Page 257 of These Tears

His smile lightens but doesn’t disappear entirely.

Then it hits. ‘They’re not still expecting a wedding tonight, are they?’

His amusement vanishes. ‘No, the groom has seen the bride. That’s bad, I assume.’

‘We need to tell them, Elias.’

Colour leaves his face as if the words have sucked it dry.

I kiss him once, briefly, softly, but he doesn’t respond. When I pull away, he is still staring at me for a moment. His mouth opens, then closes again around whatever almost came out.

In the end, he only nods towards the bonfire. ‘I’ll talk to them.’

Part of me wants to press him for whatever still refuses to come out. But too many truths have already been laid bare beneath this sky tonight.

Rising to his feet, he offers me his hand without closing his fingers around mine.

Together we move out from the shelter of the trees and towards the women who are undoubtedly plotting another kidnapping.

44

The time in Norway has taught me a great deal about myself. Mostly that I am atrocious at anything not involving a camera, a saucepan or spiralling in private.

Give me a ray of light across Elias’ chest and I can make art. Give me onions, flour and something dead enough not to object, and I can make a decent dinner.

Give me a snare, a compass or the simple task of remaining upright in the wilderness, and I become a cautionary tale with frizzy hair.

Two months pass after the Hunt that never properly happened, though calling it that still makes my eye twitch. Elias doesn’t say much about it, and he has kept his family at a careful distance since that night. Which makes me wonder if he’d told them anything at all.

Which is very Elias of him.

Nonetheless, a restlessness begins to swell in him. He walks the perimeter at dawn and again before bed. He checks the locks several times, changes the route each morning and keeps making me repeat escape plans until I start reciting them in my dreams.

I’m not entirely sure that the next time he attempts another drill, after despicably keeping me awake half the night, I won’t throw a pillow at his head and tell him to make a bloody appointment.

When I’m not teaching him about touch, tenderness and all the softer things he still approaches like unexploded ordnance, he teaches me where to aim, how to steady my wrist, how to fall without breaking my neck and how to read the behaviour of different animals.

For reasons unfathomable, even after proving how bad I am at survival in the fickle north, he also decides I need to learn to hunt properly. Because feeding chickens and managing not to poison us with stew does not fully qualify for homestead competence.

I disagree on principle, but mostly because I am tired, bruised and developing a peculiar detestation for anything that requires patience.

Still, every day, I follow him – across snow gone soft and mud feasting on my boots, from the smokehouse to the animal shed to the woodpile. I become useful in ways England never required of me.

By the end of this week, I manage to reset two practice traps without catching my own fingers, miss three bottles he makes me use as targets, gut a fish without gagging, and identify enough tracks to know when something bigger than me has passed by and decided not to say hello. This time.

It is progress, he tells me. But the furrow in his brow does not seem to agree.

He’s supposed to finish the chain-room today, but errands have been dragging him into town throughout the past few weeks – and today is no different. He refuses to explain what he’s buying or collecting, which is irritating but technically not a lie. I have become very particular about the distinction.

I know he has his eye set on goats, so I reason with myself that he’s doing the rounds on those.

We’ve grown quite a flock of chickens as of late, and I find myself enjoying the work with animals. Even asked Elias to get more – to which he agreed, depending on what he finds.

He made good on his warning about George – off somewhere beyond my knowledge and preferably forever beyond my sight. I still catch myself looking around for that obnoxious beak anyway.

Soon, the sun begins to linger longer and longer, and the yard sits in a sheltered pocket where the mountains blunt the sting of the wind. In direct light, with snow retreating from the dark soil, spring almost manages an impression of summer. This kind of warmth is not what I expect, but geography is clearly not my strong suit.

I’ve spent the morning tidying up and dealing with Margaret and her clucking lot. I’m fumbling with the rope holding the shed door open when the sound of an engine carries through the trees.