12 July 2012

I've got nothing for tonight, but will be back with another chapter tomorrow, and should have them for the weekend, too.

Thank you all for reading, and for your comments!

11 July 2012

Evening passed into night, Einar warming slowly, taking sips of warm, honey-laced water and mint tea when Liz pushed them his way and wouldn’t back down until he’d drank, and doing his best to fight the terrible weariness which tried on several occasions to close his eyes and send him slumping back against the bed in sleep.  Knew he was probably past the point where such sleep would likely prove fatal to him--especially in the warm cabin and with Liz there insisting, for some reason, rather strenuously that he go on living--but he wanted to keep an eye on the progress of his feet, and soon as his shaking had slacked off some and he was able to use his hands again, hoped also to show her the hides he’d taken.  For her part, Liz had little interest in hides at the moment, being greatly concerned about Einar’s thawing feet and preoccupied with finding a way to increase his circulation so as to get more blood flowing to them and prevent him losing any more toes--or worse--if she could.  Einar’s concern for the feet ended at getting them thawed out, which, from the feel of things, had already been accomplished and then some by Liz’s faithful addition of fresh draughts of warm water whenever that in the soaking pot began to cool; each time she apologized for the hurt she knew it was bringing him--she’d thawed her own frostbitten hands in the past, and knew the incredible, burning pain of the thing--and each time he reassured her through clenched teeth that it was no problem, none at all, not bothering him in the least.  She knew otherwise.  He was too weary and hypothermic to put on the customary expressionless façade which normally he adopted under such circumstances, and the true story was written all over his face.

Finished soaking the feet, Liz dried them as gently as possible with gauze from the supplies left them by Bud and Susan--oh, they’d be back to packing everything with usnea lichen soon enough, but why not use some of the real thing, as long as they had it?--smeared on some balm of Gilead salve and loosely wrapped everything with more of the gauze.  Wanted to give Einar a strong solution of the salicin-containing willow bark, not only for the pain but to thin his blood and theoretically improve his chances of keeping the remaining toes, but he refused.  She didn’t care.  Wasn’t about to sit there and watch him die a slow and horrible death of infection and blood poisoning, when there was something she could do to possibly prevent it.  Added the willow bark to his next pot of tea, attempting to mask its bitterness with mint and honey.  He found her out.  Was not happy, and refused to drink anymore.  Of anything.  Not what she had intended, for sure.  He had to keep drinking, or the feet would very soon be the least of their concerns.  Had only managed a sparse half cup since returning, and she could see from the shrunken, sunken look of the skin on his face and hands that he had managed to end up pretty badly dehydrated over the past several days, and no wonder, too, leaving himself no way to melt snow for water…

She’d messed up.  Never should have tried to fool him, yet she remained unapologetic.  Had been trying the best she knew to make things turn out better for him, but now she must do something to regain his trust.  Well, let him get his own water.  Didn’t help.  Water barrel had been contaminated; the whole lot tasted of willow bark, and he just knew she’d been sneaking it into there.  Probably had a whole big wad of it weighed down in the bottom with a rock, leaching out into the water and turning the entire thing into a strong willow bark solution.  Which of course she did not, tried to convince him of it but really, how reasonable can a man be when his temperature is still a good six or eight degrees below its already low set point, he’s so dry that his skin stands up all white and rigid when a person pinches him, and he’s half out of his head with the hurt of thawing feet.?  Pretty reasonable actually, Liz knew.  She’d seen him make critical decisions--and make them correctly--when in a worse state than his current one, and hoping to appeal to his innate sense of logic, order and respect for facts and truth, she sat down beside him with the remains of the willow solution.  The part she hadn’t poured into his tea…

“See?  Here’s the rest of it.  It’s right here in the pot, not in the water barrel.  Water barrel’s fine.  I would never turn our entire water supply into aspirin juice.  What would I drink, then?  I’ve got to drink plenty of water to make milk for Will, and you know I wouldn’t go contaminating it with anything that even might have the potential of doing him any sort of harm.  No, the willow stuff was and is strictly for you, and I’d really like you to try some of it.  Some more of it.”

“Think about it.  Makes sense.  Thin the blood, help prevent little clots in the damaged areas, increase flow to the toes and you increase your chances.  It’s an accepted course of medical treatment for severe frostbite.  Which you may or may not have.  We can’t tell yet, and may not know until it’s too late.  So why won’t you let me try it?  It’s not for the pain.  You can hurt all you want, so far as I’m concerned.  It’s for the toes.  So you don’t die of infection in a week or two or three.”

