Anah wondered whether the child being sought was the white boy in his camp.
Anah knew the danger inherent in making a long trip upriver, but enough trading would occur in that gathering that he could exchange slaves for many things. Still, he would have to be careful to disguise himself as Kwakiutl or Skidegate.
It would be unlikely that he would be recognized, in any case, because, even as far flung as his reputation as “Black Wind” had become, almost all his predation against other tribes had been against coastal, rather than inland villages. And he had seldom left witnesses alive to identify him.
He also understood that enslaved humans were commodities that had never lost their value, and he had many to trade. Even after the Brits and French had stopped directly authorizing any form of slavery by their citizenry, they ignored the practice of slave trading by non-whites in the region, thus condoning its continued use as a currency.
He exchanged three muskets for the message stick bearing the invitation that had been sent to the Kwakiutl.
He would make this trip up into the Tsimshian country, Anah decided. Come spring, when he could again rendezvous with intermediaries like Marté and Cull, who had a convenient connection to ocean-bound buyers like the Portuguese and Russians, a raid into the south Puget Sound waters again would bring him enough women to buy another cannon.
He would make this trip. And he would bring his slaves with him, including the Little Wolverine boy, if he could keep him contained. And he would study the boy to take his power.
Chapter Thirty
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Emmy
Emmy was not afraid of the cold. Each winter, passed over the years under the dull and sulking skies of the Oregon territory, had presented to her new problems that she had to bridle quickly. She knew that if she did not prepare properly, the deterioration of everything touched by the withering, relentless rain would deplete her strength and ultimately run her down and over. She had watched others succumb.
But she repeatedly had succeeded in besting the challenges of the elements, had endured because she held to hope and purpose — and that process had hardened her to the perennial coming of the cold, personified in her mind as a wretched and angry misanthropist. And when she reemerged into its presence, when its piercing, aching grasp reintroduced itself to her fingers and nose and cut to her core, she was prepared to defiantly withstand and survive.
And on the cold came that week, seven days into their trek east, first with a flurry of pea-sized hail that started in the early afternoon, followed by a torrent of freezing rain that lasted all night. The rain turned to snow by morning, stuck quickly, and within a few hours was five inches deep.
Emmy listened with considerable anxiety to Jojo’s recommendation that they prepare to wait. She did not want to lose time. She needed to find Jacob. She knew he would be there. She turned to Marano Levi.
“Marano, you said the weather is usually milder in the valley of the Three Spirits.”
Levi, who had said little during the trip thus far, nodded warily, as he watched for Jojo’s reaction to his opinion.
“Si, Señora. The valley is protected by the mountains that surround it. We could keep traveling.“
Jojo scoffed, angrily shaking his head at Levi’s recommendation. “That is too dangerous, Missus Evers! If the weather stops us, it will do the same to others who are coming east,” Jojo reasoned, staring down Levi as he did so. “We have to stay here at least until the snow stops. If it doesn’t get cold again, then we can go on.”
Emmy waited for Levi to counter Jojo’s recommendation. But Levi said no more.
Emmy nodded, grimly accepting Jojo’s argument, looking at the gray horizon, hoping for a change in the weather.
But the snow continued for another day, and then a cold hard freeze set in. Ice began to form on the river below their camp. So they stayed put, going through half of their provisions in the next week.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
On the second day, Jojo, anticipating a long and boring wait, brought the primer to Emmy for his first lesson.
He opened the book and pointed to the pictures of common objects with their titles on the first few pages. “Raven?” he asked.
Emmy shook her head. “No. Bird,” she said, pointing to the word.
“Noburd,” Jojo repeated.
Emmy shook her head again.
“Bu-ir-da.”
Jojo nodded and repeated, “Buirda.”
Emmy smiled and nodded. “Bird!”
Jojo repeated the word with the exact emphatic affirmative intonation. And then Emmy knew that Jojo was a perfect mimic.
Within a few hours, Jojo had mastered five pages of pictures and script.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Every night and into the bitter mornings that week, Emmy dreamed.
One night she found herself in bed waiting for someone, a man, to come through her door, and she knew it wasn’t Isaac. She waited, felt herself holding her breath, for whomever he was to be bold enough to push his way in. The dream, and the arousal it provoked, continued until she awoke to the first light. She ran outside and buried her face in the snow to calm herself before Sarah awakened.
On two nights, she dreamt she was following a spirit who looked like a version of her first husband, John Tern, Sarah’s father, a hard-pressing, driven man, who had changed from charming to angry within a few months after arriving in Olympia.
“Why did you marry the man who was Sarah’s father?” Jojo had asked the night before, as they huddled around the small campfire.
The question surprised Emmy. She was quiet for a few minutes, thinking about events that had occurred so very long ago, it seemed.
“He was a big dreamer, Jojo. A story teller. Painted bold pictures about this land. Ambitious, like Isaac, Jacob’s father. I believed him. So did my family. I was sixteen when I married him.”
She paused again, looking to be certain
