Chapter 5
5
In the section of the longhouse set aside for “school,” ten-year-old Noah crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Ruth. “We already learned about multiplication. That’s for babies.”
Ruth cast her eyes to the ceiling and prayed for patience. “If you know it already, then you won’t have any trouble solving these problems.”
“But why, Auntie Ruth?” he whined.
“No whining.”
She didn’t want to be here either. But who cared what she wanted? She’d thought her days of homeschooling were over.
“At least let me go to school,” she’d begged Luke. “How am I supposed to teach them things I don’t even know myself?”
“You aren’t. You know enough already. They don’t need to know any more than you do.”
“But the State?—”
Luke had raised his hand to cut her off. “They have no say anymore. It’s up to me.”
Ruth wasn’t so sure about that. Now that the Chilkoots were on the State of Alaska’s radar, it might be harder to get away with that old lackadaisical approach to education.
Maybe they were glad to be rid of the situation, and especially the need to send caseworkers all the way out here. Did anyone really care what one isolated group of settlers did in the mountains?
Sitting cross-legged under the open window, Sarah looked to be on the edge of tears. When Ruth tried to catch her eye, she busied herself with buttoning her cuff. What was there to say? For a brief moment, freedom, in all its disorienting glory, had blown through their lives. It had been both terrifying and intoxicating. And now it was over.
Not everyone minded. Little Seth, seven years old, seemed unfazed by the change. Thirteen-year-old Miller was delighted that he didn’t have to sit in a classroom with a bunch of kids who were ahead of him in math and English. “Who cares about that stuff anyway?” he’d said a few times. “I just want to work with the other men. Why do I have to be stuck inside?”
“Okay, everyone put down your pencils. We’re going to try something a little different,” Ruth said. She was the teacher, right? That was the job Luke had assigned her. Shouldn’t she decide what to teach? “We’re going to exercise our imaginations today with some creative storytelling.”
Sarah looked up, her woebegone expression turning to interest. Even the freckles scattered across her nose seemed to brighten. “Like writing? I loved writing in my journal in Ms. Maura’s class.”
“Yes, but we’re not going to write anything down.” If Luke got hold of it, he’d be furious that she’d strayed from the approved curriculum of the 3 R’s. “We’re just going to say it. That’s how storytelling began, before there was paper or pens. I’ll start, and then we’ll go around the room and everyone gets to add onto the story. You can say whatever you want, as long as it’s not a bad word, of course.”
She had the attention of all the kids now, and her heart swelled. When Luke had laid down the law about her new role, which was the same as her old role, she’d experienced a flash of such despair that a shocking thought had occurred to her.
She could leave. She wasn’t a prisoner here.
Immediately, she’d dismissed it. What would the kids do without her? She’d been their pillar of stability for the past year. She couldn’t just walk away from them.
“Okay, I’ll start us off. Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there lived an ogre.” She’d intended to say “prince,” but the word “ogre” had come out instead. It prompted a flurry of questions.
She held up a hand for silence. “An ogre is big and ugly and scary, and some of them are green.”
“ What ?” Miller scrambled to his feet. “You’re lying. There’s no such things as ogres.”
“This is a story, Miller. I’m making it up. It doesn’t have to be real.”
“What’s the point of that? This is stupid. I’m going out to work.” He stomped away before she could get another word out.
Maybe she should have stuck to multiplication.
“What about the ogre, Auntie Ruth?” Noah kneeled on his seat so he could see better. “Was it a good ogre or a bad one?”
“Well, do you want to take it from here, Noah? What do you think?”
“Bad ogre,” he decided. “He likes to stomp people.”
Now they were getting somewhere. In her experience, stories could be a way of processing emotions that were too difficult to manage otherwise. Without her secret stash of paperback novels, who knew where she’d be now?
Well, probably right where she was, she thought ruefully.
“Why does he like to stomp people?” she asked. “Anyone want to go next?”
Sarah raised her hand. “I’ll go. One day all the people who lived near the ogre decided to get rid of him because they were sick of getting stomped on. So they dug a big hole and filled it with bees.”
“Yes!” The classroom erupted in laughter and clapping. “Did he get stung?” Even shy Lilith wanted to know.
“Well, he was wearing boots. They were so big, about the size of boats.” Sarah was drawing the story out, enjoying the open-mouthed attention of her brothers and sisters. “But there were so many bees that he couldn’t stomp them. Some of them hopped onto his boots and started crawling up his big hairy legs.”
“Yay!” The kids cheered. Ruth watched with a sense of awed pride as Sarah threw herself into her story. Where had this talent for storytelling come from? She had a dim memory of someone telling her stories at bedtime, tucking her in, but it was so distant that she couldn’t even identify the woman. It must have been Naomi or one of her aunts.