She waited.  He considered.  Nodded slowly, took the pot and drained it, not even grimacing at the overwhelmingly bitter bite of the brownish liquid.  Liz shook her head, shuddered, snatched the pot away, but too late.  It was empty.  Not at all what she had intended.  She’d tasted the stuff, couldn’t imagine drinking it the way he’d just done.  Would have sweetened it up some for him had she known he was actually going to agree to trying the solution, would certainly have made sure he drank it more slowly, over the course of the evening, but it was too late for all that, and Einar appeared quite beyond caring.  Probably benefited, if anything, from the temporary distraction from his burning feet.  Most anything had to be better than that.  She just hoped the quantity and suddenness of the stuff wouldn’t make him sick.  He couldn’t afford it just then.

“Well, I guess that’s a ‘yes,’ then!  Thank you.  I really think it can only help.”

Another nod, Einar appearing a good deal wider awake than he had been before the willow, shocked to full attention by its bitterness, perhaps, and after he’d got his breath back he gratefully accepted the water she was holding out to him.

“Stuff’s good and strong, alright.  Ought to really do the trick, if anything’s going to.  Was a…real good idea you had there.  And a good thing you’re as persistent and stubborn as me, too.”  He gave her a hint of a wry grin, teeth still chattering and face so twirted up from the willow drink that he presented a hilarious sight, and Liz might have laughed, had the situation not been so serious.  “Thanks.  Did a good thing.”

“I’ll make you more for later, but first you’d better have something to eat.  The willow will be hard on your stomach, taken plain like that.  How about some broth, and then maybe later a little stew.”

“Good.  Sounds good.  Got a…fresh muskrat in my pack if you want it.  Good for stew.  Not so good for breakfast after a night of…must have been forty below or something.  Hard as rock.  Couldn’t chew.  Muninn…he did a lot better.”

“Yes, I’ll make us a good muskrat stew for later, or for in the morning, or whenever you’re ready.  Let’s just have some broth now with a little bear fat in it to help you keep warming, give you some energy for the night and dilute that willow a bit.  And if you think your stomach can handle it when the time comes for stew, I’ll add a bunch of the dried shepherd’s purse I have leftover from Will’s birth.  It’s in the mustard family, the seeds are real spicy and I think that ought to help get your blood moving, too.”

All details which normally would have fascinated Einar, but they interested him not in the least just then, for he had fallen fast asleep.

10 July 2012

Einar did not later remember much about that long, cold climb up from the valley, remembered taking care at every turn to render his tracks as little visible from the air as possible and remembered, when Liz asked him about it several days later, stopping once and doing his best to melt a bit of the squeaky, Styrofoam-dry snow between already mostly frozen palms out of dry-throated desperation for water, but mostly the ascent remained a giant blank spot in his mind and memory.  A nothingness, and perhaps just as well.

Nearly dark when he began pushing his way through the tangle of willows just below the cabin-clearing, and overjoyed to see them, only half believing, he would have been greatly inclined to sink to his knees and go no farther, satisfied, home.  Only he knew, in some dim recess of his cold-weary brain, that it would have been the end of him, and--had long ago forgotten why, but the urge was still there, the certainty, and it drove him on--he meant to live.  Intended to do it.  So, he kept moving.  Slow, dreamlike through the deep snow, darkness falling fast when he caught the first whiff of smoke, tears in his eyes as he stumbled across the clearing and bashed himself, insensible to the force of the blow, against the woodshed.

She was with him then, holding him so tightly he could scarce breathe, and he would have wondered what the fuss could possibly be about, had his thought processes included anything resembling words, at the moment.  But they did not, so he held her, too, sensing her distress and attempting clumsily, dumbly to comfort her, forehead on her shoulder, eyes closed and knees buckling quit unintentionally but he was a bit confused as she seemed not to want it, his silent reassurance; apparently it had been the wrong thing, for she lifted him, shook him hard by the shoulders and hurried him inside, briefly holding the door for Muninn as he hop-flew along behind.

