The Hunger(42)

“Why?” he said simply.

She was exhausted, and her throat was raw. He had bundled her in his coat and she felt like going to sleep in his arms, but she didn’t see any way to answer him except with the truth. “I can hear the dead speaking to me,” she said. “They say awful things. I wanted quiet.”

When he lifted his head, a sweep of black hair fell across his face. He needed to have his hair cut; Elitha couldn’t help but think this, even in the middle of this chaos.

“When I was a boy”—Thomas always said that when he talked about his days with his tribe, never before I was made to live with whites—“they told me spirits could talk to us. Through the wind, water, even the trees.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean.” She took a breath. “I mean . . . actual dead people.” She took a long breath; it seemed to cut her lungs open. “You probably think I’m crazy.”

He was quiet for a moment. “When my parents were killed, I thought I saw them sometimes, watching me. But they never spoke.”

Elitha remembered that her real mother came to her once and only once, the day her father remarried and Tamsen moved into their house. She was only a shadow hovering at the foot of the bed, but Elitha knew it was her. Don’t be sad, her mother had said. Your father needs her.

“The priest said I only saw them because I wanted to.” Thomas shrugged. “He said it was all in my head. After that, I never saw them again.”

“So you think it’s all in my head?” That meant she was going crazy.

Thomas shook his head. “No,” he said simply. “I think the priest was wrong. I think my parents stopped visiting me because they knew I was okay. They knew I had to go on by myself.”

Elitha had felt sorry for herself when her father married Tamsen, thinking her whole world had been turned upside down, thinking he had betrayed their mother. What must it have been like for Thomas to lose his family, his tribe, everything he knew? She couldn’t fathom it. She couldn’t see how he would have the strength for it.

“So, you believe in spirits, and dark things like that?” she asked.

He didn’t seem embarrassed or afraid of what she thought. “Yes.”

“I do, too.”

He moved a little closer to her, and she shivered when their knees touched. “I am going to tell you something that I haven’t told anyone else.” He was quiet for a bit. She waited, holding her breath. “When I was with Mr. Bryant in the woods, we met a tribe of Washoe. He couldn’t understand them, but I could.” His voice was hoarse. He was very close to her, and when they accidentally touched, Elitha could feel how cold his skin was. As if he, too, was afraid. “They told me about a demon—a spirit that is very restless, very hungry. It has become many. They have taken on the skins of the men they have consumed.”

Spirits prowling the woods, dressed as men. My name is Legion, for we are many. Mark 5:9.

Thomas shook his head. “I think you are right. I think the dead speak when they are angry, or restless. I think there are spirits. I think there is reason to be afraid. Maybe the dead are trying to warn you.” He nodded toward the darkness. “Something’s waiting for us out there.”

She thought, then, of the Nystrom boy. She hadn’t been allowed to see the boy—hadn’t wanted to—but she’d heard the rumors. She thought of the hunger Luke Halloran’s voice had described. But Halloran couldn’t have been the evil spirit of the Washoe tribe. It didn’t make any sense.

“Is that why you ran?” she asked.

Thomas hesitated. Then he nodded. “I was frightened,” he said.

She took a deep breath, then reached out and placed a hand on his arm, letting the blanket fall away from her. Now he didn’t feel cold. He felt hot, burning hot. “I don’t blame you,” she said.

He turned to her. They were very close in the dark. “Are you frightened?” he whispered. He placed one finger on the inside of her wrist, and she shivered now for a different reason. His breath brushed her cheek. His eyelashes were long and soft-looking, like the feathers of a bird.

His lips felt funny against hers—not bad, just unexpected. A little wet, a little cool, and soft. Her first kiss. Her heart jumped in her chest at the thought. It seemed harmless; why did preachers and parents get in such a tizzy about it? He kissed her again, as though he knew she wanted another. This time, he was more assured, and something lifted inside her. She pictured her soul like a bird, a soft-breasted robin trying to take flight.

They remained in each other’s arms for another minute, Elitha basking in a secret happiness that she wanted to last forever even as she knew it wouldn’t, and then she slipped away from him.

If she was gone too long, her father or stepmother would come looking for her.



* * *



? ? ?

    HER SKIRTS WERE STILL WET from the river and slapped against her ankles as she pushed back through the woods, but she didn’t care. She didn’t even care if Tamsen yelled at her for mucking them up.

As she came into a clearing, she nearly ran into John Snyder and Lewis Keseberg, two of her least favorite people in the entire wagon party. Just as quickly as it had come, her good feeling was snuffed out, like a flame extinguished by a hard wind.

Both men were carrying shovels. Before she could pivot, they’d spotted her. Snyder got directly in her way. He was as solid as a buffalo and he had the same wild eye, rolling it so you saw a lot of the white. “Well, if it ain’t Donner’s girl running wild around the camp.”