She put her towel down and let her arms fall to her sides. She was ready for the inevitable conversation. This would be when they finally hashed out the boundaries of their relationship. They would formalize the agreement and whittle down some of their hard edges that kept rubbing against each other. Sure, the friction produced heat, but there was only so much heat she needed from a lover. She was warmblooded—most of her heat came from within.
David turned and limped towards the door.
“Lock this behind me,” he said.
He shut the door.
Madelyn lowered her head and closed her eyes.
#
#
#
#
#
A few days later, David returned.
It was the same as at the beginning. He would wait for her to finish the last of her outdoor chores. He knew when she was retreating into the cabin for the night. Then, as she slipped past the heavy door, she would let it close slowly and he would follow her in.
They communicated with gestures and grunts. He pulled a pheasant from his sack. Its broken neck hung over his thick fingers. She nodded and he moved to the counter to finish dressing the bird. Madelyn went to the cellar to pull some sweet potatoes to go with the pheasant. They had their old rhythm. Instead of falling apart completely, their status had simply taken a giant step backwards. They had rolled back to when everything worked. It seemed healthy, in a way. Maybe this time they could build something strong and not make the same mistakes.
After they were through with each other for the night, Madelyn climbed into her loft and the wild animal collapsed on the couch. She fell asleep to the sound of his snoring. Everything was in its right place.
David was gone in the morning.
Madelyn had to wait three days for his return. She never once doubted that he would come back healthy and strong. When she saw him hanging around near the old apple tree, she smiled to herself. Once again, he followed her inside. This time, he offered rabbit for dinner.
The next morning, she sat on her porch drinking her tea. His footprints were still visible in the morning dew. He still brushed his right heel when he stepped over things. His left foot had picked up a small turn as well—it was probably from his injury. If so, it was the only sign. He managed to disguise his limp when he walked.
Madelyn sipped her tea.
It felt good to trust him again.
She sighed and looked down at her steaming tea. She knew what she had to do.
#
#
#
#
#
Madelyn waited until he was inside. He presented his latest gift—it was a pair of trout. She could already taste the cool stream. Madelyn doubled back and locked the door.
He was at the sink, cleaning the fish.
“I guess I’m not okay being casual like this,” she said.
David looked up. His eyes were hidden in the shadow of his brow. He cleared his throat. She couldn’t remember the last time she had heard him string together a sentence.
“I want to be like a real couple,” she said.
“Like I have to tell you where I’m at all the time?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But I want to know that you’re going to be here. Or, when you’re not, I want to know when you’re coming back.”
“Seems like that would just get you upset,” he said. “Sometimes I roam.”
Madelyn nodded. “You do. That’s true.”
He went back to cleaning the fish. Her grandmother would have approved of the way he took off the scales. He wasted no movement.
“I love you,” she said.
David replied immediately with a question. “If you love a thing, why would you want to change it?”
“I want the thing to love me back,” she said. “If the wind stops pushing, a leaning tree will fall down.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
“It does to me.”
He shook his head. “Nope. It doesn’t. A leaning
tree is
weak.
You, my dear, are
not
weak.”
Madelyn frowned and shook away the compliment.
“Would it help if I told you that I loved you as well?” he asked.
“It might. A little. It doesn’t solve the problem though. I need you either in, or out. I can’t take this halfway nonsense. If this is the primary place you intend to lay your head, then say so. I want to know that I’m important to you the same way that you’re important to me.”
David put all of his focus to the fish.
“You remember how we met?” he asked.
Madelyn folded her arms. David glanced up and saw that she wasn’t going to answer.
“I sniffed you out. We were together for twenty-four hours before either one of us said a word. You eventually said that it was the best day of your life.”
“I don’t remember it that way,” she said. “You were like feral animal. I didn’t want to scare you away.”
“We were the same animal. The only difference was that I was out there moving around and you were tied to this place. I just want us to have something real and simple. We don’t need to complicate it all with the trappings of civilization, do we? You know where that nonsense always leads.”
“Contentment?”
David set his knife down. “You know better than that.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
David studied her. He always judged things based on what he could see, hear, and smell, rather than what she told him. It took him a second, but he reached the same conclusion that she had. He wiped his fishy hands on his pants and nodded to her.
“You were so afraid that you would lose what we had, so you decided to blow it up,” he said.
Madelyn didn’t look away. She kept her eyes locked onto his as he walked to her. He cradled her chin with a sticky hand and then planted a delicate kiss on her lips. She felt the kiss roll down her spine and warm her from the inside. She was still feeling it as he unlocked the door and let himself out.
Madelyn looked at her feet.
#
#
#
#
#
Madelyn mourned the loss of David. After she hadn’t seen him for a month, she had to assume that he was dead. After a brief ceremony at Sacrifice Rock, Madelyn took David’s old hat and pressed it to her face one last time. She dropped it in the hole, covered it with dirt, and then made a deep incision on her leg.
Until the cut healed, she wouldn’t think of him. If she did, she would reopen the wound. She would convert the pain from mental to physical. Eventually, the physical wound would heal.
The cut got infected. Instead of taking a couple of weeks to heal, it took months. Madelyn’s body ached and she ran a fever for days. Just when she thought the infection had run its course, it flared back up.
One morning, when she finally felt better enough to go sit on the porch with a cup of hot tea, she received a surprise. Her heart sped up when she spotted movement over near the rock. A giant shape was digging in the spot where she had buried David’s hat. Without wondering how it was possible, she was suddenly sure that he had returned to set everything right.