Inside, Einar stood stiff-legged, braced against the wall as a wave of unbelievable warmth enveloped him, dazed eyes sweeping the cabin--cozy, neat, looked like she’d been doing a lot of cleaning in his absence--and coming to rest on the sleeping form of little Will, tiny, flaxen-haired head just visible above the sparkling warm white of the mountain goat hide.  As he watched the rise and fall of the blankets in time with the little one’s breathing, he slid slowly to the floor, attempting at first a controlled crouch but losing his way and ending up in a rather awkward position with forehead on one knee and one leg off at an odd angle, dozing…

After adding a log to the fire Liz got Einar straightened up a bit, dragged him over so that he was leaning against the bed and got his parka off, slightly snow-crusted but not the least bit wet, thanks to the extreme cold of the night, shaking from it the bits of accumulated snow and setting it in the far corner behind the water barrel, dragging a bear hide from the bed to put about his shoulders.  His hands were--aside from his general condition and the fact that his heart would likely as not quit on him if she tried to warm him too quickly--her first concern, but when she gently removed his mittens they appeared to her surprise to have faired reasonably well, fingers cracked and bleeding in places from the previous frostbite from which he’d been healing, but appearing to have sustained little additional damage, and she pressed them to her stomach for warmth, glad and relieved.  Einar might have begun feeling a bit of relief too at that point--he had, after all, completed what had been for him under present conditions an enormously difficult trek back up the mountain, had reached his goal--had his hands not begun stinging so fiercely that he was able to think of little else.  Until the circulation began slowly returning to his feet.  That got his attention, alright, and Liz’s, as she carefully eased his boots from swollen, weeping extremities and slightly warmed a pot of water to being them thawing.

Einar, having been brought back a bit more to awareness by the awakening hurt, was glad of the pain, for it meant the feet were still alive, not as thoroughly frozen as he’d believed them upon waking that morning.  Good news, even if it didn’t feel like it at the moment and probably would not for days to come. When he thought back on the year-long struggle which had followed his last bout with serious frostbite, resulted in the loss of all the toes on one foot and several times nearly cost him his life, too, as he fought serious infection and all of its consequences…narrowed his eyes, steeled himself against the possibility that he would have to start it all over again.  Would probably be a losing battle, this time.  He lacked the physical strength to effectively prosecute such a conflict, and he knew it.  Healing would be slow, too slow, and infection would take him.  The next few hours would be critical, would determine whether he…  Warmth getting to him and a great, heavy coldness starting at the base of his neck and creeping quickly upwards, Einar promptly passed out.

Woke with Liz crouched above him, raising head and shoulders and holding a pot of something warm and steaming, smelled good and strong and salty, putting him in mind of the first time he’d met her, several years and what seemed half a lifetime ago out beside the river…different river, different circumstances…and she’d taken him to shelter as the search choppers passed over, given him broth and later, food.  Pressed his eyes shut against a gathering dizziness, hauled himself up into a sitting position, nearly overturning the pot in which his feet were soaking.

“I’ll go back for the traps.”  It was a croak, a horrid, hollow sound more suited to a raven than a man, and Muninn cocked his head to one side, made a soft answer.

Liz did not answer right away, holding up the steaming pot until he took a tentative sip, choked and coughed and tried another, which went down a bit more smoothly.  “Don’t worry about the traps.  Nothing will hurt them down there.  You did the right thing.  It’s going to be another extremely cold night I think, and I’m glad you’re here.  We need you here.  We’ll go back together.”

He nodded, eyes closing again.  “Yeah, little chilly last night.”

She laughed--a beautiful sound to Einar's ears, incongruous and delightful, the music of life--didn’t know why because she did not find it the least bit funny, any of it, but somehow couldn’t quit laughing and this woke Will, who added his loud voice of protest to the ruckus, which by then included Muninn’s excited rasping, the raven seeing Einar’s pot of broth abandoned and wanting it for himself.  Einar, meanwhile, sat staring and confused, a slight smile relaxing the deep lines of his face at Liz’s apparent hilarity, watching her as she reached for the baby, drew him in close so he could see his father.  With rapt curiosity the child regarded him, crying stilled, Einar staring back with silent wonder in his eyes.

Liz wanted to hand him the little one, let them spend some time together but she could see that Einar was still shaking much too hard to be trusted with the task, appearing close to losing consciousness again--though far less likely to do so than before the child had wakened, and she was glad to see the change--so she laid Will in his basket instead, scooted it over beside Einar where the two could visit as she worked.  Shooing Muninn away from the broth and giving Einar another drink of the stuff she rubbed his legs in an attempt to improve circulation, hoping to see a color other than the mottled purple which had almost continually marked their appearance since the arrival of cold weather that past fall, but without success.  Core so thoroughly chilled and resources tremendously limited, his body simply didn’t consider the extremities critical enough to divert any extra blood in their direction.  Liz had to disagree and knew Einar would, also, given the choice, glanced about the cabin for anything that might help remedy the situation and give his feet a better chance.

