CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
“Why did you put drawings all over yourself?” I ask, watching the way the winter light catches the ink peeking through his clothes in places.
His head turns just enough for me to catch the corner of his eye.
They aren’t nearly as dark as I thought they were.
I’d convinced myself they were almost black, but standing this close, I can see the amber hiding beneath them, warm like honey trapped beneath smoke.
I wonder if they’d always been that color or if collecting souls affects their pigment somehow.
The thought follows us down the snowy path, curling quietly through my mind until I decide it’s a question worth keeping.
“What do they mean?” I ask, my attention drifting back to him, unwilling to let the question wander away unanswered as the cart groans softly over another path of frozen earth. “People don’t wear stories on their skin unless they want someone to read them.”
He doesn’t answer. Again. The silence folds comfortably between us, broken only by the rhythmic groan of timber and the soft scrape of wooden wheels as we move across the snow.
Then, without warning, his arm reaches across in front of me, the warmth of his body briefly cutting through the cold air as broad hands close gently around my own.
The leather of his sleeve brushes against the fabric of my cloak, and I stop dead in my tracks, unsure of what is happening.
One by one, he pries them from the handles with surprising care, as though he expects me to resist. I don’t.
His fingers linger for the briefest of moments, not holding me, merely making sure I’d truly let go before he wraps his hand around the handle instead.
“There,” he says simply, the cart shifting as he pushes forward, leaving me with nothing to do now but to follow.
As if relieving me was the most ordinary thing to do in the world.
I hurry after him, my bare feet sinking into the ice until I fall back into step beside him, glancing from the cart to his hand and back again several times before the words finally escape me.
“Why don’t you answer any of my questions?
” My words don’t sound accusing. They sound genuinely curious I think, because I cannot seem to make sense of him.
Have the years that separated our last encounter changed him like they have me?
It seems incredibly inefficient carrying around so many unanswered things.
I wonder if they pile up somewhere inside a person, collecting dust beside all the things they wished they’d said but never did.
If they become heavier the longer they’re carried. If that’s why he seems so tired.
“Why would I?” He finally speaks, almost absently as he guides the cart over another frozen rut, waiting for me to discover the answer on my own rather than handing it to me.
There’s no irritation in his voice, only patience that doesn’t quite belong to someone in such a hurry to keep his thoughts to himself.
I turn that over for a while. If he truly wanted me gone, he could have walked away back at the market.
Instead, he stole my cart from me. That has to mean something.
People don’t willingly spend time with someone they don’t like.
At least… I don’t think they do. Perhaps that’s why he hadn’t killed me yet.
Maybe I’d mistaken patience for kindness all those years ago.
Maybe death had simply been waiting for a more convenient moment.
That would certainly explain why he’d come back now.
“Because I asked them.”
The words leave me with far more confidence than I actually feel. It seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation. He says nothing, as though he’s weighing my answer instead of dismissing it.
“You’re asking me to answer yours while all you’ve ever done is dodge mine. Doesn’t seem particularly fair, does it?” His deep, calm voice is measured, every word landing exactly where he’d intended it to.
Fair.
I draw in a slow breath, ready to answer him properly, because he’s right.
“I’ve been at home.” The words feel truthful enough to survive being spoken aloud.
They aren’t the answer he’s searching for, and I know that.
But they’re the only ones that don’t leave my tongue feeling heavy.
I wonder if people can have more than one truth.
I think maybe they can. One that belongs to the world, and another that belongs only to themselves.
Some things are easier to survive when they remain unspoken, and I’ve become quite good at surviving.
The admission hangs in the cold air between us, swallowed by the bite of frost as we continue to walk in silence.
I wait for him to tell me it’s not enough.
That I hadn’t answered him properly after all.
I hate that I might be disappointing him, but that’s all I can give him for now.
Not telling him things has kept us both alive, and I only just got him back.
The path bends gently beneath the weight of the forest trees, covered in thick snow until they begin thinning around us, giving way to an iron fence dusted in white.
Black spears rise from the snow like sleeping soldiers, their pointed tips disappearing beneath tangles of bramble and the skeletal twigs of long, dead vines, their brittle branches bowed beneath the weight of ice.
Beyond them, my friends lie peacefully across the hillside, each one almost completely covered in white.
I can almost hear them, excited to see me after being gone for so long.
I hadn’t had time to visit them since I was let out, and I didn’t want to miss the market and come home without any money.
The snow has a habit of stealing hours, swallowing footsteps and daylight together until it’s difficult to remember how long you’ve been standing still, and I couldn’t risk arriving home after dark.
A little flutter of happiness stirs somewhere inside me as I remember that the men are away.
For the first time in what feels like forever, nobody is waiting to count the minutes I’ve been gone.
Who knows how long for. Since Doc didn’t return home from work last night, the men have been distracted.
A mercy I thank the earth for. The cottage is quiet when they’re not there, and so is my mind.
The walls don’t seem to lean quite so close, the floorboards no longer groan beneath heavy footsteps that never brought anything kind, and the air itself feels lighter somehow.
My fingers tighten around the edge of my cloak as I smile toward the little sea of graves waiting beyond the iron gate.
“I’ve missed you,” I whisper, though I couldn’t say which one of them I’m speaking to first. All of them, really.
It hardly seems fair to choose favorites.
For the first time since we’d left the market, Death turns fully toward me.
One dark brow lifts, and something softens the hard lines carved into his face.
It isn’t quite a smile, though the corner of his mouth threatens one all the same, as though my confession had caught him somewhere between amusement and curiosity.
He reaches for the wrought iron gate, its rusted hinges protesting softly as he eases it open with one hand before stepping aside, leaving the path entirely open to me.
“Go on.” His voice is low, carrying easily through the sleepy cemetery, and warmth blooms through me before I can stop it.
“You’ve kept them waiting long enough.” I shriek, the sound escaping somewhere between a laugh and a gasp as it disappears into the cold quiet, brushing past him with my cloak billowing behind me while hurrying through the gate.
I watch my step, careful not to trip on anything hidden beneath the white, as I greet my friends for the first time in what feels like forever.
My fingers drift across the weathered headstones, brushing away the ice and brittle ivy clinging stubbornly to their worn faces, freeing invisible names that are even more unrecognizable since the last time I was here.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, moving from one stone to the next, wishing I could have done something, anything to not have been locked away in the first place. I glance back over my shoulder at the darkness looming somewhere behind me, watching him linger just beyond the gate with the cart still in hand.
“You know,” I say thoughtfully, turning back and crouching down to brush a little pile of snow from an angel carved into cracked marble, “I think you’ve been rather neglectful.” A beat of silence passes.