46
The shriek of birds outside the window left ajar brings the morning. The dogs bark somewhere beyond the house, chasing each other through the clearing.
As my body begins to wake, the exquisite ache Elias has left behind blooms all over.
I reach blindly across the sheets, needing to feel the heat of him, the hard slope of muscle, the soft undulations of his chest when sleep begins to loosen around it.
My hand finds only rumpled linen. The cold patch beside me registers right after. Then the silence creeps in.
I crack open my eyes, pushing myself up from the mattress and listening past Brute and Menace, past the hens muttering in the shed and the ordinary sounds of a northern summer saturating the world.
I can see the new truck still sitting outside. He hasn’t taken it, so he must be home still.
‘Elias?’ I call, but silence responds.
As I dress, the pressure in my breastbone refuses to shift away. I make my way through the house and towards the shed. The door is closed, its bolt seated firmly in the latch. Nothing is wrong enough to name.
As I release the chickens into the outer enclosure, I keep listening for him between the sounds.
The house holds a silence too thick to breathe through. Nature whispers slyly against my ear.
I don’t find him in the darkroom, or our room.
I give up the search somewhere between the empty pantry and the back door, one hand pressed to my forehead as memory finally catches up with panic.
The goats. Anders. Trip south to a place I can’t pronounce.
Perhaps they took Anders’ truck?
The house feels arranged too neatly around his absence, every sound made shriller by the fact that none of them come from the rustle of his clothes, the grunting after his axe strikes wood, the sighs when he finds another one of my domestic mistakes.
The quiet sits there until even swallowing feels difficult.
‘Get hold of yourself, Leandra,’ I say aloud as I step out, the creak of the door stopping Menace and Brute mid-sprint as their heads turn back towards me and their pointy ears spring upright.
‘Proceed.’ I wave them awkwardly away and they scatter across the grounds again.
I’m still afraid of these creatures, but at least they haven’t tried eating me, which makes me cautiously confident they may never attempt it.
Pushing a fragment of unease out on a breath, I look inwards and do what any woman pretending at emotional stability would do – I make myself useful.
After feeding the chickens, I push them back into the henhouse and return indoors, have a quick breakfast, and grab my leather jacket Inga insisted I needed to own. I check all the doors twice, then lock up behind me.
Making sure the dogs have enough food and water, I leave them in the clearing Elias walked them through yesterday, with the front door flap left open for them.
The scent of new leather sits heavy in my lungs as soon as I climb into the truck.
Before I can close the door, Brute launches himself into my lap. With yelps and grunts and whines, I scramble his tremendous weight off me, and he sprawls across the passenger seat as though the registration came with his collar.
‘Get out!’ I rumble, clicking open the door on his side.
He blinks at me, tongue lolling, entirely unmoved by law, reason or my escalating blood pressure.
‘I’m serious, you oversized carpet-looking wolf-wannabe!’ I plant one hand on the door and point at him with the other. ‘I have thumbs,’ I rumble. ‘I open tins. I am the reason you eat.’
Brute yawns.
Disrespectfully.
In an attempt to rein in the frustration I’ve just redirected at the dog, I borrow the words of a similar beast – albeit one that walks on two legs, owns a pair of blue eyes, and is equally stubborn: I need to own the authority.
‘Fine,’ I mutter, climbing back out and rounding the bonnet.
Leaning in from the other side to grab Brute’s collar, I hesitate several inches from it, but this restlessness in me drives a new kind of urgency into my limbs.
He shuffles to the driver’s seat and turns boneless as soon as I grab the leather band around his neck. All twenty-something kilos of dead weight melt into the seat. His forepaws brace against the steering wheel hard enough to sound the horn and send the hens into a frenzy.
I glare at him. Threats, kidnapping and blizzards? Survived. A dog occupying the driver’s seat?
That may finally finish me off.
Then I remember what Elias did last night when Brute tried the couch.
I tap the seat twice.
Brute’s ears snap up and he springs off the leather as if his limbs have remembered that they belong to a trained animal, not a mutinous rug.
‘Authority,’ I remind myself aloud, glancing with distaste at the trotting budget-wolf when the driver’s door clicks shut beneath my palm.
Menace joins him beside a large trunk, and they dart into a run across the estate.
Even as the engine turns over and the track begins unspooling beneath the tyres, my fingers keep tightening around the steering wheel.
