Gunwitch by David Michael Page B

native Amerigon herbs. Mama Mancino and her girls already bustled about, dressed and alert, when Margaret untangled herself from Janett.
    Margaret pulled on her borrowed trousers, and folded her skirt. She would not need the skirt again until their trip was over. Which should be in less than three days. After the months of their trip, Da seemed impossibly close, only just out of reach. As if he were in the next room.
    Suddenly, she felt afraid of seeing Da again. How long had it been? Nearly four years? Would he still recognize his Little Puncher? Would she still recognize him?
    “Where is your skirt?” Janett asked, distracting her from her distress.
    Margaret looked at Janett, who was still groggy and pale and disheveled. She could not remember when Janett had looked so out of sorts, even in the morning. Mama Mancino’s spicy food had not been kind to her older sister.
    Margaret smiled at her sister, and took in a huge breath through her nose. “It’s time for breakfast,” she said. “Can’t you smell it?” She laughed when Janett turned away. “You need to get ready.”
    Janett did not show herself until breakfast was finished, much to the disappointment of the Mancino men, young and old. But they seemed to feel adequately rewarded when Janett finally came out of the shared bedroom. Even the younger boys stopped what they were doing and watched Janett make her entrance.
    Margaret shook her head as she saw her sister. The disheveled hair had been brushed to a sheen and arranged to best present the perfect face–which, though still pale, showed none of the puffy eyes nor other evidence of poor sleep. Janett wore the same dress as yesterday, but it had–somehow–been cleaned and straightened. Margaret wondered, as she had wondered most of her life, how Janett could create such a transformation. Miss Rose had her guns and her magic. Janett made magic with a hair brush and a corset.
    “Always you rush rush rush,” Mama Mancino said to Miss Rose as they gathered on the dock and prepared to leave. “The sun, she is not even fully awake and you go.”
    “You were up before we were, Mama,” Miss Rose said.
    Mama Mancino snorted. “With so many lazy kids, and a lazy husband, what else is a good wife to do?”
    Chico’s hearty laugh drowned out everyone else’s. He squeezed his wife and spun her around. “It is you, Rosa, that makes her like this, my Mama Mancino. When you are away, she is gentle and loving and quiet as a mouse.”
    Now it was Mama Mancino’s laugh that echoed off the lake.
    Margaret could still hear the couple’s laughter as she and Janett sped across the brightening lake, once again sharing the small bench in their pirogue.
    * * *
    In the middle of the morning, they reached the mouth of what Mr. Thomas announced as the Amicizia River. They took a short break, eating some of the food Mama Mancino had insisted they accept. Janett declined to partake despite Margaret’s insisting. Once they had eaten, they pointed their boats into the river’s current and continued.
    The Amicizia’s channel twisted back and forth, and twice during the afternoon, the girls had to walk as the pirogues were dragged across the land from one bend in the river to the next.
    Margaret noticed the nature of the bayuk changing as they traveled, becoming less swamp-like. The trees grew taller and further apart. The river became wider, with fewer side channels and sandbars.
    Again, Margaret found herself looking at Miss Rose, wondering how an Englishwoman could seem so at home in such a wild place. In the light of day, even in the soft gray-green light of the bayuk, the events of the night before faded. Miss Rose looked like nothing so much as a scout, a woman of the woods.
    When they stopped for lunch, Margaret made herself sit down near Miss Rose. Neither Miss Rose nor Chal talked as they ate. Instead, they kept a constant watch, the two of them covering opposite directions, looking past each other and peering into the