Her eyes lit with curiosity, and she snapped her journal shut. “Yes, please. I would love that.”
She followed him to the edge of the woods, where he showed her how to look for good sticks and how high she wanted the sticks to be above the ground.
He tried to ignore how close that required them to be as he crouched beside her. Tried to ignore it when a strand of her hair brushed his cheek. Tried to ignore how memories of their kiss two nights ago kept rising in his mind.
He didn’t know the exact day she’d be leaving Alaska with her family and Dr. Ottingford, but it wouldn’t be long. While they might stay in Sitka for a week or so before departing, a month from now, their time together in the wilderness would be forgotten, left behind for only the mountains and forests to remember.
It happened every year at the end of an expedition. He said good-bye to people he’d been with day and night for months, rarely hearing from them again. His relationship with Bryony was no different.
So why did the thought of saying good-bye to her make his chest feel tight?
* * *
She should be more excited.For months, all Bryony had wanted was to know she’d be able to get home. And if standing on the sandy banks of the harbor in the small Tlingit village of Wrangell, Alaska, wasn’t confirmation that she’d be back in Washington, DC, soon, then she didn’t know what was.
Her father and brother and Dr. Ottingford couldn’t stop smiling. They were talking to some of the natives, her father pointing to trees and asking questions about the foliage, even though the town was covered in a dusting of snow. Mikhail was engaged in a serious conversation with a severe-looking man who wore a colorful cloak with beading on the edges. She assumed him to be the chief, but perhaps he was an elder. From what she could figure out, certain tribes had chiefs and others had elders, and she didn’t know which type of leader ran the village of Wrangell.
All she knew was that everyone was happy to finally be out of the wilderness—except her.
She knew she should be happy, knew she should be trying to learn everything she could about the flora and fauna from the native women. Knew she should be thankful that she was only a few days away from boarding a ship in Sitka headed for Seattle, where they’d take a train the rest of the way home.
So she couldn’t explain why the sight of the village made her throat grow thick. Why part of her wished she was still lost somewhere in the wilderness, trekking up a mountainside and watching as the valley below grew smaller and smaller.
She tried to take everything in, tried to commit as much of the village to memory as possible so she could sketch it in her journal later. The clan here respected Mikhail. That had been evident before they’d even pulled their canoes ashore, when people from the village had recognized him and started calling to him in Tlingit.
Two other men in finely appointed cloaks were standing with Mikhail and the Tlingit leader now, and they all seemed to be agreeing with what Mikhail had to say.
Not knowing what else to do, she found a log to sit on, pulled out her journal from her pack, and started sketching, but she didn’t get very far. Not because she ran out of time but because her gaze kept drifting to Mikhail. More and more men from the village came to talk to him, almost as though they respected him the way they might a chief.
Then a ship arrived. It was beautiful, sleek, and polished with masts that stretched toward the sky, and the sight of it made her feel even sicker. Everyone in the entire town was excited to see it, but she could barely stop herself from running to the bushes and retching. It belonged to Mikhail’s family somehow, and the captain said he could have them in Sitka by sometime tomorrow.
Mikhail spoke of his family in such normal terms. He talked about how he missed them, how much his oldest brother had sacrificed to send his two sisters to law school and medical school, and how his youngest brother still acted more like a boy than a man.
But the ship rocking gently in the water told a different story, as did the way the entire village of Wrangell reacted to Mikhail’s presence. The Amoses were more than just a large family that loved each other. They had both wealth and sway with the Indians.
“Do you want to eat?”
She turned to find Mikhail had somehow escaped his throng of admirers and come up beside her, holding fish and a dense cake in his hand.
For some reason, all she could think of was the rabbit they’d caught in her snare that morning, waiting to be roasted over the fire. He’d taught her in fifteen minutes how to do something she’d struggled for weeks to do on her own.
“You may as well.” He extended his hand closer. “Smoked salmon tastes better than anything Scully will cook aboard ship, trust me.”
“Are we leaving for Sitka today or in the morning?” She took the salmon from his hand and put a bite into her mouth, the flavors of fish and salt strong on her tongue.
“Today.” He gestured toward the ship, where crates were being lowered from the side into long, narrow canoes. “We’ll board as soon as the crew is done unloading the blankets.”
“Blankets? Are those... Does that mean...” She swallowed. “Are the blankets because of me?”
The skin around Mikhail’s eyes crinkled at the edges. “Of course. You know what the bargain was.”
The first canoe reached the beach, and villagers rushed to help lift the crates out of the boat. One man pried the top off a crate and held up a blanket. It was basic gray wool without the slightest bit of embellishment, but everyone reached out to touch it with excited smiles on their faces.
“You’re telling me that two hours after we arrived in Wrangell, one of your family’s ships just happened to arrive, and it was carrying two hundred blankets?” She turned back to Mikhail. “How did they know the blankets needed to be sent here?”
“They didn’t. The ship was carrying seventy-five blankets. I ordered them all to be dropped off here. We’ll get restocked when we go to Sitka and have the rest delivered before theAuroraheads back to Seattle, along with the pail of beads.” He said it as though it was nothing, as though he’d paid no more than a few pennies for her release, and rerouting his ship was about as inconvenient as being served green beans at dinner when he preferred peas.
Just how much was her freedom costing the Amoses? She opened her mouth, fully intending to offer to pay him back, but another question emerged instead. “If the warriors had taken me, would I have ended up here?”