Comments from 9 June

Anonymous said...

Powerful chapter, FOTH. Will he burry his past, or will it burry him? We all have a past, and often it has dragons. 

Mike

Yes, it does.  Hard to say which way this one will go.

cimarron said…

Sounds like he was about to make "payment in full" on the farm.

cimarron

Came awfully close this time.

Apple said…

for petes sake, I thought that was going to be the final installment

I seriously considered it…but, life goes on.  Besides, I don’t think Einar’s the sort who is likely to get to die in his sleep.

9 July 2012

Sometime the next morning, frigid sunlight spreading itself slowly over a fast-frozen world, Muninn the raven tired of sleeping all puff-feathered in his tree, shook himself, straightened a few ruffled wing-pinions, and hopped down to see what was taking his human companion so long to wake and give him his daily allotment of muskrat.  The man wasn’t moving.  Wasn’t even visible, body buried deep beneath a sheltering mass of spruce duff and the cone-leavings of what might well have been generations of squirrels, head thoroughly concealed by the hood of his parka.  Muninn saw something, though, a good-sized strand of grey-streaked black hair, long and wild and matted with spruce needles and sap, that the man had apparently neglected to pull into the shelter with him, and the raven took full advantage of the oversight, grabbing and twisting for all he was worth.  Nothing.  He tried again, harder, and the hair came out in his beak.  Not his intended result.  He couldn’t very well eat the hair, and now he was left with no way to get the man’s attention.  Well.  He would make a way.  Employing all his ravenly skill and cunning, the hungry bird mounted a fresh attack, rasping and croaking and tearing at Einar’s carefully-constructed bed until the man’s hat was exposed.  He pulled off the hat, twisted some more of the hair thus revealed and, still receiving no response, went to work on the parka hood, searching for the man’s face.  Found it, a dreadful shade of mottled purple-grey which would have brought him a good deal of alarm had he been human, but of course he was not, and being a hungry raven, simply wanted the man to be able to return sufficiently to his senses to be able to snag the two of them a bit of breakfast.  He knew life when he saw it, and wasn’t about to go giving up on the man, while there was still breath in his body, however faint and slow those breaths might prove to be.

Head exposed, Muninn went next for a spot just behind Einar’s left eye, pecking hard enough to have drawn blood, had much of it been circulating at the moment, and this time he was rewarded with a muted groan and a great, wracking shiver as a bit of life began returning to the man’s half-frozen body.  Encouraged, Muninn went in for another attack--no sense losing the ground he had worked so hard to gain; he could see this was going to be a long process, and meanwhile, he was only growing hungrier--twisting another lock of hair and this time, securing a stir of movement, a half-coherent growl as Einar tried but failed to go for his knife.  Too stiff to move, he opened both eyes and glared at the bird, relieved beyond belief that his attacker was none other than the raven, for in any other case, he would have been quite lost.  Still couldn’t seem to get much response from his body when he tried moving, one arm finally flopping to the side a bit after a great deal of effort, but that wasn’t much use, and deciding it had been a good deal better off in its initial position, he put out an equally exhausting effort returning it there.

Just beginning to become aware of his surroundings--the raven had made absolutely certain he did not begin again drifting towards sleep--Einar slowly began to take stock of his situation.  Had fallen asleep in the night, clearly, despite his efforts to stay awake, and it had indeed been far too cold in the night for him to safely have done so.  Quite a wonder he’d ever wakened again at all, after that one, and he was pretty sure that without the raven’s timely intervention--greedy vulture, you just want breakfast, and I know it--he almost certainly would have gone right on sleeping right through his own almost-inevitable demise.  Was probably still fairly inevitable, but being awake and more or less alive, he figured it was time to see what was left.  Tried moving his hands, discovering, much to his surprise and gladness, that he was actually able to do so, fingers numbed but not entirely immobile, and it seemed that, whether by blind instinct or grace or some generous combination of the two, he had managed to protect his hands reasonably well in the night, tucking them into the very center of the desperate little sinewy ball formed by his freezing body.

