For a while they talked about ordinary things — the crops and livestock, and a bit of gossip — such as the dance last leaf-fall, when the two girls from the Hanniby Family had run off with two of the young men from the Styles. Disgrace and disowning followed, it went without saying.
“I guess I’d fare the same way, wouldn’t I, Chanter, if I just took to my heels and ran.”
“I guess you would,” Matt’s brother replied, easy, only his eyes suddenly alert and guarded. “But why’d you run anyhow? Have you seen someone you like? Take up with one of the farmgirls, boy. She’ll get it out your system. And you’ll be wed in spring.”
“To Thena Proctor.”
“To Thena Proctor.”
“I’ve never met her, Chant.”
“No you haven’t, boy. But others have on your behalf. She’s a good-looking lady. Our pa wouldn’t ever pick us any girl not fit. Take my wife. Pretty as a picture and strong as a bear.”
Matt looked off into the fire with his blue eyes full of trouble.
Chanter waited.
Matt said, “Did you ever hear — a tale of the Proctor girl?” “Yes.” Chanter grinned. “Gold hair, waist narrow as a rose stem, and can wrestle a deer to the ground.”
“How does she do that then, Chant?”
“How the heck do I know, Matt?”
Matt’s eyes came back from the hearth and fixed like two blue gun-mouths on Chanter’s own.
“Does she perhaps leap on its back, sink in her claws, fangs in its neck — drag it to the earth that way?”
Chanter winced. And Matt saw he wasn’t alone in hearing stories.
Matt added, slow and deadly, “Does her long hair get shorter, yet cover her all over? Do her paws leave pad-marks on snow? Are some of her white front teeth pointed and long as my thumb?”
Chanter finished his coffee.
“Where you hear this stuff?”
“Everywhere.”
“You must see it, sometimes men get jealous — our pa is rich and so we’ll be too — some men want to fright you. Malice.”
“Chant, you know I rather think these fellers were set — not to scare — but to warn me.”
“Warn you with horror tales.”
“Are they tales? They said—”
Chanter rose, angry and determined.
So Matt got up too. By now they were almost the same height.
They stood glaring at each other.
Chanter said, “They told you old man Proctor is a shape-switcher. He sheds his human skin of a full moon midnight and runs out the house a mountain lion.”
“Something like that. And she’s the same.”
“Do you think our pa”—shouted Chanter—“would hand-fast you to a—”
“Yes,” said Matt, cool and hard and steady, though his heart crashed inside him like a fall of rocks. “Yes, if the settlement was good enough. Enough land, money. The Proctors are a powerful Family. Yet no one else made a play for Thena.”
“Because they knew we Seatons would ask for her.”
Matt said, “This summer, late, about three weeks back, I had to ride up that way, through the forests. Let me tell you, brother, what I saw then.”
That evening Matt hadn’t been thinking at all of the Proctors. Some cattle had strayed, so he and his father’s hands rode into the woods above the valley. The landscape here was like three patterns on a blanket: the greener trees, birch, maple, oak, amberwood, with already a light dusting of fall red and gold beginning to show; next up the forests on their higher levels, spruce and larch and pine, dark enough a green to seem black in the leveling sunlight; last of all the mountains that were sky-color, etched in here and there by now with a line of white.
In less than two hours it would be sunfall. Once the cattle had been found, on the rough wild pasture against the woodland, they minded to make camp for the night and ride back to the Seaton farm the next day.
Matt had known most of these hands since boyhood. Some were his own age. They joked and played around while the coffee boiled on the fire. Then Ephran remembered a little river that ran farther up, where the first pines started. He and Matt and a couple of others decided on some night fishing there. It would be cooler, full moon too, when the flap-fish rose to stare at the sky and were easy caught.
After supper, going to the river, it was Ephran who spoke to Matt. “I guess you know. Joz Proctor’s place is all up that way.”
Matt said, “I suppose I did.” It was perhaps strange he hadn’t recalled. But then, he’d never been exactly certain where the Proctor farm and lands began. Hadn’t ever tried to learn. Never been tempted to come up and see. It seemed to him right then, as they walked on into the darkness of the forest, he hadn’t cared to, nor even wanted to remember now. He added, lightly, “Ever been there, Ephran?”
“Not I. It’s all right, Matt. We’re at least ten miles below the place.”
“Think old man Joz would reckon I was out to spy on him otherwise, to see what I was getting? Run me off?”
“No. Not that.”
They walked in silence for a while after this. The big moon was rising by then, leftward, burning holes between the trees.
Ephran, who was eighteen now, had never been one of the ones Matt had heard muttering about Joz and his golden daughter. The first time, when he had been fourteen, Matt had felt he overheard the mutters, anyhow. Later though he’d wondered if they meant him to, less from spite or stupidity than from that idea of forewarning — just as he was to say to Chanter.
What had the men said? “… bad luck for the boy. He don’t know no better. But Veniah Seaton should’ve.” “By the Lord, so he should.” And the lower, more somber voice of the old man in the corner of the barn: “Not a wife he’ll get, but a wild beast. A beast for a bride. God help him.”
There’d been other incidents through the years after that. In front of Matt even, once or twice — given like a piece of wit: “Proctor, that old puma-man—” “Joz Puma’s Farm. ” Matt took it all for lies. Then for games. Then—
Then.
The river appeared.
It was slender and coiling, moonlit now to sparkling white. The other men went on, and Ephran paused, as if to check his line.
“Listen up, Matt,” said Ephran, “you don’t want to worry too much. About her.”
“Why’s that?” said Matt, again light and easy.
“Because there are ways. Do your duty by her. There’ll be no hardship there. Do that, and let her keep her secrets. Then when the time’s right, you can be off. Not leave her, I don’t mean that, Seatons and Proctors have a union, you’ll have to stay wedded. But big place, the Proctor lands. Plenty to do. Just let her be. Don’t — try an’ rule her, or get on her bad side — jus’ do as you want and let her do as her wants. That’s the bestest way.”
Matt said, “So you think it’s true?”
Ephran scowled. “I don’t think no thing at all.”
“She’s a shape-twist.”
“I never said—”
“And her daddy before her.”
Ephran glared in his face. “Don’t you put words in my mouth. You may be the boss’s second-born but I’m freer ’an you. Ican go off.”
Matt had the urge to punch Ephran in the mouth. So instead he nodded. “Fair enough. Let’s go fish.”