"Would you like me to call you that?"
"If you'd like. I like whatever you call me." He chuckled. "Except when you're mad at me. Some of those names I don't like too well."
"Curtis," she said thoughtfully. "Curtis. I like it." She kissed him. "Curtis, I love you. I love you very much."
And when they got up in the morning, she still called him Curtis. She stopped running her horse, too, settling for a walking gait, or an easy trot. She's settling down, he told himself. At last.
In the beginning of Two-Month, with the ground bare, the big freeze struck. The fireplaces, never adequate in cold weather, seemed almost useless now. More blankets were piled on the beds, enough that they had to wake up to turn over. Ice froze in the pail in the kitchen, and despite the fireplace, burst the ceramic pitcher on the washstand in their bedroom. Macurdy let Blue Wing perch on the mantle in the living room, though the bird suffered from claustrophobia indoors. Then, blowing on his fingers from time to time, the squire of Macurdy Manor sat down and drew plans for a brick stove, with flues to be built in the walls between the living room and the rooms adjacent, intending to build it the next summer.
The big freeze lasted for four days, cold enough that when he went outside, even at midday, the hairs in his nostrils stiffened. Something which, back home in Washington County, was taken to mean the temperature was below zero.
This time the cold broke without a storm; on the fifth day it simply warmed up. Not up to freezing-not that warm-but the bright sun felt good on his face, and the cows were let out for the exercise. The sparrows and crows were out too, those that hadn't died. And Blue Wing. After five days with only brief hours outside, he flew high and wide. "The river is frozen," he announced when he returned, and said that was something rare for the Green. The ground was certainly frozen-as hard as the new concrete pavement on Main Street back in Salem.
The next day dawned warmer than the day before. Toward noon the temperature rose above freezing, the bright sun shining on a slick of mud atop the frozen ground, and Macurdy and Melody saddled their horses for a ride. The cattle tracks went directly to the pasture above the woods, and when the two riders got there, Macurdy rode around examining what condition it was in, while Melody rode down to see the frozen river, and Blue Wing soared high overhead. The pasture grass was a mixture, and grazed-down enough that Macurdy wasn't sure what species dominated. Nor how much winter-kill there might be, given such severe cold without snow cover.
He heard Blue Wing shrieking something and looked up, to see the raven spiraling down, almost diving. The short hairs bristled on Macurdy's neck. Then he discerned the words: "Macurdy! Macurdy! The ice has broken! Melody is in the water!"
Thumping Hog's flanks with his heels, Macurdy galloped as recklessly as Melody ever had. At the river bank he pulled up. The hole was mostly full of broken ice, and only her horse's head showed, whinnying wildly. She's gone under the ice, Macurdy thought, and galloped wildly downstream, where eighty yards away he could see water kept open by rapids. If he could get there before she was carried through and under the next ice…
He got there just as she emerged, and Hog didn't hesitate when Macurdy drove him into water shockingly, deathly cold, reaching her near the foot of the rip. Leaning down, he grabbed her sodden coat with a grip of iron, then Hog fought their way across the current back to shore. Macurdy jumped down and examined her; there was no trace of spirit aura; little even of body aura.
He howled then, howled at the sky like a hound. But only once before turning her over on her stomach and beginning the artificial respiration he'd learned in grade school, at the same time chanting brokenly a formula Arbel had taught him. He pressed and relaxed, pressed and relaxed, until, soaked as he was, he was shivering almost too violently to continue. God! he prayed silently, let her live, and I'll do anything you ask! He knew that artificial respiration would be useless if long interrupted, yet feared that any life which might remain would freeze out of her, so after half an hour, his hands and mind numbed by cold and shock, he stopped. High clouds had moved in to block the sun, as if God himself had turned against him.
Almost too cold to function, he struggled the dead body across Hog's shoulders, then managed, barely, to pull himself into the saddle. At the house, he carried what had been Melody into the living room, while his houseman, who'd come into the room to investigate, melted back out in shock. There was no trace of aura now. He stripped her, dried her, wrapped her in blankets, and laid her out in front of the fireplace. Then, long after there was any use in it, he began artificial respiration again. He had only a vague notion of time, but finally was aware that her body was stiffening.
Moving woodenly, he carried her into the bedroom, washed her, painstakingly brushed her hair, and got her into clean clothes-her dress uniform, stored in a cedar chest against moths. When that was done, he called for his houseman, who came in wide-eyed and silent.
"Have Dellerd harness Socks and hitch him to the buggy. I'm taking my wife to Teklapori."
Not trusting his voice, the houseman nodded silently and disappeared. When he was gone, Macurdy wept violently for about a minute-hard racking sobs that shook his whole body, while the tears sluiced. Then it passed. Stripping himself before the bedroom fire, he rubbed his body with a rough towel till he was red and tingling with renewed circulation. That done, he dressed in dry clothes, put on a heavy coat, and carried the body out to the buggy-a sort of surrey with the back enclosed-where he lay it gently on the back seat. Then, after giving a few instructions to the houseman and farm foreman, he drove off down the road toward the capital, a silent Blue Wing flying low overhead.
PART 7: Goodbyes 41: Farewell to Melody
" ^ "
I took it easy, driving in to Teklapori; I didn't want to give her body any bumpier a ride than need be. It's not like I thought she was still in it or anything. It was a matter of respect. And besides, it seemed like all of her I had left.
I felt tired and empty, and kind of half conscious, as if my mind was turned off, but every now and then I'd come out of it and look around. After a while it started to get dark, so I stopped and called to Blue Wing, and asked if he'd like to ride on the folding roof. I suspected he wouldn't, on something moving like that, but he didn't much like flying after dark, either, and it seemed as if he wanted to go with me. Or with Melody, actually; him and her had gotten to be such good friends that fall and winter. Anyway he didn't say a thing, just flew up there and perched, and on we went.
After another couple hours, I stopped and put a feedbag of oats on Socks's nose, and when I got back on the seat, Blue Wing was perched on the arm rest on the rider's side, claustrophobia be darned. I didn't say anything when I sat down, but after we started off again, I reached over and stroked his head a couple of times. "Thanks, old friend," I said, and started crying again. After a while he spoke. I don't think he had the equipment to talk really quietly, but he kept it halfway soft.
"That's not her back there, you know."
"I know," I answered. "But I've got to treat her body with respect. She lived in it for more than twenty years, and loved me with it, and I loved her with it."
"Do you feel her now?" he asked.
I shook my head. "No. Do you?"
"Yes." He paused half a minute, then went on. "She tells me you will too, when you go to sleep tonight."
He meant it, I didn't doubt. I didn't know whether she'd really talked to him, or if he only imagined it, but he believed what he told me. "How does she seem?" I asked him.