Thieving Forest by Martha Conway

Author:Martha Conway
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780991618514
Publisher: Noontime Books
Published: 2014-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

The woods lead to a small dry clearing scattered with mounds that look almost like sand. After they set down the boat, Susanna bends down to touch one. It is sand.

How is this possible? She lets it run through her fingers.

Back before the mastodon left, Meera tells her, the Black Swamp was made up of six ancient lakes. So Nushemakw’s people say. They claim that one lake is still here, hidden and full of magic. “The person finding it will become great with power but also bewitched, unable to leave.”

The clearing, surrounded on all sides by woods, is bowl-shaped and smells like the wet trees. But there is no sign of a river. Susanna’s initial stab of disappointment turns to worry. Are they lost? Not yet but soon, if they keep going, they might be. She should turn back but she doesn’t want to go alone. She never wants to go alone, that is her problem.

“We’ve been going northwest, but now we must turn fully west,” Meera says firmly.

A blue haze seems to float in the air. Meera decides to climb a tree, hoping to catch a glimpse of Fish River. Meanwhile Susanna takes off her moccasins and scrunches her toes. They are still wet from wading through the shallow pond. She hears the faint trickle of water nearby and pulls her tin cup from her grain sack. She follows the sound to a stream almost hidden by a thick line of plants with brown fanning leaves. On the largest leaf a small frog hides quietly. Looking closer, she sees it is dead.

Meera comes up beside her. With one hand Susanna shades her eyes. “Did you see Fish River?”

“I saw to the west the red maple that grows along its banks. We are close.”

Susanna looks down at the dead frog. Nothing has changed. From here she can probably find her way back to Injured River. But when she takes a step she feels a sudden sharp pain on her ankle.

“Oh!” she cries out. Something golden rustles away in the grass.

“A snake,” she says. “It...I think it bit me!” She drops to the ground.

Meera turns quickly. “Where did it go?”

“I don’t know. Oh!” She can see fang marks above her anklebone and the skin around it is turning red. All in a moment every limb of her body seems to stiffen. “Oh! It hurts.” But Meera has run after the snake. A few moments later she returns, her face ashen. “A yellow shixikwe. It makes its way to water after attacking, else it dies.”

Susanna is still on the ground, cupping her ankle with both hands. “Is it bad?” she asks, rocking backward. It feels very bad.

Meera crouches down and gently takes Susanna’s hands away from her foot. She looks at the bite without touching the skin. “The poison is inside you,” she says. “Try not to move.”

She makes a travois with her blanket, maneuvers Susanna onto it, and pulls her toward a nearby stand of sycamores. The sky has become a curious shade of yellow-green, and a hazy rain begins, as soft as fog.

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