A Girl Called Badger (Valley of the Sleeping Birds) Read online

  Wilson went to the map display in Reed’s office and watched the glowing dots creep toward the perimeter.

  HE KNEW THE GENERAL route of travel but went over the scouting reports again and sketched his own map.

  The last expedition to Springs had been three years ago and few details were available on Mina’s village. The scout––Hausen’s oldest boy––described a well-protected settlement of three hundred or more with fields of beans, corn, and squash. Wilson memorized landmarks and open areas with little cover. It would be safer to travel at night like the expedition. He wrapped his map and notes in leather.

  At a table and two chairs set up in the corridor, the guards talked in low voices.

  “How are you men today?” Wilson asked.

  “It’s a bad situation, Ensign,” said the tallest. “We didn’t want to say anything while Father Reed was here.”

  “Why couldn’t you go? He could have stayed here,” said the other guard.

  “I can’t say what’s in his mind, but you’re right, I could have taken his place. I speak the dialect and I know enough about the old machines.”

  “Well, I guess Father Reed knows what he’s doing. Still, it’s been the talk of the village.”

  “I’m sure it would be.”

  AN HOUR LATER ROBB brought drinks for the guards. He came into Wilson’s room and closed the door behind him.

  “So … I got what you wanted,” he said.

  “Left in the right place?”

  “Yeah. Do you need me for anything else? It was a long walk and I’m tired.”

  “Just a minute.” Wilson took out the calendar he’d found underground. He’d put a protective hemp cover over it. “You can keep this.”

  Robb held the calendar with two fingers, like it was covered in sheep manure. “Pictures of cats?”

  “It’s a conversation piece. Girls love anything small and fuzzy.”

  “No, it’s stupid. Bring me something better than this.”

  “Okay, I promise.”

  “I know something about calendars,” said Robb. “Want to hear?”

  “No.”

  “With a calendar your days are numbered.”

  “Get out of here before you say something smart.”

  Wilson went to his bunk but couldn’t sleep. He filled his pack with useful items. If he changed into his hunting leathers someone might get suspicious. He rolled them into a bundle with extra moccasins and tied it with a length of rope. A large package of painkillers and his pistol and knives also went into the pack. For the rest of the supplies he depended on Robb.

  The guards changed a few hours later. The expedition had been traveling for eight hours, and off-map for six.

  Wilson filled his hot water container. He’d been soaking valerian root for hours in the treatment room. He mixed the valerian with chamomile and hot water and let the mixture brew. He thought honey might cover some of the taste and added a spoonful. He served two large cups of this ‘herbal tea’ to the guards along with pillows and blankets from Reed’s quarters. Over an hour later the cups were empty and the two were fast asleep on the floor.

  He rolled extra shirts and lumped them under his blanket. He thought it might fool the guards for a few minutes at least. With pack in hand he stepped over the sleeping men and placed a letter on the table.

  Wilson went to the entrance tunnel but heard the latch turn on the outer door. With no time to get back to his bunk, he tossed his pack into the treatment room.

  The inner door opened and his mother stepped in with a groaning Brownie. The pregnant woman wore only a nightdress and overcoat.

  “What happened?” asked Wilson, his stomach a dull pit.

  His mother held Brownie under the arms. “Happening? A baby is happening. Don’t worry Brownie, it’s not much farther.”

  “Wait,” Brownie said. She grimaced, her face streaked with sweat.

  Wilson and his mother waited for the contraction to pass. The dozing guards were only a few feet away. Could he run for it? Wilson wondered how much could the guards could sleep through. He followed the two women into the treatment room.

  “When did this start? How long has this been going on?”

  “Listen, Cubbie, hold your questions. I’ve delivered more babies than you have teeth in your head.”

  Wilson spread his hands. “Do you want me to help or not? I’m happy to leave.”

  “It’s not enough that Father Reed is gone and Brownie’s man is out on night duty,” said his mother. “No, I have to deal with a teenage son.”

  Brownie groaned. “Stop fighting!”