Feet hadn’t fared so well, it seemed.  Couldn’t feel them at all, would have to further explore the damage at some later time, once he was able to get himself up and moving.  Which was not going to be an easy task.  Incredibly stiff he found himself, starting to shake pretty bad now that he was awake and moving a bit, and Einar knew he must have something to eat pretty quickly if he wanted to make it very far into the warming process.  His first thought, strangely, was not of the provisions in his pack but of the muskrats he’d left hanging in the tree near his first bed of fir boughs, and determined to reach them, he struggled out of his bed, the bag, shoved hands into his mittens and tried to get to his feet.  Couldn’t quite manage it, stiff and uncoordinated and finally contenting himself to crawl.  Reached the hanging-tree at last, sat staring up for a full dazed minute at the hard-frozen meat in the boughs far above before somehow managing to lower the rats, and he sat right there where they fell, chewing and scraping with molars at the iron-hard meat of the first rat that came to hand, teeth chattering between bites.  Not making much progress--the stuff might almost as well have been cement--Einar finally tossed the rat to Muninn, who had much better success in retrieving its bits of frozen meat.

Huddling, fading, Einar might have gone back to sleep right where he sat, had it not been for the raven and his insatiable appetite.  Well aware of the jerky, fat and other edibles remaining in the pack the bird once more demanded Einar’s attention, keeping up his harassment until at last the man groaned, rolled forward onto his knees and stood.

Yeah. Better get moving, hadn’t we?  All this sitting still and gnawing on frozen dead critters isn’t gonna get us anywhere good, not on a morning as cold as this one.  Nope, not gonna get us anywhere at all.  Time to go home.  Which indeed it was, far past time, actually, but the homeward trek was far easier announced than begun--Einar still a bit surprised at the announcement, actually, for giving up halfway through his intended week of trapping was not a concept that generally would have even occurred to him--as he still had traps out in nearly a dozen different locations which must be checked and taken up, likely more muskrats and perhaps even a beaver or two skinned out and their hides scraped…besides which, he still couldn’t feel his feet, must tend to them the best he could and must find some way to get himself warming, too.  Was dangerously near slipping back into the half-frozen shadow land in which he had spend much of the night and from which he knew he’d be unlikely to have the energy to emerge, a second time.  Needed a fire.  Had been needing one for the past two or three days, but all the concerns which had prevented him from doing so over that time were still in effect, and he had no intention of changing his mind, now.  Might die, he knew, as a direct result of that decision, but if he made that fire and it was seen, bringing the enemy to the area…well, he’d probably die anyway, trying to hold them off, and then so would his family, when they followed his back trail up to the cabin.  Best stick with his initial resolve, let the movement of running his trapline do the warming.   Ha!  What movement?   He was barely able to manage a dazed shuffle.  Nearly as badly as he needed warmth from an external source, Einar knew he must have fuel to keep his internal fires burning, had managed no more than a bite or two of the hard-frozen muskrat and now he fumbled with the pack to which Muninn had been striving so hard to draw his attention.

Having eaten a bit more Einar’s head was slightly clearer, the precariousness of his position and the unlikely thing that had been his survival of that frigid night coming more clearly into focus, and from that position, his next course of action began making itself plain.  He had to go back.  Retrieve the traps if he could, leave them if not--no harm would come to them in the few days they’d be abandoned--and head back up to the cabin.  He’d be fortunate--blessed, really--if he made it at all, and knew he must hurry to begin the trek, before his feet thawed and slowed him further, before the killing cold of another night could come, and freeze the rest of him.

Muninn wanted more food, and he gave it, tossing the bird a chunk of pemmican which was very quickly consumed to a chorus of delighted chortlings.

“What do you say, critter?”  Voice rough, unsteady with cold, and Einar realized he’d had nothing to drink that morning; not good…  “Time to head up the hill?”

Muninn did seem to think so, emphasizing his agreement by hopping heavily up to Einar’s shoulder, a move which brought the unprepared man to his knees in the snow.  Remaining thus for a long moment--almost too long, for sleep was never far off, that morning--Einar shook his head, smiled grimly at the bird and struggled back to his feet.

“Guess we better get walking.”  No further mention of the traps.  They could--would--wait.  There was a tightness in Einar’s throat as he packed his few belongings with as much haste as stiff limbs and unfeeling hands would allow, some part of him rebelling at the thought that he was quitting, abandoning the trapline before his intended week was up and failing to give Liz the space she surely must need and want after the events of their past few days together, but he shook his head and set his jaw, started up the slope.  He would live.  Must live, if possible.  That was the choice he had made, and now he would do his best to see it through.

