7 October 2012

Liz listened in silence as Juni confessed to reading the transcripts and to the--in Liz’s eyes--far greater offense of having told Einar of her having done so, shaking her head and praying for the continued restraint which would be required to prevent her slipping her knife between the young reporter’s ribs sometime within the next few minutes…

Her prayer was answered. Restraint.  Calm.  The damage was already done, matter could be dealt with at a later time.  For now, she just wanted some answers.

“Why did you have to bring it up?  Surely you had to realize it wasn’t something he would be too anxious to talk about…”

“I was curious.  It’s my job to be curious.   I want to know his story, how it’s affected his life, how the things that went on over there might have uniquely prepared him for the life he’s had out here in the hills, things like that.”

“He’s not a story, he’s my husband--a man with a life and a family, and he’s hanging onto that life by a thread right now, he really is.  By getting involved in this and making him think about those things all over again, you may be setting in motion the sequence that finally takes his life.  I really don’t know how many of these we can go through, before he takes it a little too far and he’s gone.  Do you know how many nights I’ve spent praying that he’ll leave those transcripts alone, not feel compelled to go read them again anytime soon, how many times I’ve wanted to burn them just so that wouldn’t happen?”

“Why didn’t you burn them?”

“He asked me to, once.  But I couldn’t.  They’re his.  His past, his memories, his burden, and until he decides on his own to set it down…”

She nodded.  “Then I didn’t really do too much harm by asking about them, it sounds like.  Except that now he looks at me like he wants to kill me, of course…  Because this stuff was already on his mind, coming up from time to time and surely would have come up again and again whether I was here or not, if he was, as you say, still unwilling to ‘set it down.’”

“Maybe.  But it was still not your place to intrude like that.  What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking like a journalist.  Those papers fell out when he went to get the maps yesterday, I could tell how anxious he was not to let me see them, and so naturally the first time I was alone in the cabin…”

“He’ll never trust you now, you know.”

“Does he trust anyone?”

“Not really.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Well, it’s done.  I wish you could take it back, but you can’t.  But you can help me find him.  I really don’t want to leave him out there all night with that sort of thing on his mind, if he can be talked into coming back here.”

“It’s been on his mind a lot lately?”

“I really don’t want to talk too much about it, because I don’t think he’d like my doing so.  But yes, it’s been on his mind more and more over the past year or so.  It’s the running, I guess, or the search itself, all the helicopters and things that were coming over so low for a while…but it’s like things he put out of his mind for years and years have finally come up and thrown themselves in front of him to the extent that he can’t ignore them anymore, and as it turns out…well, maybe there were some pretty good reasons why he’d chosen to try and keep those things in the shadows, all those years.  Not look at them.  Now that he’s allowing himself to look…well, I thought it would be good for him, hoped it would, in the end, and maybe it still will, but sometimes he lets himself slip so deep into that shadow-country that I start wondering if I’m going to get him back again…and that was even before the transcripts.”

“I know better than to ask where he got those transcripts, though of course I am very curious!  I guess it doesn’t really matter too much, though.  Where do you think he’s going?”

Liz shrugged, an action barely visible in the near-darkness.  “Off into the brush to freeze himself for the night.  It’s what he does when all of this gets to be too much.  Seems to help sometimes, but lately he barely lives through it.”

“It’s no wonder.  When you’ve got no insulation on your body, the cold can get awfully intense in a hurry.  Is that why he does it?  Starves?  So the cold will be more intense, since that’s what he uses to handle things?”

“No, I don’t think so.  Like I said before, it’s complicated.  The cold is a separate thing.  He really does like it, thrive in it a lot of times, but with all of his ‘insulation’ disappearing like it’s done…well, I’m afraid he really doesn’t know where his limits are, anymore.”

“Doesn’t know, or doesn’t care?”

Another shrug from Liz, but it was too dark for Juni to see.

“Let’s go find him.”


