40
When the snow retreats, the mountains emerge by degrees: charcoal shoulders sprout first, then veins of jagged stone, then the dark earth at their feet.
April does not bloom here. It reveals itself in slow, reluctant sighs, one dark patch beneath the white at a time.
I shift the camera strap higher and hook a thumb beneath my waistband where the unfamiliar ink now covers the last trace of Ron. The shape is hidden beneath my clothes, but I’m still not used to finding something else on that spot.
Still, a strange calm overtakes me knowing it’s there.
A bear paw print. Typical Elias – Scruffy Bear – Crane.
Lifting the camera again, I study the landscape as I would a stranger’s face, searching for the first fracture through the lens that might reveal the secrets behind it.
What I took for another section of a large field has begun to sag inwards. Snow thins around a shallow basin, translucent at the edges, and a dark surface glimmers beneath it – the lake that Elias has spent all winter keeping me off so I wouldn’t fall through the ice.
And now, seeing the water beside the smokehouse feels like finding a pulse beneath the skin of a sleeping beast.
The wind skims across it, carrying a hollow resonance of open water beneath an enormous sky.
I head back towards the cabin, letting the sight of it imbue me with a calm I haven’t felt before.
It comes into view between the sparse trees, and unlike before, a smile creeps over me.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like a prison and – dare I think – started feeling almost like a home.
Warm amber light pools in the windows, as if inviting me back into its comfort.
Timber walls huddle beneath the snow-dappled roof, keeping their secrets tucked inside, while the smoke trails lazily from the chimney into a clear sky.
Inside, I drop onto the edge of the bed and reach into my camera bag for another lens.
My travel bags sit against the wall beside it – empty. Because my clothes are now sharing space with his in the wardrobe.
Nearly seven months have passed since Elias took me from the airport, and even the rhythm of our days has changed.
My passport is inside the desk drawer, next to his.
My phone charges beside the bed. Henrik, Anders’ oldest son, or Inga, drives me into town if Elias is too busy.
For the first time since autumn, knowing those things – and having the form of freedom that the wilderness allows – loosens something in me.
I speak to Anna once a week from the landline, circling the same grave in every conversation: Elias, Conall and the case.
I don’t tell her the truth of my living arrangements: that even months later, I’m still here with a man who brought me to this place without my consent. I don’t dare open another box of wounds while hers are still being carefully handled.
But it’s not the only reason I stay silent.
The evidence of what he has become to me is humiliatingly simple.
The camera balances across my thighs as I press the lens release and twist the barrel free. The old lens disappears into its padded compartment as I settle the bag on the bed.
My eyes skim the pillow.
Often, I wake before him and listen to his breathing, irrationally afraid that one morning the bed might be empty. That Cromwell, the police or some consequence Elias hasn’t named will finally find the road to us.
Whenever I ask whether the British authorities could connect Jakob Halvorsen to Elias Crane, he gives me the same answer: the name is legally his here in Norway, and there’s no way someone can connect the two because Jakob has been making transactions here, whilst Elias has been undergoing therapy and, later, sitting in prison in England.
The lens catches as I twist it into place. I draw it back, line up the marks properly and try again until it clicks.
I no longer ask if he had any help, but who helped him. He skirts the answer. At this point, I have decided I don’t want to know.
While tidying up around the cabin, I’d found the deed with Jakob Halvorsen’s name, but still… I’m not entirely sure if it’s legitimate or not.
My gaze drifts to the travel bags. They are eagerly waiting to leave, though that knowledge brings less comfort than it should nowadays. We don’t know what awaits in England.
According to Elias, Conall has heard nothing to suggest British police have circulated an international alert or request for his arrest in connection with Isak and Melody’s deaths.
That should be somewhat reassuring, but whenever Cromwell’s name enters the conversation, the man goes so still the entire room seems to brace.
My fingers tighten unconsciously around the edge of the bedspread.
It reminds me that the danger is not only what Elias might have done. It is what someone else still intends to do once the truth is out.