8 July 2012

That day went much as the previous on the trapline, Einar taking five muskrat and setting several traps for beaver, besides, and with the exception of a little incident where one boot went accidentally through the ice—he’d been tempted for a brief moment to allow the rest of him to go on in, figuring he could use a cold soak, but thought better of it at the last second, remembering that he’d not brought many dry clothes, and without a fire had no way to dry his boots—the day passed largely without incident.  Back in camp he fed the raven and ate the meat from one of the day’s fresh take of rat, huddling against the rock wall in a bid to escape the wind, sleeping bag around his shoulders as he sat on his heels.  Wasn’t even remotely comfortable, as his seat bones felt as though they were bruising at the pressure, nothing covering them anymore, but he was too worn out either to know or to care, or to recognize the significance of a previously comfortable position suddenly paining him so. 

Despite all the muskrat he’d been eating, Einar had continued to lose weight over those frigid days on the trapline.  Simply couldn’t seem to get enough to keep up with what he was expending; that, and he supposed also that the sudden influx of fresh food combined with all the hard work and the cold must be speeding up his metabolism, increasing his need even further beyond his capacity to meet it.  Whatever the cause, he knew he must find a way to halt the trend, before it halted him.  Permanently.  Had he possessed a way to measure his weight—75 pounds, and that wearing his parka and boots, and with a stomach full of muskrat and river water—he might have experienced some alarm.  Ought to have, but more likely he would have felt nothing at all.  Life was what it was, and he never had been one to fret over the particulars.   Put more stock in results, and he was still able to work, trap, do what needed doing, and most of the time, that was enough for him.  Seeing as this particular set of particulars was about to do him in, however, a bit of fretting might have been in order, but would have to wait, if it was to come at all.  For the moment, he knew all his meager energy must be devoted to preparing a better shelter for the night, or all the rest of it would soon be a moot point.

Well below zero already and falling fast, temperatures were against him that evening, high clear vault of the sky splattered with stars whose silver light seemed only to make things colder as they blinked to visibility in the dimming sky, one by one and then in great legions as day tilted swiftly towards night.

What to do?  His bed of boughs was certainly insufficient for the coming cold, had barely seen him through the past two nights and his initial plan to add more branches was appearing pitifully inadequate in the face of the rapidly advancing cold.  Considered digging a snow cave but already the evening was well advanced, he terribly weary and without the right tools, knew the project was rather beyond his reach, for that night at least.  He’d end up wet and exhausted and with no dry clothes to change into, and it would likely be the last mistake he ever managed to make.  Which left him considering a fire, his previous resolve to avoid entirely such risks while down in the valley paling some against the odds he knew he’d be facing as the night went on.  Couldn’t do it, though.  Wouldn’t.  Not much choice, then, and he knew he must hurry, and did, searching from tree to tree to find one where the snow had perhaps accumulated less deeply and he might have some hope of scraping it aside and finding a heap of good dry duff in which to bury his sleeping bag, and himself, for the night.  Found such a tree at last, using his snowshoe to scrape down into the dry litter beneath it until he’d created a nest for himself, a space large enough to burrow in for the night.  Muninn had followed—wanting more muskrat, no doubt—and perched himself up in the sheltering branches of Einar’s chosen tree.

Later, cocooned and shivering in his pile of spruce duff as the wind shrieked and howled outside and darkness grew complete, Einar’s thoughts turned to Liz, eyes softening as he pictured her where she hopefully lay warm and secure in their bed of bear hides, little Will beside her and a candle, perhaps, lighting their evening in the soft, quiet time before sleep.  For a moment, he could almost feel her there beside him, insistent arms round the rigid, bony chill of his shoulders, holding, warming, but then she was gone, leaving him alone once more in the grip of the arctic night.  Shook his head, drew icy limbs in closer to his body and huddled against a chill that he seemed powerless to effectively resist.  Realized once again how greatly Liz’s attentive presence had helped to keep him warm—and more likely than not alive, too—through so many of the more frigid nights that winter, and rather than bringing the usual annoyance that attended such realizations—should not have to rely on others for so simple a thing as maintaining a livable body temperature as he slept—he found himself grateful, thinking of her with a tremendous fondness, and of Will…

He had so many things he wanted to give that boy, knowledge of the land and love for it, the subtle, sure-footed ways of the elk and mountain goat on high mountain trails that hardly appeared wide enough for a fox to travel, parts of himself, even, most of himself, when it came down to it, but there were other things he would just as soon not pass along, and the anger was one of them.  Not sure why it had come to mind just then but there it was, a thing he seldom liked to think about, but there it was.  Though he always did his best to keep it in check when in her presence, he knew it must in some way be affecting Liz—they never talked about it, but it was always there—and as the boy got older, grew more and more aware of his world, well, Einar did not want him carrying the burden of another man’s rage, times long past, things which in no way pertained to him, and as he lay there freezing, forcing himself to stay awake and flex already numbed, hurting hands and feet, Einar sought to plumb the depths of his own dark, murky soul, seek that anger out at its root and see if he might manage, perhaps, to leave some small part of it out there in the snow, not take it home with him again.  Was it the things his enemies had done to him all those years ago? 

