Stony River (21 page)

All this information was fascinating to Sevana, but none so much as the speaker himself. He took such an interest in the things around him: nothing escaped his alert eye or failed to inspire his appreciation. He was so at home in the woods, she thought he would do just as well without a house. She couldn’t imagine who he would be, if he wasn’t of that land.

After the night’s botany lesson, Joel produced his fiddle. “The evening wants a little music, do you agree?”

“Oh, yes!” And she settled happily against the slope to listen.

He tried a few notes, then broke into a spirited tune that rollicked in the open air and made the sleepy evening come alive. Even the sheep took notice, for they pricked up their ears, and the lambs began frolicking again. When that song was over he went straight into another, his nimble fingers dancing on the strings and the quick bow flying back and forth.

All at once the mood of the violin changed, as he began a minor melody that climbed to great heights and plummeted dizzily down—a hauntingly savage, unfettered tune like the mountains themselves. And like the mountains, it stirred Sevana’s heart and filled her with longing. “That was a beautiful song,” she said at its end. “What was it called?”

“It doesn’t have a name, but I wrote it of the mountains.”

“You wrote it?”

“Over many wilderness campfires.”

“I knew it was of the mountains!” she exclaimed. “That was all I could think of while you were playing it.”

“That would surprise me, if I didn’t know your love for them,” he said, with a smile for her.

The song was still playing in her mind. “Please, Joel,” she begged, “would you play your mountain song again?”

In answer he drew up the bow, and once more began the melody of soaring pinnacles and somber depths. He was playing to the mountains, and his song was a part of the scene to which he played, and a part of the night. Sevana couldn’t look away from his eyes. They were so dark—as dark as the pools in Avalanche Creek that lay in the shadow of the cedars—and yet they always shone with some inward illumination, even when he wasn’t smiling.

With the last stroke of the bow, the quiet of the evening returned— seeming hushed, as if everything was still listening. “Do you play, Sevana?” Joel asked.

“No.” She had to stir herself from her dreamy mood to answer. “Not enough to say so. In music class we were taught to play almost every instrument, and none of them well.” But she took the violin he offered, and after a few false starts haltingly found her way up an octave and down again. “That’s all I can remember,” she said without pretense, handing it back.

“All your notes were true. Perhaps I could teach you a song or two in the time we have, before I leave for the wilderness.”

“I’d like that.” But her spirits fell at the mention of his going. There were mysteries in him she saw and wished to learn, but it seemed time would be snatched away before she could.

The sun on the mountains was changing, a softer light making deep the etched surfaces of rock and snow. The three peaks loomed solemn, enigmatic—captivating. Blazingstar skittered up to Joel and he tousled his soft wool, but he was not looking at the lamb but across to the mountains with a distant expression. A low wind sang, a creek tumbled somewhere far away, and all else was silent.

“Oh, the mountains!” Sevana spoke impulsively out of her thoughts. “Just to see them fills me with a restlessness, as if I hear in them a strange, faraway call.”

His eyes rested on hers. “I know that call,” he said.

“Do you?” She was excited that he could understand. “Oh, Joel, if only we could go far into that country, until we found what was calling to us!”

He smiled slightly. “Do you think we would find it there?”

“Why, yes!” she declared, as if there could be no doubt. “I know we would, for it is the mountains that are calling.”

“Calling, yes—but Sevana, we could go into the very heart of those mountains and still not find it, for they call us to things that can’t be captured or held in the hand.”

Sevana didn’t understand that statement, but at that moment the rocks began to glow like hot coals, as if an unfelt wind had fanned them into luminous heat. The patches of snow shone brilliant as flame against the slate-blue sky. “Oh!” she breathed. “Do the mountains burn like that every night?”

“Every night the sky is clear,” he answered. “And it varies each time, so you can never take it for granted or get tired of its sameness.”

“I want to paint it,” she lamented, unable to take her eyes from the massive granite planes stained garnet red by the sun’s fiery leave-taking.

