Einar’s
continued presence at the shelter secured for the time being, Liz hurried back
inside to finish doing what she could to turn the previous night’s half-frozen
stew into a good, filling breakfast, Einar remaining outside just long enough
to run up the ridge as he had been his initial intent, needing to restore some
circulation to stillness-numbed limbs. This
task accomplished with some minor success he rejoined Liz in the shelter,
partaking of a most welcome if somewhat slushy breakfast feast of moose stew. Will, allowed by Liz only small tastes of the
stew when he seemed curious, was curious about something else, too.
Cozy
in his woolen undergarments and the insulated suit provided him by Susan before
their flight and jump he romped about the interior of the shelter, pausing in
each of his rounds to stare at the flickering candle flame and then at the cold
remains of the previous night’s fire, a quizzical look on his face. After being corrected several times by both
Einar and Liz for too closely approaching the
firepit while it was lit, he knew the boundaries, knew where he was
supposed to stop, but could barely restrain himself from creeping closer in his
quest for information. A pointed glance
from Einar, who the child was watching nearly as closely as he was the cold
firepit, stopped his forward progress, Will rocking back and forth on hands and
knees as he stared into the ashes and sang a little song about “fi-fi-ur, fi-fi…UR?”
voice going higher at the end as he all but demanded to know the fate of the
flames whose movements he so loved to watch.
“Fire’s
out, little guy,” Einar explained, scooping him up before he could venture too
much further into the restricted area and get himself into trouble. “You don’t know about planes yet, but you
will, and when those things are around, we can’t risk making smoke. Smoke.
See? Like this…” and he took a sprig of spruce needles from the
supply Liz had brought in for tea, held it above the candle flame until it
began smoking. “That’s smoke. That’s what we don’t want, today. Smoke.”
“’Moke?”
“Yeah,
smoke. That’s right. Real good for keeping the flies off of meat
and for tanning buckskins, but not so good when you’ve got planes in the
air. Don’t worry. You’ll learn all that as time goes by. And hopefully at some point…” Einar was quiet for a minute, eyes distant, suddenly
appearing very weary, and when he continued his voice was low, a little rough. “At some point hopefully you won’t have to
worry about it anymore, at all. Would
really like that for you, Snorri. For
you and your mother.”
“And
for you,” Liz was quick to put in, not liking the sound of future planning that
did not expressly involve all three of them.
“For all of us.”
“Yeah. But if they had me, they wouldn’t keep
looking. It would be over, and you guys…”
“Don’t
even suggest that! Will has a right to
know his father, to grow up with him.
Would you deprive him of that?”
Einar
shrugged, picked up his parka and finished stitching the tear in its sleeve,
going at the work with a silent fury which both seemed to preclude further
discussion and to indicate that the matter was weighing on Einar’s mind, and
Liz let it drop. Did not like to hear
him talk that way, thought it really did not sound like him at all. She wondered how long he had been
entertaining such thoughts, and how seriously he had meant what might have been
dismissed as a passing notion, a simple frustrated outburst, from anyone
slightly less literal and precise than Einar tended to be. Well.
She supposed it was only natural that certain things would come up as he
really began to contemplate Will’s future as an individual, as a person, and these
were conversations in which they would have to engage. At least he was thinking ahead. Always good to think ahead. Sometimes best not to go too far with it,
though.
When
Einar went out that evening—after a day of no more planes, but no fire, either—to
check his snares, it was to find the empty.
He did, though, see one set of tracks where a rabbit had passed just
outside the little corridor in which he’d chosen to set that particular snare,
a sign of life, at least, and a promise of more to come. The weather, too, held promise of change,
extreme cold that had prevailed for the morning and maintained its grip through
most of the afternoon at last lessening, waning ahead of a wind as soft and
strange as it was persistent. Einar
would have almost called it warm. Most
days. That evening it only seemed to add
to the ice in his bones, chattering teeth and leaving him to hunch his
shoulders against what seemed to be a perceptible and alarmingly rapid stripping
away of what little warmth remained precariously preserved in the core of his sinewy
frame. Shivering but not caring too
much, he headed for home, stopping several times to test the wind with his nose,
scenting a change, a softening, even if his body could not yet feel it. Smells were carried on that wind, strange,
live smells that promised some faraway but approaching change not only of immediate
weather conditions, but of the season itself.
All
of which was interesting, but of far less immediate concern than the fact that
he’d failed to find game, and they were out of moose stew. Out of moose altogether, actually, and though
they still had a fair quantity of the food sent along with them by Bud and
Susan in the drop bag, both he and Liz had been hoping very much to be able to
save the vast majority of those provisions, stashing them away against a time
of need. Well, they had need. A need he was not meeting, and would not meet,
so long as he stood there semi-dazed and staring beneath the little cluster of
leafless aspens which were currently doing nothing to shield him from the warm-freezing
tentacles of the wind. Visibly shaking himself
in hope of shattering some of the creeping apathy which had begun wrapping
itself unannounced and unwelcomed around both mind and body he set off, eyes
darting from one cluster of vegetation to the next and ears sharp for any
indication that potential game might be present.
When
Einar’s sought-after indication came, it arrived in a burst of feathery energy
that sent his heart into his throat and nearly left him to make a dive for the
ground, so nearly did it resemble the sudden materialization of a hovering
helicopter. Initial alarm passed and no
aircraft in sight Einar grinned a bit sheepishly, biting his lip to avoid
laughing aloud and further alarming the grouse he’d scared up out of a small
knot of chokecherry scrub. The bird,
true to the nature of its species, had not gone far, and saw gawking unconcernedly
at him from a low fir branch not ten yards distant. Supper, if he’d ever seen it…
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