Fire Along the Sky by Sara Donati Page B

was coming, but Lily just didn't want to see it.” Curiosity spread out her hands on her lap. “You know they quarrel something awful, those two—”
    “They always have,” Hannah agreed.
    “That's most usually the case with twins when they get to a particular age. But Lily and Daniel ain't never been apart for long, not really. She don't know what to do with the idea of him going off to war without her.”
    “How angry is she?” Hannah asked. “Should I go find her?”
    “Won't do no good,” Curiosity said. “She went up the mountain and hid herself. I expect we won't see her again for a good while.”
    With more energy Curiosity said, “I'm going to make some cake to send along with those boys. It ain't much, but I got to do something.”
    She pushed herself out of the rocker so hard that it thumped back and forth and sent the cat running for a safer corner.
    “What is it?” Hannah asked, though she knew very well.
    Curiosity gave her a grim smile. “I am mad enough to spit nails, and there ain't no use in pretending otherwise. What is the Almighty thinking, letting me live long enough to see more boys go off to war? I don't know as I can stand it, Hannah. The waiting and wondering and imagining. Sending off letters that never get where they supposed to be. Waiting for word that won't come no matter how hard I bargain with the Lord. I'm likely to turn into a bitter old woman if anything should happen to either of those boys, and that's one thing I promised myself I would never be. I'd rather die. Sometimes I'm just weary of it all.”
    With her fury drained away Curiosity seemed almost to wilt and collapse inward. She sat down again, heavily.
    Hannah let out the breath she had been holding. Now was the time to say things that were meant to be a comfort, to recite the facts they both knew to be true: Daniel and Blue-Jay would make the best of warriors; they were both excellent marksmen and woodsmen; they would look out for each other as no one else could. But truths like these were too fragile to bear the weight of fear.
    Instead of talking, Hannah did something else, something harder for her. She knelt in front of Curiosity and put her arms around the woman's thin shoulders.
    “We'll bear it because we have to,” she said.
    Curiosity pulled away with a sigh and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
    “Did my father say when—”
    “Tomorrow, at first light.”
    “Then we know when Lily will be back,” Hannah said. “She won't let Daniel go without trying to talk him out of it again. What I'm less sure about is Jennet, and how she'll react.”
    Curiosity was rattling cake pans with a vengeance, but she paused to look at Hannah over her shoulder.
    “She ain't going back to Montreal?”
    “She says not,” Hannah said. “But I expect Luke could change her mind.”
    Curiosity snorted softly. “Those two put me in mind of porcupines in mating season. They don't exactly mean to hurt each other but they don't seem to know how to get the business done without some bloodshed neither.”
    It was an image that made Hannah laugh out loud, and one that stayed with her for the rest of the day while she looked, without success, for her sister and her cousin.
             
    “You should have waited.” Elizabeth looked up from the quill she was sharpening; she could not hide her irritation or her worry, and neither did she care to. “It might have gone better if you had come to fetch me, Nathaniel.”
    Her husband sat on a low stool leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees and his hands dangling. He looked up at her with his head cocked, an expression that meant he was calculating how much of an argument he wanted just at this moment. He could say what they both knew to be true, that the conversation with Lily might have been worse too, especially if Elizabeth hadn't been able to hold her tongue. But Nathaniel had never been cruel, and he was worried about his wife almost as much as he was