She sighed. “I didn’t mean to. I was clumsy. And all for something that might have waited till you got back.” She gave me a rueful smile. “I’m used to doing things for myself.”

“The bandages are somewhere on the ground near where we found her,” I told Esther. “Go find them. And if they’re dirty, wash them out again.”

She stayed right where she was for a long moment of no and then went out into the night.

When she returned, I pointed at the fire and watched as she draped the wet bandages over the back of Cate’s one hard chair and dragged it close to the flames.

Cate looked from me to Esther and back again.

“What’s wrong between you two?” she said. “You used to be like peas in a pod.”

I thought about everything I might say, then chose the simplest. “We’re different.”

Cate scoffed at that. “So are ink and paper, but they get along very well indeed.”

“She’s mad at me,” I said.

“Not mad,” Esther said.

“She thinks I’m the reason our daddy got hurt.”

Cate scoffed again. “You’re a girl. You’re not a tree.”

“She was in the way,” Esther said.

Cate shook her head. “Blame comes from the Greek for ‘curse.’ That’s the root of it. A curse. Against the sacred. Which is what sisters are. Or should be. To each other.” She glared at us both. “Sacred.”

I looked at Esther. She looked at me.

“It’s all right that you were in the way,” Esther said. “You’re just a kid.”

Which made me mad, but I held my tongue.

I found Cate watching me carefully. “Captan fetched the right person,” she said.

And, just like that, I wasn’t mad anymore.

“In the morning,” she said, “look for Larkin down the path alongside the spring, down over the rocks and around and down until you reach the cabin.”

“I will.” To Esther, I said, “Wait until those bandages are bone-dry, cooked clean, and then wrap her leg up again. Clean as you can. And light that lantern there before I go,” I said, since I would need my own for the hike back down to home.

And, along with it, a good bit of courage, besides.

Chapter Fifty-One

My lantern ran out of oil before I ran out of path.

I stopped then and there, the woods dark and windy, and wanted badly to go back the way I’d come. But I’d heard my father say many times that wild animals were more afraid of people than people were of wild animals, so I wasn’t much more than nervous as I continued on in darkness.

The bear I saw as I rounded a bend in the path was several shades blacker than the night.

When I saw him, I froze.

He did, too, when he saw me.