38 years, come on, Einar, it can’t really be that, can it?   Was he still stewing over having been hung from the top of that bamboo cage by wrists and ankles like a piece of meat, all his dignity stripped away—or so it had seemed at the time; he had not come to realize until much later that there is always dignity in silent resistance, no matter the circumstances, and doing all one can do, even if it is very little, to say “no, here I stand, whatever may come”—the pain at times more than he could bear, more than anyone could bear, only to have it, and worse, done all over again a few hours later when he’d regained consciousness? 

Oh, he was angry about that, alright, when he thought about it, which he had hardly done for years and years after the fact, only recently allowing his mind to stray into such territory, at which point the anger he’d never really properly allowed himself to experience had flowed over him like a great flood…yeah, he was mad.  Mad at them, sure, his long-deceased enemy, infuriated at his own helplessness in that cage, at the memory of it and at anything in his present life which might resemble it in any form, enraged at his inability to make things turn out better for Andy—yeah, he still saw it in the present tense, spoke of it thus in his mind, though it, too, was nearly four decades back in the dim and distant—and bitterly unforgiving of the possibility in himself that he might, just might have split when there was some chance, however remote, of his having helped Andy to freedom.  Run from the torture and the pain and his own imminent death, a fact which, if true, could not be remedied…yeah, a lot of things to be angry about, but he didn’t really think that was all of it.

Worse, perhaps, than the things the enemy had done to him—they were, after all, the enemy; it was their job to be brutal and unrelenting, and he could largely accept that—was the way he’d been treated afterwards.  His escape and the long, agonizing trek back to friendly territory afterwards, body failing him and strength nearly exhausted even before he’d begun, had, in some sense at least, been a thing of power, of overcoming, but once he was back and they’d finished getting him all patched up and had shoved him on that plane for home—quite against his will and despite his protests, formal and otherwise—instead of heeding his pleas to be allowed to rejoin the fight…done with you, finished, unfit, go away, got no use for you anymore…well, that had perhaps been worst of all. 

Home.  What was that?  Not something he’d wanted just then, not with the war still going and boys he’d stood beside still fighting…and dying, and Andy—or Andy’s body, or Andy’s ghost; he had no way of knowing just then, and it wouldn’t have made too much difference if he had—still lingering out there in the jungle somewhere, awaiting his action…besides which, home simply wasn’t something that existed for him anymore, even if he’d wanted it.  He was changed, cursed, marked like Cain as a wanderer forever upon the earth—Cain, who had killed his brother in malice, and though there had been no malice in Einar’s act, his desperate bid for survival, he oftentimes saw himself as no better than that first of murderers—and there was no going home after a thing like that.

Oh, the marks could be hidden, most of them, with enough effort, the scars concealed, and oftentimes he did conceal them; it had been years before he’d let his family see him in short sleeves, and by then, they’d learned not to ask questions.  Often he meticulously hid all evidence of his scars in those first years back, simply because he didn’t want the questions, didn’t want to talk about it, but at other times—out in the Rhodesian bush, on some of the climbs he’d done after his return from that conflict and in day to day life on the job he’d subsequently taken—he’d been almost proud of his scars, had let them be there for everyone to see.  They were the marks, after all, of a man who had survived, who had come through; that was something he had done, and it was a very powerful thing, the knowledge of which had more than once brought him through other, lesser difficulties which might have vanquished a man lacking similar experience and perspective.

At other times, he’d even added to the scars, putting his body through trials and torments equal to or perhaps at times even exceeding, by their very intensity and duration, those the enemy had perpetrated upon him, until sometimes he found himself having nightmares about those sessions nearly as frequently as about the initial events, the two things becoming entangled and intertwined in his mind, usually a good time, he figured, to back off some lest he lose his grip altogether and end up going over the edge, losing himself in the abyss.  Or, perhaps he was already there.  Things certainly did seem abysmal enough, at times…  But with the rare exception of those times when he felt himself too close to that edge, to a place from which there might well be no return, he seldom backed off on the intensity of the thing, punishment, perhaps, for his failure to rescue Andy or at least to stay there with him and endure to the last, or perhaps simply a way to deal with the memories and sensations that sometimes came over him, get a grip on them and seize control before they could wholly engulf him and have their way with him as they sometimes threatened to do. 

