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I dropped my dirty clothing on the rocking chair, and I would have to talk to Nova about laundry tomorrow. But right then, all I wanted to do was sleep.
The room was chilly from a draft, and the floorboards creaked under my feet as I made my way back to bed. I crawled underneath the covers, and I had just laid my head on the pillow when Nova knocked on the door.
“I don’t want you having an altercation with the wolfdogs, so I’m locking this door to make sure it stays shut,” Nova said through the closed door. “But you can call for me if you need anything.”
There was a click of a lock, and she locked me in from the outside. I really looked at the door for the first time.
It was an old heavy wooden door that had been painted white, but there were thick gouges along the edge and doorframe. Like deep claw marks.
Something had been locked in this room before.
15
Lazlo
The first few days I spent in the guest room, Nova asked nothing of me, and I did little more than rest. She brought me meals twice a day – eggs and porridge in the mornings, venison or bear meat with vegetables in the evening along with apple cider or goat milk – and she checked on my knee once. That was the extent of our interactions.
I tried to make small talk with her, but she was entirely uninterested. So I laid in bed for the most part, sleeping often. Nova kept the door locked during the day. I heard it clicking after she brought me food and clean linens in the morning.
It was unnerving, obviously. The way Nova came in without saying much more than salutations, leaving me with a tray of food, and then departing again with the audible click of the lock.
It was a strange thing being held captive, when my injured knee meant I couldn’t really escape anyway. On top of that, I’d been starving, so I had no choice but to eat the food she offered me, and it tasted better than anything else I’d eaten recently.
In the afternoons, from my first-floor bedroom window, I watched Nova take care of her farm.
All of the non-wolfy animals were kept on the other side of the heavy-duty fences lined with barbed wire. The level of security was presumably due to keeping the wolfdogs out – along with other predators, like wild wolves, human marauders, or even confused and aggressive zombies – as opposed to what the goats and chickens required to be kept in.
On the morning of the fourth day, I woke up before dawn feeling restless, but physically, I was better than I had been in some time. I still had to limp to the bathroom, but if I tried to put weight on my bad knee, I could hold it with some pain instead of collapsing to the floor.
By the time Nova came in with my morning meal, I made sure that I was sitting up and nonchalantly reading Harlow’s copy of Little Women, so I appeared as alert and healthy as possible.
“Oh.” She sounded surprised when she saw me, and she stopped short. “You’re looking better.”
“Yeah. I’m feeling better,” I told her with as grateful a smile as I could muster. “It’s probably about time I start helping out around here.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, but she seemed hesitant, and her dark eyes were unreadable, as usual.
“Where should I start?” I asked.
Nova set the tray down on my bed, and she pushed up the sleeves of her flannel shirt. “I have to do my morning chores, but when I’m done, I’ll direct you what to do.”
“Okay, sure.”
“Yeah.” She nodded and backed out of the room. “It’s time to put you to work.”
“I’m looking forward to being useful again,” I told her.
Then she left, and I heard the door lock behind her.
Excited about the prospect of leaving the room, I set up about getting ready, washing up and dressing myself for the day. As the sun rose in the sky, the room grew warmer, and all of the snow from the recent storm had already melted. Summer wasn’t that far away. I didn’t know when Nova would return, so I left my shirt off since it was more comfortable that way.
The lock clicked, and Nova opened the door without waiting to see if I was decent.
She looked at me sitting shirtless on my bed and her eyes widened in surprise. “You have a lot of tattoos.”
“Yeah. It was something I used to be into.”
She tilted her head, trying to get a better look at one I had winding down my arm. “I just wasn’t expecting you to have so many.”