The sensation of loss won’t let go of me all the way to town.
The longer I turn it over in my head, the more I realise – this is the first time Elias and I have been apart this long since circumstances reduced us to one plate, one cup, one bed.
We may have known each other for longer than the months I’ve spent here, but the cabin has compressed the last few into something else – lived solely within his reach.
Shaking my head, I promise myself to become more independent now that things have changed. I should own my time better. Get in touch with the Sámediggi and apologise until kingdom come for abandoning the cultural project I’d applied for.
I can already imagine the explanation: sincere apologies for abandoning the grant, followed by the minor administrative detail: a handsome local man abducted me and rearranged my priorities. Repeatedly.
The joke lands between my ears and dies there. It’s easier to make Norway sound filthy and ridiculous than admit I still do not know which parts of it have been my choice.
I need to get a grip on myself. His absence is a perfect time for that.
And I could start with learning something new.
Like fucking knitting.
I find the women by following the laughter, then recognising Inga’s voice among it.
She and her cousins are already gathered in the back room of Mee’s house, where the windows stand open to the mild air and the table has disappeared beneath coffee cups, cake crumbs and the disarray of coloured yarn.
They accept me with a loud exclamation and drag me into their chaos before I manage to take my trainers off.
We’re making Sunna a birthday blanket for her seventieth. Each of us is knitting a long panel that will later be joined into a blanket large enough to cover her bed. Every strip will carry a pattern tied to a memory.
Someone nudges a ball of wool towards me, and twenty minutes later I’m swearing at a dropped stitch while three women find amusement in it.
Somehow, I laugh alongside them. Between Inga’s dramas, Mee’s corrections and the cousins arguing over whose panel looks least ridiculous, the hours loosen around me.
My fingers fumble, but the rhythm eventually settles into my hands, and the needles begin moving with less argument. I discover I am not terrible at knitting. Certainly not good enough to earn silence from the experts, but good enough to be teased with affection instead of concern.
By the time the sun sinks a little and turns the room orange, my little section has grown into something that almost resembles intention. But when it drops lower and the light begins to cool, the unease returns so heavily it steals the warmth from my hands.
I’m gathering my things when the back door opens and Anders appears.
My hand shoots for my jacket, nearly taking the yarn basket with it, before the thought catches up: if he's here, Elias must be home.
The movement stops me cold.
That frantic readiness.
That humiliating relief at the thought of him returning.
It’s too much like the dependent girl I used to be with Ron.
It sits wrong on my chest and tastes worse.
Anders’ eyes move to the jacket clenched in my hand, then return to my face. The smile he walked in with fades somewhat. ‘He’s not done down south. I had to come back for the elk. One of the young bulls has been testing us.’
My hand eases on the leather.
The hope inside me that detonated earlier is now collapsing into a million bits.
‘You came back alone?’ I ask, needing to hear it said aloud to believe it.
He smiles in response. A beat passes before he looks towards Inga. His gaze holds too long. ‘Ready?’ he asks her.
‘I don’t understand how you came to the decision that your grand romantic retirement would be livestock management,’ Inga supplies as she picks up her bag and a basket of cookies.
Her father gives a soft chuckle, eyeing me as I zip up my jacket.
His truck’s bonnet then catches my eye through the window.
How is Elias bringing the goats back if the truck is here?
‘Are you going to get him tomorrow?’ I interrupt the back-and-forth with his daughter.
He simply gives me another smile like it’s an obvious matter.
A prickling feeling settles at the base of my neck.
Mee and her sisters escort us outside while her mother speaks rapidly to Anders in Sámi. I catch none of the words, only the clipped rhythm and the way the man’s smile pulls taut as he listens.
Even with the absence of the ring, I’m still rubbing at my finger as I walk towards the truck. The pale evening all but winds around my throat before I make the second step.
‘I’ll come by this week,’ Anders says as he climbs into his truck. I give a faint incline of my head as I open the door to mine.
Their kindness helps. It just doesn’t fill the space where I want Elias to be.
The sound of the seat belt clicking into place drives me over the edge.
My head snaps sideways towards Inga seated in the other vehicle next to Anders, smiling and miming the stitch we all agreed to use to join Sunna’s blanket together. Her father inclines his head once, a soft smile drawn into a mask.