Page 5 of Dawnlands

“You have saved me from the plantations?”

“Aye, we’re going to London.”

The youth gritted his teeth on the terror of another unknown destination. “I thank you.”

Ned grinned. “You don’t look too thankful.”

“I am. You knew my grandmother, her name was Quiet Squirrel. D’you remember her? She made your snowshoes. D’you remember them? And my mother?”

“Quiet Squirrel!” Ned exclaimed. “She did! She did make my snowshoes. And she taught me… She taught me every—” He broke off. “Is she…”

“She’s gone to the dawn,” the boy said simply. “All my people are gone. All my family are dead. Just a few of us were captured alive. The village is gone. You can’t even see the postholes. They burned us out and they plowed our ground. They have made us…” He sought for the word. “… invisible.”

Ned sat down heavily on the side of the bunk. “Invisible? How can a people become invisible?” He had a sudden, vivid memory of the village of Norwottuck: the houses around the central fire, the children playing, the women grinding corn, the men dragging in a shot deer, the girls carrying long spears loaded with fresh fish. Impossible to think it was all gone, yet he knew it was impossible that it had survivedthe three years of bitter warfare. “And you…” He looked at the youth. “Were you one of the little lads?”

The youth pressed his lips together as if he would hold in dangerous words, but he forced himself to speak. “I met you when I was a child of six summers. You used to make me laugh when we crossed the river on your ferry. Back then, I was called Red Berries in Rain.”

Ned’s eyes widened; he got to his feet, put his hand under the youth’s chin, turned his face to the light of the candle. “Red Berries in Rain?” he whispered.

There was a day in his mind, long ago, more than fifteen years ago, when the women had been on his ferry, and they had been laughing at the little girl who had hidden behind her grandmother and peeped up at him with huge dark eyes. “You’re a lass?” he asked, disbelieving. “You’re that little lass?”

She nodded. “Please… Please don’t give me to the sailors,” she whispered.

“God’s blood! D’you think I am a beast?”

She flinched from his outrage. “The jailer gave my sister to the sailors.”

“I’d never do such a thing!” he swore. “I’d never—well, you’re not to know. But I have a sister in England! I have a niece! God knows, I’d never…”

“I said I was a boy, and they gave me a shirt and breeches.”

“Aye, it’s best.” Ned gestured to the patched breeches and old shirts on the bunk. “You’d better stay as a lad till we get to England. We’ll say you’re my serving boy.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t want to be a girl until I am a girl of the Dawnlands again.”

“What’ll we call you?” he asked. “I can’t call you Red Berries in Rain.”

“It was a mosmezi tree,” she offered. “You had one growing by your gate. A slight tree with white flowers in spring, and in autumn: red berries? We use the bark for healing?”

“I remember,” he said. But he did not want the pain of remembering the tree at his gate, and the ferry across the river, and the women who had been his friends, and who had walked with him into the New England village, sure of their welcome, with baskets of food and fish onstrings. “It’s a rowan tree,” he told her. “We can call you Rowan. And here…” He pushed the clothes towards her. “You’d better get out of those rags, they’re probably lousy. I’ll get the galley to boil them.”

“Can I wash?” she asked.

He hesitated, knowing that at every dawn, her people would wash and pray, facing the rising sun. They were the People of the Dawnlands, they were the people of the long dark coast that was the first to see the sun every day. Of all the unknown peoples in all the great forests that stretched to the west far away behind them, they were the first to see the first light.

“Not like you do at dawn,” he told her. “But I can get you a jug of water and some soap.” He put his hand on the latch of the door.

“Shouldn’t I get it?” she asked him. “As I am your slave? You’re not mine.”

She surprised him into a laugh. “Aye, I’m not. Come then, I’ll show you the way to the galley and the stores, and around the ship. You should really sleep in the hold, but you’ll be safer in my cabin. You can have the bunk, I’ll take the floor.”

“No! No!” she refused at once. “I sleep on the floor.” She looked up at him to see if he would smile again. “I am your slave. You’re not mine.”

“I’d never have a slave,” he told her. “All my life I have believed that men—even women—should be free. I’m going back to England now to help set my countrymen free.”

She nodded, following the rapid words and watching his lips, so she saw his smile when it came. “But you can sleep on the floor.”

“Because you have a niece?” she asked him with a gleam in her dark eyes.