Under the Same Sky Read online

  He paid no attention to me. From ten feet away I could see Ruth’s body shake. Her eyes were focused on our mother, lying still in the doorway. Ruth’s tiny doll was tucked into her apron, and it moved with her, quivering like a hummingbird’s wings. Blue Shirt yanked it free, walked to his horse, and shoved the three items into his saddlebag. His horse took a half step forward as he swung onto the saddle, then Blue Shirt turned to the men.

  “I’ll head in to make the ’rrangements with the cap’n,” he said. “I’ll join y’all at the meetin’ spot.”

  The men nodded and Blue Shirt’s gaze focused on each of the remaining riders. There were twelve of them in all, most about the same age as their leader, but a couple were younger, their long, tangled hair untouched by gray. Words of warning rumbled through Blue Shirt’s tight lips, and I saw how they all listened with wary respect. Like a pack of dogs.

  “Y’all need to remember the profit we stand to gain on these three. We already lost the mother. Mind there’s no marks on the rest of the merchandise, fellas.”

  He adjusted his hat and, signaling with his chin for one of the men to follow him, rode off toward the east, away from the sun.

  The rest of the men whooped and kicked their horses into a gallop. They ran across the dry brown land, the three of us helpless on the saddles. The wind obliterated the sound of our weeping and smeared our tears back into our hair. We raced through clouds of dust and headed toward the shadowed forest, where the world offered a hint of cool green. The horses thundered over a grassy knoll, travelling farther than my sisters and I had ever gone, their hooves pounding like thunder.

  As we entered the closely knit trees of the forest, the animals were forced to slow and bunch together. The man who shared my saddle shoved aside branches that stung my skin. There were four horses ahead of me, and I could hear the others behind me, but I didn’t turn to look. I didn’t want to see the face of the man whose thighs pressed firmly against my skirt. Remnants of sunshine dappled the men’s hats in front of me, then vanished as they disappeared into the shadows. The air cooled under the trees, but not enough to dry the sweat that rolled over my face and down my neck.

  We rode for about an hour before the men stopped the horses in a small clearing. Spruce and ash trees had blocked the sunlight with their massive limbs, and the resultant bald ground beneath was black and hard, flecked with gray by the occasional rock and fallen twig. The man behind me swung off our horse and reached up to pull me down. My legs wobbled when my feet hit the dirt, and I grabbed the saddle to still the ground beneath me. He tugged me to the base of a balsam and forced me to sit. The tree’s sap caught and smeared the back of my dress. It tugged at my hair. The man tossed a coil of rope upward until it looped over a branch. He pulled it until my bound wrists were suspended over my head.

  “No, please,” I begged through the gag, shaking my head wildly. “I won’t run. I promise. Please, please—”

  He said nothing, only checked to ensure the knot was tight. Then he turned and walked toward the other men.

  Adelaide stood nearby, tied to a horse. Her eyes flickered around the clearing as if seeking a friendly face, but she didn’t see me. A man came from behind and grabbed her by her arms, leading her to the opposite edge of the clearing. I could barely see her from where I sat.

  Little Ruth sat alone on a horse. She sobbed and pulled against her restrained hands in disbelief, looking so much younger than her ten years. The man who now seemed to be in charge hoisted her over his shoulder and carried her into the trees, away from the clearing, far away from me. I heard her whimper, and a while later I heard a muffled scream, then I heard nothing more.

  I slumped against the tree and hung my head, but the rope tightened around my wrists, yanking my arms straighter over my head. My fingers felt cold. My arms were so heavy I thought they might tear off at the wrists. I tried to twist my hands, to loosen the knot, but nothing moved. I stared at a tree across from me, trying to distract myself. Tears poured silently down my cheeks, blurring the lines of the forest.

  The world is rich with scents and smells: the promise of supper, the sweet, musky smell of animals in a barn, the heady aroma of daisies blanketing a summer field. Around me the pines emitted a fresh tang, faintly reminiscent of our hearth fire. The pungent balsam at my back seemed strong enough to choke out any other smells. The ground where I sat had its own perfume: earthy, musty, solid as a grave. That smell will stay with me for the rest of my life.

