I wake before Jane does. There’s a faint yellow light that illuminates the ground for a few feet inside the cave mouth. Beyond this, where we slept, twilight still drapes the cave. Jane is snoring, she won’t wake for some time. I think briefly that I should stay until she wakes up. Waking up alone here, after the events of the past two days, might be more terrifying than the actual flight from the village. I need to think though and to think I need to move. My needs win out, so I grab Father’s rifle, sling the powder and bullets over my shoulder, and creep silently from the cave toward the woods. Once out, I hasten to the tree line and into the forest.

“The forest is the best place to think, Mary. The trees know things we could never guess”. Father told me that on one of our first hunts together. I remember I asked him:

“If the trees are the only ones who know, how can they tell us?”

“They’ll tell us if we listen, sometimes it’s their voice on the wind, or sometimes it’s the birds in the branches, or sometimes it’s just them telling our hearts”

“Father, how do you know so much?”

He laughed…I remember his laugh. It was big and full of life and joy. He didn’t laugh often, just like he didn’t smile often, but when he did, it filled all of us with happiness. “I learned from your mother…where else”.

“Where did mother learn?” I inquired further.

“You’ll have to ask her that Mary, that’s her story to tell”.

I wonder now why, if he learned everything from Mother, he was the one who took me hunting. Maybe Mother had an injury I don’t remember? Something that kept her from roaming the woods? Whatever the case, I remember her always being at home with Jane and Thomas.

As I find a game trail running through the trees, I push the memories to the back of my mind. There are plenty of rabbits here in the forest and I’m hoping to shoot one. I can worry about everything else later. If I’d thought ahead, I would have grabbed a spool of wire to make snares along the path. Unfortunately, I did not think ahead, so I’m stuck with the rifle. I want to get as far from the cave as I can before I make a kill. No point in giving ourselves away with a gunshot right by our hideout, even if it’s highly unlikely anyone will be this deep in the woods besides us. Besides, the trek will give me time, time to decide what to do for me and Jane.

What Jane said yesterday in the hollow is unfortunately true. I do not have a plan for what to do next. Father’s friend on the coast could still help. William…his name is William. I remember now. I met him once when I was about Jane’s age. He came to see Father about something. Father had quickly ushered us out of the home, but not before William had hugged us and asked all our names. He seems like a kind man in my memory. With keen green eyes like Jane’s and a mess of dark hair on his head that falls nearly to his shoulders. He can help…he has to help. Perhaps he can take us downriver, away from the Reverend and the village. That still leaves the problem of how to get there. William’s home is at least 10 miles from the village. That’s maybe two day’s walk on the road, but the road is likely not an option. I don’t want to risk anyone from the village coming upon us. We’ll have to parallel the road, which will probably double our walking time. That also doesn’t account for the fact that we’re miles deep in the forest and we’ll have to circle the village. I’ll add another day to account for this. That’s a three-day journey. The first day will be in the woods as we approach the village. Once we circle the village, we’ll keep descending into the valley till we reach the river, then follow it to William’s home.My heart sinks slightly. We’ll have to be careful going through the valley.. Down in the valley there’s farm land along the road and very little cover to conceal our movement. True, not everyone cares enough to turn us over to the Reverend, but some do, and all it takes is one of them seeing us. The Reverend allowed us to escape from his grasp once…he surely will not do so again.

I’ll have to come up with a way to move through the farmland undetected. I’ll think about this later, though. The cave is far enough away now that I feel comfortable shooting. I break right from the game trail and walk slowly and quietly, stepping carefully to avoid any dry leaves or twigs that may make a sound. “Step forward with your heel, Mary. Use your toes to feel for anything that will make noise, Twigs, leaves, anything like that. Once you’re sure there’s nothing to give you away, you can give your weight to the step”. Father taught me how to stalk game here in the woods. It’s slow, but it works.

A flash of movement catches my eye. I turn to look and see a large rabbit crouched near the trunk of a tree. His eyes stare at me unblinking from the underbrush.. He has definitely seen me, his eyes are fixed on mine without blinking. “His first impulse is to freeze. If you don’t move too fast, he won’t run”. Slowly I crouch down to one knee “Remember to take your time, if you scare him you won’t catch him”. I raise the rifle slowly and use my knee to support my arm in holding the rifle. “Don’t miss, if you miss you’ll scare off everything around”. I line up the front sight and the rear sight, then bring them slowly into line with the rabbit. He doesn’t move except for a few twitches of his nose. “Good…now breath in.” breath fills my lungs “and slowly let half of it out.” I let out half of the air in my lungs, then freeze. “Now stop, steady, squeeze the trigger…don’t pull it”. I squeeze the trigger in my hand, the hammer falls, the rifle cracks and kicks up and into my shoulder. “That’s my daughter!”