Einar did not want to be found.  Intended to stay close enough to camp to be certain of keeping watch over it and of being able to intervene should trouble come, either from the outside or internally, as Liz and Juni seemed to be exchanging a fair share of angry words that evening, but he wanted very badly to be left alone and to keep out of sight, at the same time.  Well, perhaps he could still have both.  Had better move in a bit closer though, make sure things weren’t about to boil over between the two of them.  Which they must have been, for Liz sounded angry in a quiet, “better watch out for the rabbit stick” kind of way which he had seldom heard from her except when action was soon to follow.

“You need to leave,” she was saying.

“It’s too dark.”  That was Juni.  “I’d just blunder around and make a lot of tracks.”

“Is that a threat?”

“You’re every bit as paranoid as he is sometimes, aren’t you?  Of course it’s not a threat, it’s just the truth, and I’m sure I will be leaving soon but had better at least wait until daylight!”

Einar, crouched in the snow on a rise not too far from the spot where Liz and Juni stood arguing, could not make out their words, but could tell with certainty that they were speaking too loudly, both of them, making too much noise for their first night down in the valley, which should have been a time of watching and of caution, and he moved, putting himself in their anticipated path.  They nearly stepped on him before Liz felt a presence in the darkness and put a hand on Juni’s arm, stopping her.

“Einar?” she whispered.  “Are you there?”

Silence, and then she heard him move, a slight settling in the snow as he shifted his weight to the other foot.  “We were looking for you.”

“Said I’d be back in the morning.”

“I wasn’t going to wait that long.”

“Should have waited.  I’m not fit company, right now.  You don’t want me around camp.”

“Einar…”  It was Juni again.  Wished she would just be quiet.  “I came to apologize.  I’m sorry.  I had no right trespassing in your house by taking those papers down and reading them, and I never should have done it.  Now that I have, though…it’s just that it wasn’t in your record, the things that were described in that debriefing…”

“What record?  Don’t figure you have the right clearance to get hold of the relevant records.  And what were you doing messing around in my records, in the first place?”

Juni smiled.  “Just trying thoroughly understand my subject, before doing that first story.  I found out a good bit about your service, and your discharge.  Not the whole story though, I always was sure.  Things were missing, or seemed to be.  Now I guess I know why.”

“You don’t know squat.”

“I know that you were a prisoner of war, and that the fact was never officially acknowledged because of the circumstances.”

“No, I was not.”

“Effectively you were.  Everywhere but on paper.”

He was angry.  Feeling unsteady, and not at all liking it.  Couldn’t let it show, not in the presence of this stranger, this intruder, in the presence of mine enemy, and he took a deep, slow breath, kept his eyes fixed on the cluster of timber straight ahead across the little clearing, a blacker shade in a world of black, glad it was dark so she couldn’t see him trembling.  Cold.  He was just cold, he told himself, and couldn’t help it.  Struggled hard to prevent his voice from shaking, too.

“What is your purpose in asking these things?”

6 October 2012

No chapter today, out enjoying this beautiful fall weather and getting some work done, but I'll be back with another tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, and for your comments!

5 October 2012

After his discovery, Will crying and everyone looking his direction, Einar had to join the little group in camp, carefully avoiding looking at Juni and she at him so that Liz had to wonder what could have possibly transpired between them during the few minutes in which she had been away gathering snares.  Well, whatever the matter might be it would simply have to wait, for supper was ready and she intended everyone, and Einar especially, to eat without delay.  It wasn’t much, their cold supper of pemmican and chokecherry-honey mush, but when the half frozen pemmican was sliced and spread with the sweetened fruit paste, it seemed to the hungry travelers nearly as appetizing as it was nutritious.  Liz only wished they might have a fire so hot tea or broth could be enjoyed with the meal, but she and Einar had already discussed the matter, and he wanted, for that first night at least, to minimize their signature as much as humanly possible.  Which, hunkered down in a clump of timber without fire or even shelter, save the over-arching trees, they certainly were managing to do.  Except for the noise made by little Will, and expecting a good deal of his trouble must be due to hunger, after several hours’ travel without a snack break, she took him from Einar, fed him before enjoying her own portion of the meal.  While Einar had, of course been unable to feed him and thus unable, past a certain point, to go on keeping him content, the interlude had seemed to do both of them a great deal of good, Will finding at least temporary contentment in the change of pace and Einar, for his part, having no choice but to warm up after his time digging about in the ice, Will requiring constant motion to prevent his wailing.

