Retching wildly Sid wriggled out from beneath Shine and ran out the door. I lurched to my feet, staggering after him. At the door I stopped and looked back. Josie was still standing there, her body arched forward, her hands held out in front of her as if they still held the axe. Not knowing whom to run to, I sunk down onto the stoop and dropped my head in my hands.

"Kit!"

Sid was standing in front of me, water dripping off him from where he had dunked his head in the gully's brook. His breathing was coming in quick, heavy spurts, and his face, cleaned of blood, was as white as a sun-bleached sheet. Inside the house, Josie had dropped to the floor and was rocking her body to and fro, to and fro, like she had done on the day of Nan's passing. Only she wasn't moaning and crying on this day. She was quiet, as quiet as sin, staring at the blood-soaked face of the man she had just killed.

Then Sid was stepping past me. He grabbed hold of Josie's hand and, grabbing hold of mine, hauled me up from the stoop and led us both down to the gully. We sat there like statues, excepting for Josie's rocking, rocking, rocking.

"We've got to hide him."

I was still, not able to think past the motion of Josie's rocking.

"We've got to hide him."

It was Sid. He fell to his knees before me, his hands grasping mine.

"Do you hear me, Kit? We've got to hide him. Nobody knows but us. And we're not telling." He had taken off his glasses somewhere, and his eyes were bare without them. "We're going to drag him down the gully," he was saying. "Then we're going to put him in his boat and send him adrift. Nobody'll ever know."

"Someone will find him," I whispered.

"It won't matter."

"They'll know it was us."

"No! How can they? No one's seen Shine since he's come back. Why would they connect him with us?"

"I don't know, I don't know. The reverend'll find out. And then he's goin' to send us away."

"No he won't," Sid yelled, shaking me hard. "Do you hear me, Kit? I told you and I told you. Nobody's going to take you away from me. I won't let them." He let go of me and gripped Josie's rocking body. "Stop it! Stop it, Josie, do you hear me? It don't matter that you killed that fuckin' animal. It don't matter. Now listen here, the two of you. We got to get Shine's stinking body down the gully. All right?"

Sid was back to gripping my hands again, but my eyes were closed and all I could think was that Josie had killed Shine and he was bleeding all over our canvas floor and she was never gonna stop rocking, never gonna stop rocking.

"Kit!" Sid's hand smacked across my face."Kit, it's shock! You're both in shock, but you've got to come out of it. We've got to get rid of Shine. Do you understand me? We've got to get him out of there!"

I nodded.

"Thata girl." He smiled weakly, then taking my mother's hand, squeezed it gently.

"Josie, Kit and me's going to get rid of Shine. Now, you wait here, do you hear me? You just wait right here till Kit and I gets back."

Josie kept staring straight ahead, rocking to and fro, to and fro a "She's going to be fine," Sid said, leaping to his feet. "Come on. She's going to be fine."

We walked back to the house. The smell of blood and fear drenched the air, and the room was alive with black fish flies swarming around Shine's bleeding head. Covering my mouth with my hand, I watched as Sid kicked the axe to one side and turned Shine onto his back.

"Take a leg," he ordered weakly. "I'll take the other one and we'll drag him. Be easier once we gets going down the gully."

We lifted a leg each and started dragging. Josie looked up as we come out through the door, and seeing Shine's body bumping over the stoop behind us, scrambled to her feet and ran up to the woods.

"She's gone to the camp," I said.

Sid nodded and we kept on going, sweating and panting in the heat. Once we came to the gully we dragged him straight down through the brook, the water washing away the bloodied trail as we went. His boat was hauled up on the beach, right in front where the gully ended, and after a spell of tugging and pulling and shoving, we finally got Shine into it. Putting our shoulders against the bow, we shoved it off from shore and watched as it bobbed gently over the growing swells.

There was a bit of a southerly picking up and the boat would be in the middle of the bay soon enough, moving away from Haire's Hollow and drifting further down the shore. And perhaps, I was thinking, if a big enough wind picked up, it might take it straight out to the open seas, and nobody would ever see it or Shine again.

