4. The Body Remembers
CHAPTER FOUR
the body remembers
The morning after the stitching is a blur of grey light and red pain.
The cold isn't just outside anymore. It’s in the room with us.
It’s sitting in the corner, watching. It has weight, mass.
It presses against my chest when I try to breathe.
Clara’s fever returns with a vengeance. It’s not a slow climb; it’s a spike.
Her skin is burning, flushing a dark, unhealthy crimson against the pale wood of the floor, but she’s shaking so hard her teeth are chattering audibly.
Click-click-click. A rhythm of dying. A metronome is counting down the minutes we have left.
I touch her forehead. It’s slick, radiating a heat that feels wrong—chemical, volatile.
Like a machine overheating before it seizes.
"Clara."
She doesn't answer. Her eyes are moving behind closed lids, tracking something I can't see.
"Leave me," she mumbles, her voice thick and slurred. "It’s too loud."
"It’s not loud. It’s quiet."
"The ice," she whispers. "It’s scratching. Can't you hear it? It wants to come in."
I look at the walls—nothing but frost and rot.
But I feel it too—a pressure. The mountain is pressing down on this little wooden box, trying to crush the anomaly of warmth inside it.
The wind sounds like fingernails on the siding.
Scritch. Scritch. I check her leg. The swelling hasn't gone down.
The skin is tight, shiny, reflecting the dying embers of the fire.
The infection is waking up, feeding on her.
But the fever is the immediate killer. The cold is leeching her heat faster than her body can generate it, faster than the pathetic fire can replace it.
I feed the fire the last of the chair leg. It flares, hungry, consuming the offering in seconds. I lie down next to her, wrapping my body around hers, trying to act as a shield, a human blanket. But I’m cold too. My blood is sluggish, thick with exhaustion. I am a battery running on empty.
"Rowan..." Her voice is a ghost.
"I'm here."
"Cold. So cold.."
I reach into my pocket and pull out the blade. It’s dull, heavy. Honest. I look at my uninjured wrist. The veins are blue rivers under the skin, branching maps of life. Warmth. I don't hesitate. I don't pray. I press the blade to my wrist, just below the pulse point.
I push. The skin resists—tough, leathery from the cold—then parts.
The pain is a sharp, white flash that clears my vision.
Blood wells up—dark, rich, impossibly red in the grey room.
It steams in the cold air, a tiny cloud of iron-scented vapor.
It looks like wealth. It looks like the most expensive thing in the world.
I shift Clara, turning her head. Her lips are cracked, blue. I press my bleeding wrist to her mouth.
"Drink," I whisper. It’s grotesque. It’s primal. It’s the most honest thing I’ve ever done.
She doesn't wake, but her body reacts. The metallic scent hits her—the smell of prey, the smell of life. Her lips part. I smear the blood over her mouth, forcing the warmth in.
"Take it," I command, my voice shaking. "Take the heat."
She swallows. A reflex. Then again. I press my wrist against the inside of her arm, where the skin is thinnest, smearing the hot, salty proof of my life across her cold skin.
I rub it in, trying to create friction, trying to transfer the essence of survival from my veins to hers—a transfusion of will.
Take mine instead.
The warmth of the blood acts like a shock. Her body jolts—a small, weak spasm. Her eyes fly open. Gold. Wide. Terrified. She stares at me, then at the blood on her mouth, on my wrist. She tastes it: iron and salt.
"Rowan..."
"We needed warmth," I rasp. "Don't spit it out."
I hold the pressure until the blood starts to clot, until the heat transfers.
We share the pain, the fear, and the profound, grotesque intimacy of survival.
I am feeding her my own time, my own heartbeat.
When I finally pull away, leaving a smear of dark crimson on her skin like war paint, her eyes are focused.
The fever has broken. The shaking has stopped.
She reaches out, her fingers bone-thin, and touches the cut on my wrist. Her fingertips are stained red. "You're bleeding," she whispers.
"I know."
"For me?"
"For us."
She doesn't wipe the blood away. She lets it dry on her skin. A mark. A claim. She licks her lips, tasting the copper. She doesn't look disgusted. She looks... devout.
The fire cracks loudly, sounding like a bone breaking. Warmth is just another kind of pain. Keep something alive, I think. I look at the wound on my wrist. It throbs in time with her heart.