Already with his cessation of the forced movement brought about by having Will in his charge Einar was growing cold in the deep shadows of the evening; Liz could see it, but figured this was one time when he’d simply have to deal with it, himself.  She’d too many other things to do at the moment, and could hardly be watching him every moment, in addition.  Not that he’d have wanted her to do that, in the first place.  He’d get through just fine, would have to, as he wouldn’t want to risk leaving his family alone with the uninvited stranger whose presence for some unknown reason had suddenly become all but intolerable to him.  Because of this, she was confident that he’d figure it out, find some way to stay warm enough to keep hands and feet useful, should they be needed for the defense of his family.

Supper, and they ate in silence, Einar crouched with his back to a tree, Juni a respectful distance away and Liz between the two of them, still feeding the seemingly insatiable Will as she enjoyed her own meal, the rich, fatty pemmican a satisfying and warming meal when combined with her hastily-improvised chokecherry preserves, no one even thinking to complain that the whole lot was cold.  Finally Liz could stand the heavy silence no longer, and she spoke.

“Well, it looks to me like we’ve recovered almost all of the traps and snares, so we ought to be able to get a lot done tomorrow as far as establishing a trapline, don’t you think?”

A silent nod from Einar, a nearly-inaudible growl,  “yeah, we got all but a couple of them, have to chop those out of the ice with the axe, just couldn’t get at them without it, can do that in the morning or even in a couple minutes here when we get done eating.  I can work in the dark, can work all night if I have to.”

“Why would you have to do that?  We have time, don’t we?  Let’s all get a good night’s sleep, and set snares in the morning, don’t you think?”

A shrug, a glare, more silence and then Einar was on his feet, remainder of his supper set aside--he’d barely tasted it, actually, much to Liz’s dismay; she would have to see that the situation was remedied before they turned in for the night--and spear in hand, ready to go.  “About all the night’s good for, anyway.  Might as well make some progress on the trapping rather than lurking around camp the whole time.  You sure don’t want me around here, and it’ll be good.  I can keep the ice holes open, make the rounds every hour or so and stir up the water so it doesn’t freeze solid again, give us a big head start for when it gets light enough to set the snares.”

“Yeah, and the way things are going right now, you’d probably end up keeping those ice holes open by jumping into them every hour or so, wouldn’t you?  All night long.  And be frozen solid by morning.”

“Sounds about right.  Fella’s got to protect his trapline, you know.  In fact, I was thinking that instead of bothering with the snares in the first place I might just go diving for beaver and muskrat.  It’s like spear fishing, only you do it under the ice, and you really got to be on your toes, because those critters are pretty fast swimmers.  Anybody want to join me?”

Smiling at the welcome lightening of the mood--even if Einar was dead serious about wanting to spend the night in that icy water, as she suspected was probably the case, and she shuddered at the thought of it, gave thanks that he wasn’t down there alone, at the moment--Liz pulled him back down beside the tree and placed his unfinished supper in his lap.  “Sorry, I don’t think Will can hold his breath for that long, yet.  So delightful as this hunting method sounds, I’ll simply have to pass.  This time.”

“Oh, don’t worry.  Since it sounds so delightful to you, you can just wait for Will to fall asleep and come join me for a quick dip.  Seeing as I clean forgot to bring the waterproof nightvision diving goggles, spearfishing for muskrat is out until morning starts letting some light through the ice, anyway.”

“Another time.  I’ll come on that dip with you sometime when we can have a fire to warm back up, after!”

Einar laughed, nodded, rose, the hilarity leaving his eyes as he glanced at Juni, a dark shadow seeming to come over him.

“You’re really going,” Liz asked.

“Yeah, going.  I’ll stay out of the water, though.  See you folks in the morning, when trapline time comes.”

Liz was on her feet also, Will looking up at her in startlement at the sudden motion, the unaccustomed edge to her voice.

“Wait!  Take your dinner, at least.”