“Remember it, so you can,” he admonished her.

The rockfire was growing deeper, casting its purple-red hue over the watchers in the meadow as they sat spellbound in the unearthly light. Finally Joel roused himself like a slumberer shaking off sleep and stood to muster the sheep, calling out their names in a lyrical, singsong shout.

But Sevana was too transfixed to move from her hollow in the grass. The place seemed timeless. She marveled at the pinnacles towering so close, and a wonder of Joel ran through her as he stood waiting for the flock with a far look burning in his eye—a dark fire kindled by the alpenglow.

When only dying embers lay on the smoldering mountains, ashes left of the glowing coals, the flock had gathered and Joel was ready to go. He turned to see if Sevana was coming—and found her curled up on the hillside, fast asleep.

CHAPTER 14

Sevana woke up in a bed in the night—Joel’s bed, she knew with instant, inexplicable clarity. She was lying on top of the blanket in her hiking boots and borrowed hunting shirt. She got out of bed and pushed open the door.

Joel was at his desk, bent over something he was writing. The draft from the door she’d opened made the lantern above him flicker. He turned his head. And even before she met his eyes and saw their depth of feeling, there was a tension about him, or in the room, that told her whatever he was concentrating on was no ordinary correspondence.

“How did I get in your bed?” she asked, walking into the room.

He laid down his pen. “I put you there. You fell asleep in the meadow. I didn’t see any sense in making you walk down the trail when you were so tired—so I carried you.”

“All the way…and I didn’t wake up?”

He smiled his slow, easy smile. “A hike like the one you took can really knock the wind out of your sails if you’re not used to it.”

The talk was beside the point, considering she was in his cabin in the middle of the night. “Joel, I feel so foolish,” she groaned. “And I don’t want to take your bed.”

She sat on the bench with her back against the table edge. He had been writing what appeared to be a long dissertation, the pages scattered, his eyes shadowed by weariness and glinting with a suspicious moisture. “What time is it?” she asked, shaking her hair free since it was falling down anyway.

“One o’clock.”

“Do you always stay up so late? Or just when you lose your bed?”

“Don’t worry about it. I can put something down on the floor when I want to sleep.”

She buttoned the overshirt against the chill in the room. “What are you working on?”

“A letter. You’re cold, aren’t you? Let me start a fire.” He got up at once.

She glanced at the closely written, heaped-up volumes on the desktop. “Do you have a soulmate or something like that, who you tell all your thoughts to?”

“Yes, something like that,” he agreed, filling the firebox with cedar kindling and sprucewood shavings from the pail.

She sighed, her hands clasped under the too-long sleeves and the toes of her boots pointed neatly in front of her. “I’ve never had anyone like that. I always thought it would be wonderful—” showing she had not been without her fantasies growing up in her lonely environment.

He tossed in a match. “It could be. Under the right circumstances.”

“Yes,” she said, still wistful. “I’ve always dreamed of it.”

“I think most people do. But I don’t think it happens very often.”

“Then you’re very fortunate.”

“No, Sevana. I said the right circumstances.” He closed the door on the sparking wood and went back to his chair. “I don’t know anything about that.”

She looked at the man who was so much older than her, almost a whole decade. “What do you mean?”

He shook his head with a peculiar look. “If I tell you, I’ll become the fool in your eyes that I am in mine.”

“No, I promise you won’t.”

Her simple, artless response made him smile. “All right, I’ll test you on that. You’re the first person I’ve ever told.”

She felt a thrill that he would consider her worthy of such a confidence, after all the days in the meadow when he had not betrayed himself to her. “What’s her name?”

“Chantal.” There was a pause, as if he wasn’t sure he could discuss it. “Would you like some tea?”

“It sounds good,” she said, mostly because she felt he wanted her to.

