Chapter 5 #2
As she opened the door, Luke moved up behind her.
He could see nothing inside, just flat black except where the flashlight’s thin beam swept across a dirt floor and wooden bunks.
We’re different, he thought. She knew that he could change shape.
But for her, it seemed to be as natural as thought.
She spoke of it so casually. She had walked with confidence in the dark because she never had second thoughts about it.
Luke was made entirely of second thoughts. Just the idea of giving himself back to the bear, losing himself as he’d nearly lost himself on the iceberg, made him shudder.
“AWK!”
As soon as Inga started to go inside, the doorway was suddenly crowded with thrashing, flapping shapes.
“Oh, right, that,” Inga said over the screeching cacophony.
Luke felt the flashlight pressed into his hand.
“Go on in and take a look around. There should be wood and fire-starting materials. I’m going to try to find a place for these guys so we don’t have to spend the night with them. ”
She pushed past him in the narrow space in front of the door, talking aloud to the flapping .
.. things in the general tone that a person might use for a stubborn farm animal or a stuck bolt.
(“Idiot, can’t you see I’m doing it? Settle down and stop that infernal flapping .
..”) As her voice receded, Luke felt Rogue bump his leg again.
He ducked his head by habit, used to nearly hitting his head on the sill of doors like this one, but it turned out to have room to spare, as if this door had been built to accommodate someone even taller than Luke’s six-two.
Inside, the cabin was a single room, designed for shelter more than comfort.
The furnishings were a pair of wooden double bunk beds on opposite sides of the room, and between them, a table with a few wooden chairs.
There was an iron stove and, as Inga had said, a pile of neatly stacked wood beside it, with a long-handled barbecue lighter and a box of matches on top of some old magazines.
Rogue lay down beside a bunk, sighed, and put his head on his paws.
“You and me both, boy,” Luke told the dog. His feet had stopped hurting and gone completely numb, which was probably going to be not so fun when feeling started up again.
He had vague recollections of learning to start a fire in Boy Scouts, and he was crumpling magazine pages when Inga came in, carrying her pack at arm’s length, and shut the door firmly behind her.
“If you still have doubts about why I’d rather not have them in here with us tonight, cute as they are, let me direct you to the state of my backpack,” she said. “This is worse than when my brother used it to carry an afternoon’s fishing catch, and it took me weeks to get the smell out that time.”
She leaned the backpack up beside the door and walked around the room, seeming aimless until she came back with a large glass and metal object. “I knew we left a fueled-up lantern here. Hand me one of those matches.”
Light bloomed behind the lantern’s glass. Inga stood on tiptoe to hang it from a hook on the ceiling, evidently meant for the purpose, and Luke was able to get a proper look around the cabin’s interior.
It didn’t really change things a lot from his pinpoint stage-by-stage view in the flashlight’s beam.
But he noticed a few things he hadn’t seen before.
As well as the furniture, there were shelves on the walls with an assortment of small objects to make a stay in the cabin more comfortable: neatly stacked dishes, books, cans, boxes.
“There’s a cap on the chimney to keep birds and weather out,” Inga said. “I’m going to climb up there and take it off.” She pointed to what he had taken for a wall. “That’s a window with a board over it. You should find a hammer on the windowsill. Can you work on that while I do this?”
“Do you need help?” Luke asked.
“No, I’ve got it. It’ll only take a minute.
” She gestured to a bucket beside the door.
“I’ll get some water while I’m out. There’s a spring nearby; it’s one of the reasons my parents chose this spot.
You’ll also find some clothes and bedding in a sealed tote under the bunks, if you want to—you know. Get dressed.”
She opened the door. There was some squawking from knee level and Inga’s sharp exclamation of “No, you can’t come in!” and then the door closed on the ongoing clamor.
Luke found the hammer and discovered that the board was held on with a couple of loose nails. While he peeled it off, he heard scuffling on the roof, and then Inga called down, “It’s all good! You can make a fire whenever you’re ready. I’ll be back with the water in a minute.”
Although it had been some time since he had laid out a fire, it came back to him easily.
He placed some smaller sticks on top of the magazine pages, and was surprised and pleased when it caught almost immediately.
Then he was less pleased when smoke billowed out.
After fiddling with the different moving parts of the stove, he found a chimney damper that was closed, also evidently rusted or stuck, but it let go and opened up when he banged on it with his fist a couple of times.
After feeding it a few more pieces of wood, he closed the small iron door in the front of the stove and limped over to drag out the tote from under the bed.
Totes, actually; there were two of them.
One held bedding, and the other, as she had said, contained clothing—plain workman’s clothes, sized for a big guy.
Most of it would fit Luke easily. He shed the slicker and changed into loose work pants and a man’s cable-knit sweater.
His feet ached and stung, but when he cautiously investigated, he was slightly unnerved to find that cuts which he was positive he had received only this evening had already sealed and stopped bleeding.
He ran his thumb lightly over a bruise that had faded to brown even though he was pretty sure it had happened a couple of hours ago.
I’m a monster.
But no—Inga wasn’t. Though he only had her word that she was like him. Except—not like him. He had been forced into his present circumstances, while Inga seemed to come by hers naturally.
Maybe that was what made all the difference.