Or maybe—the most acceptable, sane-sounding explanation of the three, and the one to which he usually resorted when he found himself questioning his motives; the first, he knew, in which he was punishing himself, could not stand up to the test either of logic or morality if closely examined, and the second sounded dreadfully self-indulgent; not like him—maybe the entire thing really was simply his way of training and strengthening himself, an effort to render mind and body progressively more impervious to such assaults of the enemy should he ever find himself in a similar position, in the future.  That was his favorite explanation, and one which seemed to him quite justifiable as a reason for his self-imposed torment.  The reasons varied, though, as did the intensity of the thing; sometimes he’d go for years without the need to engage in such trials.  Hard exercise, if he could get enough of it—climbing and running were good, but only if he really worked himself beyond the point of exhaustion on nearly a daily basis—seemed almost to do the same job and negate his need for the other, darker pursuit; those years on the trapline had been good ones, his time in that bamboo cage relegated, during them, to the dark shadows where it probably belonged as he got home each night nearly too exhausted to eat his supper and do the few simple household tasks he’d set for himself, before falling into bed.  He’d hardly once during the midst of all that hard work felt the compelling need to suspend himself from his ceiling by the wrists and ankles until he had lost all circulation in arms and legs and had barely the strength to take another breath, or any of the other things, and that was good…

At other times, such sessions could be a weekly thing or even more frequent, leaving him to seriously question how long he could go on surviving his own treatment, but all he knew for sure was that it had kept him alive, that enforced reliving of the worst time of his life, had allowed him somehow to keep on making his way through an existence which would have long ago proven itself intolerable, untenable, quite a mystery…

What’s that, now?  He roused himself slightly, shifted position and stared up at the black, starry sky.  What are you talking about, Einar?  What’s all this nonsense?  This stuff’s not supposed to be talked about, thought about, analyzed like this…you’re gonna do yourself in looking too deeply at all this.  Shook his head.  Mind had been wandering.  Must be getting cold.  Now, what had he been trying to figure out?  Right.  Had been trying to figure out why he was so angry, so much of the time, dig the thing out by the root so he could perhaps leave some of it behind…only it was all seeming pretty pointless at the moment, pretty irrelevant, because he wasn’t angry anymore, was just cold, terribly, dreadfully cold and weary, missed his family, wished Liz was there…

The night went on, skies remaining clear and temperatures plunging to thirty below, thirty-five, forty…unusual, but not unheard of, and Einar did not wake.

Fire banked against the encroaching chill, Liz lay quietly in the bed with little Will that night, wide awake and staring into the darkness as trees shattered with explosive reports in the woods nearby.  Sap freezing, and she knew it must be far colder than anything they two of them had yet seen in their time together in the mountains, a rare and deep cold snap for that part of the world.  An anomaly.  Unusual but not impossible, and though it was bitterly cold in the cabin even with the fire, they had plenty of wood, warm furs, fat and all the food they could eat, and would come through it just fine.  She only wished Einar was there with them to share the warmth of the bed and maybe a pot of stew, could barely stand the thought of him down there in the valley, weary, no doubt, from all the hard work he would have been putting in on the trapline, more likely than not wet from his proximity to the river and likely short on food, also, as it seemed he always shorted himself still, even when there was plenty to eat.  She prayed for him, for his safety and for his life as the night went on, for his safe return but all she heard in answer was the silence, the occasional snap and shatter of an exploding spruce.  

Comments from 30 June

Apple, Kellie and Steel Butterfly--thanks for reading, for your patience and for your well-wishes for good travels.  Back to regular chapters now, at least for a while...

Philip...as difficult as it is for me to come down from the mountains after being away for a while and back to this world which, while still rural, is a bit noisier and not so solitary...it was quite a blessing for me to discover your Saga of Einar and the Energizer Bunny.  Had me laughing pretty hard there, for a while!  :)

You're a good writer, by the way.  Ought to start your own story.

Thanks again!


Finally had rain here, at least in the area where I was spending the week...nearly an entire summer's rain, over the course of four days...that was wet!  But it's such a blessing to finally be getting some rain!

Here's the scene one night, with the storm just beginning to break up, and the rain ending...