42
The sky is already deepening in colour.
The hollow I found in the mountainside overlooking the bear-head cliff has tightened around me; snow has banked low overhead and the stone at my spine is drawing out what little warmth I have left.
I can’t see the lights below, can’t hear engines or voices – only the slow creak of the mountain and the rasp of my own breath fogging the inside of my hood.
In one moment, it almost feels as though the cold has receded, and Elias’ voice crawls into the space.
Your limbs start burning. Then they stop. That’s when you mistake it for relief.
I’d hated those words when he threw me into the blizzard. Now, with the mountain closing in around me and the cold beginning to feel almost pleasant, they land very differently.
I drag my thoughts away from that and let them drift towards home.
I think of Marina first, of how certain we’d always been there’d be another call, another visit.
I think of my cousins I kept promising I’d see, the messages left on read, the holidays skipped because of work or grief or whatever excuse felt good enough at the time.
The time I’d spent on Ron.
Anna… Oh, Anna… She’ll be devastated.
And Elias. His name fills the remaining space in my chest. How little I actually said what I felt. How often doubt chewed at what we had, whispering we were only pretending for convenience and survival.
With snow pushing at me, the truth arrives with terrible clarity: whatever exists between him and me is real. It grew out of fear, coercion and difficult choices, but none of that makes what I feel imaginary.
If this is it – if they find a frozen body tucked under a cliff when the thaw finally reaches it – then at least I die knowing that much was true, and—
Something cuts through the blur at the edge of my vision. I snap my head to the side.
It blends with the snow, but the snow doesn’t move that way.
A shape stops close to where I’m hiding. Unreal enough that my mind refuses it at first. A demon in a snowsuit.
Am I dead already?
The figure stops. Turns towards me.
I lurch upright before sense catches up.
My knees fold beneath me, but on the next attempt I force them straight, one numb hand clawing at the rock as I stagger uphill.
‘Stop!’ The word is swallowed by the thick fabric of the balaclava and wind.
But… it sounds too soft.
‘Leah!’
The name cleaves clean through my skull.
I still. Spin around.
As the shape resolves, it becomes smaller than either of the masked men who chased me.
Swearing under a breath, the figure rips off the goggles and yanks down the balaclava. Familiar movements. Familiar shoulders. Blonde hair, reflecting the white of the snow.
Blue eyes look up at me.
‘Inga?’ I frown, still shaking.
Relief drops her shoulders – then they snap rigid again when I sway.
‘Leah, don’t move.’ Her voice turns clipped and sharp. ‘Stay where you are.’
She drops to her knees, tears open the pack at her side and pulls out a silver emergency blanket. ‘Can you understand me?’
I blink.
The panic doesn’t disappear so much as drain unevenly, leaving my limbs weak and my breath scraping in shallow pulls.
I stare at her like she might still turn into something with antlers or claws.
‘Tell me your full name,’ she says.
‘Lean-ndra Notting-gham.’ My teeth knock through it.
Only then does she release a breath, her eyes closing with regret. ‘This was not supposed to happen.’
She lifts the blanket. ‘Put this around yourself.’
I jerk back, looking at the thing, then back at her as though one of them might bite me.
She stops moving, her lips pressing together. ‘I’m so sorry. My brothers frightened you badly. They are idiots.’ She swallows, eyes flicking over my face, my shaking hands, the snow clinging to my clothes.
Brothers?
‘It’s just me. You’re safe.’
‘Safe?’ My laugh comes out cracked and ugly. ‘Two men in wooden masks shoved me into a car!’
Tears begin to press against my lids. I welcome them because they seem to thaw the frost caught on my lashes.
Her mouth pulls taut. ‘I know. I know. It’s a stupid family tradition.
’ She takes a step towards me. I hold still this time.
Then she takes another, and another, until she is close enough to wrap the blanket around my shoulders and pull a thick, insulated cape over it with careful hands.
‘Jakob was supposed to tell you… The preparations for the Hunt have never happened like this before. They were not meant to grab you that way,’ she murmurs, ‘and you were not meant to run up the mountain—’ Her brow furrows.
‘Why would you run up the mountain? Never mind—’ She shakes her head as she stands and dusts herself off.
‘The sledge is just below the ridge. I’ll take you back, get you warm, and explain everything before Jakob finds us and murders every male relative I still tolerate. ’
My body is too cold for proper outrage and my thoughts are delayed.
‘H-hunt?’