  I recognised another stink. My father had breathed the same fumes after each trip into town, brought them into our room on those nights he beat us without warning. Whisky. Amber liquid that burns men’s throats and sets them free to follow their darkest natures. Whisky mixed with the sweat running down our captors’ skin and mingled with each man’s sour musk.

  The men paced the clearing, then split into three groups. Three men walked toward me, chuckling amongst themselves, rubbing their hands together as if they were preparing to feast on a magnificent meal. In the end, the largest of the three stood before me: a bearded, middle-aged man, fumbling with his belt. His nostrils flared briefly as he straddled my skirt. I saw the hunger in his eyes, the lust moistening his lips. I could practically feel the tension in his fingers as he opened and closed his big fists in anticipation.

  I shook my head, whimpering, trying so hard to convince him he was wrong without ever saying a word. No, no, no, I screamed silently. My arms burned, my wrists were rubbed so raw I thought the bone must be showing through. I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. Beneath my burning eyes, my nose throbbed, swollen and blocking my breathing. But all that pain paled against what I knew was coming.

  I told myself it would be over soon.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Over the span of a few unthinkable hours, those men changed everything. They climbed onto me, one after another, dulling my pain and revulsion until I no longer registered anything. A piece of me died on that hard ground beneath the sun-peppered trees, and I wished the rest of me would go as well. I stopped crying, stopped fighting, tried to stop breathing.

  At one point during the day I noticed one young man with dirty blond hair, shifting from one foot to the other, standing slightly apart from the others. He seemed unsure of how he fit in, as if he watched the depraved group from somewhere inside himself. I wanted to cry out to him, but the gag had stolen my voice. I pleaded silently when he came to me, begged for pity, but my thoughts fell solidly, uselessly onto the ground between us. When he knelt on the dirt and entered my body, I looked up at him with a cold penetration of my own. Moisture glistened in the corners of his eyes for an instant, and then he closed them.

  Someone had lit a fire, a pale orange flicker in the shifting sunshine. Its smoke curled and crept toward me like a curtain. I could neither see nor hear anything from my sisters. The silence terrified me most of all.

  The smell of seared meat wove into the smoke, and my mouth automatically filled with saliva. Would they think to feed us? Would we ever eat again?

  My wrists were still tied and suspended over my head. I no longer felt them. My nose had stopped bleeding sometime during the day, and the blood had hardened into a tight crust over my cheeks and lips. My tongue was dry and tasted like copper.

  Nothing before that day had given me any reason to feel hatred. Now it pulsed through me, blackening my blood. I would remember these men. Their faces and features were burned into my brain. They would die and I would watch. I made it a promise to my mother, my sisters, and myself.

  The peaks of evergreens loomed over me, their tips swaying with the breeze, bending toward and away from each other as if they were talking, whisky on their breath. Sleep came and went, ragged snatches of escape that blurred the line between reality and dreams. Fear melted to apathy, pain dulled to hopelessness, escape became an illusion.

  The sun finally set and the men’s voices rolled into snores around the dying campfire. Exhaustion consumed me and I slid into the relati
ve safety of my mind—not asleep, but trying to find that place between sleeping and waking. I needed peace. Without peace I had no hope of dreaming. Without dreams I had no hope.

  I lay on the hard ground, shivering and blinking at the stars. The shiny black eyes of a raven peered down at me from a branch overhead. Ravens. I have always seen ravens. In both my dreams and my waking hours they have been nearby, watching, voicing opinions in rolling squawks. This one perched silently above me, strangely awake in the night hour. It studied me closely, angling its head.

  “Take me with you,” I begged silently, then brought Wolf’s face to my thoughts. “Please, please find him. Find the wolf who is a man.”

  The raven turned his glossy profile and seemed to consider the firelit faces of the sleeping men. After a final glance, the bird spread its wings and disappeared into the darkness.

  I felt more alone in that moment than ever before in my life.

  Gradually, I began to feel a warm pressure building in my chest, completely different from the ugly weight of being crushed beneath a man’s body. And I knew Wolf had come, his gentle brown eyes bottomless with sorrow, nostrils flared, lips pursed tight. Without dreams, I had been unable to call to him. Now he saw my bruised, ragged body. His expression spoke of helpless fury.

