The sun was high. Soon people would be on the trails, so Catta ran. He felt lighter and faster now, almost like he could run for days. He went up and down a stone staircase and through an ugly stretch of cleared timber. The splinters cut his feet, which meant they were too soft. He would never wear shoes again. He crossed one of the big hay fields, not yet cut, and wet green buds stuck to his legs. He ran down the soft path covered over with moss like an emerald tunnel. He passed the ice pond, which lay close to the road, and then the fairy houses, and he hoped Isa had not dragged his mother out there before breakfast. He ran silently, bowed down, close to the ground, hands by his knees, like he imagined the Micmac to have run. The Old Man had said the ice pond was bottomless—Catta wanted to dive in and bring him back a handful of weeds. Had there been, he wondered, an eagles’ nest on Baffin after all? Did I miss it? He came out of the woods on the edge of the uphill pasture, by the graveyard. The high point of the clearing. The two houses and the big barn lay in front of him, and then lower down was the Cottage, the dock, and the ocean.
Catta reckoned the barn would be empty—Sheila would be on North with the rest of the staff. From the hayloft he could see both the Cottage and the Hill House and everything else happening in the clearing. He could evaluate his options from there. The problem was his route. It was safest to take the longer but most concealed path to the barn, so he headed away from the houses and the barn, down the hill to the back fields where the cows had bells, over the fences, and then into the small woods by the ocean. When he arrived at the barn by that back route, he had traveled more than a mile in a wide circle rather than cross a few hundred yards of open ground.
The barn was dark.
“Who’s there?” Sheila said, sharply.
Catta walked farther in and turned the corner. Sheila was there kneeling by the Border collie’s box, holding a bottle of milk for the little gray body lying among the eight black-and-white puppies.
“You came back,” Sheila said.
71
The New House kitchen was in pieces on the floor. Christopher Templeton, who did not cook, had risen early and decided that, with the staff absent for the Migration, he would make the entire house a full lumberjack’s breakfast. He pulled everything out of the drawers and cabinets while overlooking the most obvious well-used frying pans that hung unobtrusively from the ceiling. The kitchen was unusable.
Billy Quick considered taking everyone down to the Cottage, where Martha had stockpiled food for the Migration period, but he decided it was too early to deal with children. An outdoor cooking fire was ruled out due to the drought restrictions. It was distasteful and somewhat embarrassing, but begging for breakfast at the Hill House seemed like the best of a bad set of options.
Which was how, when Jim Hillsinger came in from an early walk, he found the entire New House around the oak table in the Hill House dining room. Twelve hours of independence should not be so hard for them to sustain, he thought. And yet here they were, enjoying breakfast and a fire (presumably lit by Billy) in the dining room fireplace that, as a matter of policy, was never lit before dinner. Hillsinger managed the pleasantries and even a joke, and Christopher Templeton said that Lila was hard at work in the kitchen.
Hillsinger passed through the two sets of swinging doors and found his wife negotiating multiple pans on the stovetop. The kitchen smelled like coffee and bacon and warm butter.
“Can I help?” he said.
“You may not,” Lila said. “You may, however, sit down and entertain our guests, who are somehow victims of the Migration.”
“How, exactly?” he said.
“The details are mysterious,” Lila said, and Jim went back through the swinging doors.
Thirty minutes before, Lila had been cracking eggs when Billy Quick appeared at the kitchen door, looking mortified. He was at the head of a gang. He must have explained why they were there. She couldn’t be sure—she had not been listening.
It has taken, Lila thought. She could tell, even through the screen door. He had noticed. Her capitulation would still be, for Billy, an advanced theory rather than knowledge, but she saw a new hesitation, a slight leaning forward. He wanted confirmation.
There is no conceivable book, Lila thought, for what comes next. She was in some form of love with Billy Quick—and also with her husband and her children and the life they had made. She loved this velocity, and she loved that stasis. She would choose and instead of or, and all instead of one. She had walked over the horizon.
“I’m so sorry to hear it,” Lila said when Billy finished talking, presumably about the New House kitchen. He had noticed. He was searching. And then she laughed, for the first time in a thousand years.
72
George said he had to find someone named Billy Quick. His aunt had instructed him to do this the minute he set foot on Seven Island, and he was worried it might be seen as rude that he had waited this long, until the morning after his arrival. Penny said she would go with him to the New House and introduce him to her uncle.
Uphill, the New House was quiet. No one responded to Penny’s knock. No one was visible through the windows. Only the Hill House showed signs of life. As a recently declared enemy of the Hillsingers, Penny would never have walked alone into the Hill House dining room alone, but now George opened the heavy front door and stepped inside. Penny followed, expecting to flee. A crescendo of adult laughter rose up and fell away.
The two children appeared at the dining room door just as Jim Hillsinger returned from the kitchen. Everyone turned toward them. Hillsinger had never seen the boy before.
“Good morning,” this new boy said in a strangely declamatory style, Hillsinger thought, as if he were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “Would you please tell me where I could find Billy Quick?”
The adults laughed.
“Not a word until your lawyer wakes up,” Christopher Templeton said to Billy, prompting another burst of laughter.
“You must be George,” Billy said. “Have a seat.”
George began to speak, but Billy stopped him.
“Eat first,” he said. The less these children said here in this house, Billy thought, the better for everyone.
Penny kept watch on Jim Hillsinger. He never looked at her directly, or only briefly, and she was relieved when the room’s attention shifted and the murmur of adult talk started again. Lila Hillsinger came in from the kitchen to bring them enormous plates of eggs, bacon, more pancakes, even coffee. Although Mrs. Hillsinger rubbed her back gently and asked how her father was, Penny was intensely aware of the exits. She was coiled and ready to run. And then the devil spoke.
“So, George,” Jim Hillsinger said, “how was your first night on Seven?”
Don’t answer, Penny thought. It’s a trick.
As far as George was concerned, this morning was much more promising than last night. This, finally, resembled the past three weeks: calm adult voices and food on china plates, followed by laughably simple questions. He was especially glad not to be in a room with James Hillsinger.
Penny, however, imagined all the different and equally bad ways that George could answer that question: Your son tried to kill me, he could say, or I slept in a barn. She set her legs against the table so she could vault back and run for the woods. If George made them angry, they might come for her first.
“This is the nicest place I’ve ever been,” George said.
“That’s a good answer,” Jim Hillsinger said.