“Not hungry.”

“It doesn’t matter.  Remember our…agreement?”

“Give me a day off?”

“No.  Not now.”

He nodded, took the food she was pressing into his hand, stowed it in a pocket and left the camp.

Juni waited until he was out of sight, crunching of his boots faded to silence.  “This is my fault.”

4 October 2012

She could see something was seriously wrong, went to him, laid the snares aside and tried to get him to his feet but he resisted her at first, kept staring into that icy water with bared teeth and hand gripped so tightly around the spear that she feared him about to use it, though why or against whom she was slightly less sure.  Regardless of the cause of the present situation--she had her suspicions, glancing sideways at the reporter where she stood just inside the nearest stand of timber, trying to look busy--it simply wouldn’t do, evening coming and Einar crouched there on the ice in a silent rage with soaked and already mostly-frozen sleeves, so far from realizing that he was slipping inexorably into a dangerous hypothermic haze that she probably couldn’t have convinced him, had she tried.  With the matter seeming pretty urgent to her, Einar nearly got the bad end of the rabbit stick before she thought better of it.  Seldom a good idea to wade in with maximum force when one doesn’t know the particulars of a situation, so instead she simply took him firmly by the arm, raised him to his feet.

“Einar, help me.  I need you to take Will for a minute.  Can you do that?”

More silence, then he nodded, reached for the little one but stopped himself, staring at his sleeves in a moment of confusion and then shaking his head, wringing icy river water from their cloth.  “Too wet.  Don’t want to get him wet.”

“Well then for goodness’ sake get rid of the wet shirt!  Your parka looks dry, just switch, and then you can take him.”

Didn’t want to do it, not with Juni watching, staring, but he had little choice, as he certainly couldn’t be soaking little Will’s warm, dry clothes with night coming and them unable to safely have a fire, so he turned his back on the reporter, changed as quickly as his cold-stiff limbs would allow into the dry parka and got Will snuggled down in the warm folds of its fur-lined hood.  The child was wailing, angry and quite indignant at having been wakened from a sound sleep, pulled from his warm nest and stuffed into a parka with someone whose body temperature was likely a good three or four degrees lower than his own, and Einar paced with him, skipping, bouncing, swaying and doing his best to return contentment to the world.  By the time he had achieved this, Will drifting once more into sleep, he was himself fairly thoroughly warmed through the exertion, weary and beginning to sway quite involuntarily but no longer shivering.  Only then did he have the focus to spare on seeing what Liz was about, why she had been in such a hurry to hand the little one off to him, but when he looked up she was nowhere to be seen.  Nor was Juni.  Good thing, that.  Tracking them, casting about warily as if half expecting an ambush as he stalked up through the timber, Einar ended up at the camp, where the two women crouched working together to prepare a cold supper.  They didn’t see him, so he stopped, kept still behind the trees and watched them, listening to the conversation, suddenly suspicious for no good reason at all.  What were they plotting, those two?

Nothing much, it seemed, aside from the best way to turn cold pemmican and dried chokecherries into a palatable and nutritious supper, for when he eased his way closer and cupped a hand behind his ear, that was exactly what he heard, Liz expounding on the nutritional benefits of pemmican and how it could, in fairly small quantities, keep a person going over even the roughest terrain and through the sub-zero nights of winter…but it didn’t, she allowed, taste all that great until one turned it into a nice, warm stew, which of course was only possible with a fire.  With fire, she pointed out to Juni, a person could make one of the rich, thick stews the likes of which had kept the Utes and others going through the winter months, dried venison, fat--either from deer, bear or some other source--dried berries for sweetness and additional energy and, if one had dug, dried and stored them during the spring months, a handful of starchy roots to round things out.

“Where do you get starchy roots,” Juni was curious, “since I’ve never heard of wild potatoes or anything like that around here.  Do you use cattails.”

“Oh, cattails are a real treat as far as I’m concerned, when we can find them.  They’re so much like real potatoes that you can hardly tell the difference, really.  Just boil the roots whole in four or five inch sections, split them down the middle and scrape the starch off the fibers, and you have instant mashed potatoes!”

