Shadows Cast by Stars

and drops. “All that stuff about adopting you…”

“She said you agreed.”

He shrugs. “I did, but I didn’t really believe her about what was coming. I mean, she never spelled it out, either, but now that I think about it, she knew. There’s a big difference between knowing and believing, though.” This time, his smile is more successful. “Guess that makes you medicine woman now, huh?” His voice breaks and he gulps down another mouthful of tea to hide it.

“Yeah.” My shoulder aches. “Dad, what are we going to do? How are we going to find Paul?”

He doesn’t say anything at first. Instead he gets up and retrieves a blanket from his room, and drapes it around my shoulders before taking a seat beside me. “I don’t know, Cass. That’s a huge place, the ocean. I want to believe they’re still alive, but I’ve spent too much time on the sea to think differently. And yet…” He takes a deep breath. “I think I’d know, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t we?”

Yes, we would. Paul is not dead. Neither is Bran. For the first time, I think I can understand how Bran’s mother must feel, holding on to hope when everyone else has long since bid it farewell. “We’d know, Dad,” I say. “We’d know.”

He nods. “I know you’re right. Just… I’ve asked the Elders, before Henry came back, and they said they had to wait for him. And now that he’s here? I’ve got to pray that he’ll let me take a boat out, and then I’ll have to pray for a miracle, because that’s what it would take to find a canoe out there.”

I close my eyes and try to see them, but all I can see in my mind is the great gray expanse of the ocean. “We’ll find them, Dad. We’ll find them.”

We sit that like for a while, my father trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe, and me trying to figure out how to make it happen. We would need a boat, which we don’t have, and we would need fuel, which we also don’t have. But supposing we did, what then? The strait between the Island and the Corridor is more than thirty miles wide, and if they got caught in a current and were taken south? They could be anywhere by now.

No. I won’t think that.

I will find them. I will.

Except… I am medicine woman now. Sometimes you’ll have to make hard decisions. Madda’s words come crashing down around me. I can’t just go off in a boat. I have a responsibility to this community now.

Does that outweigh my responsibility to Paul and Bran?

I don’t know. I’m not even sure I can be medicine woman. My training’s hardly complete, for one thing, and for another, just because I was Madda’s apprentice doesn’t mean I’m medicine woman-or does it? Henry said I was, and he’s an Elder, so maybe I am, and yet… “Dad,” I say. “Do you think I can do this? Be medicine woman, I mean?”

“Yes, yes, I do.” He nods to punctuate his words. “Madda wouldn’t have taken you on if she didn’t think you could do it. Me, I’m glad it’s you and not that Avalon girl. At least Paul’s away from her,” he mutters into his cup.

That’s a small mercy. A very, very small mercy.

I want to stay here forever, in this house perched above the lake. I want to wake to my father singing in the kitchen. I want to spend my days washing windows and picking rocks and listening to the blackbirds warble. I want to twist my hair into a thousand braids and whirl in circles, dancing like I did when I was small.

I want my brother to come home.

But my father is standing in the doorway, speaking words that I don’t want to hear.

“You’re needed in town,” he says. “A boy’s been hurt.”

I’m not ready. Madda said not to heal when I wasn’t well myself.

And yet, a boy is hurt.

“They’re waiting for you down at the dock. I’ve got Madda’s medicine kit ready for you,” my father says.

This was my choice. I chose this path. So why can’t I move?

My father takes my hand in his. “You can do this. I know you can. Put on a brave face and tend that boy like you’ve done your brother all his life.” He touches my hair. “Don’t let them see you like this, Cass. You aren’t weak. Don’t give them reason to think you are.”

I want to tell my father he’s wrong, that I am weak, but the look on his face-the one that says he believes in me-convinces me otherwise. “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

My father smiles. “That’s my girl.”

He walks me down the hill to where two men bob in a big rowboat. Neither says a word in greeting. My father helps me in, hands me Madda’s medicine kit-my medicine kit-and the men begin to row. I clutch the kit to my stomach and try to ignore the pain in my shoulder, the lump of stone in the pit of my stomach. How can I do this? I don’t even know what’s inside the medicine kit at this point. How much of the St. John’s wort did I use back at the boundary? How much willow bark remains? What if I need to suture a wound and there’s no gut? What if the kit’s completely empty, so that when I arrive at this boy’s side, I’ll find I can’t do a single damned thing? I should look, but I can’t. I can’t move at all. What kind of medicine woman will they think I am, wandering around with an empty medicine kit? What then? Will they laugh at me? Kick me out? Stone me?

The men dip their oars into the dark water and pull, dip and pull, and there, beyond the wake, is the sisiutl, watching me with its glassy black eyes. He’s coming along to see what unfolds, and when I fail, he’ll swallow me whole.

But the sisiutl stops swimming and floats there in the water, just under the surface, as the boat draws toward the opposite shore. If anyone looked at it, they’d probably think it was a dead-head. Maybe it is. Maybe none of this is really happening. Maybe the shades aren’t really shades. Maybe the sisiutl isn’t really a sisiutl at all, but a trick of light that my brain has interpreted as something supernatural because that’s the only way I can make sense of this twisted reality I live in.

I turn my gaze to the sky. I don’t want to look at the lake anymore. If this world is a figment of my imagination, shouldn’t I be able to look at these two men in this rowboat and see Paul and Bran at the oars instead? Shouldn’t I look back at the dock and see my father standing there with Madda?

The man across from me frowns. “You okay?” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Just fine.”

And I will be, I tell myself. Just wait and see.

They beach the rowboat on the southern end of the lake, not far from Bran’s house.

“That way,” one of the men says, pointing toward the neat rows of an orchard. He helps me out of the boat. My feet sink into the sand as I watch them paddle away.

I turn my back on the lake and head to the orchard.

Women cluster around my patient. They part as I approach. I recognize some of them from that day in the park, when Helen invited me to make baskets with them. They watch me with blank expressions, as if they don’t know me. And they don’t. They don’t want to, either. I’m here to heal, and then leave. I’m an outsider. I know it. They know it. And that’s just the way it is.

Helen is kneeling beside the boy who’s lying on his back unconscious. I almost drop the medicine kit. Helen. Who has lost Madda too. I draw a deep breath and walk toward her, hoping she’ll look at me. How could I have forgotten Helen? Who told her?

Doesn’t matter who told her, my mind whispers. It should have been you.

It should have. Yes, it should have, but I was too lost in my own grief, my own pain, to think of anyone else but myself. The need to apologize, to make amends, to make everything better is so strong that I have to bite back the words, because now isn’t the time. Right now, that boy on the ground needs my help. Fix him first. Fix the rest after.

A dark-haired woman sits beside Helen, cradling the boy’s head, weeping. She looks up at me. The woman from the park. The one who shunned me.

Doesn’t matter, I repeat to myself. Fix the boy. Fix him. Concentrate on that. Put the rest away.

I crouch beside Helen. “What happened?”

“He fell,” the mother says.

“From how high?” I glance up at the tree above us.