"Let's start cleaning," Sid said quietly.

We retraced our steps, tossing every blood-soaked rock and blade of grass that we come across into the brook. When we got to the house, Sid went to the camp looking for Josie, while I went to the well for water. She wasn't rocking so bad when Sid brought her back. Still, she wasn't talking either, and her eyes were dazed, and as soon as she come inside, she ran to her room and slammed the door.

Ripping up one of Nan's sheets, Sid dropped to his knees and began soaking up the blood. I kept bringing in buckets of water from the well, and after an hour of steady scrubbing, there wasn't a trace left of Shine.

"The crackie!" I burst out.

"What?"

"Shine's dog! Where is it?"

Dropping to my knees, I searched under the daybed and crawled across the floor to search behind the stove.

"Kit, the dog's gone," Sid said, helping me up off the floor.

"No! It was here. It was here," I cried. "Help me."

Pushing Sid away, I ran down the hall and searched under the bed in Nan's room and in her closet while Sid looked through mine and Josie's.

"He must've run off," Sid said, coming back in the kitchen. "Come on, we have to get rid of our clothes."

"Our clothes?"

"They're full of blood," he said quietly.

"Oh." I looked down at my blood-stained shorts and blouse, and at his shirt.

"Are you going to be all right, Kit?"

I nodded.

"I'll find you a T-shirt," I said and went down the hall to my room. After I had changed, I searched through the closet and found an old shirt of my mother's that looked close enough to a man's and brought it back to Sid. "What about Josie?" I asked, stuffing my stained garments into the stove besides his.

"I already checked her. She's clean." He went outside the door and, returning with the kerosene can, poured the flammable liquid over the clothes. Standing back, he lit a match and tossed it in the stove. Flames shot up through the top hole, and Sid pulled the cover back in place.

I looked around the kitchen. The sun poured through the windows, showing dust motes floating through its beams and casting splashes of yellow around my feet and the clean canvas floor. Clean! Everything clean! Except for the pictures burning through our minds. How now were we to clean those? I looked to where Sid was standing by the stove, watching me, and if there were birds living in this house, then the silence that fell between us would've been the storm that they'd still their singing for.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

GOD'S LAW IT WAS LATE EVENING WHEN THE WINDS SHIFTED. Roaring up the bay, they brought with them the lacing rain and foga"and Shine's boat. I watched it from my room window, ploughing through the white caps and heading for the beaches of Haire's Hollow like some ghastly phantom ship, heavily toiling beneath its burden of death, and with the prowling winds at its helm. Fear set my teeth chattering and I pulled back from the window and stared instead at my reflection, and seen how the yellow of my hair blended into the yellow of the lamplight behind me like a great, flickering halo, and I seen what I first thought were raindrops squiggling down the pane were tears streaking down my face. And then I heard what I first thought was the wind howling was the sound of someone screaming. Pressing my face back against the window, I strained to see through the dark, and there, standing on the edge of the gully, her face whipped by lashing strands of red, was Josie, her rain-drenched clothes clinging to her body, and her fists aimed at Shine's boat. I raced outside and, coming up behind, grabbed her by the arms. She kept screaming and shaking her fists until I got her back inside the house and shut the door.

I scolded her, gentle like, as I skinned off her wet clothes and wrung the water out of her hair. Wrapping one of Nan's knitted shawls around her shoulders, I sat her in the rocker by the stove and poured her a cup of tea. Her lips were blue and she was shivering out of her skin. I stoked up the fire to warm her, and all the while I talked to her, like Sid would've done.

"No need to be scared of Shine no more. He's in God's hands now, and Sid's not goin' to let anything happen to you. No one's goin' to know we did it. And don't go worryin' about what God thinks. He seen what Shine was doing to Sid and me. And if it weren't for you, Shine might've killed me and Sida"or just as well as killed us both. And if all of that don't come across to God, you can be sure Nan's watchin' all what's happenin' and is doin' her part to fix things right. She always said you were given to her on account of her being smart enough for the two of you. So don't think she's not remindin' God now, of how it was him that took her away in the first place, leavin' you behind to fend for yourself.

"Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if she got a flock of angels together right now pointin' the finger at God himself and hoverin' over our roof this very night, makin' sure nothin' more happens to you. No sir, it wouldn't surprise me one bit, no matter how much she hated feathers. It's other things we got to worry about, like keepin' what happened to Shine to ourselves. And this is where you got to listen real good. You can't tell nobody nothin', if they starts comin' out here askin' questions. We never seen Shine. Just keep sayin' that, and anything else that they ask, act like you don't know what they's talkin' about. They'd rather believe that of you, anyway."

After a while the crackling fire and the steady rocking sent her drifting off, and I made her lie down on the daybed. Covering her up, I put more wood in the stove and took her place in the rocker. I rocked through the rest of the night, listening to the wind howling against the tide.

Her forehead grew hotter during the night. The next morning the wind and rain had stopped, and I sat on the door stoop waiting for Sid. Catching a glimpse of him coming down the road, I quickly ran to meet him.

"She has a fever," I babbled. "She was out in the rain last nighta"we seen Shine's boat."

Putting his arm around my shoulders, Sid talked fast and quiet as he led me back to the house.

"It's the biggest news since the coming of Christ. Old Joe was the first to find him when he went out to check his nets this morning. They've sent a message off to Deer Lake for the Mounties. They should be here by noon. Some of the fishers are going up and down the shore, looking for Shine's camp. Old Joe and his brother is gone over to check out Miller's Island." Sid paused. "Has she said anything?"

"No. They're goin' to find out, Sid."

"Not by us helping them, they won't. We've got to tend to Josie's fever ourselves. Perhaps after the Mounties come, we can get Doctor Hodgins to come look at her."

"I don't think we can keep her quiet about Shine."

"We have to. We'll talk to her good. She listens, Kit, she most always listens. But, we have to wait a day. We don't want anyone looking Josie's way yet, not with Shine just found dead. It don't take much for some people to start making connections, even if there's none."

"Sid, it wouldn't her fault. I mean, she was protectin' us. Perhaps they'd let her go a "

"The law might. But, you're forgetting about the reverend. He'd be on to the both of you like gulls to shit, convincing everyone that morally you'd be better off someplace else, that it was Josie's sluttish ways that brought Shine upon you in the first place, and who's to say it wouldn't happen again, this time with you being the victim. He can play it good, Kit. You don't need me reminding you of that."

"Oh God," I cried. "It's gone too far, I'm scared. I don't care about me, no more. I only care about her, and a and you." I turned to face him. "They'll find out, Sid, and it's goin' to be bad. They don't have to know about you. It's me that's to blame. It's me that wouldn't leave. I should pay! I should pay!"

He caught me by the shoulders, his eyes hard set against mine.

"There's none of us to blame!" he half yelled. "You hear me? None of us. But, it's her they'll haul off to jail. Her mind couldn't take it, Kit. You know it, and I know it. Even if after the trial they let her go, there'd be nothing left to let go. Josie can't survive without you. Without a " he swung his arm around the gully, "Without this. It's all she knows. It's all that keeps her alive." He tightened his grip and whispered harshly, "And me. She has me too, now. She killed Shine to protect me. I won't let them destroy her because of it."

I was quiet, the truth of his words washing over me.

"Do you think it's O.K. to talk with Doctor Hodgins now?" I whispered.

"No. He's a man of the law too, in some ways, and he'd be forced to tell the truth. It wouldn't be right to involve him. Will you trust me, Kit? I'm going to see us through this. I promise you."

I closed my eyes, and felt his lips pressing against my forehead. Taking him by the hand, I led him inside. Josie was sitting up on the daybed, rocking in that strange way of hers, but her eyes fixed right away on Sid as he walked over and sat down besides her.

"How you doing, Josie?"

She never said nothing, just kept rocking.