  Wilson covered the exam table with a blanket and they helped Brownie lay on top. He pressed a button and the upper half of the table elevated slightly.

  “When did the contractions start?”

  “Maybe an hour ago,” said Brownie. “Here’s another one–”

  She clenched her teeth. Wilson counted the seconds until her face relaxed.

  “One minute,” he said. His mother was searching the cabinets. “What are you looking for?”

  “A clean cloth.”

  “In cabinet four.” He paused and looked at Brownie. “This baby is coming soon.”

  “What a genius I raised,” said his mother and brought a pile of white towels. She bent and spread Brownie’s legs and laid most of the cloth underneath. “You’re still too young to see this. Hook her up to the machines.”

  Wilson unspooled the cables and contact discs and attached them to Brownie’s shoulders and sides. He connected an extra three to her abdomen and wrapped her arm with a membrane. His mother had removed Brownie’s underwear and peered between her legs.

  Brownie shouted in pain, then panted for breath.

  “Can you … give me … painkiller?”

  “How long?” Wilson asked his mother.

  “Minutes,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Brownie, there’s not enough time for painkiller. Just concentrate on breathing.”

  Wilson found a clean apron and washed his hands with sterilizer.

  “Wash up, mother, then hold her hands,” he said.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  He placed a small pair of scissors, a warm, damp towel, and a few pieces of string on top of a white cloth. Wilson’s throat tightened and his face burned thinking about the next steps. He looked between Brownie’s legs and it was just like the manuals––fierce, red and hairy. He rubbed sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “She’s starting to crown,” said his mother. “Brownie, push with the contractions!”

  His mother held her hands and Brownie screamed. After a few pushes, the head crowned further and slid out. Wilson supported it with his hands as the shoulders rotated.

  “More!”

  With the next contraction Brownie screamed again and the baby slipped out in a gout of blood. Wilson wrapped it in a warm cloth. He wiped the nose and mouth then flicked and pinched its feet. The baby made a nasty face and squalled. Wilson took string and tied the cord in two places, then used the small scissors to cut between them.

  “You can hold her,” he said, and handed the baby to Brownie.

  “My beautiful baby,” she cooed.

  Wilson remembered he had to deliver the next stage. He massaged the lower part of Brownie’s abdomen and a minute later more blood and the dark red placenta slid out. He wrapped this up and set it aside, then placed clean cloth underneath Brownie.

  The infant’s eyes were wide and active. They rolled and looked at everything in the room.

  “That was the easy part,” said his mother. “Now you have to worry about them the rest of your life.”

  “What’s her name?” asked Wilson.

  “June,” said Brownie.

  Wilson put a blanket over her and cleaned up the red circles of blood on the floor. He put everything including his apron into a basket, then attached monitor wires to the baby. All the readings on the display screen looked normal.

&nbs
p; “Both Brownie and June have very healthy vital signs. Now mother … I have to go.”

  “Yes,” she said and touched the baby’s tiny nose with her pinky.

  He lifted his pack and roll of clothing. “You don’t understand. I’m leaving.”

  She stared at Wilson. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “ I can’t just sit around here waiting for Reed to come back. If anything happened to her––I mean, if anything happened to the expedition, I couldn’t live with myself.”

  She pulled a bundle of cloth from her bag. “I had a feeling about that. I made these for you, but you didn’t go.”

  Inside the bundle were two leather bracers, smooth and the color of walnut.

  “I didn’t have time to decorate them. They go over your arms and tie at the bottom.”

  “Thank you.”

  She hugged him tight. “Whatever you do, just come back in one piece.”

  “At least one, I promise.”

  The guards were leaning against the corridor outside the treatment room. They stepped in front of Wilson.

  “We figured there was something in that tea,” said the tallest.

  Wilson nodded. “That’s right, and I’m sorry.”

  “You’re planning to leave, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but a baby got in the way. I’ll go back to my room now.”

  “Wait,” said the other guard. “We’re not going to stop you. It looks like you could have left without helping Brownie. We know we can’t keep you forever, and anyway, we both hate sitting around doing nothing.”

