Dawn on a Distant Shore by Sara Donati Page B

gone, on the run through the endless forests. Liam had still been
living with his brother then, but he had always seemed to show up when she
needed to talk. Now she barely knew what to say to him. If it was in her power
she would leave him behind and go north with Elizabeth and Runs-from-Bears and
Curiosity. He would stay here and split kindling and carry wood and water, clean
possum and skin deer, lay traps. He would be more alone than she had been in
the summer. She had had her grandmother and aunt and uncles.
    "You will like
Otter when you get to know him," Hannah said. "He knows all the
secret places on the mountain. He'll show them to you."
    "Will he?"
Liam's voice was hoarse.
    "You are one of
us now. He will show you."
    "I've been
thinking." He never raised his eyes to her. "Maybe I should go stay
with the McGarritys until you get back. The two women can manage with your
uncle here."
    "No," Hannah
said, more forcefully than she meant to. "Don't do that. You belong
here."
    "So do you."
    She blinked.
"She'll need help with my sister and brother--"
    His shoulders slumped
in defeat. He nodded.
    "You'll
stay?"
    Liam would not meet
her eye. "I'll be the only white on Hidden Wolf when you go."
    It was like snow on
the back of her neck; the chill ran down her spine to settle in her gut. She
must have made some sound. His head came up and he studied her with eyes the
blue of winter ice.
    "I am not
white."
    "To me you
are," he said.
    The world blurred, the
red-gold of Liam's hair and the bright metal of the traps hung on the wall
colliding in a rusty rainbow. Hannah pressed her hands to her eyes to stop it,
to take away the look on his face. He thought he had paid her a compliment. I
am the daughter of Sings-from-Books of the Kahnyen'kehâka people, she thought
to say. I am the granddaughter of Falling-Day, great-granddaughter of Made-of-Bones,
great-great-granddaughter of Hawk-Woman, who killed an O'seronni chief with her
own hands and fed his heart to her sons. These names ran like a river
through her veins, but they meant nothing to Liam. They were not the names of
white women. She opened her mouth to say it again-- I am not white --but
at her shoulder was another grandmother. Cora Bonner, who had come here to the
edge of the endless forests from across an ocean Hannah had never even seen.
Granny Cora, with her fair skin and eyes of indigo blue and her gentle smile
that hid a will as hard as flint. From her Scots grandmother Hannah had gifts
she could not deny: a love of song, an appetite for words on the page, a talent
for languages, the desire to roam. I am not white : it was only one part
of the truth.
    He was looking at her
as he did sometimes, as Bears looked at Many-Doves or her father at Elizabeth.
It was something she did not understand completely, and so she put it away, a kind
of magic to be kept for later when she was older, woman enough to understand
what it meant and strong enough to know what to do with it.
    "Hannah!"
    She paused at the door
with her back to him.
    "I'll stay if you
want me to."
    All her words had
deserted her, and so she left him there in a pool of cold winter sunshine.
     
    In the night,
Runs-from-Bears came to Many-Doves. The sound of his step on the floorboards
brought Elizabeth out of a light sleep. On the other side of the wall she heard
Doves murmur in welcome. There were small creakings and sighs and a low laugh,
suddenly hushed.
    She would have gone
outside, despite the cold and the late hour, but it would mean walking past
them. Elizabeth rolled onto her side and buried her head in the covers, trying
to banish the images that came to mind. She called up a different picture, one
she had been pushing aside all day: Nathaniel in a gaol cell. It would not be the
first time she had visited such a place. Her brother Julian had spent three
months in the London debtors' prison before Aunt Merriweather had paid his
bills and seen him clear to get on the boat to New-York. He had left England
only