Page 119 of These Tears

The first rush of breaking free has long since burned off, and the forest begins to thicken as I press deeper, following what remains of his bootprints.

I walk. And I walk and walk.

After what feels like hours of nothing but snow and tree trunks, my breaths count themselves. I’m terribly out of shape. My thighs burn from effort. Sweat crawls down my spine only to cool into clammy ice under my snowsuit. The trees start to look the same, my hatchet marks the only proof I’m not moving in circles. Every few minutes, I glance back, searching for any hint that I might be far enough, that the cabin is not near me any more.

The sky slowly lights up with that grudging, thin blue-orange seep rather than a normal sunrise. Just as I’m starting to wonder if I should stop or turn back, the forest grows sparser and something appears in the distance between the trunks.

My legs slow.

Squat and rectangular, it sits in a small clearing like a secret – barely bigger than a garden shed. Corrugated metal roof, cheap timber walls, half-buried in snow. No windows. One door, its edges packed with drift. The same snow-pressed silence as the cabin, only more purposeful.

I approach, pulse hammering.

The bootprints lead straight to it, then vanish under the overhang. Up close, the smell hits me first – petrol clings to the air, old oil and cold metal. And the snow is piled up on the sides as if it had been cleared recently.

There’s no lock.

Why would there be, Leandra?

No one is crazy enough to be out here in the first place.

I wedge the hatchet under the handle for leverage, grunt and force the door open. Snow clusters behind the creaky door in a soft hiss as I open it. Inside, pale light snakes through the gap over my shoulder, illuminating just enough.

Empty.

Or almost.

The space is just wide enough to fit a single small vehicle – my guess, because of the petrol stains. Snow has been pressed flat into the floorboards in a neat rectangle, the kind that only something narrow and heavy would leave. Hooks hang from the wall, holding a heavy canvas cover folded over itself. A couple of tools and two white petrol canisters lie scattered on one side.

A snowmobile shed.

My fingers go numb on the handle.

He does have a snowmobile. Or he had one here recently.

Of course he does. Someone who lives in a place like this needs to be able to travel.

My stomach lurches. All those lectures about no roads, no one for miles… The way he’d made it sound like the mountains themselves closed their jaws around us.

Liar.

Or is he? He never actually said there was no machine. He only let me think the absence of roads meant the absence of escape.

I’m ridiculous.

He’s ridiculous.

No.

He let me make the assumption and never bothered correcting it.

Stepping inside properly, I stare at the emptiness. My throat works around a dry swallow. Hope and fury twist together until they gain a bitter taste beneath my tongue.

The jar knocks against my hip as I sit on the floor to rest. The thread around its neck bites into my gloves when I lift it up to my face.

The glass is fogged white on the outside, the feathery crystals starting to lace along the inner walls. I slosh it gently. The water moves, sluggish but still liquid, though a skin of ice is already beginning to form at the top, fracturing into shards as I tilt it.

The only reason it has not frozen solid is that the jar has been trapped against my hip on the outer fold of my snowsuit, stealing what little warmth my body can spare.