34
‘Piss off, George,’ I mutter, nudging the cockerel off my leg with the bristled edge of the barn sweeper. The damned bird has made it its lifelong goal to peck my foot down to the bone.
He struts off in an indignant circle, fluffing his feathers and tossing idle threats into the cold morning air like the king of the coop.
Like someone else I know.
It’s been three days since the gathering at the Nielsens’. Three mornings of waking to the scuffing of Elias’ boots outside before I even opened my eyes. Three nights of the door shutting between us with a small, final click that somehow sounds louder than a slam.
He has taught me how to bank the fire, so it doesn’t choke the room with smoke – though my nan had already drilled that into me by the time I was twelve.
I let him explain it anyway. I let him crouch by the range and speak to the iron mouth instead of to me, because even that feels like a reprieve when the alternative is silence.
He has shown me where to scatter ash on the path, so I don’t split my skull before breakfast. Where to keep the chicken feed. Which latches always freeze. How to reset the generator before the cold starts winning and I end up spending my morning beating ice with a shovel.
Every lesson is clipped, practical and delivered without eye contact, as though I am part of the livestock – with opposable thumbs.
Chop this. Carry that. Don’t leave the smokehouse door open. Now open the door. Feed the fire. Don’t touch the pipes. Feed yourself before you faint. Feed me before I ask twice.
And somehow, even in all that distance, he still expects the old rituals to remain intact: one plate between us. One cup. One spoon. His mouth fed by my hand.
At night, he makes me read. The pages of that godforsaken book have only grown worse, but Elias listens as though I am reciting a bloody weather report. He sits across from me with his arms folded, eyes on the flames, face carved into something calm but not peaceful.
He doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t even let his gaze linger long enough for me to accuse him of anything.
That is somehow more grating than the alternative.
By morning, he is always gone before I wake – in the shed, by the woodpile, shovelling paths that are already clear. Anything to keep his hands busy and his body outside. In the evening, he’s back behind the door.
I keep counting: the distance between the snowmobile and the exit. Keys. The time it takes him to cross from the shed to the house. Which hooks hold what tools, which tools are sharp enough to matter.
The snowmobile is useless without petrol and keys. The road is too far without knowing the route. There is no direction save for the one locked in his head.
I growl at myself as I sweep George’s insult along with the straw and catalogue every pointy thing in the barn. The sharp inventory leaves a coldness within me.
I have never hurt anyone before – not intentionally, at least. Not in any way that left blood behind.
But the longer Elias keeps me here, the harder it becomes to pretend running is the only shape escape can take.
‘You named him George?’ His voice breaks across the chill like a snapped twig, scattering the hens in a flurry of flapping wings and startled clucks as he stomps in, zipped head-to-toe in his snow-crusted suit. His expression twists with faint revulsion as he narrows his eyes at the bird.
‘He’s got the belly and the likeability of one,’ I grumble, flicking a quick glance towards Elias without fully meeting his eyes.
‘I advise against naming the animals. You’ll be cooking them at some point,’ he mumbles.
Not having thought about it, I glance at the hens and frown. Not Margaret…
She sits placidly in one of the nesting boxes, blissfully unaware that her career trajectory may eventually end at two hundred degrees Celsius.
George makes a noise to my right and my mood sours further.
Elias follows the beady-eyed little menace as he makes a beeline back to me.
I raise my sweeper with a warning flick. ‘Come on, I dare you. I’ve got a pot with your name on it.’
‘He’s been volatile lately,’ Elias comments dryly, shifting his focus to inspect the half-empty nesting boxes. ‘That’s going to be a problem.’
His boots crunch against the compacted straw and dirt, leaving large, wet impressions.
‘I’ll separate him if he gets worse,’ he says, more to the coop than to me. ‘Or cull him.’
I ease my hold on the sweeper.
Elias hooks his hands to his hips. ‘Even if one of the fertilised eggs gives us another male, he won’t be useful for months. We can’t wait that long.’
George struts past my boot as though he understands none of us have really taken to him.
Elias says nothing else. Neither do I.
Turning back to the floor, I drive the last of the muck into the corner as I eye the straw I’d brought in earlier. My breath clouds the air in soft white puffs. The tin roof creaks above us from the shifting weight of the snow.
And the silence stretches its tendrils again.
Three days of pretending nothing happened.
Behind me, Elias begins returning the shovel and tools to their respective places, each piece of metal settling with small clinks.