  “Help me,” I whispered.

  For a moment his eyes lost their focus, as if he heard something, as if he sensed the air around us both. Then something moved behind his eyes, and I felt the warmth of his fingertips brush my cheek.

  “At the river,” he murmured. That was the first time I had ever heard his voice. The words curled off his tongue, soothing as a touch. “I will be at the river for ye.”

  I turned my head, distracted by the sound of one of the men relieving himself in the woods near me. When I looked again, I lay alone, in my mind and on the ground. But now I could sleep. And I did. Without dreams.

  Chapter 4

  Damaged Goods

  The morning brought no sunshine, only the ominous pressure of another sweltering day. Cicadas screeched from the trees. My cheeks were sticky with sweat before my eyes had opened.

  Thirst was the first thing I felt. Thirst that felt like sand in my throat. Thirst that blocked the air when I tried to swallow. I struggled to sit, using my heels to push back against the tree. The skin of my face felt tight; sweat and filth pasted hair to my forehead and cheeks. My bloodied wrists hung lower, the rope having been tugged on repeatedly the day before. I was too weak to move them. At least the gag was gone.

  They had moved Adelaide to a closer tree, so now I could see her. Her face was bruised almost beyond recognition, and smeared with dried blood. One of her eyes had been bashed into an ugly purple bruise. Like mine, her gag had been loosened during the night and hung like a thick necklace around her neck. Her hands were unbound and lay motionless at her sides. Her braids hung in tangles, matted with leaves and mud. In my memory I saw us as we had been the morning before, alone in our room while I wove those braids for her. They had been like cords of gold.

  Of Ruth I saw no sign.

  “Addy?” I called, but my voice was hoarse and too soft for her to hear. She made no sign that she heard anything.

  Across the clearing the men were moving around, and I smelled the hint of coffee in their tin cups. My mouth flooded at the sweet smell of meat frying over the fire, temporarily easing my burning thirst. One of the men walked across the clearing near me, then bent to pluck something from the ground. My body began to shake. Seeing the men, smelling them, hearing their noises made my heart race. Would it start again once they’d finished their meals?

  The sounds of hooves made everyone turn. A dark horse pushed through the leaves on the edge of the clearing, carrying the man in the blue shirt. The man’s young cohort rode in behind him, astride a lighter-coloured horse. Blue Shirt swung off his saddle before his horse had completely stopped. He removed his hat and scratched his head, then jammed it back on and strode purposefully toward where I lay.

  Not again, I thought, feeling tears sting my eyes. My body shook so violently I yanked involuntarily on my wrists. Please, not again.

  I dragged myself as far away from him as I could, mewing, “No, no, no, no, no,” but he grabbed my chin and lifted it, peering into my face. Without a word, he dropped it and headed toward Adelaide.

  Adelaide whimpered when he did the same to her, raising her bruised face to his. Releasing her chin, he spun toward the men and growled like a dog, lips pulled back from his teeth. The men avoided his glare, but Blue Shirt’s eyes found their mark. The short man to whom he had given instructions the day before shifted from foot to foot, staring at the ground. Blue Shirt glared down his nose at the shorter man.

  “I said no marks, Leonard,” Blue Shirt said through clenched teeth. Leonard’s chin hung on his chest as if he were a small boy being disciplined. “I see marks, Leonard. I see big fuckin’ bruises, Leonard. Those are marks folks don’t wanna pay for. Tell me, Leonard, did I say to make marks? No, I’m pretty fuckin’ sure I said no marks. Jimmah?” He turned to the man he had ridden in with and lifted his eyebrows. “What did I say about leavin’ marks?”

  “You said no marks, sir,” the younger man assured him.

  Blue Shirt made a sound of disgust in his throat, then paced between the other members of the gang, railing at them, shoving them out of his way.

  “Where’s the li’l ’un?” he demanded, and I stopped breathing, needing to hear.

  Leonard lifted his chin and looked around, his eyes darting toward the wood. Blue Shirt strode back and grabbed Leonard’s shirt front.

