The Hunger(75)

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TEMPERATURES DROPPED.

Two days now they’d been hunkered inside the tents. The snow came up to their knees and obscured the way ahead in a thick blanket of white. It had begun to harden in place. Everyone shivered together, fully dressed, under quilts and blankets. George was delirious and feverish. His skin burned but was as pale as the snow. Every time he cried out in pain in his sleep, the girls whimpered, terrified. Tamsen made him drink tea made with ginger, bee balm, and cinnamon, good for infection.

It was late. She slept now only in snatches—an hour, maybe two if she was lucky. Burger and Shoemaker had eventually made it back, during a break in the snowfall, but only with the bitter news that Eddy had refused help. They had no choice but to wait out the weather now. They were as good as stuck.

She was sitting at George’s side, sleepless, when she heard a sound outside the tent: a gentle schussing, as though someone was gliding by on runners. A sleigh, that was what they needed, but a sleigh out here in the wilderness? Impossible. She was so desperate to be rescued that she was hallucinating.

Tamsen threw her cloak over her shoulders and picked her way out of the crowded tent. She listened for the crunch of boots on snow, but instead she heard something else: whispers. No matter how hard she strained she couldn’t make out what was being said.

Something was out there. If you’d asked her a month ago she’d have said it was wolves, but now she was filled with a worse kind of dread. Once again the visions she’d had in the basin came back to her: the shadow figures with their strange appearance, like something long-dead come back to life; the sickening smell of the one that had caught fire. Pushing through the fear was a current of anger. She’d let everyone dissuade her of what she’d believed to be true. Kept her head down while they mocked and isolated her.

But she’d been right, and she knew it now—could feel it.

No, could feel them.

They had followed her here. Had been, possibly, tracking their party all this time.

Her mind raced. Should she awaken the others and demand their help? Would they even listen? If they once again ridiculed her, the danger might only get worse. There wasn’t much time. The creatures moved fast.

She shuddered, turning toward the mouth of the tent to try to find a rifle, remembering again the way their faces writhed in the fire.

Fire. They had been terrified of the fire in the desert. They had scattered after the broken lantern set the dry plain aflame.

Tamsen paused, listening again. There they were—the distant, hungry whispers, moving through the branches of the trees as drifts of snow blew to the ground.

She couldn’t be imagining it, could she?

She thought again about rousing the hired men to help, but they were slow to get out of bed and she would not let a second pass while the creatures could be closing in on her family. She would not allow these men to stop her from doing what was right.

Not this time.

Fire. She had to build a fire, now. She focused her mind on that.

Carrying wood slick with frost in her arms, Tamsen made her way through the snow as far as she dared go toward the woods. Her boots filled with frigid slush. Her hem cracked with ice. Her fingers turned numb, bloated from the cold.

She cleared a spot on the wet ground and stacked the wood as quickly as she could, occasionally stopping to look over her shoulders. Crouching, she thought she saw eyes glittering in the dusk, glittering with the reflected light.

“Go away,” she said out loud, her voice thin in the cold.

From the old flames, she set a twig alight and carried it to the newly built campfire. Carefully, she lit the tinder at the base. The tinder caught but just barely, sending up a smoky plume. She would build a third one, too. The others would say it was a waste of good logs, but she knew better.

As she was working, Solomon and William, Betsy’s teenaged boys by her previous husband, crept out from the tent, shoulders hunched against the cold. “What are you doing, Aunt Tamsen?” Solomon asked.

She straightened up. On the air, their breath seized and turned white. “There’s something in the woods—can you hear it, boys?”

“Wild animals?” William asked. He was the younger of the two and was always looking for adventure.

Tamsen hesitated for a second, then nodded.

“We should hunt for it. Father says we could use some wild game.”

“These animals . . . aren’t the kind for eating. And though you’re a very brave boy, William, you shouldn’t go out hunting after dark.” She had to clench a jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. “Will you help me build some more campfires, though, to keep it away?”

The brothers looked puzzled. But they were good boys and helped her in the end. They built three new fires, making four in total. By this time, the oxen had started lowing, but it was too dark to go searching for them and make sure they were okay. Tamsen’s heart felt as if it might splinter in her throat, as if it might shatter like ice and cut her open from the inside out. She remembered how Elitha had screamed when the man got a blackened arm around her. How he’d sniffed at her neck. The cadaverous look of his face and the wet, pulsating motion of his nostrils.

As if he’d found them by smell.

They were still out there. She could hear them. The wood was wet. It wouldn’t light fast enough. Why hadn’t she thought to bring out her rifle anyway? Maybe the noise would have at least scared them off. Would four fires be enough? No. They must build more. As many as they could. In a circle, all around the tents . . .