Madelyn dropped her tea.
The mug shattered on the porch.
At the sound, the enormous grizzly bear lifted his snout and studied Madelyn across the yard. She knew the look—the bear was famished and would eat anything it found. She covered the distance to the door in two big strides while the bear streaked towards the cabin. She locked the door behind herself and heard him scratching around out there.
For days he held her hostage. Madelyn went down to the control panel so she could study the cameras. He stayed so close to the cabin that she couldn’t get an angle on him. She would open one of the slits in her wall, see just a corner of the giant animal, and then he would move off. Her best bet was to rush through the door and nail him with the scattergun, but every time she went near the door she could hear him out there sniffing around.
Locked inside, Madelyn’s imagination began to run wild. She imagined that the bear was a hairy demon, sent to drag her down to hell. She could hear him out there, banging against the wall when he scratched behind his ear, or scraping at the cabin’s foundation as he dug a spot to sleep.
It was even worse when she couldn’t spot him on the surveillance cameras. Then she was left to guess and tempted to venture outside. Eventually, she would spot the bear through one of the slits and her heart would race.
Madelyn felt like she couldn’t breathe anymore. She was trapped.
That’s when they came. The bear’s size and shape drew them in. The Roamers closed in on her cabin because of the stupid bear and there was nothing she could do about it. Madelyn crawled up into her loft and hid under her blankets as the clicking intensified.
The bear seemed oblivious. He thumped and scratched at the walls.
He roared when the things closed in.
They wouldn’t attack a bear. He wouldn’t have the right DNA. As soon as they got close enough to invade his cells, they should have turned away. But she heard a massive fight going on just outside the walls of her cabin. She pressed her hands to the sides of her head to block the noise. It still got in.
Madelyn realized that the moaning she heard was coming from her own throat.
She pulled her hands away. It was quiet.
There was no clicking, and no growling from outside.
She raced downstairs to check the panel. She didn’t see him. Back upstairs, she checked every slit until she was sure that it was clear outside.
Madelyn slid the lock open and waited until she could catch her breath. She stepped outside with the scattergun leading the way. She found the claw marks in soil. She found the tufts of hair that were caught on a tree trunk over by the old outhouse. She found David’s hat. The bear had dug it up and shredded it.
Footsteps made her spin. She wanted to run for the cabin, but she couldn’t make her legs work. The thing was stumbling out from the woods. It’s big head hung at a strange angle. Its legs didn’t seem to be moving in time with its stride. As Madelyn watched, the bear advanced to the grass and then fell to the ground.
She trotted forward, keeping the scattergun pointed at the target.
The bear had lost a lot of mass somehow. Its brown fur seemed deflated. She didn’t understand until she saw the finger poking out from underneath the paw. She looked at the glassy eyes of the predator and realized that they were dead.
Madelyn reached down, grabbed one of the round ears, and pulled. It was just a bear head and skin. David was under there. She tossed the gun aside and rolled him to his back. She cradled his head on her lap and wiped the blood from his eyes.
Madelyn’s tears fell on his face.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”
David blinked and his eyes found her. He spit out blood before he spoke.
“I heard the Hunters coming your way and I tracked them. This bear ran towards me so I shot it. I didn’t realize that they were on his tail. Before they converged on me, I managed to skin him and hide under his fur,” he said.
Madelyn stroked his cheek.
“You throw off heat like a campfire,” she said.
David took her hand and squeezed it.
“It almost worked,” he said. “They definitely didn’t give me the full workover.”
“What happened?” she asked again.
David smiled and coughed. Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. It mixed with the clotting bear blood.
“We have to get you inside and cleaned up,” she said. She thought of him naked in the shower and more tears spilled from her eyes. She remembered the time that she should have had the most sympathy and had instead turned away.
“Don’t eat the bear,” he said. “The meat will be tainted.”
“No, of course not,” she said, shaking her head.
When she started to lift him, David expelled a heavy breath. Madelyn realized that he was gone.
She sobbed and beat a fist against the ground. David had come back from the dead and had promptly left again. This time, he was gone forever. She held him until the blood dried and started to fuse their skin together. She held him while the flies discovered the rotting bearskin and encamped on its eyes.
Madelyn kissed his salty lips for the last time.
She spent the day putting him to rest.
M
ADELYN
PULLED
HERSELF
FROM
the loft and descended quietly, so she wouldn’t wake Elijah. The loss of David ached like a fresh wound. She went to the bathroom and barely recognized herself in the
mirror. She looked creased and haggard. Over her shoulder, the glass door of the shower reminded her of the time she had found David there.
Madelyn took a deep breath and looked down at the sink. She was too weary to continue, but there was no use in trying to get any more rest.
She returned to the living room.
Despite her effort to keep quiet, Elijah had gotten up. He was tidying up—folding the blanket he had used.
“Sorry to wake you,” she said.
“Don’t be,” he said. “Seems like you had a rough night. Must be tough coming home under these circumstances.”
Madelyn nodded.
“Besides,” he said, “we have to make a plan. Assuming Harper is feeling okay, how long do you estimate it will take us to hike to the truck?”
“I’ve been thinking,” Madelyn said. “You guys should continue on without me. I can stay here and monitor that thing to see what it’s doing. I’ll figure a way to post the status of it up on the ether so you’ll have some warning if it’s really headed towards Fairbanks.”
Elijah shook his head. “No. We don’t leave people behind like that. We came to rescue Harper and that doesn’t include sending her off to find her way home alone.”