Page 32 of Mountain Captive

“I still believe that. But not if it means giving him my daughter. I’ll talk to him. I’m sure I can make him understand.”

“What if he won’t listen to you?” her mother asked.

“He will. He has to.”

More conversation, but too soft for Chris to hear. A few moments later, the door to the trailer opened and closed. Chris waited but heard nothing more. Finally, she slipped out of bed and padded on bare feet to the front of the trailer. Her mother sat on the edge of the sofa, head in her hands. Was she crying?

Chris hurried to her. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Where is Daddy?” She didn’t call himDaddymuch anymore. It sounded too babyish. But she was too scared to worry about that now.

Her mother pulled her close, arms squeezing her tight. “It’s okay,” she said, and wiped her eyes with her fingers.

“Where did Daddy go?” Chris asked.

Her mother sniffed. “He went to talk to the Exalted.”

“About me?”

Her mother hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.” She pulled Chris into her lap even though Chris was too big for that; her feet almost touched the floor when she sat on her mother’s lap.

“Helen says there’s going to be a wedding soon,” Chris said. “That I’ll be a bride and wear a white dress and have a big party just for me.”

Her mother studied her, deep lines across her forehead. “Do you know what it means to be a bride?” she asked.

Chris thought for a moment. “Helen says I have to live with the Exalted and do what he tells me.” Then she said something she had never dared say before: “I don’t want to live with him.”

Her mother hugged her tightly again. “Maybe your father can talk him into waiting until you’re a little older,” she said.

Chris didn’t think that when she was older she would want to marry the Exalted, either, but she didn’t say anything. “You should go back to bed,” her mother said. “It’s not even six o’clock yet.”

“I’m awake,” Chris said. “And hungry. Can I have breakfast?”

Her mother made breakfast; then they both dressed and Chris helped her mother clean house, which didn’t take long because the trailer was small and they didn’t have much stuff. Mom tried to be extra cheerful, but she kept glancing out the window. “Shouldn’t Dad be back by now?” Chris asked after a couple of hours.

“The Exalted probably sent him to do some work,” Mom said. Everyone in the Vine was expected to pitch in. For the men, that often meant building things, cutting trees, or digging ditches, latrines or garden beds.

Chris did her lessons. Children in the Vine didn’t go to school. Instead, the parents taught them. Some children didn’t have to learn anything at all, but Chris’s parents made her read and study math, reading, geography, history and science every day. She didn’t mind so much. Most of the time the lessons were interesting, and she usually found them easy.

Her mother got out a quilt she was working on, but often, when Chris looked up from her schoolwork, she found her mother staring out the front window, her hands idle.

They ate lunch without Dad. By three o’clock, her mother could hardly sit still. She put away her quilting. “I’m going to look for your father,” she said. “Lock the door behind me, and don’t let anyone in unless it’s me or your dad. Do you understand?”

Chris nodded. “What am I supposed to tell anyone who comes by?”

“Don’t tell them anything,” Mom said. “Stay quiet and let them think no one is home.”

Chris wanted to ask what her mother was afraid of, but she didn’t. Instead, she turned the lock after her mother was gone and sat on the sofa to wait.

She was back in half an hour. “Jedediah told me your father left the Exalted’s home this morning with some other men. They went into the woods to pick mushrooms.”

“Isn’t it the wrong time of year for mushrooms?” Chris asked. Always before, they had looked for mushrooms in the spring and fall, when they would pop up after wet weather. Now it was midsummer, warm and dry.

“Maybe this was a different kind of mushroom,” her mother said. “Or someone found some by a spring or something. Come, help me peel potatoes. We’ll make a special dinner. Maybe we’ll even make a cake.”

Making the cake, and the potatoes and vegetables and meat loaf, took a while, but six o’clock—the hour they usually ate supper—passed with no sign of her father. Her mother filled a plate and told Chris to sit down at the table and eat it, but Chris only stared at the food, her stomach too queasy for her to even think of putting anything into her mouth.

A little before nine o’clock, they heard voices outside. Mom rushed to the door, then, with a cry, opened it to admit Jedediah and a man Chris didn’t know. Between them, they carried her father, his face gray, his hair and clothes wet. “He ate some of the mushrooms he found,” Jedediah said. “I think they must have been poisonous.”

They carried her father past Chris to her parents’ bed at the back of the trailer. Mom hurried after them. Chris tried to follow, but Jedediah shut the door in her face.

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