"Kit says you've got the flu," he went on, laying the palm of his hand across her forehead. "You're hot, for sure. Are you feeling sick?"

She smiled weakly, and watched as Sid reached inside his shirt and brought out a dark red pitcher plant, its heavy belled sides slightly crushed and drooping from the weight of its petals.

"It's for you," he said, pressing it into her hand. "I seen it on the bog on the way over and it reminded me of you. See? It's pretty and red, and it grows alone, and it's got a poison sitting in its centre, and anything that goes in there that don't belong, don't get out. That's God's law, do you hear me, Josie? What don't belong, don't get out! And that's why you hit Shine with the axe, because he didn't belong here. He was going to hurt me and Kit, and you done the only thing you could. It's God's law." Clasping his hands around hers, he leaned over and pressed his cheek against hers. "God's Law, Josie," he whispered. "No one can judge it but God himself. You done good. Didn't she do good, Kit?"

"Real good," I said, my voice trembling. "I bet Nan's proud of you."

A faint glimmer of yellow appeared in her eyes as she looked up at me.

"Real proud," Sid whispered, brushing back a limp strand of hair. "And you can make us prouder, Josie. You know how you can do that? By not telling anybody what happened with Shine. Not anybody! It's our secreta"mine, yours and Kit's. Promise me now, promise me that you won't ever tell anybody anything about the axe and Shine. Do you promise? Do you promise?"

She lay back and nodded tiredly, a small nod, just one dip of her head, and then she closed her eyes. Her cheeks looked more flushed, and her breathing was starting to sound a little raspy. Sid and I looked at each other, then quickly went outside.

"I don't like the looks of her," he said worriedly. "Let me go back and find out what's happening. Perhaps the Mounties are out from Deer Lake by now. If so, and everyone's making a fuss over them, they won't notice Doctor Hodgins making a house call too much. Don't worry," he said, trailing a finger along my cheek. "She's going to be fine."

I smiled the best that I could, but the unease growing within me since the killing was starting to take over.

"Hey," he said, giving me a little shake. "Will you never start trusting me?"

"What about Aunt Drucie?"

"I'll drop in on the way and tell her the two of you's gone berry picking. How's that? What with everything that's after happening, she'll be happy enough to mosey into Haire's Hollow and catch the news. Are you O.K.?"

I pulled away and folded my arms worriedly.

"The reverend says if we kill, we pay," I said, looking out over the gully.

Sid gave a snort.

"You care now what the reverend says?"

"He preaches God's law."

"He uses God's law to fix his own preachings."

"Isn't that what you just did?" I said, turning to face him.

"Isn't that what we all do, sometimes? Take God's law and make it ours?" he answered almost angrily. "Damn! You think I haven't thought about this, Kit? You think I don't care about God's law? Hell, I'm scared to death of God's law." He kicked at a rock and sent it plinking against the side of the house. "But there are other laws, God's laws too, I suppose," he said, turning to me. "But they aren't so clearly written. And it's those the reverend don't spend much time on, like those of the mind. Well, those are the ones I think about all the time. And my mind can't reason it through that Josie should suffer any more. And that's the one God will judge me on, do you understand me, Kit?"

He cupped my chin and forced me to look at him. "I'm doing what I have to do," he whispered. "I believe that. Now, you have to believe what you're doing is right, too, else the lie becomes your sin. Decide, Kit. Is she deserving of your lie?"

He kept staring at me, but I could find no reassuring answer. It was how the reverend and everyone else was going to be using God's laws that was causing me the most concern. Fear clung to me like a black shroud as I watched him walking away, shadowing my every step and darkening my every thought. I went back inside and spent the rest of the morning tending to Josie and looking out the window, waiting and watching, waiting and watching a Come noon, Sid hadn't come back and Josie's forehead was burning hot. And she was still, so very, very still. I sat back in the rocking chair and must have dozed, because suddenly I was on my feet, listening to the hard, deep moans coming out of her as she slept.

"Shine! Shine!"

"It's all right," I said, shaking her.

"Shine!"