“Thanks dad…” A soft breeze ruffles the trees and carries my whisper away into the forest.

I return to the cave with the rabbit over my shoulder. As I emerge from the woods into the clearing, I see someone has already started a fire in the fire ring and piled a stack of wood nearby. I am concerned to see that the smoke is escaping out of the cave and rising into the sky in a very distinctive column. I don’t want a sign of our location and the pillar of smoke rising into the air is a sure sign for anyone looking for where to find us. It is, however, a straightforward thing to fix. I’ll put some branches over the entrance of the cave. This will help disperse the smoke and make it less noticeable.

I cross the clearing and duck into the cave. The fire is crackling and warm in the frosty morning air. Inside the cave is as warm as any home I’ve ever been in. There is indeed a pile of wood and kindling nearby. Close enough for convenience but far enough away that the fire will not catch it. The blankets have already been rolled up and stowed with the bags near the cave wall. The metal canteens have all been filled and placed neatly with the baggage. The only thing out of place is Jane. She is nowhere to be found.

I drop the rabbit and rush out of the cave, hastily scanning the tree line. “Jane!” I call to the woods…there is no response. The trees sway gently, but nobody calls back. “Jane!” I call louder. My voice cracks and I fall silent. Again, there is no response. “Shit!” I whisper.

I panic. It is not like Jane to wander away. Could someone have taken her while I was away? I thought we had been careful enough. I thought we had covered our tracks and been quiet enough. Nobody should have found us. Maybe an animal? Maybe a wolf or a cat had crept into the cave and taken her while she slept…or maybe it was something worse? “Jane! JANNNEEE?” I scream into the air. She has to hear.

“Mary…?” I hear a quiet voice…so quiet that for a moment I think I have imagined it. “Mary?” There it is again. A little louder this time and…behind me? I turn. The voice sounded like it came from the cave, echoing off the walls up from its belly.

I turn and stare into the cave. “Jane?”. My eyes struggle against the darkness. An impenetrable and oppressive darkness shrouds the cave beyond the light of the fire. There is nothing there except…a light? I see an orange light dancing some ways off in the cave. As though someone is just around a corner holding a lantern. Suddenly, the light bursts into view. Down in the cave, a tiny figure has rounded a turn and is approaching with a light. It flickers like a torch.. The light catches and reflects off a curtain of red hair.

“Jane!” I cry out and rush into the cave, scrambling over loose stones and around rocks. I meet her in the darkness and pull her into a powerful hug. She is holding a metal lantern and has a large rectangular object tucked under one arm. “Jane! What were you thinking? Why would you?” I stammer. “You could’ve gotten lost or…”

“Mary!” She pushes me away. “I’m fine. "Look." she pushes me away and gestures down. I see that the rope I brought from home is tied around her waist and is running up toward the light at the entrance of the cave. I must have missed it in my panic. “I tied myself off to one of the bags so I wouldn’t get lost”.

My arms tighten and I am suddenly acutely aware that I am sweating profusely. I try to talk, but for a moment, nothing comes out. “Let’s just get back to the fire,” I finally say through clenched teeth. We turn and walk out of the darkness toward the fire and the cave entrance.

When we get there, Jane unties herself from the rope while I clean and prepare the rabbit. One of the sticks in the woodpile is long, straight, and sturdy enough that I can sharpen it with the knife to skewer pieces of meat for roasting. Once I have these roasting over the fire. I turn to Jane again.

“I’m sorry Jane, I shouldn’t have been angry…but you can’t disappear like-”

“I’m sorry I can’t disappear?” Jane cuts me off sharply. “I wake up and you’re just gone. So I make a fire, I fill the water, and I gather wood, and you’re still gone. What am I supposed to do? Just sit here and do nothing?” I open my mouth to try to speak, but Jane continues over me. “I’m not a kid anymore, Mary…did it ever occur to you that while you were running through the woods with Father, I was growing up too?”

I try to speak but I can’t. Jane stares at me, her arms crossed, waiting for a response. I can’t give one. I just stare back, my shoulders slump and my head drops.

“I love you Mary” The words jolt me out of my stupor.

“What?”

“I love you Mary,” Jane says again. Her expression softens, and she uncrosses her arms. “I don’t say it enough”. She crosses the space between us and pulls me into a bear hug of her own. “We’re out here alone Mary and we’re in danger…you don’t have to hide that from me”. She pulls away and looks up into my eyes. Her red hair falls down in front of her bright green eyes, which sparkle in the firelight. “We have to trust each other…we’ve got nobody else”.