My eyes follow his hand. Hook. Tools. Lock.
And inevitably, the door.
I’d tried the one at the back of the cabin, when he was off in the smokehouse. It wouldn’t budge. Not even with a knife wedged into the frame until my fingers cramped around the handle.
He sleeps in there. Keeps something in there. My passport, probably. The other pieces of me he collected before dragging me across half a continent and calling it a life. There’s no other reason for him to guard it like some frostbitten troll hoarding treasure.
‘We’ll go into town to get a new cockerel,’ he says abruptly, halting as he swings the shed door open.
I glance up.
‘When you’re done, there’s a lot of snow around the smokehouse. I could barely move yesterday. Clear it out, please.’
And then he’s gone.
No thanks. No look back. Just drops the command and vanishes through the swirling gust of wind that follows him out.
I watch the door for a moment, sweeper gripped in my gloved hands.
He’d told me that he only goes into town once a week to avoid wasting petrol. But he’s been leaving every day. He always returns with his jaw so rigid that the strain of it seems almost contagious.
And after hearing that heated conversation he’d had on the phone at Sunna’s three days ago—
Every time he returns, his features are drawn tighter. Every evening, the door closes earlier.
Several hours later, with my cheeks still tingling from the cold as if they’re about to peel straight off my skull, I’m at the range, stirring broth in the rhythm of his wood chopping just beyond the kitchen window.
He had to move to the east side of the house because he’s already lined the wall with logs along the west side of it.
I narrow my eyes at him.
Does he really need to chop that much every day or is it another one of his exits from reality?
The thought has barely finished forming when another sound slips beneath the axe blows.
Not one engine, but two, growling closer through the trees.
Elias stops mid-swing and twists at the waist as he looks towards the treeline, his breath fogging white across his cold-reddened cheeks.
He lowers the axe, pushes his beanie a little higher, and lifts his chin once towards the trees in greeting.
Not a minute later, a firm knock resounds at the front door.
Elias glances at me through the window in wordless instruction, and I remove the broth from the hotplate and wipe my hands on a towel before opening.
On the threshold, swathed in a white snowsuit, stands Inga. In her hands, a lidded container wrapped in cloth. Her smile is warm, her gaze is too, but the shade of her eyes, like everything else around this place, is not.
‘Surprise!’ she yelps merrily, nearly startling me.
‘Good afternoon,’ I murmur, forcing a smile to my face.
She pushes in, taking a single step further to settle the container on the table.
‘We’re a little late,’ she says brightly.
I blink rapidly to banish the haze of petty, irrational jealousy that rises the moment she steps into the house like she belongs here.
‘Late for what?’ I try as I push the door closed.
‘Hey, hey!’ Elias shoulders in with two more cloth-wrapped boxes balanced against his chest, snow clinging to his jacket and beard.
Anders follows right behind him, cheeks red, carrying another stack and grinning as though this was all expected.
‘We brought too much, I think,’ he announces, unnecessarily – because the kitchen is already filling with the savoury scent coming from different containers.
Elias doesn’t look at me as he passes, but his arm brushes mine anyway. It’s a brief contact, but charged enough to make my fingers twitch around the towel I haven’t realised I’m still holding.
Then the two men start moving around each other, opening the fridge and clearing the shelves before stacking containers inside.
Inga unwraps the one at the table, holding some sort of chocolate cake, humming under her breath, while I remain by the door watching them take possession of the kitchen.
‘Am I missing something?’ I say. ‘I feel like we should have baked something too.’
Inga is at my side in a second, coiling her arm around my shoulders.
Don’t squirm, I coach myself.
She pulls me closer to the table and drags out a chair. ‘You just sit down. It’s your day.’
My brain blanks out.
I aim my gaze at Elias, who is still avoiding meeting mine.
‘My day…’ I reiterate.
‘Yes! You don’t celebrate birthdays?’ Inga asks, unhelpfully.
My gaze falls to the cloth clutched between my fingers.
Is it my birthday already?
I’ve been here almost a full month.
The cloth twists tighter.
‘We still need to step by Olle’s place,’ Anders says as he straightens. ‘I’m bringing more ammunition to him. There have been quite a few sightings around here. Have you set the traps?’
‘Not yet. Was planning to do it tomorrow,’ Elias admits as he turns to Inga. ‘Anyone else coming?’