Chapter 12

" Sch?n! Sch?n! All-a-man, tyst and sch?n! "

Seth's body was awake and moving before his mind even registered the fact that he was actually awake. He apparently had attempted to sit up, but found himself pressed back, falling back down roughly, his head hitting something with a painful thunk . He blinked against the pain, cautiously reaching up to rub at the sore spot.

As he came more fully to wakefulness, he remembered more of where he was. He had been dreaming, and the dream still lingered in bits and pieces, which did not help his befuddled state. His eyes cleared, and he saw the reason why he had not been successful at sitting upright: There was canvas stretched taught a scant few inches from his face, sunlight filtering through weakly.

Of course , he thought groggily, working one fist up to rub in his eyes. He had been so bone-tired the night before that he had simply crawled into the back of one of the wagons in the travelling party he had joined, and apparently fallen asleep as easily as a babe. It was not a difficult thing to imagine, as the wagon had rocked him in a most pleasing manner as it travelled down the back-country trail, his person pressed in comfortingly on all sides by all manner of cargo. The canvas tarp had provided not only a shield from the sunlight, but also a small amount of insulation.

Unfortunately, he also shared his sleeping space with a crate of chickens. The moment they heard voices, this set them off to clucking and cawing directly next to Seth's right ear. He turned to stare at them balefully, and was rewarded by one of the hens taking umbrage with his pertness and pecking him directly on the nose.

"Yowch!" he said, rubbing at his sore nose, his fingers finding the little dent the vicious beast's beak had made.

"You, bj?rnson! Time to rise, it is tryck-vorw?rts !" the voice called again, nearer.

With a last withering glance at the hen, Seth began the delicate task of extricating himself as quickly as possible. He shimmied and slid his way down the wooden planks of the wagon until his feet emerged and he slipped out, landing awkwardly on his boot heels like a newborn calf. The bright light made him squint, and he put a hand to his forehead until his vision adjusted.

As always, it was a shock to his system to open his eyes on a landscape that was so completely foreign to anything he had ever seen before. The road they travelled was scarcely more than an animal or old trading trail, hemmed in on all sides by pine trees. Beyond the trees was all shadow, with nary a beam of sun penetrating through to the forest floor. It was unnerving, and Seth spent more than a little amount of time contemplating how someone could just walk into the trees and vanish.

He had no time to contemplate such fancies just now, however; the party he was travelling with had come to a halt. It was a strange, motley group: A family of at least a dozen Germans, a trio of either Swedish or Norwegian brothers, either their sister or cousin, a few men from Cornwall who were on their way to work the mines, and Seth.

There were four wagons, each pulled by a pair of sullen oxen, each of them piled high with everything a new settler could possibly require. There were pieces of furniture waiting to be reassembled, dishes, endless bolts of fabric, and, to the pride of the patriarch of the German clan, several glass windows to be fitted into cabins or farmhouses. They were wrapped carefully in layers of fabric and covered with straw to protect them from the rough jostling of the dirt roads.

After every hill or stream crossing, one of the family would cautiously, almost reverently, check on the windows, lifting a corner of their covering carefully. The rest of the clan would wait anxiously, hands clasped or twisted into aprons, and collectively exhale with relief, sometimes clapping. Seth could not begin to understand their odd affection for these windows, but he accepted it in stride. There was little to entertain on the trail, and the entire group was soon invested in the fate of the windows, sighing and smiling when they realised they were still whole.

The party had paused at the foot of a hill. It was not especially steep, but it was long, and necessitated fitting the wagons with hill-brakes so that they could not roll backward. All of the men fortunate enough to have horses were expected to dismount and help push to take some of the strain from the road-weary oxen.

Seth had attained a mule when he had landed in Halifax, a surly and ill-tempered beast that the ostler had seemed far too happy to be rid of. It was only after he'd handed over some of his dwindling supply of banknotes that the ostler had placed a familiar hand on Seth's shoulder and warned him, "Now, Daffodil here might be inclined to nipping, but nothing too terrible."

