At last some news of Allen. The general sent word that he and his men have arrived at Perkins Island, but they have so far been unable to cross the sound. I am glad to know he is safe and well. Yet more than a month has passed, and they have not even reached the mainland of Alaska!
These past weeks I studied the map and tried to picture them already traveling up the Wolverine River and into that empty, unmapped territory. I sped them along, my finger skimming the paper through a land of pleasant weather, friendly natives, easy walking. Might they travel even more quickly than they hoped? At this rate, they could be home in another month. I should never have allowed it, but one night I imagined them all the way to the western coast and home in time for Allen to place his hands on my swollen belly.
To learn instead that his journey hasn’t even truly begun, it is a heartbreak indeed. I could brush away my worry when he had only just left, but now, against my will, my brain conjures river ice that cracks into swift water, and Indians who dress in furs and eat their enemies.
March 28
It is past dark now, and I shiver beneath the covers and long for sleep. A gale whips the fir trees around the cabin and sleet pecks at the window; I think the dreary weather must account some for my restlessness. This bed was never so cold and empty when Allen was here. Even with Charlotte tucked in across the hall, I feel wholly alone. The house creaks and groans, and I hear some board or branch outside that knocks in the wind. I do not usually possess a fearful imagination, but I could almost expect a “rapping at my chamber door.”
I have given myself a chill to recall Mr Poe’s lines. It is absurd, for they are just words of poetry, and this house is no different than when Allen slept here beside me. Yet it is. If only I could hear Allen, his voice in another room and know that he was soon coming to bed. In the warmth and comfort of his arms, sleep would soon be upon me.
Instead my only company are the books at my bedside. Illustrations of deformed organs and stillborn infants, descriptions of all the ways one might die in childbirth?—?the stuff of nightmares surely.
The photography book, on the other hand, numbs my brain, with its “depth of focus” and “width of angle” and chemical formulae, but I will turn to those pages, for at least they might lull me to sleep.
March 30
Such a coincidence. It is as if I conjured Mr Poe’s raven. Last night I wrote of a “rapping at my chamber door,” and this morning I woke to the noisy calls of a raven outside the bedroom window. It was much too late to be sleeping, well past dawn, yet there I was still bundled beneath the wool blankets. I did not know at first what had wakened me, but then I heard another throaty “caaaaww” and a gurgle, something akin to water being drained from a narrow-necked bottle.
I wrapped myself in my shawl, went to the window and saw the bird hopping about on the grass just in front of the largest fir tree. Its right leg is deformed in some way so that its movements are lurching and strange.
I have spotted many of his smaller cousins, the crows, on my walks down by the millpond, but not many of these larger, more impressive specimens. If I were to heed Mother’s advice, I should have quickly drawn the curtains. Despite her devotion to reading, teaching, and the Society of Friends, she is astonishingly superstitious about the natural world. The notion that ravens are harbingers of death! I recall once when a local woman bore a stillborn child, Mother told me that she had spied the woman throwing scraps to a raven in her yard just days before.
I suppose these nonsensical ideas arise from the birds’ scavenger nature and their midnight color. Myself, I have always found them quite fascinating. It is said that they are considerably more intelligent than they are given credit, that they can be trained to speak and perform tricks.
“Birds and Bird-Life” has never been one of my favorite books; it is a bit too fanciful for my liking, but it does include some interesting stories about the various species. For example, Mr Buckland reports that a raven will pluck the eyes out of a sick lamb. I confess it startled me after reading this passage, when I then peeked through the bedroom curtains again to see the bird still on the lawn, black feathers disarrayed about its head, head cocked with an eye toward me. I actually jumped when it opened its great black beak and cawed.
Oh, and now I am doing precisely what I find so frustrating about this book. Mr Buckland would personify this bird as an impudent “busy body,” always teasing and playing jokes, and I would turn the bird into a fright. I should like more rational, objective observations. I want to know the facts of this creature. What does it eat? How does it court? Where are its nests to be found?
This, however, is interesting. Mr Buckland states that ravens may live as many as a hundred years! Could it be so? Perhaps this noisy old bird outside my window has seen more than we can ever know.
March 31