And I had found one of the gifts waiting for me there, too—the fat chickadee—perched on the stone where I myself often perched.

On the day Quiet was born, I sat among the tumbled boulders and slowly, carefully followed the map of my father’s scar, through every kind of cure I knew, and considered how they might help him wake.

I thought about what the balsam fir gave us for head colds, sores and cuts, and plenty more.

Jewelweed for ivy poison.

Barberry, in winter, so we never had scurvy.

Mustard plaster for clear lungs.

Mud for bee stings and spider bites.

The twin nurses—onion and garlic—for what’s coiled in a gut, and vinegar, as well, for the gut and cuts, too, when they festered.

I would try all of these, and more besides.

When I thought of the jonquils by my father’s bed and how they had failed to rouse him, I considered their opposite, and I came up with a plan that would surely earn me a week of nothing but gruel. Maybe worse.

When I thought of the songs that my mother played on the gramophone and how they had failed to rouse him, I considered sounds of my own, and I came up with a plan that would surely mean a mouthful of fresh horseradish . . . which gave me yet another idea to try.

Beyond that, I couldn’t think another thought. My stomach was sore with such ideas. I didn’t relish the thought of upsetting my mother. And the prospect of giving my father pain made me hurt, too. But the flame that lit my way felt true to me. And brave.

That’s what my father needed me to be.

That’s what I needed me to be, too.

So that’s what I would be.

Chapter Nine

“The venison,” my mother said when I came back to the cabin and found her in the yard, hanging wash.

I’d forgotten.

“Samuel!” I called.

We waited for his answering yell, which came from below the cabin where the brook crossed the slope and paused long enough to make a shallow pool where crayfish sometimes paddled foolishly into my brother’s waiting hands.

“See that you come straight back after the Petersons’, Ellie.”

There were two places my father had told us to fear. One was the river, which sometimes raged after a heavy rain and was, at all times, apt to drown things. The other was the part of the mountain above where the families lived. “Bears,” he often said. “And coyotes. And steep rock faces. And ledges that drop off into nothing. So don’t wander up too far, you hear me?”

And we did hear him, and we did obey, especially since there was a warning in his voice of something else besides bears and broken bones, though I didn’t know what that might be.