with sweat. They’ve been riding these dusty roads for some time and haven’t seen a bath in weeks. And none of them wear a silver signet ring withCircinusstamped into the metal.
