Page 2 of The Shape of Silence

When she grew sick once, he fed her gritty tea water. When she recovered, he gave her work again.

She learned the land the way she learned everything else—by watching, then doing. After a while, the dark forest did not frighten her. She learned its shape and sound, and how it behaved.

Sometimes she remembered another place, but the remembering began to thin and grow distant, like a sound heard through water. She tried to hold it for a while, hoping one day she could communicate enough with the man to have her questions answered. But for now, the work came first. Still, she sang songs she recalled, hoping to keep a language she had once known but didn’t hear anymore. She sang quietly, most often when she was alone, the words whispered.

By summer’s height, she set a snare without his help and brought back her catch the next morning. She laid it on the table and waited.

The man bobbed his head, his blue eyes on the stout rabbit. That was all.

She had seen eleven summers, though only one of them belonged to this place. By the time she understood the man’s language, she hadn’t forgotten what questions she’d wanted to ask—about where she was, how she’d gotten here, when she was going to see her mother and father again—but they seemed somehow less important than what they would eat and how they would survive another winter.

***

By the second summer, she no longer startled when he came up behind her. She was familiar with the man and his sparse noise—the shift of weight, the careful placement of a foot.

She sat on the floor near the door, mending a tear on the knee of her pants. Her jeans no longer fit her and had long since been taken apart for other needs—strips for tying bundles, a patch inside one boot where the leather had worn thin, a square folded and kept by the hearth to lift hot iron, another sewn into the lining of her shirt to hold flint. What remained of her jeans was little more than a length of blue cloth, softened by so many washes and the ever-present smoke, and she used it now without thinking. She still wore her undershirt, though it stretched tight against her chest, and sometimes her own wool cowl-neck sweater, though the sleeves no longer reached her wrists. She had outgrown her coat at the end of last winter and had sewn the thing into a bundle she used as her pillow. It had once been pink and white, striped and bright enough to look out of place in the gray house, the only color that did not belong to bark or ash or fur. Smoke had dulled it until the white had gone the color of old bone and the pink had faded into something quieter. It still held its shape better than the furs, and it kept the cold from her cheek at night, but she would’ve preferred to have had her coat still.

Her stitches were smaller than they had been a year ago, laid close and even. When the thread knotted, she didn’t get frustrated or rush it, but carefully worked it free and went on.

The man came in and crossed the room to the shelf and took down the salt jar. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted the weight of it in his hands, the way he tilted it to judge what was left. He did that now and again, though she didn’t know why. They rarely used salt.

Outside, the light was high and clear. They worked close together that day, splitting wood that had been dragged back from deep within the forest. He chose the heavier lengths; she carried the smaller ones and stacked them where he indicated.

There had been a morning weeks ago when she’d woken to blood and thought briefly that something had gone wrong, that she was dying. She’d stood very still, listening to her body the way she listened to weather, waiting for pain that did not come. When she told him, with hardly enough wherewithal to be embarrassed, he listened, nodded once, and brought her cloth without comment. He showed her where to keep it and how to clean it, and said the blood would come again, every month. That was all.

She moved a little more carefully that night. Her body felt heavier, but she didn’t worry about it, since the man had not. It was simply another thing to account for, he’d said.

Later, as the light faded, she sat on the low stool and watched the man work near the fire’s soft light, repairing a strap that had begun to fray. He didn’t speak then, and yet the silence between them wasn’t empty. It had long since taken on a familiar shape, something that held, rather than pressed.

She was taller now than she had been when she first came here and stronger, too. The work fit her hands better. She understood more than she once had, and understood as well that she had much to learn.

When the man finished, he set the strap aside and looked at her, inclining his head in the direction of the fire, and she rose and banked the small flames, the day done now.

That night, she slept deeply, the house steady around her, the quiet, familiar noises comforting.

The next day, they went out early, while the ground still held the night’s cold. The air was clear enough that sound carried farther than it had the day before, and she kept a little more distance between them, watching how he chose his steps and then placing her own feet where his had been. They checked the furthest line first. One snare lay empty, another held a rabbit, already still. He reset the thin line while she waited, then nodded for her to take it.

She secured the rabbit in the pouch at her hip, careful not to let it swing. At the small loch, she knelt and rinsed her hands, the water cold, and then—without really thinking about it—she picked up a flat stone and sent it skipping across the surface, once, twice, and a third time before it sank. She smiled to herself, with some hazy memory of her father showing her how to do that.

The stone made a small, dull sound when it sank, and then the water closed again, smooth but for a softly widening ripple. She watched the place where it had disappeared and had the quiet thought that this must be how it was, when something was no longer where it belonged. It didn’t stop being—she had not stopped being. She and the stone had simply gone where they could not be seen.

The man had come to stand beside her. He stood for a moment, looking at the stream, and then surprised her by bending and choosing a stone of his own. He threw it less carefully than she had, and it skipped only once before dropping. He looked at the water, and then fetched another stone, and tried again. This one hopped twice.

He made a sound then—not quite a laugh, but something close to it. The corner of his mouth lifted, just enough to change the design of the wrinkles in his face.

She smiled again, a bit distracted by her thoughts for a moment before she picked another stone and skipped it with greater intent. Her stone skipped five times before it dropped from sight.

The man’s brows lifted at this, but he didn’t attempt to skip another. Without a word, but giving a small nod, he turned and left the loch, angling toward the sun in the east and the other snares.

***

Five years later

––––––––

She finished washing her hands before she looked at him again.

The water was cold enough to sting. She rubbed her fingers together until the ache passed, then shook them dry and stood for a moment, listening. The house made the same small sounds it always had—the settling of the fire, the faint shift of air near the door—but it seemed already something in the pattern had slipped.