She pivoted, pointing the ledge and cave out to Liam, who peered upward with one hand cupped to his brow.

"I don't see anything!" he shouted.

Elizabeth caught a flash of movement from the corner of her eye that brought her up short: Dutch Ton was standing on her porch. In one hand he held a haunch of venison; in the other, a hunting knife.

She blinked to dislodge the mist of the falls from her lashes, and she blinked again. There was a pulse in her neck that was beating out of rhythm; she put one finger to it to still it. Liam was at her ear, but she could not understand him. She raised a hand and he fell silent, crouching down as if to hide. As if he saw the danger, or perhaps smelled the fear that rolled off her like sweat.

It was him. Dutch Ton stood there on her porch, squinting into the sun. He wore a patch over one eye now, but~ he was wrapped in the same mangy buffalo robe she had last seen him wear at the campfire where Jack Lingo had tried to burn her.

She thought that perhaps she might be able to breathe again if she could only stand, but all the muscles in her legs seemed to have gone to jelly. In some part of her mind she was thankful for the fact that Hannah was safe in the cave behind her. In another, she knew that if she could stay where she was, and be still, he might not see her. The angle of the sun was in her favor.

She saw the red slash of his mouth opening and closing, spraying bits of meat. He was talking. There was another man behind him, just out of view inside the cabin. The door began to swing inward.

He is dead. Jack Lingo is dead. She said the words out loud and firmly: an incantation, a prayer. But the door continued to swing in a clean arc. As clean as the trajectory of a bullet, or a rifle stock swung in anger.

Spit filled her mouth in a bitter rush, and in her head a simple refrain: away away away. Elizabeth came to her feet with a jerk, barely noting the slick surface of the rock beneath her. She felt her moccasins lose purchase; too late. She threw her arms up and pitched forward into the gorge just as the second man stepped out into the sun, his hair and beard catching the light in a red—gold flare: Richard Todd.

Falling seemed to take a very long time: long enough to hear Liam's high—pitched scream, loud enough to be heard over the falling water. His scream echoed, or perhaps that was another voice, from behind the falls. She twisted away to protect her belly, taking the slap of the water at an awkward angle and plunging down to the bottom. A flash of pain as she struck her head on a ledge of rock and then she was shooting up, vaguely aware that the water was hazy red with blood and that it must be her own. She broke the surface gasping, kicking against the heavy tangle of her skirts without effect. The force of the water tumbled her, once and then again.

Elizabeth thought of Nathaniel and of the child, and she went down in a great tide of sorrow and regret.

* * *

Liam would dream of it for years: Many-Doves coming through the falls as soon as Elizabeth hit the water, diving after her like a hawk after a trout. But Richard Todd was closer: he had already gone in from the other side, dragged Elizabeth up by her hair and flipped her over the edge of the gorge before Doves got there. Liam didn't see what happened then because he was on his way, pushing until his leg burned like hellfire. By the time he got to the other side, the two of them were already on their knees next to her.

He told himself that dead people didn't bleed like that. No matter how white and still, somebody pumping blood the way she was had to be alive. Many-Doves had her hand pressed to Elizabeth's head above the left ear. The blood welled up between her fingers and wound over her arm and wrist like snakes.

With a single jerk, Todd ripped the sleeve from his shirt and handed it to Doves. She took Elizabeth's head in her lap, the wet hair trailing over the rounded mound of her belly. The tendons on her forearm popped with the effort of pressing the linen to the wound.

Todd bent over to lift Elizabeth's lids one after the other. He studied her eyes closely, and finally sat back on his heels looking thoughtful. Then he made a fist and jammed two knuckles hard into Elizabeth's breastbone. Liam flinched, but Elizabeth's eyes only fluttered open. Her face contorted briefly and then her eyes closed again.

Hannah and Falling—Day came out of the woods. Hannah threw herself down next to Elizabeth and burst into noisy tears. Before Liam could get to her, Richard Todd leaned over and put a hand on her shoulder.

Liam had never heard him speak Mohawk before. Now he spoke to Hannah in that language, and the sound of it brought her wet face up in blank amazement. She turned to her grandmother with a question. Falling—Day was bent over Elizabeth, and Liam could not see her face, but the answer she gave Hannah seemed to calm her further. She got up, wobbling a little, and wiping her face with the back of her hand, ran off toward the cabin.

* * *

Hannah ran. She ran for blankets. She ran for water, for rags, for her grandmother's baskets of herbs and roots. She ran down to the village to deliver Falling—Day's message to Axel; she ran on to the judge.

There, she collapsed in Curiosity's arms and sobbed for ten minutes before she could find words, Mahican or Kahnyen’keháka or English, to describe what had happened at Lake in the Clouds.

For all its boniness, Curiosity's lap was made for little girls, even one with legs as long as Hannah's. Curiosity held on tight and listened while Hannah told her and told her again, drawing the picture with words and her hands and sudden short bursts of tears, pressing her hands to her face and her face to Curiosity's apron front. She smelled of yeast and roasting goose and lye soap. Comforting smells. She could have gone to sleep there on Curiosity's lap in the middle of the judge's kitchen.