Page 120 of These Tears

Another hour out here and it might be useless.

I go rigid.

Another hour and I might be, too.

Defeated, I unscrew the lid with stiff fingers, crack the thin ice with my forefinger that feels as if it might fall off from the cold, and force a sip down.

Clutching the jar for another moment or two, I accept the silence the shed offers. For a moment.

How’s he getting animals with a snowmobile?

I don’t care, I decide with a shake of my head. I’m out of here.

I glance at the tracks trailing away from the wooden structure. My gaze continues climbing the trees until it settles on the sky.

He might be back now or later. I don’t actually know because I have no idea when he’d left.

The thought snaps me into motion as I turn on my phone and check the compass app.

Keeping northwards might mean something. It has to. Last time I looked at a map, a stretch of blue separated Norway from the next piece of land. So… north means sea. Sea means water, and water means towns, roads, people – or maybe my brain just needs a direction badly enough to invent reasons for one.

Are there fjords nearby? He’d mentioned locally grown apples, so a village should be close. A fishing road? A fucking leprechaun bush—

No, wait, that’s Ireland.

I have no idea where the bloody hell I am!

Fuck, I should have paid more attention during geography.

For the third time, I check the notification bar – still no signal. Nothing but my own reflection on the screen – pale and stupid and breathing too fast.

The compass works, at least. North is the only certainty at this point.

The snowmobile tracks lead ninety degrees to the right from the storage shed. Evidence that something has gone that way and might return from it.

I should follow them, if only as proof that civilisation breathes at the end of that.

But that’s the way he had taken. He will take the same route back and then I’ve done fuck all.

I choose the unknown because it feels less like walking directly into his hands.

As the tracks fork away from me and north beckons me closer, my lungs start contracting with each step.

Though I can taste freedom, however far it is, there is only one thought that keeps cleaving through the panic: I’m leaving him.

Not the captor. Not the madman.

Elias.

Someone who had been abandoned so many times by so many people – everyone, in fact. My heart aches. It may be that saviour complex I’m unable to rid myself of, but the truth is far harsher. Elias was never just a prisoner to me. He was never just a project, never just a distraction. Even if there is a strong possibility that I might have imagined everything, there is still a small, tender place in my chest reserved for a particular pair of blue eyes.

My phone shows it’s past ten by the time I stop again. Still nothing. Just woods. Just nothing!

Christ, I may have made a mistake.

And just as I pivot to find the tree I last marked, I hear something—

It’s faint at first. Like the rasp of air through bare trees.