The Plains of Abraham

Chapter 21

Rising before dawn became a habit. I wanted to see the sunrise.

A wooden staircase ascended to a walkway rimming the top of the palisades. The only intruders upon my privacy were a couple of yawning sentries, their posture confessing a long night of monotonous duty. They ignored me. They wanted to watch the sunrise too.

"Unanchored" best described my feelings. My childhood home, my mother and sister, were behind me. Ahead was mystery and myth, and probably no small amount of adventure. In contrast my present locale was a paradise in the wilderness, a place where one might choose to stay put.

The thought rattled me at first: to remain at Bounty Rock. To court someone like Adrienne. To eat heartily, to sleep in peace. The more time I spent on the walkway, the more I thought about it, the less the idea unnerved me. Yet I could let go neither of what I'd left behind nor of what Malcolm promised lay ahead.

From the walkway I had the highest possible view of the Markette valley. No trees blocked the horizon or the sky above, which grew more saturated with each passing minute I gazed at them. The sun crept over the horizon, first winking at me, then bringing all its light and might to bear and illuminating the world.

Ellanoyans kicked off their morning bustle as soon as the first glow burnished the sky. Citizens hurried to and fro, always carrying something. Always traveling in a straight line, ferrying their goods with an equally linear purpose. They were the happiest people I'd ever met, and the hardest working. You had to wonder about a correlation between the two.

A breeze rose with the sun. It shifted directions on a whim. From the east, then the west, then the east again. It occurred to me that winds by definition were in motion, always journeying from one place to another, with no permanent home. If they ever stopped moving, they died.

*

After a few days of mending, Malcolm felt strong enough to attend a potlatch. The entire community sat in a circle around a colossal bonfire. I carried Malcolm to the event in my arms, with Eva accompanying closely, refusing to leave his side. Adrienne and Eli joined us. Everyone on mats of rushes.

Adrienne's father Berthold, the king, greeted Malcolm and me personally as he entered the clearing. "How beautiful the sun is, now that you are among us." He took his seat on a platform slightly raised above the assembly.

"How does he know how beautiful the sun is?" I asked Adrienne. "It's nighttime."

She answered, "The sun is no less beautiful when you can't see it."

"Well, you have me there."

Food was passed around on rectangular wooden platters. Wild cow, thick grilled steaks. Pheasant and quail. Catfish, walleye, bass. Mounds of vegetables: celery, potatoes, broccoli. Carrots as long as my hand and thick as a cabin pole—Gideon should be here, I thought. Everything drenched in butter. And of course corn on the cob. Red and white wine in squat earthen jugs.

Malcolm's spirits picked up as he ate. He tasted the wine critically and said it would serve well for mass.

"Does it qualify as sacramental wine?" I asked. "Pagans made it, you know."

He took another sip and swished it around in his mouth.

"I'll say a blessing over it," he mused. "You can fix pretty much any deficiency with a blessing." He lifted his cup. "Fill 'er up!"

The dance, we were told, was in our honor. First the singers lined up. They were teenage boys and girls. They lifted their seraphic voices in slow, harmonized chords that sounded like God's own choir. No words, just the sound of human voices. Like wind instruments. The notes rising and falling, and rising each time higher again. Until I thought the song would move the clouds with its grace.