I feel tears welling up in my eyes again, and I try to force them down. “Now, when are you going to ask me about these?” Jane holds up the lantern and rectangular object. In the light, I now see that it is a book. A large leather book stitched over with intricate designs in turquoise thread. I feel the edges of my lips twitch up.

“What are those, then?” I ask.

Jane shakes the lantern. "well this one I found down in the cave. There’s another box down there that had this and some glass jars in it. I’m really lucky I found it in the dark. I walked right into it and tripped.” She holds up her hands, which are scraped, but not bleeding, as though she caught herself with them on the rocky floor when she fell. “So after that, I came back to see what I’d found. Lucky me, it was a lantern and,” she lifts the lantern higher, “It’s still got oil in it. So I lit it and went back into the cave. I found the box with all the jars, one or two of them I think have more oil in them.”

Jane’s eyes sparkle, and my lips twitch up into a full smile. “Okay then, little sister. What’s the story with the book, then?”

“Oh that? Well, that was in a box next to the lantern. I didn’t see it the first time without light, but once I had that, it was right there. There’s more stuff down there, too. There’s at least three or four more crates down there that have lids. I don’t know what’s in them.”

“Okay, but what about the book? Can I see it? I can read a little and see what it is.”

“Oh, I already tried, but it was really dark, even with the lantern. A couple of pages had what looked like recipes for something. It called for a bunch of plants and herbs and things. It was really dark though, so I didn’t read too much more.

“Hold on, you read some of it? You can read?” Father taught me to read, but I never saw him teach Jane and he never mentioned doing so.

face.Of course I can, Mother taught me.” Jane chirps before examining my face, I must look incredibly skeptical. “What? What did you think we were doing while you and father were out in the woods?”

“I didn’t…I didn’t know. I didn’t even know mother could read, let alone that she was teaching you.”

“Well now, you do. Father wasn’t the only smart one in this family, you know.”

I laugh. “Okay‌. Why did you go down there anyway, though? You know, it could have been dangerous.” I ask.

“It was strange” Jane looks down and her eyebrows furrow. “After I finished collecting the firewood and got the fire started, I kept thinking I was hearing someone whispering down in the cave, though I couldn’t tell you what they were saying. I thought it was the wind or a breeze from down in the cave, so I went and filled the Canteens in the spring, but I kept hearing it.” She looks up. “It sounded like someone was calling my name down there and I just couldn’t go look.” She pauses. "It led me right to the lantern and the boxes. After I found them it stopped and everything got silent”.

She looks up at me. I don’t know what to say. It was foolish and dangerous but…‌ following those imagined voices led her to more supplies and more things that might help us. I’m stumped. I don’t know what to make of this. I settle for ignoring it. It was dangerous and ill advised, but it worked out this time. Given the events of the past day, I decide that now is not the time for a lecture on safety.

“Let’s look at what’s in the book, then.” I am actually very curious about what might be in a book in a cave in the forest. I can tell Jane is too. She is more excited than I have seen her in a long, long time. She smiles and bounces a little up and down on her toes.

“Yes, let’s! I bet it’s got a treasure map! Or maybe it’s a new book! One nobody has ever read before!” She bounces over to the fire and sits down on a large rock, motioning for me to sit next to her. I do, and we crack open the book. It’s handwritten in a strong, flowing script. There is no introduction. The first page is just a handwritten recipe.

“A poultice for healing wounds:

Honey from the bees (at least half a jar)

A palm full of salt

A palm full of flour

Two handfuls of bunch of berries

A fist full of blue clay from the mountain

Mash it all together in a jar. Apply generously to the wound twice daily until the wound closes. "

We look at each other across the book. Jane is smiling widely and quickly flips through the pages. More recipes in the same powerful hand until we find something new.

“Incantation for safe travels:

Gather bark from the Box elder and dry it. Then beneath the full moon burn the bark. As the smoke rises, speak the incantation:

‘By sun, by moon, by star, by sky.

Iter Tutum, Iter Sanum,

By land, by sea,

Through field and over mountain

Iter Tutum, Iter Sanum”

Jane and I look across the book at each other. “Incantation for safe travel,” Jane whispers.

“Poultice for healing wounds,” I whisper back.

“A spell book” Jane says. I nod silently. Aspell the book indeed, in Father’s cave with Father’s Things, Jane looks at me and swallows. She expects me to say something and I have nothing.

Next Chapter: Chapter 4