  “So–”

  “So lock us in your room. We’ll come up with a story before morning.”

  INSTEAD OF LEAVING THROUGH the entrance Wilson decided to use an abandoned tunnel.

  He’d learned about the passage and a few others last summer, when a pair of teenage lovers had fled into them for an afternoon and caused a minor uproar. It wasn’t the tryst that had worried Father Reed––it was the absence from the tracking screens. Afterwards, the priest had unrolled the old paper maps and shown them to Wilson.

  Wilson cleared heavy wooden boxes from the back of an old storeroom. In the wall was a circular hatch, dull and tarnished black with age. Wilson pried it open with a crowbar and crawled into a narrow stone tunnel. He gripped a lantern in one hand and batted at cobwebs with the other.

  Friends,

  I know you think I’m abandoning my duty. Station is my home and I wish things had turned out differently. I won’t say I didn’t have a choice because that’s not true. This was the best in a range of bad choices.

  Wilson came to an intersection in the stone and earth tunnel. He turned left and continued crawling on his hands and knees. He thought about his friends, fresh meals, and warm shelter. Outside the valley he would have none of that.

  As you know, Airman Chen has a rare medical condition. She will die without treatment.

  A black spider as big as his hand jumped onto the lantern. Wilson jerked in reflex and smashed the glass and metal cylinder against the tunnel wall. Everything turned black.

  The machines in Station will continue to work while I’m traveling. I’ve checked and re-checked everything. If anything happens, the section leaders and my mother have enough knowledge and experience to handle it.

  Excuses for turning back leaped through his mind like that disgusting spider. Wilson sighed and slowed his breathing. He spoke the night-sight poem and the tunnel brightened to gray twilight.

  I know my choice looks careless. But I can’t live without her, and I can’t accept the feeling that something might go wrong.

  ––Wilson

  He opened a hatch near the Tombs and crawled out. The night-sight had changed the dark heavens to a silvery dome and turned the peaks around the valley to faint charcoal sketches.

  He took a back route to the corral and gave the populated center of the village a wide space. A few lanterns swayed through the plaza on late social calls. The laughter of a pair of guards carried on the breeze as Wilson crept through fruit trees and herb gardens.

  He half-wished that someone would see him, that hands would reach from the dark and pull him back to his duty. He numbly kicked away those thoughts and at a safe distance began to jog.

  Blackie barked once when he arrived at the corral. Wilson knocked softly on the door of the cabin and Alfie stuck his head out.

  “What? Hey, Wilson.”

  “Did Robb leave anything for me?”

  “It’s right here.”

  Alfie shut the door behind him. Wilson unwrapped the hunting leathers and wore them over his normal clothes. He strapped his knives and pistol around his waist and double-checked the pistol’s hammer––still over the empty chamber. Next he tied on the bracers from his mother. Thick, cured leather covered both forearms from wrist to elbow.

  The pack from Robb contained dried meat, corn bread, three pouches of pemmican, two skins of spruce tea, a pouch of dried fruit, a fire-sparker, and a pair of candles. Wilson transferred the items from his small pack to the large one. A bearskin lay on the floor next to the large pack. Wilson rolled it together with the rest of his clothes and a wool blanket, tying the bundle with rope. He secured this to the top of the large pack with a few tight loops.

  “Alfie, I’ll need to borrow your crossbow.”

  “But I’ll get in trouble!”

  “Go to Armory tomorrow and tell Hausen I borrowed it. If he gives you problems tell my mother. Also, don’t tell anyone what Robb did.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  Wilson put five crossbow bolts in the pack and five in his belt. He put his arms through the straps of the pack and took the crossbow from Alfie.

  “Good luck,” said the boy.

  Wilson put his hand on Alfie’s shoulder. “Thanks. Just remember one thing––don’t ever do anything this stupid when you grow up.”