“Yes, I tried that once in one of the classes I took.  Only that time, we roasted the roots in the coals, just like you’d roast potatoes.  Only first, we coated them with a layer of swamp mud to keep them from drying out too much.  It really worked.  Yep, mashed potatoes.”

“We’re too high up here for cattails, though.  Down in the valleys you can often find them, places like this, but we didn’t get down this low very often last summer, so we didn’t have the chance to gather enough cattail roots to dry and save.  Mostly what we did gather were spring beauty roots--corms, actually, little round things that look just like new potatoes, and taste that way, too--and avalanche lily roots.  The avalanche lilies have slightly deeper roots and are a bit more trouble to collect, but their roots are really starchy and good, also, and sometimes you’ll find a slope where the snow has just left in the spring--which is June, up here--and it’ll be covered with avalanche lilies that there’s no way to walk without stepping on several of them!  Thousands and thousands, sometimes covering an acre or more.  So when it’s like that, you can see that it isn’t too difficult to get a pretty good supply of them put away.”

“How many did you get put away?  Is that what’s in some of those covered baskets hanging from your ceiling at the cabin?”

“Yes, some of them.  Between the lily roots and the spring beauty, we got nearly forty pounds of dried roots put away!  Which is quite a lot, just for the two of us.  A lot of Ute families actually gathered fifty or more pounds--dried--for the winter, but we just didn’t have time to do that this year, and besides, some of those roots were for trading.  The dried roots were like a currency for a lot of the tribes.  They’d trade with other groups, roots for dried meat, hides, things like that.”

Interesting information, all of it, Einar had to concede, but not much of a secret, really.  Still, he crouched down right where he was and went on listening, sure something else must be coming.  If it had been, however, he was never to know, as Will, disturbed at the extended lack of motion and waking rather suddenly, began crying again, giving away his position.

3 October 2012

As Einar had only recently made the trek and well knew the paths upon which he wanted to lead them, the descent went fairly quickly, he in the lead with Juni just behind and Liz bringing up the rear.  Einar had insisted upon this configuration, still not entirely trusting the reporter’s motives and figuring that it would be wisest to plan the journey so that she could be closely watched, especially as they approached the valley.  Timbered walls growing above them and the river becoming occasionally audible, Einar’s steps slowed, pace becoming a creeping, halting thing which allowed him plenty of stops for listening, testing the wind; a necessary change but not a welcome one, as he’d been having difficulty enough maintaining his balance.  Had been managing so long as they were moving at a steady pace, but now, pausing, it was all he could do to remain on his feet.    Too bad.  He’d simply have to find some way to keep going.  The most critical part was still ahead of them, as they scouted the valley for potential danger and established a camp for the night--and for the days they would be spending in the valley.

They would, he knew, have a lot of work to do in retrieving the traps and snares he’d abandoned at the end of his last failed week of work down in the valley, the things surely frozen solid beneath the ice by that time, and wanting to save time and effort that evening, he decided they ought to make camp in the spot he had chosen on that previous expedition.  A good place, nestled close against a cliff for security and windbreak and heavily sheltered by timber from view of anyone who might pass by in the valley, near enough to the river to make for a handy base as they came and went to the traps, but not so near that the rush and gurgle of the water should fill their ears and render them incapable of detecting the approach of danger.  Guiding the little party towards the spot he continued his careful descent, glancing back now and then to be sure that Liz wasn’t having any trouble with Juni, but they seemed to be getting on just fine.  Valley floor not too far below them, and the time had come for Einar to go on alone, have a look before the others followed, and he waited for them to catch up, handed Liz his rifle and told her he’d be back directly.

