Page 17 of The Giver of Stars
They stopped in a clearing. Margery dismounted, pulling a water bottle and some apples from her saddle pack, passing them out, then taking a swig from the bottle. ‘It didn’t work then,’ she said, nodding towards Isabelle’s leg. ‘The walking thing.’
Isabelle’s eyes widened. ‘Nothing is going to work,’ she said. ‘I’m a cripple.’
‘Nah. You ain’t.’ Margery rubbed an apple on her jacket. ‘If you were, you couldn’t walk and you couldn’t ride. Youcan clearly do both, even if you are a little one-ways.’ Margery offered the water to Alice, who drank thirstily, then passed it to Isabelle, who shook her head.
‘You must be thirsty,’ Alice protested.
Isabelle’s mouth tightened. Margery regarded her steadily. Finally, she reached out with a handkerchief, rubbed the neck of the water bottle, then handed it to Isabelle, with only the faintest eye-roll at Alice.
Isabelle raised it to her lips, closing her eyes as she drank. She handed back the bottle, pulled a small lace handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her forehead. ‘It is awfully warm today,’ she conceded.
‘Yup. And no place on earth better than the cool of the mountains.’ Margery strode down to the creek and refilled her bottle, screwing the lid back on tightly. ‘Give me and Patch two weeks, Miss Brady, and I promise you, legs or no, you won’t want to be anywhere else in Kentucky.’
Isabelle looked unconvinced. The women ate their apples in silence, fed the horses and Charley the cores, then mounted again. This time, Alice noted, Isabelle scrambled up by herself without complaint. She rode behind her for a while, watching.
‘You liked the children.’ Alice rode up next to her as they started on the track to the side of a long green field. Margery was some distance ahead, singing to herself, or perhaps to the mule – it was often hard to tell.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You looked happier. At the school.’ Alice smiled tentatively. ‘I thought you might have enjoyed that part of today.’
Isabelle’s face clouded. She gathered up her reins and half turned away.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Brady,’ said Alice, after a moment. ‘My husband tells me I speak without thinking. I’ve obviouslydone it again. I didn’t mean to be … intrusive or rude. Forgive me.’
She pulled her horse back so that she was once again behind Isabelle Brady. She cursed herself silently, wondering whether she would ever be able to find the right balance with these people. Isabelle plainly didn’t want to communicate at all. She thought of Peggy’s clique of young women, most of whom she only recognized in town because they scowled at her. She thought of Annie, who, half the time, looked at her as if she’d stolen something. Margery was the only one who didn’t make her feel like an alien. And she, to be fair, was a little odd herself.
They had gone another half-mile when Isabelle turned her head so that she was looking over her shoulder. ‘It’s Izzy,’ she said.
‘Izzy?’
‘My name. People I like call me Izzy.’
Alice barely had time to digest this when the girl spoke again. ‘And I smiled because … it was the first time.’
Alice leaned forward, trying to make out the words. The girl spoke so quietly.
‘First time for what? Riding in the mountains?’
‘No.’ Izzy straightened up a little. ‘The first time I’ve been in a school and nobody was laughing at me for my leg.’
‘You think she’ll come back?’
Margery and Alice sat on the top step of the stoop, batting away flies and watching heat rise off the shimmering road. The horses had been washed and set loose in the pasture and the two women were drinking coffee, stretching creaking limbs and trying to summon the energy to check and enter the days’ books in the ledger.
‘Hard to say. She don’t seem to like it much.’
Alice had to admit she was probably right. She watched as a panting dog walked along the road, then lowered itself wearily into the shade of a nearby log store.
‘Not like you.’
Alice looked up at her. ‘Me?’
‘You’re like a prisoner sprung from jail most mornings.’ Margery sipped her coffee and gazed out at the road. ‘I sometimes think you love these mountains as much as I do.’
Alice kicked at a pebble with her heel. ‘I think I might like them better than anywhere on earth. I just feel … more myself up here.’
Margery glanced at her and smiled conspiratorially. ‘This is what people don’t see, wrapped up in their cities, with the noise and the smoke, and their tiny boxes for houses. Up there you can breathe. You can’t hear the town talking and talking. No eyes on you, ’cept God’s. It’s just you and the trees and the birds and the river and the sky and freedom … Out there, it’s good for the soul.’
