Fire Along the Sky Read Online Free Page A

when she must choose one kind of life or another or let someone else make the choice for her. For some the crucial moment came suddenly, without warning and when least expected; others saw it approaching, pushing up out of the ground like a weed.
    It was an image that would not leave her mind, and so she had finally spoken about it to her mother, holding the idea out in open palms like the egg of an unfamiliar and exotic bird.
    And how it had pleased her mother, this simple gift. She sat contemplating her folded hands for a moment, Quaker-gray eyes fixed on the horizon and a tilt to her head that meant her mind was far away, reliving some moment, recalling a phrase read last week or ten years ago. When she spoke, finally, it was not with the quotation Lily expected.
    She said, “There are so many choices available to you, such riches for the taking. The very best advice I can give you is very simple. You have heard me say it in different ways, but I'll put it as simply as I can. When it comes time to choose, try to favor the rational over the subjective.”
    At that Lily had laughed out loud, in surprise and disappointment. Who else had a mother who would say such a thing, and in such a studiously odd way? Other people were satisfied with quoting the Bible and old wives' wisdoms, but Lily had a mother who preferred Kant to the Proverbs. Who made decisions with her head when she could, and was convinced that in doing so, her other needs would be satisfied.
    Certainly she could point to even the most unconventional choices she had made in her life and argue that they were rational, and more than that: that she was happy with the choices she had made. As most of the other women Lily knew were happy with the lives they had.
    Her cousin Kateri had chosen a husband from the Turtle clan at Good Pasture and gone with him to live among the Mohawk on the Canadian side of the St. Lawrence. It was too early yet to know how well she had chosen, or how badly. Other women misstepped and struggled mightily forever after; there were a few like that in Paradise, burning bright with the anger they must swallow day by day.
    And then there was Hannah, her own sister, who had chosen to leave home and chosen well, in spite of the fact that the wars in the west had taken it all away from her. Now she was neither angry nor content but merely alive, as placid and blank as the clouds overhead and just as distant.
    The war was coming closer all the time, and while they had not heard a single shot fired and none of the men had gone to join the fighting—
not yet,
Lily corrected herself—there were casualties. Lily counted herself among them.
    Without the war she would have left two months ago for New-York City. The plan had taken a full year to finalize: she would live with her uncle and aunt Spencer in their fine house on Whitehall Street and study art with the teachers they had found for her. In time, when she had advanced far enough, she would travel with them to Europe where she could study the work of the great artists.
    But all of that had come to a sudden end, because men must fight and to do that they started wars. Her own brother was infected with that need, her twin brother. The strangeness of it never faded.
    Many-Doves was telling a story. Lily's mother laughed in response, a gentle hiccupping laughter that meant she was embarrassed. All these years living among the plain-speaking Kahnyen'kehàka women, but her mother still blushed and laughed like a proper young English lady when the talk turned to men and women and the things they were to each other.
    This is the life my mother chose
. Lily repeated this sentence to herself often, and every time she was overcome with admiration and resentment in equal measure.
             
    When Many-Doves decided the time was right they put down the hoes to eat in the shade of the birch trees. Lily filled empty gourds with water from the stream and they unwrapped a parcel of cornbread and boiled