  “The li’l ’un?” he growled, nose to nose with Leonard.

  Leonard’s eyes were wide, unblinking in the face of Blue Shirt’s fury. He made a short grunting sound, then swallowed hard. His eyes flicked to the side, away from the men.

  “Over there,” he muttered.

  Blue Shirt disappeared into the woods in search of Ruth. He didn’t come back for what seemed to me a very long time. When he returned to the fire, his face pulsed a violent shade of purple. What had he seen? Where was Ruth? Panic bubbled up and stuck in my throat. Blue Shirt walked to Leonard, whose chin still drooped and, without hesitation, punched the side of Leonard’s jaw. Leonard staggered sideways with the blow, then recovered his balance and spat to the side without looking up. He returned his chin to its earlier position. Blue Shirt spun the other way, throwing his arms in the air, kicking the dirt, swearing and yelling at each man in turn. I listened hard, but I couldn’t make out any of his ranting.

  Blue Shirt’s eyes returned to my face, and he started walking toward me. I was pressed so tightly against the tree, there was nowhere for me to go. I sat, shaking, waiting. His eyes raked over me, taking in my bloodied dress, the finger-shaped bruises that coloured my arms and partially covered breasts, and finally my face. I blinked up at him, too tired, too resigned to bother looking away. He took off his hat again, scratched his head, and put it back on as he turned toward the other men.

  “This one’ll do,” he said, then jerked a thumb toward Adelaide. “An’ maybe the other one if you clean her good. But goddammit, boys!”

  He spat on the ground by my feet then walked toward his horse, shaking his head. He threw himself into the saddle and turned the horse toward the path.

  “Hurry up and git this all together. And Leonard,” he growled, “take ’em to the river. I want ’em clean and ready. You got me?”

  Before Leonard could respond, Blue Shirt gave his horse a hard heel. The animal reared back in surprise, then bolted into the woods. The younger man followed without a word.

  Low-keyed grumbling and nervous laughter rippled through the group. A man with a jagged pink scar on his neck came toward me, and I squeezed my eyes shut. He grabbed my wrists and I cried out when he tugged me to my feet. He fumbled with my hands and I stared at him, dazed, not sure what he was doing. I felt the rope release and my hands fell to my sides. The blood that had been dammed by the rop
es roared back into my limbs, ripping the vessels wide open, stabbing like thousands of needles. It burned and throbbed and from far away I heard myself sob. My knees wobbled and I leaned against the man’s arm for support. He waited for me to regain my balance, then pushed me ahead of him, toward the tethered horses. I was tossed onto the saddle, and I gasped at the impact on my bruised and torn body.

  “Drink,” he grumbled, passing me a tin cup. The water smelled of sap, but I gulped it down.

  “More?” I asked. He squinted at me, then stomped off toward the fire. He was back in a few minutes, cup in one hand, a chunk of charred meat in the other.

  “Can’t promise any more than this today,” he said. “Enjoy it while you can.” He thrust the food and cup toward me, then turned and walked back to the fire.

  Camp was being packed up, the fire sizzling and smoking as the men extinguished it with their dregs of coffee. Adelaide was thrown onto another horse, where she sat as still as her deadened eyes. I slumped over the saddle, feeling nauseous, like something was churning in my gut. But the man had probably told the truth. I might not eat again all day. I watched the men work while I chewed on the tough piece of meat he’d given me.

  The pink-scarred man swung his bulk onto the saddle behind me and clicked his tongue at the horse. We started moving slowly through the trees and my nausea got worse with every step, until I bent over and rested my forehead on the pommel.

  Something was missing. Gone. One of the horses whinnied, restless. Its voice was high, like a child’s. It made me think of Ruth, shrieking when we played tag, running wild through the goldenrod—

  Ruth. My stomach dropped, my nausea frozen into a solid block of ice.

  “My sister—” My voice strained through a throat torn by screams.

  He grunted. I couldn’t see his face, but one of his thumbs jerked toward Adelaide.

  “No,” I whispered, “my other sister.”

  “Oh,” he drawled, “the li’l ’un.”