And then all the raucous noise stopped. Ruth turned to see Luke at the door, scowling at Sarah. A remote frown had always been his default expression. His head was shaped like a hatchet, blunt and square, his eyes a hard gray. She knew that he ruled through fear. It worked.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. Sarah’s face lost every bit of its color, and she dropped her head to look at the floor.
“It was me.” Ruth stepped forward. “I’m trying out a new way to learn writing.” Writing was one of the 3 R’s after all. “Sarah was just following my instructions.”
“Both of you, come with me.” He jerked his head.
“No.” Ruth spread her arms wide to block Sarah from coming forward. “I’ll come. Let Sarah stay here. She was being obedient. And someone needs to watch the others.”
Luke gave a grudging nod. Obedience was all-important, after all, second only to loyalty.
Later, Sarah snuck into the potato cellar where Luke had ordered Ruth to stay until he decided otherwise.
“How many?” she whispered.
“You shouldn’t be here. Only five.” Ruth didn’t mention that they’d been especially harsh. Five lashes with the willow, and she could still feel every one.
“I brought you some salve.” Sarah handed her a small jar. It was so dark in the cellar that Ruth had to fumble for it. The potato cellar was dank and dim, and it was supposed to be a punishment. But Ruth had been down here enough to know how to get through it—she let her imagination fly. At the edge of her thoughts, she could already hear the chatter of the sophisticated party guests, the creme de la creme of society, all waiting for her arrival.
That was why she’d shared the storytelling exercise with the kids—so they’d know how to survive too. So they’d have a tool to help them through times like this.
It was worth it, even though being marched into the potato cellar was humiliating and her back still stung.
“Thank you. Now you should get out of here,” she told Sarah. “You’ll be next if he catches you.”
“I don’t care. I’d rather be here with you. I hate him.”
Her fierceness shocked Ruth. No one ever said things like that out loud here. “We’re not supposed to hate.”
“Then he shouldn’t be so hateful.” Sarah wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth. “You know what he told me? He said you were a bad influence and I need to stop going to classes. He says I know enough to contribute to the family.”
A shiver went straight to Ruth’s core. “Contribute to the family” could mean a number of things. Unlike Ruth, Sarah wasn’t a Chilkoot by blood. In other words, she was marriage material.
In no way was her little sister ready to get married. There were laws out there in the outside world—she knew about them through the caseworker. But the Chilkoots followed their own laws, and in Luke’s mind, the need to grow the community outweighed any other consideration. Especially any one individual’s wishes.
“Did he say anything else?”
“Yes. He said if I behave myself, I’ll have a choice. If I don’t, I won’t.”
Not good. Luke had many ways to exercise control, and fear was just one of them. Dangling the illusion of choice was another.
“Something’s not right,” Sarah burst out. “Don’t you feel it? Ever since he came back, it’s different. I heard some of those new men talking to each other and they were speaking a different language . What if he makes me marry one of them? I don’t like them. They’re scary.”
“He said you’d have a choice.” Even saying that felt weak, and Sarah let out a snort of contempt.
“Between one old man and another? That’s not a choice. You know what else Papa said? He said his biggest mistake was letting you sell wool in town because that’s how you met Daniel. He says he can’t trust you now, and that’s why none of us can leave the property anymore.”
Ruth froze. No one ever said that name anymore. Daniel —the man who’d wanted to marry her, the man who’d died in an avalanche because of Luke. Daniel should be alive today. The fact that he wasn’t…
Luke is dangerous.
That red alarm truth flashed through all the layers of training and intimidation that came with growing up as a Chilkoot.
Luke is dangerous. We’re not safe here. I’m not safe here.
Urgency raced through her nervous system. If Luke was saying openly that he didn’t trust her, she was in trouble. Mentioning Daniel—that was a threat. He was also trying to turn Sarah against her. He probably already had a husband lined up for her and didn’t want to have to deal with Ruth’s opinion about it.
Maybe that was the real reason he’d sent Ruth to the potato cellar—so she couldn’t interfere with his plans. “Sarah, I think we should?—”
She broke off. Could she trust Sarah? They were all trained not to keep secrets from Luke and Naomi. She wouldn’t blame Sarah if she panicked and ran to Luke with Ruth’s rebellious impulse.
So be it. If this backfired, she’d suffer the consequences. But she couldn’t just go along anymore, and she couldn’t let Sarah get married off without her consent.
“I think we should leave here. Tonight.”
In the darkness, she heard Sarah’s quick indrawn breath. “You do?”
What would happen if they left? Ruth wasn’t a prisoner here—she was over eighteen. But Sarah? That was different. Would they come after her? Where could she and Sarah go? How would they get there? What about the other kids?
The glittering ballroom hovered at the edge of her imagination. Oh, how she wished she could disappear into that fantasy. Those imaginings had helped her survive until now. But she mentally dismissed the ballroom, and it vanished.
In this moment, survival required something else. Action.
“I do. And here’s how we’re going to do it. Are you with me?”