He gives me small facts like pebbles dropped into black water – brief ripples that tell me nothing about what lies underneath.
And little by little, against every sensible part of myself, I start wondering whether the deaths I’d pinned to Elias’ shadow may have belonged to someone else’s darkness all along.
I’m already heading out with my camera when Elias swoops out of nowhere, curls an arm around my waist and turns me into the door, pressing me chest-first against it.
There is nothing careful about the way his hand slips beneath my coat, lowers the waistband of my thick tracksuit just enough for his mouth to find the bear paw at my hip.
His brand.
I fought him over the way he pushed me into getting it. But now I carry the mark gladly on my body.
His lips touch there once before travelling up beneath the hem, where he gives a small nip at the skin.
‘Elias!’ I hiss, trying to shove him off while my body helpfully betrays me by leaning right back into him. ‘Anders will see.’
He hums, thoroughly unconcerned, until I twist around, pull my tracksuit bottoms back up and start batting sawdust from his hair.
‘You got it all over me, you menace,’ I grumble.
His smile appears against my throat. ‘Good.’
‘No, not good. Are you done with the room?’
‘Nope,’ he says and finally peels himself away as if it were the hardest thing he’d ever done.
The cold rushes into the space he leaves behind as he walks over to a cabinet by the door and hooks two fingers through the handle of a battered toolbox.
He pauses with his hand on the latch to look me over one last time – hair mussed, tracksuit still crooked – just like his grin.
I clutch the camera closer to my chest like a shield and direct one or two curses at my ovaries.
His mouth twitches as though he can hear them.
Anders calls something muffled from the room that once held chains and still seems blistered by history.
My giant bear walks backwards down the corridor, toolbox in hand, his gaze never ceasing to devour me.
‘Can I finally see what you’re doing in there?’ I ask.
His grin deepens, but he simply disappears around the corner without a word. A newly fitted lock snaps into place in response.
I stare at the empty space for another second, deliberating whether curiosity should kill this silly cat again, but ultimately, I gather my dignity and try to rein in the desire still vibrating through me.
Purpose. I need that today. Something other than thinking about my demon and the ridiculous amount of stamina he has.
Outside, I take only a handful of frames before checking the memory card.
I can offload everything to the laptop and keep shooting, but without a darkroom I can’t make the prints that matter to me.
If I can’t eventually hold the finished image in my hands, every photograph feels as though it has stopped one breath short of completion.
So I’m dosing myself as carefully as my own demons allow.
Lifting my chin and absorbing the coolness of the weary winter, I focus on the moment. I let it seep into my pores and fill my lungs.
Emotion hides in places like this. The lake is graphite rather than blue, reflecting a sky still uncertain of its brightness. Mist threads the mountains and softens their edges so they don’t look as harsh.
Like me, everything is caught between states: snow and water, winter and spring, silence and confession. That is where I always find the most honesty – in the instant before something has reached a point when it can no longer remain what it was.
I still want to leave; I want a road I can take without asking, a city close enough to reach before nightfall and a life that does not depend on snow depth.
What I no longer want is to leave him behind.
In that moment, the distinction frightens me enough for me to raise the camera and hide behind the viewfinder. The birches seem especially judgmental today.
I push all half-thoughts away and cling to my lens, chasing emotion the way waking rivers chase the Norwegian Sea.
Because pursuit gives shape to a beautiful silence.
Here, in the thaw, the world is not yet alive, not yet aware of two beings pretending things are perfect in a world that is far from it.
After all this time, I can finally admit that whatever we have has deepened. What I still can’t reconcile is the way Elias keeps preparing me for a life I haven’t agreed to live forever.
He still bullies me through homestead lessons as though civilisation has been permanently cancelled. When I ask when we might leave together, he talks about all the work that needs to be finished before summer. The answer arrives too quickly each time, polished smooth by repetition.
I turn the focus ring beneath my fingers until the distant tree line sharpens through the glass. Easier to bring a mountain into focus than whatever Elias is keeping buried.