Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [18]
Lionel fell asleep dreaming that he stood on the edge of the plains, a great woods at his back. The prairie now churned in a sea of swirling grass before him. He looked from the woods to a small raft as it crested a distant wave out on the rolling hills. Corn Poe, Beatrice, and his grandfather were on the raft, drifting farther and farther away from Lionel; drifting and soon disappearing to somewhere on the far side of the horizon.
Chapter Ten
EARLY MORNING • BEATRICE’S FEATHER • SUPPLIES • CORN POE’S DEPARTURE • LISTEN
LIONEL WOKE to the sound of Corn Poe’s voice. “Hell, I may have to grow my hair out,” Corn Poe said. “Then you could wrap mine just like that.”
Lionel lifted the heavy buffalo robe and sat up. His body was stiff, but he felt rested and somehow, once again hungry. He turned to see Beatrice sitting on the corner of the fireplace and Grandpa still in his rocker by her side.
Beatrice looked different. She looked more like Grandpa than she had when Lionel had fallen asleep. Strips of red and blue flannel were woven into her long, thick braids, and one of their grandfather’s hunting knives hung from a beaded belt that was cinched at her waist. Lionel wondered if perhaps his dream were true and that Beatrice had changed on the far side of the horizon, and then returned.
“I’ll lend you this until you and young Lionel there find your own way,” Grandpa was saying as he tied a long feather from a red-tailed hawk’s wing into Beatrice’s braid.
Beatrice smiled, and Lionel thought that it was the first time he had seen her smile since before they had left the boarding school. Lionel ran his hand across his closely cropped hair.
“Don’t you worry. You’re next. It just might take a while before we can get to it, eh, boy?” Grandpa stood to stoke the coals from the previous night. “I think we best get moving.”
Lionel saw through the cabin’s small frosted windows that it was still dark. He slipped back into his clothes and crossed to the door.
“Get some water on your way back,” Grandpa called after Lionel. “It’s good to see you up on your feet. I was beginning to wonder if you would ever wake.”
Lionel smiled, opened the cabin’s door, and stepped out onto the fresh-fallen snow. He stood for a moment looking up at the faded stars and full moon that still hung in the far corners of the clear, early-morning sky. The air was cold and dry, and Lionel could feel it filling his lungs as he walked past the small stable to the outhouse.
Ulysses stood in a stall next to Grandpa’s mule. He snorted to the air as Lionel passed.
“I’ll get to you, don’t worry about that,” Lionel said, his voice cracking with his first words of the day.
Lionel continued to the outhouse, looking to the river, confused by what his grandfather had told him about Napi the old Man creating the land. The Brothers and priest at the school had told Lionel that the world, the entire world, was created by someone else, not Napi the old Man, and that it had taken six days. He wondered how two different people could create the same world on which they walked and rode across every day. He still wondered what had happened to the Frozen Man.
When Lionel retuned to the warmth of the cabin, he heard the snap, popping sound of bacon. Corn Poe sat by the fire with a long fork in his hand.
“Hey, there. That’s for all of us,” Grandpa shouted across the room as Corn Poe tried to blow on a piece of sizzling bacon that was already in his mouth.
Grandpa stood over a wooden table with Beatrice at his side, looking at a large map. “The river will lead you up into the Mountain, but remember there are many twists and turns. once you get to the base of the Mountain, a stream will join the river. You must follow this stream north. The stream will take you to the valley and then the meadow.”
Lionel glanced around the room. Small bundles made of heavy canvas lay about in preparation for travel. There was grain for Ulysses, a collection of small pots and pans, preserved vegetables in