Thank goodness for the mare. Thank goodness Franklin hadn’t butchered her, back at the fishermen’s cabins. She knew the way across the lake. She could feel the tug of water to her left, where it was pulled toward the drop of the cascades, and she simply kept the tug on that side, so that inevitably, if there was any pattern to the universe, she was bound to find the other bank. Again there was a mass of mud and reeds to conquer, but they pushed through fearlessly. The water drained out of the panniers. The worst was at their backs.
Oddly, they felt colder once they came out of the water than they’d felt when they were immersed in it up to their throats. Their clothes weighed heavier than wood. And they all, including the mare, were shivering uncontrollably. They needed to get down to shelter and to fire, or they would catch a fever. Jackie’s skin was blue. Her lips were purple. They lifted her out of her pannier and cuddled her, though neither Margaret nor Franklin yet had much warmth to offer. The horse shook herself, sending great loops of water out of the panniers and the sodden net bag on her back.
Once they’d found a way around the lake and reached the cascades, the path down into Ferrytown was familiar, though easier to negotiate now that there was little undergrowth (and no need to transport Margaret in a wheelbarrow). First they passed the bridge point and then they proceeded through the forest of burned antlers that they’d inspected from the eastern bank the day before.
Soon they reached the dry, rocky ledge where Margaret had rested on the day that Franklin went back to her home to collect her few possessions. The fruit trees there were little more than charred stumps. But somehow the wooden bench and fishing platform had survived the fire. Now they had open views across the town. It was wise, despite their aching bones and chattering teeth, to make sure that the place was safe. Margaret pulled up her spy pipes to look for any signs of horses or fires or strangers, or even evidence of someone that she recognized from her community. Lifting the pipes to her eyes had become a joy for her. It clarified the world. It made her young. But now the pipes seemed to cloud the world even further than her unsatisfactory eyes had done. The pipes were full of water. She shook them, but that made little difference. All that distance, she thought to herself, all that agony, and still she couldn’t see any better than the day they’d fled from Ferrytown.
Franklin studied what remained of the houses until he was satisfied that all the movements he could see were caused by nothing more sinister than the wind, the wild dogs, and the birds. There was no smoke, no sign of horses in what had been the tetherings. He listened, too. No voices. No tools. No creaking evidence of life. “I think it’s safe,” he said, though Margaret was disappointed at the news. She’d thought it might be possible that some old neighbor had survived, that there might be miracles.
They cut a lonely sight, the final family on earth, as they started across the flood-smoothed slopes between the river and the town. They’d reached the habitation of the dead. There must be ghosts. Their nervousness was palpable. Their steps were hesitant, especially when a pair of buzzards put up from the burned remains of the lofthouses, where the smaller boats had been stored, and dislodged a piece of black timber from the building’s skeleton. Even the mare had toughened ears, twitching at imaginary flies. It was here that on that final day in Ferrytown the few late-coming emigrants had gathered, marooned between the water and the flames, and driven away shorn-headed Margaret and Franklin in his strange coat. It was here that Franklin had been cut by slingshot. Out in midstream, the last bones of the ferry raft, still protruding from the shingle where it had grounded itself, split the speeding waters, marking the flat expanse of the flooded river with chevrons of froth.
At last they reached the first of the buildings. Nothing now stood much higher than Franklin. The brick footings of the palisades had survived, and some of the older timbers had proved too tough for the flames and stood like sentinels. But all the other buildings — the men’s dormitory, where Franklin had found his brother’s shoes; the women’s dormitory, where there had been three lines of beds, each with a pile of bright clothes hung over the end; the guesthouse hall with its dining tables; the barns, the yards, the kitchens, and the workshops of about two hundred families — were almost level with the ground. What little remained was scorched and blackened beyond recognition. Even the earth and the flagstones in the compounds were charred. The town was colorless.
Margaret did not pay much attention to her neighbors’ homes. Her mind was fixed on family. She hardly stopped to look at the whitened, picked remains of the baker and his daughter, still lying on the steps of the oven house, their bony knees twisted by their sudden deaths, their sides pulled open by animals. They had been saved from the flames and denied their cremation by being caught in the open street. She hurried on, cradling Jackie in her arms, while Franklin followed with the mare.
Too soon she reached the outline of her own compound. She could have stepped across the destroyed outer fence, but habit and superstition made her keep to the old pattern and enter through the space where a wooden door had been. The last time she had entered it, her hair had been shorter than the nap on a gooseberry, and she had been too exhausted by the flux to walk. Franklin had carried her, piggyback, and then, once he had set her down, had had to find a stick and lend his arm to help her walk. Now she felt just as exhausted, but she was glad that Franklin had allowed her to meet her family alone — alone, that is, except for Jackie. He waited in the road outside with the horse, watching her but saying nothing. He could remember his last visit there as if it were yesterday: the barrow that he’d found, the food he’d salvaged from their larder and the list of clothes she’d given him, the smell of her possessions, his guilty looting of their chests and cupboards, the pot of mint he’d saved (and she had lost), the valuables, her comb and brush with their tangled knots of ginger hair. “Will I ever see her hair this long again?” he’d wondered at the time. He looked at her, and yes, by summer’s end her hair was bound to reach her shoulders. He felt his own head and face. There was stubble. A man’s beard should be longer than a man’s neck, he’d always been taught as a boy. Never bare your throat to strangers. And Franklin had been glad to have started a beard when he was relatively young, a teenager. It had almost masked his sudden reddeners.
Her courtyard seemed larger than Margaret remembered it. But then it had always been busy with equipment, animals, and family. Now every corner was clear, except for piles of wood ash, and the space had been enlarged at one side by the complete removal of the screened veranda. She found the courage to walk a little closer, although she could look only through half-closed eyes.
She saw what she had hoped for. There had been cremations for the family. Her brother’s wooden cot had disappeared entirely, and what remained of him was just a few scorched bones. He’d not provided any meals for animals, and so he could hope to rest in peace. “Your uncle,” Margaret said to Jackie. And then she went into the other “rooms,” through fallen and blackened lintels, beams, and rafters. “That’s your great-grandpa. And that’s my ma. You would have loved my ma. That’s big sister. That’s Carmena’s place. That’s your other uncle and his dog.” She had to think before she could remember its name. “It’s Jefferson. You could have played with Jefferson. He was a ratter and a tough old dog, but he liked little girls.”
They went across the courtyard, past the spot where their neighbors’ dead white dove had tumbled to the ground, to the annex house. That had burned more completely than the other buildings in the compound. It had been the straw and wood room and so had almost volunteered to be destroyed by flames. Margaret waved her hand at it. This was more than she could bear. “In there was where your Auntie Tessie lived, and funny Glendon Fields, and their boy, Matt. You would have had a playmate, see,” she said. But already she had turned away and was running back to Franklin and the mare.