Vern, babes in tow, fell to the river. With a splash, they went under before bobbing again to the surface. All three coughed up ice water. Vern couldn’t see if the fiend was behind her, but she dove underneath and swam with the current, holding her breath for as long as she could and hoping her babes did the same.
Downstream, she broke the surface to gasp for air. The twins writhed in agony against her, alive. Seeing no evidence of the fiend, Vern swam to the bank on the opposite side of the river from where she’d started the day.
Howling and Feral, both their own shade of gray from the cold, coughed and sobbed. Vern smacked their backs hard until they spit up globs of water. Lost in wheezes, gurgles, and snorts, the babes refused to calm. No amount of rocking could convince them the danger was gone.
Vern staggered toward tree cover and collapsed into the undergrowth with a grunt. The impact disturbed the roost of a hidden woodcock, and it darted from its hiding spot in the thicket in a flustered tizzy.
Vern’s throat, bruised by river water, trembled painfully as she spoke. The rest of her body was similarly afflicted. Her nails hurt. Her eyeballs. The woods, like a father whose mood suddenly turned soft again after a rage, comforted her through her aching. Fallen oak leaves and pine needles enfolded her and her wailing children. She lay back against a rotting loblolly log, its surface pillowy soft with white apioperdon.
At least something good would come from this day. Fried mushrooms for supper.
Welts streaked her face where branches had hit. Howling and Feral had been similarly assailed, their faces notched with tiny wounds. Vern’s breath more even now, she held them both to her breasts. They quieted instantly, and while she thanked the God of Cain that the twins were alive, she thanked him more that they had finally stopped crying.
“That was something, wasn’t it?” she said to the children, astonished by her tree-jumping. Had someone asked her when she woke up this morning if she could’ve done anything so daring and athletic, she would’ve said no. Her escape from the fiend had hardly been graceful, but that she’d done it at all was a feat that defied the bounds of her previously demonstrated capabilities.
Howling cooed at Vern, while Feral fed furiously. The air was rich with the sweet tang of persimmons, and when Vern tilted her head upward, she found herself beneath a canopy of the bright fruit. Overripe, one fell from its branch and half burst onto Vern’s belly. She sat herself up. All around her, fallen persimmons lay squashed and busted on the forest floor.
This good fortune had all the trappings of a fairy-tale deceit, but she’d not eaten well in days, and besides, maybe she wanted to be fattened up by a hag. It’d be a relief to be eaten up, to never more have to run for her life.
She’d bite right into the frost-coated orange fruit and pay whatever price it asked of her.
3
SPRING CAME IN THE END, though the season did not carry with it hope for new life. April announced itself with a body. Howling, already crawling at five months, stumbled upon the fiend’s handiwork during one of his morning wanders: a dead baby deer with a pacifier in its mouth. Vern had to stop Howling from plopping the binky out the corpse and between his own lips.
At least summer brought an end to the dreary dead fawn show, and Vern was able to get some work done. She tied one babe to her hip and the other to her back in a way that made it possible to walk ten or even fifteen miles to forage without tiring.
Blackberry season stretched long this year, sweetening the air like wine all through a dusty hot August. Her hands and wrists bled from the constant prick of thorns.
She carried pounds and pounds of wild berries in a square of cloth, four corners tied together into a satchel. Her treks lasted miles, and she was greedy with her takings. She gorged herself till it felt her belly might split, then put what remained in the sun to dry as stock for winter. Some she mashed into a gritty paste and cooked into leather over embers in the August noon sun, others she left whole.
She followed suit with wild grapes, red plums, and prickly pears. For savory fare, there were bearded tooth mushrooms, wild onions, and amaranth.
Vern always had a way of getting what she needed from the earth. Her eyesight made reading difficult, so back at Cainland she preferred classes that emphasized practical work. She’d gotten special permission from Reverend Sherman and the deacon board to spend half of each school day outside, better learning the land. She was killing rabbits with air rifles by age six, launching bullets into the fleeting blurs of their light brown bodies. She had to get closer than most in order to see them, but she was a patient hunter and a decent shot. Aiming was about the body. Not the eyes. She rarely used the magnifying scope Reverend Sherman had bought her.