Page 203 of These Tears

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.