No sign of danger along the river, no ski or snowshoe tracks, and in watching Muninn, it seemed the bird saw nothing of concern, either.  Einar’s previous camp was just as he’d left it, almost no sign of the nights he’d spent there, aside from the heaps of spruce duff between which he’d struggled so hard to stay warm and alive through those long, frigid hours.  Giving the place one final glance he turned to go, shuddering at the knowledge of just how close it had come to being his grave.  No need to mention that bit to Liz.  She would, he expected, like it just fine for the security of the cliffs up behind, the heavy timber which shielded them from the wind.  This would be especially important considering that he did not intend that they should light a fire, not so close to the river where the smell of their smoke, if not the fire’s actual glow, would be all but certain to reach anyone who might be traveling the valley.  Shelter from the wind would make a huge difference.  Stopping to break the thin ice at river’s edge he swallowed a quick gulp of its icy water before returning for Liz and Juni, leading them into camp, slipping Will into his own parka for the final descent.  Liz had carried him long enough, it was his turn, and now, after his drink from the river and giving the water a bit of time to be absorbed, he was a good deal more certain of staying on his feet.

“Well,” he declared, sinking to the ground with Will, “this is our camp for the night.  Think it’ll do?”

Mutual affirmations from Liz and Juni, seemed the place would do just fine, which pleased Einar, as he had no intention whatsoever of seeking out another, and that bit of business out of the way, the time seemed right to go and retrieve some of the traps and snares he’d left, as the ice would only be frozen harder come morning.  Giving Liz the axe and directing her upriver to an area where he had previously snared several muskrats, he took spear and pack and set out down the river after beaver snares and the Conibear traps he’d been so disappointed to have to leave, on his last visit.  Juni, given no direction, followed Liz for a time, helping her retrieve several muskrat traps before wandering off to see what Einar might be up to.  Some minutes later she found him crouched somewhat precariously on a little outcropping of brittle ice, having already retrieved several snares and apparently deciding to re-set them, while he was at it.

Removing parka and rolling up sleeves in an attempt to keep them somewhat dry as he worked in the icy water, Einar lowered one double-snare beaver set and then another, checking the snares and adjusting the shape of one which had been somewhat deformed in the lowering.  Juni, crouched beside him, was watching.  Gathering her courage.

“Those scars on your arms aren’t all from the wolverine, are they?”

Making a subconscious effort to pull his sleeves down a bit further and crossing his arms Einar shrugged, turned away from her.  “Life’s rough out here.  Leaves its marks, sometimes.  No problem.  Skin heals, scars fade.”

“Some of them are a lot older though, aren’t they?  More faded than the others.”

Another shrug.  “Been trapping for a long time, climbing even before that, fighting the occasional bear or wolverine or wildcat.  Decades, off and on.”

“Trapping and climbing and fighting wild animals.  Really?”

He gave her a sideways glance, not at all liking her line of questioning or her apparent refusal to be content with the answers he was providing.  “Yeah, trapping and climbing and…well, I told you the story of the wolverine.”

“I read the papers…the debriefing.”

Einar froze, wanted to whirl around on her with his spear but kept still, voice a dry rattle like the wind in the few winter-ravaged leaves still clinging brown and withered to a nearby patch of scrub oak.  “None of your business, those papers.”

“I know.  I’m sorry.  I was curious.”

“Happy now?”

“No, I am not happy.  Nobody should have to endure those things.  Or see them.  And I’m sorry that you did.  But I think it…explains a lot, maybe.   I do have some questions.  Would you be willing to answer a few questions?”

Einar shrugged, turned away, viciously shoved his sleeves back up above the elbow--they wouldn’t stay, but he neither noticed nor cared, letting them hang down in the water--and went back to arranging the beaver set.  When Liz returned several minutes with later several ice-encrusted snares and one Conibear, it was to the sight of Einar crouching all stiff-backed and steely-eyed beside the beaver set, Juni carefully avoiding him on the far side of the clearing.

2 October 2012

The following morning Einar rose early in anticipation of their coming trapping expedition, taking leave of Liz and Will and quietly stoking the fire, hoping not to wake Juni.  He wanted to do a bit of scouting before taking off for the valley, took the binoculars and his parka and slipped out for a quick climb up into the cliffs up back of the cabin.  His attempt at stealth did not entirely work, and Liz--a still-sleeping Will snuggled down on her back as if she’d expected to be gone for a while, and he wondered if she’d been planning to follow him--met him in the tunnel as he struggled to get into his boots, hand on his shoulder as she crept forward to assist with the task.  It wasn’t easy, but together, they finally managed.

