More than that, was my hair. Before, my father’s violet coloring had always marked him as something else, though it was easy enough to hide with the right hat and kerchief. Now, however, it was I who held that dubious honor. Here, in this place, I saw my father and Annie’s violet locks. Behind Annie, her husband was jade in coloring. I hadn’t seen her children long, but I knew they were likewise colorful. In contrast, my own onyx hair stood out, marking me as other. I didn’t like it. There would be no blending in here. Not the way I could out there, beyond the Boundary. I felt exposed. Suddenly, my lack of shine felt like an accusation, like an admission of a crime I had not known I’d committed. I had my father’s violet eyes. That was all we shared between us.
“And your wife?” She looked around him, peeked into the shadows cast by the moon dancing on the scrub oak. “Where is she?”
“She died in childbirth.”
“I’m sorry,” Annie said, and she did look sorry. Her eyes went wide and filled with tears, her mouth opened and shut silently, and then she took her brother’s hand and led him inside, leaving me to trail after.
I was acutely aware of crossing that threshold that night, the feel of moving from the known, into the unknown. The cabin itself was small and warm, informal but full of the oddities of life, bits of cloth, a comb, a mirror, small boards and chalk for writing, books, a basin of water, and so much more. Things acquired through life and stability. Things I’d never had. Never even dreamed of having.
We were quickly seated at a long oak table that took up most of the space in the cabin and served bowls of hot soup with chunks of bread. I picked at it nervously, wary. Whatever appetite I’d had, fled.
Still, I felt my father’s eyes on me and I ate. Even then, I did not want to disappoint him.
Across the room, the two children stayed well away, but whispering behind their hands, gazes fixed on me. What a curiosity I must have been to them, and truthfully, I was just as curious about them, but shy with my regard. I had not seen other children before. Not that I could remember, at least, and their presence filled me with an odd mix of excitement and trepidation.
My da told Annie his story, about his years in the mountains. Meeting my mother in some far-flung town, his marriage, my birth, and then that fateful second birth, whereupon both my mother and sister died. Then, he said, he was so torn apart with grief, he took me on his saddle and put wherever we had been behind us. He put fire to the trail and ran from his shadows. Spent some time with me, trapping and hunting, until he realized that a girl couldn’t act like a man grown. A girl needed structure and education. A girl needed to be civilized.
“Are you staying?” Annie asked, voice full of hope. “You could hide out somewhere—"
“I can’t,” Da said. He cast his eyes to the far wall, as though he could see through it. “You know me, Annie. My life wasn’t made to be lived in one place.”
I don’t know why I hadn’t realized it before that moment. Perhaps I was so young, or perhaps I was so caught up in what was happening, I didn’t stop to think that my father would be dragging me all the way out here to dump me at the feet of strangers. I didn’t think that this journey was one long goodbye. If I had, perhaps I would have savored it more.
He must have been desperate. I realize that now. Desperate, to dare the Boundary with his own daughter, who might not survive it. Not once, but twice, for I learned during his conversation with my aunt that I had been born in the mountains, well within the Boundary.
I do not harbor anger for him. Not truly. As a child I did, but now I am wiser and I understand the way of it. He loved my mother with every part of him. She was the only creature in the world that could tame the wild of his soul, and she was gone. I was nothing but a reminder, every day, of what he’d lost.
A body can only live so long with a wounded heart and a bleeding soul.
He did not leave me because he wanted to. He left me because he had to.
They spoke in soft tones for some time before I started nodding off and Annie ushered me and her kids to a loft upstairs and bade us rest. I was exhausted, but not used to sleeping under a roof. Uncomfortable, I tossed and turned the night away, listening to their whispered voices down below as they haggled away my future in a pool of yellow shine light.
Her kids, my cousins, did not speak to me. They huddled together on the bed they shared and stared at me with wide, startled eyes. I watched as dreams took them and darkness filled the loft.
It was warm, and the blankets I was given were soft.
I would like to say that I whiled away the hours weeping terribly into my pillows. Perhaps I should wax poetic about the night quaking with the force of my despair, but it was not like that. My sorrow was a dark, secret thing, a stray cat hidden in the coldest corner of my soul. I fed her scraps. I watched her grow.
Sometimes it is the wounds we do not see that leave the deepest scars.
In the morning, I listened to the cabin, quiet, save for my father’s heavy boots tromping around while he gathered supplies. Preparing to leave.
I crept down the stairs, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I pulled the door open, wincing as it screamed on hits hinges, slicing into the still morning. My breath hung in the air. My feet crunched over the cold earth as I stepped away from the cabin, toward my father. Diaphanous fog blanketed the scrubland, hanging on trees, making ghosts of the small glade we stood in the center of.
Da was tightening his blankets to his saddle, motions tense and jerky. I knew he knew I was there. I could see it in the stiffening of his shoulders. “Da,” I said. That, and only that.
He let out a long, low breath, head sagging, his body going still. “I was hoping you’d be asleep.”
“You don’t even want to say goodbye?” I wanted him to face me. To see the pain on my face. He was my home, and he was leaving. What did that leave me with?
“Little flower,” he finally turned, and I saw tears wetting his cheeks. I’d never seen him cry before. Not even when he got stuck with the antler of an angry bull elk. “I won’t be gone for long.”
We both saw the lie, and let it rest between us like a dead, shriveled thing.
“Annie is a good woman with a lot of love. You will be better off with her. You’ll go to school. Learn to read.”
Da had never learned to read, and it was always an embarrassment for him. He’d speak of reading frequently, of the magic of books unlocked for the person who knew the way of them. Even at that moment, I could hear the yearning in his voice. He wanted what every parent wanted. He wanted to bequeath me with opportunities he never had. Right then, however, all I could focus on was my abandonment. Somehow, his desire made me feel all the more hollow.
“I don’t want to learn how to read.” I sniffled. Wiped at my nose. “I just want you.”
“Cassandra, I will be back soon, and you will show me all the stories you can read. You will be dressed in fine clothes and eat at fine tables. You will have a future here. One I cannot give you in the mountains. The wild is no place for a little girl.”
“Da!” I sniffled, my voice seemed muffled by the stillness and mist that shrouded us.
“Enough!” He barked. He hardly ever raised his voice, so I jumped and put more distance between us. “You will stay here, and you will mind Annie, you hear me? You will be a good girl. You will attend your studies, and you will listen to your betters. This is not an argument, Cassandra. This is what I require from you. Do you understand?”