He hunted up cups and ingredients while the water heated—glancing over to his guest in apology for taking so long. He noticed how her face contrasted with the dark logs behind her, as milky as the wakerobin that bloomed in the shaded thickets behind his cabin in early spring; and he was perceptive enough to recognize the prettiness of the girl who sat under his lantern, wearing a flannel overshirt that despite its size looked better on her than it ever had on him.

When both had their hot drink in hand he began his tale, finding it none easier for the delay. “Five years ago, I met Chantal when she was out here for a summer job,” he started out, with the hesitancy of a stream-crosser finally committing to a slippery log. “She was on a fire lookout at Landmark Peak.”

Sevana remembered the beautiful girl he had mentioned once before. “She was a city girl, too—” he flashed her the ghost of a grin, “from Vancouver. But she wanted to be an outdoor photographer, and had gotten the idea that if she lived on a lookout she would be right there in place, ready to snap any sunsets or storms or wildlife that came along. She was nineteen, didn’t have much money to travel, and figured it was the only way she could get the shots she needed. It was a good plan in that respect. Her portfolio from the summer earned her a job with the biggest outdoor magazine in B.C.

“The day I met her, I had driven up to Landmark Peak to see if I could tell how much snow was left on Stormy Pass. And there she was, sitting on the steps of the tower crying her eyes out.”

“What was wrong?” Sevana found she didn’t have much sympathy for this unknown girl, who she was now certain had caused Joel some kind of heartache.

“She was out of propane. She was supposed to hook up the new tank when the old one ran low, but the bottle ran out before she realized it. She didn’t have a clue how to hook up the new bottle, or relight the pilot lights in the stove and refrigerator and heater, and she was afraid she would get in trouble if her boss found out how helpless she was. So instead of radioing for assistance she was planning to tough out the rest of the summer without any cooking or refrigeration or heat.”

Though she didn’t want to, Sevana felt an instant bit of connection with another human being tenuously navigating the world with the same handicap as she. “Did you help her out?”

“Yes, I got everything working again before her food spoiled. And she was so grateful, she cooked dinner for me. I stayed for sunset, too, out on the catwalk.”

Sevana saw his jaw grow tight as he fell silent. In the lanternglow his face was contrasted by highlight and shadow—like a portrait in charcoal. No city boy, he, she thought. With his lean-angled features as decisively cut as the cliffs of chiseled rock, his hair tousled by the free-chasing winds, and his rugged, self-reliant character, he seemed as untamed as the wild mountain he lived upon. Finally, he went on.

“It was instant, the attraction I felt for her. It fascinated me the way we could talk about anything, the way I saw my feelings mirrored in her eyes. I made up an excuse to see her again—said I’d bring her a larger wrench to make changing the propane easier next time. But after that, I came up often enough she never had to worry about the propane again.

“I thought she felt as I did. She was always glad to see me, never wanted me to go. Out on the catwalk one night pointing out the North Star, I took her in my arms and kissed her. From that moment on, I was lost. I lived for the times I was with her. The days were running out before I was to leave for summer pasture with my new flock. I was so sure of her feelings I sold a violin and bought an engagement ring, and the night before I left for the wilderness, I asked her to marry me.

“There was only one minor complication. She was engaged to a Mountie in Vancouver. She hadn’t told me because she wanted to keep seeing me, and was afraid I would stop coming if I learned she was spoken for. To be fair, I guess she had made up her mind to tell me several times, but hadn’t found a way to bring it up—was still looking for the best way to tell me. But when I proposed, the truth came out more abruptly than she’d intended it.

“I guess I wasn’t quite myself. I’d been knocked off-balance by her all the way around. When I heard she was supposed to be married that September, I didn’t even listen to her say she could call it off. All I could think was how she had deceived me the whole time—led me on—kissed me like I was the only one she’d ever loved. I didn’t see how I could ever believe her again. I told her I wasn’t about to turn some decent, unsuspecting man’s life upside down by stealing his fiancée, and walked out on her.”