Page 246 of These Tears

I’ve done this before – when Elias tried to teach me how to move without being seen, without the animals noticing me.

Downwind. Quiet breaths. Light feet.

Once the trees swallow every trace of civilisation, Elias’ voice cleaves through the adrenaline in the shape of memory.

If you get lost, stop, breathe and listen.

I lean back against a boulder and crouch, fighting to quiet my breath.

Running until I sweat will only give the cold more access to me.

Voices move far below. No engine. No footsteps ahead of me, either.

I look up at the first hard stars finally showing through the blue and I find… What did Elias call it? Polaris. North. The wind bites at me, but neither tells me where home is, just how not to get any more lost.

It usually comes clean off the fjord.

The wind. I follow the stars, imagining him right next to me.

Whatever you do, Elias’ voice rises again, don’t spend all your strength on fear. You’ll need your legs more than your imagination out here.

I scoff at my demons who speak in his voice now, while I’m rubbing my face to force myself into some semblance of tranquillity, but my heart won’t settle.

Find a landmark. Do not waste your strength wandering in circles.

Landmark. Landmark. Landmark.

My gaze collides with a crooked section of a cliff that rises through the trees, shaped like a bear caught mid-yawn. I anchor my mind to it.

When I settle in its crevice, I cast a long gaze across the small clearing that dips into a sea of treetops.

When the commotion below completely dies, my heart reaches for Elias.

He has lodged himself too deeply in my chest. Every terrified thought turns towards the cabin somewhere in the distance and the possibility that, while I am running for my life, Elias may still be fighting for his.

42

The sky is already deepening in colour.

The hollow I found in the mountainside overlooking the bear-head cliff has tightened around me; snow has banked low overhead and the stone at my spine is drawing out what little warmth I have left.

I can’t see the lights below, can’t hear engines or voices – only the slow creak of the mountain and the rasp of my own breath fogging the inside of my hood.

In one moment, it almost feels as though the cold has receded, and Elias’ voice crawls into the space.

Your limbs start burning. Then they stop. That’s when you mistake it for relief.

I’d hated those words when he threw me into the blizzard. Now, with the mountain closing in around me and the cold beginning to feel almost pleasant, they land very differently.

I drag my thoughts away from that and let them drift towards home. I think of Marina first, of how certain we’d always been there’d be another call, another visit. I think of my cousins I kept promising I’d see, the messages left on read, the holidays skipped because of work or grief or whatever excuse felt good enough at the time.

The time I’d spent on Ron.

Anna… Oh, Anna… She’ll be devastated.

And Elias. His name fills the remaining space in my chest. How little I actually said what I felt. How often doubt chewed at what we had, whispering we were only pretending for convenience and survival.

With snow pushing at me, the truth arrives with terrible clarity: whatever exists between him and me is real. It grew out of fear, coercion and difficult choices, but none of that makes what I feel imaginary.