So naturally, it was within the first ten minutes of their knowing each other that Daffodil had decided to test Seth by clamping down on his bicep as fast as a snake. The next time the she-mule tried that trick, right as Seth had joined the caravan, he simply put his hand under her chin before her teeth could make contact with his arm, and lifted straight upward. This had apparently disoriented Daffodil so much that she had decided it was not worth the effort, and had reduced her vitriol to simply staring at everyone and everything around her with her ears pinned back.

" Bj?rnson , you are ready?"

Seth shook himself. He was more and more inclined to introspection and reminiscing these days when there was little else to do but watch the scenery go by. The father or possibly grandfather of the Germans was looking at him expectantly, his startlingly full beard bristling with the prospect of such a physical task. Slipping from his jacket and throwing it over the saddle of his mule that was tethered to the back of one of the wagons, Seth took up position behind one of the vehicles.

To his great pleasure, Seth discovered that he liked being among these people. To a person, they seemed to relish hard work, old and young, men and women alike. By the same token, they all seemed glad to have Seth along; he was pretty sure they referred to him as some sort of bear-person, but they said it with such teasing affection that Seth did not mind in the least.

It wasn't as if communication was exactly easy, anyway; everyone spoke a different language. Ostensibly, the Cornish miners spoke English, but Seth had nearly as much trouble understanding them as he did the Scandinavian brothers. Everyone communicated in a strange mish-mash of German and possibly Swedish, with English peppered in.

With a shout, the party began up the hill, one person driving, two walking at either side of the front of the wagon, ready to jam in small blocks of wood if the hill brakes failed so that the wagons in the front would not roll backward into the ones at the rear. The oxen bellowed as the drivers tapped their rumps with switches, trying desperately to build up a good speed before they began their ascent.

" Ja , brothers, now! Tyst-sch?n !" the bearded leader called out, and to a man, all those with even a little strength put their shoulders to the carts. Seth did not hesitate, surging forward with the others. It was a strange feeling, this kind of physical work. He had always been a strong, broad-shouldered man, but his time in the frontier was chiselling him into a solid block of muscles.

He couldn't help but smile as he laboured, one shoulder pressed tightly against the rear of the wagon. His whole life, he had felt simply too big for his life. His hands, like great bricks, felt clumsy and nearly monstrous when he attempted to hold a pen, but they bent startlingly easy to working with tools or chopping wood. Seth's love of disassembling and reassembling clocks and machinery had been a constant source of irritation for his mother. "Tinkering again," she would sigh, her face disappointed.

Out here, where everything depended on the strength of a man's back and the willingness of his hands to work, Seth felt right at home. His ability to repair the wagons had rendered him indispensable to the settlers; his good nature had endeared him to them. He had adapted to a life of hardship startlingly well; it had been only a matter of hours on the road before he had simply dispensed with his cravat.

His feet slipped a little on the dirt as the road inclined, and he nearly stumbled. A hand caught his elbow, steadying him. After righting himself, Seth grinned gratefully up at one of the blond Norwegians (Swedes?), who returned it with a grunt as they redoubled their efforts. The trio of brothers was named Karl, Otto, and Sven, but Seth could not begin to establish which was which. He half-suspected they traded names back and forth, for a look sometimes came over their faces very much like one that Kitty wore whenever she was about to commit some mischief.

Kitty .

The thought of Kitty nearly caused him to slip and fall again. Seth had done all that he could to put her from his mind, but she kept sneaking her way back into his consciousness. Though she looked nothing like Kitty, the German clan had a sister or a daughter that tended to throw her head back with abandon when she laughed, much as Kitty did. It always stung when she did so.

As the days wore into weeks, Seth found himself wishing sometimes that he had asked for a lock of Kitty's hair to take with him. It was a selfish thought, as he had wanted nothing more than to set Kitty free. He could not imagine her here with him, ankle-deep in mud and God knew what else, skinning rabbits and starting fires.

And yet…a part of him believed that she could adapt. There was something in her, a kind of good-humoured strength that he had little doubt would see her through just about anything. She was much like Seth in that matter, with her natural inclination to meet challenges with a smile and a clever solution. Well, Seth could not always lay claim to a clever solution as such, but he had found that he had a true gift for working with his hands, and that surely counted for something.