  SEVEN

  Wilson guessed the expedition was eight hours ahead. He planned to cross high above Station on the flank of Old Man, then turn north and descend to the lake. The trees would give him cover and the route would avoid patrols. No one would be monitoring the perimeter map in Reed’s office at least until the morning. That was six hours away and would give him a good lead.

  Wilson headed for the eastern end of the valley and stopped only when he reached a thick forest. He closed his eyes and imagined a full moon.

  Eyes made of light

  Eyes made of sun

  Eyes made of moon

  Restore my sight

  A chill spread through his left arm and dulled the pain of the lizard bite. A minute later he opened his eyes. The forest had brightened but all colors had turned a nebulous gray. The sky above was solid twilight with no constellation or star-river in sight.

  Wilson started to load his crossbow––foot in the stirrup, right hand on the grip, and left hand on the reload bar––but gasped at the sudden pain in his left arm. He turned the crossbow upside down and awkwardly reloaded with his right hand. He kicked himself mentally for not thinking about it earlier. Armory had a right-hand-reload crossbow he might have filched somehow.

  With clear sight and the security of a loaded bow he set a good pace. He knew the mountain well. Like the rest of the boys from the village he’d wasted plenty of hours on the rocky slopes and in the deep forests.

  After half an hour he broke out of the thick pines into a meadow. The dew glistened on blades of grass and dampened boulders from ancient landslides. Wilson passed a massive stone face, where cracks and chimneys spread up to a high cliff. The wind brought the smell of moss and broken branches, and jarred loose his childhood memories.

  He and a group of boys had played “ambush” in the forest eight years ago. Like most things that involve boys, it was mostly running and hiding. While looking for a good spot he’d come upon the granite face and started to climb. He’d seen the bigger boys scale the rock before, and imitated them by shoving his fists and feet in the cracks. Halfway up
he slipped and landed on his leg with a dull crack. The mistake cost him nine weeks in bed. Father Reed had oddly taken pity on Wilson. His mother had only a few books, so Reed had lent the boy volumes from his personal library. Only priests were normally allowed to read these and the strange stories fascinated Wilson.

  A wolf howled in the distance and Wilson realized he hadn’t used scent-cover. He cursed under his breath while searching his pack. Clothes were always washed with cedar water but he hadn’t used any on himself. He opened a small vial and rubbed yellow liquid on his skin.

  He walked down a draw and over a ridgeline then fought through scrub and forest to a dirt trail worn down by generations of mule deer. After a few minutes of walking the trail followed the edge of a cliff. Far below lay the gushing waterfall that had spat him and Badger out of the underground reservoir.

  Wilson stopped for a moment to watch a flock of birds glide north across the gray water. A poor-will called in the forest near the lake––low-high-low, low-high-low.

  He turned from the view and saw a shape in the forest like a wolf or a dog, as black and still as a chunk of coal. His vision was fuzzy because of the sight-trick, but the ears were up and definitely canine. Just as Wilson began to think he was seeing things the wolf scratched its neck with a back leg.

  Wolves were rarely seen inside the perimeter and normally left humans alone. Wilson hoped he wouldn’t be the exception. He aimed at the wolf for a second then lowered his crossbow. When he threw a stick the beast ran off. At least it wasn’t rabid. Wilson continued on the trail and the dark wolf followed. It was always just over a spur or behind a stand of trees.

  The path followed the cliff then descended to the lake through a long series of switchbacks. He approached a vast blackberry patch and startled a pair of mule deer. They leapt from the towering thorn bushes and trotted away along the lake.

  Wilson ate handfuls of berries and turned his head constantly, watching left, right, and behind him. The wolf was gone or at least he couldn’t see it. It wouldn’t give up his trail for a fast-moving mule deer unless it was stupid or sick. Maybe it would be better for everyone if he’d shot it.

  A stream flowed out of the lake and through a mix of conifers and deciduous trees. Wilson followed the stream and thought about the last time he’d been here. The water cut deep into the earth to become a gully and eventually a deep and narrow ravine. Hiking through it would have been good cover, but he preferred the open ground at the top.