Betsy the Border collie had delivered six puppies less than a week ago. Cyrus had never heard of a dog nursing a sheep, but, on the other hand, the paths of grace are sometimes winding. If the lamb died, he could still say that everything possible had been done, that they had salvaged two head plus the mother from a hard pregnancy out of season. It was possible to transplant a newborn, so in theory one of the other sixty-odd ewes could have taken it on. That was labor-intensive, though, and it would have involved Sheila’s waking someone up during the actual labor—which would have defeated the original purpose of keeping the experienced farmhands relatively fresh for the Migration. By that standard, Sheila’s solution was fair.
Strictly speaking, the Migration was the annual stretch of time, started decades ago, when the Seven sheep were loaded onto a barge and released on North Island, at the archipelago’s northeastern tip, where they grazed for eight weeks. The forage there contained a much greater concentration of clover, which was higher in protein than the grass on Seven proper, and that kept the sheep healthier over the long winters. From being a basic matter of animal husbandry, however, the Migration’s meaning had over time evolved into something very different. When Cyrus formed his ministry—a congregation largely made up of current and former Seven staff—he’d obtained permission for the farmhands to suspend their work over that first thirty-six hours and hold a concurrent retreat on North, where there were three old shacks and a well. The retreat was dedicated to reflection, to spiritual work and teaching. It was a time of intensity and oneness, and Cyrus wanted his people awake and alert for it.
“You might have saved his life,” Cyrus said to Sheila.
She began to cry just opposite the Staff House. She was young and she’d been up most of the night, so he let her go on for about fifteen seconds.
“That’s enough,” Cyrus said, and Sheila stopped.
12
Edward Peck, the boatman, opened his eyes and looked outside through the window. Everything was still. It was a little after dawn. The sky was overcast, but he predicted the gray would burn off into the perfect blue of the best days here.
Then something shifted through his peripheral vision. Peck sat all the way up. By the tree line, no more than fifty yards away, was a twelve-point—no—a fourteen-point stag, at least. He had never seen antlers on the Seven deer at all; this one had to be exceptionally strong to make it here. Peck reached under the bed for his old sniper’s rifle, pulled back the bolt, and loaded it. He laid the rifle down on his bed and lifted the window as gently as if the beast were in the room—but when he tried to raise the screen, it jammed. Undeterred, Peck sighted along the barrel at the joint of the stag’s left front leg, just below where he imagined its heart lay, to account for any deflection from firing through the screen.
The report was tremendous. Somehow he had forgotten that the gun would make a sound—and the crack echoed across the harbor and off the Indian Head cliffs opposite the family houses. The stag’s left foreleg buckled right away, but he kept his balance until his right one collapsed too, followed by the rear. He fell heavily on his left side, just inside the tree line.
Edward Peck’s first idea, as he ran out of the staff house, was to get the carcass as far as possible into the woods before anyone else saw it. He reckoned he could drag it a few hundred yards in, field-dress it, and then scatter the entrails for the crows before hanging it from the hindquarters to get the blood out. He imagined that he would do all of this by himself. The woods back there were lightly traveled, so the stag should be safe tied up in a corner for a day or so. At that point, he would butcher it himself and present the meat to Cyrus as a gift. It was all possible—it was even excellent—but if he wanted to keep the head and neck, which he did, it was going to take speed and strength, right now. At the tree line, he knelt down to test the body’s weight. Even just the head was shockingly heavy: his entire plan was impossible.
“Peck,” Cyrus said from behind him.
Why is he awake already? Peck thought, even before turning around. He had already forgotten how loud the rifle shot had been.
“That’s the stag been eating Mrs. Hillsinger’s flowers,” Peck said, risking a smile.
Cyrus laughed. He too knelt down and lifted its foreleg, and then let it fall.
“Shoot from the window?”
“Through the screen.”
Cyrus whistled.
“Clean,” Cyrus said, examining the wound. “Fourteen points. Don’t see that much over here.”
“Pretty lucky,” Peck said.
“In the army, you’d get a medal for a shot like that.”
“Can I keep the head?”
Cyrus smiled.
“You’re on the first boat out,” Cyrus said, “which is in seventy-two minutes. Leave an address on your bed for your last paycheck. Pack well—anything you leave behind will be sold or thrown in the fire.”
Nothing in Cyrus’s tone or bearing was angry or even agitated, and nothing announced that Peck was being fired. The emergence of the stag—so close by, and right when he’d opened his eyes—was such obvious good luck, such a clear case of a once-in-a-lifetime chance, that it would certainly merit an exception to the rules. Even Cyrus could not punish destiny.
“Can’t shoot guns in the clearing,” Cyrus said, “especially with the families here. That was all spelled out for you.”
“You said it was a clean shot.”
“So it was,” Cyrus said, looking at his watch. “Boat leaves in seventy-one minutes.”
13
Jim Hillsinger had been awake for hours when he heard the rifle, so he got up to see what was happening. He felt a sort of disorder at work within him, a lack of discipline to his thoughts. He hoped that air would help.
Lila had not come to bed. After the Old Man’s rant about Baffin, she had left the living room, left the house, and not returned. That reaction was more than he’d expected, although he’d expected something. The Baffin idea had some merit, especially now that Catta was twelve. James was too old, and anyway he was too brittle for an opportunity like this. He would draw the wrong lessons. Hillsinger had observed that the margin between success and failure in his line of work was often a function of simple endurance. But how to teach it—endurance? He was not sure it was possible, but if it were, then the Baffin solution was a fair candidate. Lila, of course, did not agree. He hoped she had not done anything rash, which he defined as anything the Quicks might know about.
The sky was faintly pink when Hillsinger began to walk toward the tree line by the barn. Over there he could see two people talking, and—given that a gunshot in the clearing was very much against island rules—one of them would almost certainly be Cyrus.
14