I wonder if she would even recognise me anymore, such as I am in this state, Seth thought grimly. The road was wet, and mud was clumping up around his boots; his hair had grown longer, and despite his misgivings about German facial hair, he knew that he was in sore need of a razor too. His hands were quickly becoming work-roughened, and the idea of holding one of Kitty's dainty hands in them seemed a little preposterous, almost profane.

"You daydream," the Norseman said, his left shoulder against the wagon so that he was facing Seth as they pushed. "You think of your ?lskling ," he said. His face, only a scant couple feet from Seth's, was bemused, his sharp cheekbones lifting.

"I do not," Seth protested. He was not entirely sure what the Swede had said, but he knew exactly what he meant.

"You do," Karl—or was this one Otto?—replied firmly. "Your eyes go soft. I see it among many men here."

"See what?" Seth asked, shifting his shoulder so that he could bring more of the strength in his legs to bear.

"Men come; women stay. Everyone is unhappy, a nation full of sighs and longing." The Swede shrugged his free shoulder, then put his hand to the back of the wagon to steady himself better.

"Sometimes people are reunited, no? What about them?" Seth asked, jerking his head a little toward some of the German family.

"This is true," Karl agreed. "It gives us all hope, but makes us despair too. How many of us will see our loves again?" He gave another dismissive gesture, as if the idea of a lifetime of loneliness and pining was simply a matter of routine. "She is very vacker, yes?"

"She what ?" Seth blurted, unsure if an insult had just been levelled.

"Her face, it is—" Karl paused, turning about so that his back was to the wagon, his legs bent as he pushed backward uphill. With one hand, he gestured broadly at his own face. "Not like your mule, no?"

"I—no, Kitty does not look like a mule ," Seth replied, a little baffled.

"Ah, I think this," Karl nodded sagely. "It makes the pain s?t— sweeter, yes? It is always sad to leave a beauty behind."

Seth said nothing until they had reached the top of the hill. The weight of the wagon was gradually lifted from his shoulder as the ground levelled out. The party was drawing to a halt at the peak, giving both man and beast a chance to recover. Wearily, Seth trudged up the hill, cresting it with Karl a half-step behind him.

When they, too, had attained the summit, they were caught like the rest of the party, staring down at the valley before them. It stretched out for miles, acres and acres of trees, pine, maple and oaks with their branches bare, all packed tightly in between rolling hills. A river, sparkling in the setting sun, sliced through the trees in a winding ribbon. Beyond the valley, in the distance, snowy mountains peeked over, their tops shrouded in foggy white. Seth was spellbound by the view, as was everyone else in the caravan. Everyone had pulled to a halt to take in the view before them.

Once, in London, he had accompanied Kitty to a salon in which a wild-haired young man, a poet of some description, had tried desperately to explain the Romantic concept of the sublime . He had compared it to standing on a cliff at the edge of the sea, of seeing a storm rolling in, or even staring up at the night sky and feeling small. Seth had little use for such lofty ideas, but he couldn't help but think of that strange little poet now. It was truly overwhelming, like standing on the rim of the world.

"But there is also beauty ahead," Karl said, coming up to stand next to Seth. He tilted his blond head in the direction of the valley. "Surely this makes some of it bearable, do you not think?"

Seth said nothing for a moment, his eyes on the unblemished wilderness. "I think your command of English is much better than what you let on," Seth replied at last, giving the Swede a sidelong glance.

To his surprise, Karl gave him a jocular thump on the shoulder. "Yes, but if you Anglos know that I speak English, then you will want me to speak English."

Seth stared for a moment, not entirely sure he understood. Karl's face broke into a grin, and Seth couldn't help but laugh. Something felt relieved within him, not totally, but a kind of tension that eased by degrees. Karl's smile broadened, and he began slowly walking down the hill.

Seth remained where he was for a bit longer, even as the rest of the party began to cautiously move off after putting brake-slides on some of the wagon wheels. They would have to make camp when they reached the bottom, as the sun was beginning to sink behind the hills, but they were too exposed at the top of the hill. For some reason that Seth could not quite figure out, he tilted his head upward, the Northern star blinking in the inky, growing dark of night.