‘I’ll explain. Put your arm around me, I’ll get you onto the sledge.’ She reaches for me.
My breastbone fills with blistering heat until it feels as if it might split straight through my middle. I leave her hand hanging in the air as I grit my teeth.
‘Does El—Jakob know?’ I ask, hoping for the right answer. A violent shudder runs through me.
Guilt pinches Inga’s face into an expression far too sheepish for the circumstances. ‘He probably knows what’s happening by now.’
My brows draw together. The world stops for one intake of breath. ‘What does that mean?’
‘I swear,’ she says, taking another step towards me with both palms up in surrender, ‘I will explain everything. Right now, we need to get you off the mountain and get you dry.’
By the time I can hold a mug without sloshing half of it over my fingers, my wet clothes are hanging near the fire and I’m buried beneath three blankets, wearing Inga’s change of clothes – one size too large.
She has checked my speech, my hands and whether I know my own name often enough that deliberately answering ‘Margaret Thatcher’ has begun to feel reasonable.
‘Hold on,’ I say in disbelief. ‘I was traumatised – chased across a frozen mountain – because of some ritualistic Sámi… thing?’
‘The Hunt…’ Sunna starts. Her mouth attempts a smile, then thinks better of it. ‘It isn’t Sámi. We are, but the Hunt is just an old Halvorsen story that became a family game many generations ago, based on the reindeer herding traditions.’
In its sane form, the ceremony begins with the woman choosing a route through a marked section of a forest. If the man reads her tracks right and reaches her before the agreed time, the family declares that he is fit to have her.
Meanwhile, the woman needs to survive in the forest to prove she is worthy of such a capable man.
I can now see Elias’ charms are a hereditary affliction.
Inga, Sunna and two other cousins smile over their cups. ‘It means he can protect you,’ Sunna says mildly.
I stare at her. ‘Right.’
The word drags slowly, because this seems like too fragile a moment to point out that Elias and I are not, in fact, engaged, and that if anyone in this tent knew the real version of events, they would gasp and yelp and call the authorities.
I glance from Inga to Sunna to the cousins, all of them sitting there with their heirloom mugs and bright eyes that match the handsome devil’s, and a downright terrifying loyalty – to their family.
One of whom is Elias.
And… now that I consider it, they are probably more likely to help him hide a body than report one.
The mug creaks in my grip.
Feeling returns to my fingers in a vicious scatter of pins and needles, hot enough that I keep flexing them against the mug. The sensation keeps reminding me of the moment I saw the damn masks.
Markus and Olle, the culprits behind that wonderful idea, are nowhere in sight. Sunna had mentioned Inga sent them away when Elias found out one of them had tried to chase me.
Also, there is the small, inconvenient detail that I absolutely would not have survived being hunted through the cold wilderness if a stubborn someone hadn’t spent months teaching me how to read wind, tracks, snow and landmarks – and how to fight back.
That kind of planning feels too much like Elias had been preparing me for something even then.
Warmth unfurls beneath my ribs before my good sense can stamp it out.
Surely—
Surely Elias hasn’t been teaching me about life on a homestead so his family would approve of our marriage.
Has he?
I can’t tell if this is that ugly side of me wanting to be wanted, wanting to experience something that some fiction-poisoned part of me apparently needs… or if it’s real.
‘I wish you had told us beforehand.’ I shake my head, planting my face into my palms as I try to hide the heat that has begun to gather in my cheeks.
‘That would defeat the purpose of the Hunt,’ Inga supplies. Helpfully, of course.
And isn’t that the truth.
My eyes go to the hide flap at the entrance of the giant tent.
‘Is Elias here?’ I ask, because I suddenly don’t feel confident being here without him. ‘I mean… Jakob.’
Sunna’s smile softens in a way that makes my spine draw taut before she even answers. ‘The men are preparing him.’
Inga’s already laughing at the shape of my face. Because somehow, this sounds exactly like something someone says before a sacrifice is made.
I disdainfully eye the duodji knives on the small table.
‘For what?’ I ask, still confused, cold and irritated – with myself for the most part.
Inga sets her cup down and crosses her arms unforgivingly. ‘For you,’ she says with a wry smile.
My lids flutter with confusion. ‘I have no idea what that—’
‘Because your family is not here,’ Sunna continues gently, ‘we intend to stand with you as the bride’s own.’
Bride.
Soft and quiet. That’s how it lands at first. It knocks the air from me, regardless.