“The juniper really was helping, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, some.  I’ll get by, maybe try it again in a few days if things haven’t started improving, any.  Right now just want to take a few minutes up in the cliffs before we go, watch the valley for smoke, any sign that we won’t be alone down there.  Muninn’ll warn us as we get closer and I know I won't be able to see everything from up there, anyway, but still think I ought to take a look.”

“I think you ought to consider saving your energy for the hike.  It’s quite a climb up to the top, back there.”

Resolutely, he shook his head.  “Nope.  Figure if I can’t make it up into the cliffs and back, I sure got no business heading out on a trap run to the valley, in the first place.  It’ll be a good test.”

She nodded--couldn’t argue with that, but only hoped he would be able to honestly assess the results of the test--squeezed his shoulder and watched him go, heading herself out to their hanging pantry in the spruce grove to check on everything before their departure, cut some frozen meat for the trip and hang their newest batch of jerky well out of reach of hungry scavengers

Juni, meanwhile, had been awakened by all the movement but stayed in the cabin to pack, rolling up her sleeping bag, stowing her few possessions in her pack and wishing, as she did so, that Einar had not so thoroughly hidden her camera, as she would have liked to take it along and record her first experience on the trapline.  Wondering if perhaps she might be able to find it--the consequences of such discovery, she knew, were unpredictable at best, but she was willing to risk Einar’s wrath in order to recover the camera--she searched in and behind several of the baskets which held Liz’s dried serviceberries, chokecherries, lily roots and other footstuffs, but she found nothing.  Scanning the cabin for other possible hiding places her eyes fell upon the orange envelope whose contents Einar had accidentally spilled in retrieving the maps, and her curiosity got the better of her.  Waiting until she no longer heard the fading crunch and crackle of Liz’s boots in the snow, she carefully slid the envelope from its spot in the rafters, checked to see how the papers were positioned so she would be able to put them back exactly as they had been, and began reading…

So absorbed was the reporter in the narrative that she entirely missed hearing Einar’s approach until he was in the tunnel, itself, saved only by the fact that he stopped to knock some of the snow from his boots and repair a small section of the wall which was losing its insulation, weaving willow wands back into place as Juni desperately stacked, straightened and shoved the transcripts back into their envelope, all but tossing it back up into the rafters and hurrying to look busy with something else before he could make his way in through the door.

“Ready to go?”

“Yes.  Almost.  I’m just packing.”  She was sure he would hear it in her voice, the tremor, the guilt, the fear that he would know what she’d done, even if she never let on, but fortunately he seemed little aware of such nuances of human expression, that, or she was a better actor than she had known.  Or both.  Either way, the realization emboldened her somewhat.

“Where’s Liz?”

“She took Will and went to get some meat for the trip.  Einar, I…”

“Well you’d best hurry up and finish packing then, because I want to get down there with plenty of daylight still left to make camp, and the day’s moving right along.”

“I just want to ask…”  but--fortunately, no doubt, for Juni, who surely would have thought better of the thing she’d been about to ask, given time and distance and a bit more thought about the potential results--he was already gone, ducking back out through the tunnel to find Liz and remind her to retrieve some fur scraps for the lynx sets he wanted to try, down by the river.  He’d seen the tracks on his last, failed week down at the river, hadn’t had the opportunity that time to try for one or two of the creatures but the furs would still be good, and he meant to make the effort, this time.  Liz, by the time he reached her, had not only already thought of collecting some of the fur scraps Einar kept hanging in one of the trees for just such a purpose, but had done it already, making a neat pile of everything on the deer hide she’d brought to aid transport and preparing to hoist it to shoulder and haul it back to the cabin for packing.  Giving her a quick grin--the prospect of completing the trapping effort he’d started several weeks prior had him in an unusually buoyant mood that morning--Einar slung the bundle over his own shoulder instead, keeping pace as she started back for the house and thus wordlessly answering her question as to the outcome of his cliff-climbing test.  He was, though weary and winded after the exertion, ready to go.

Fur scraps gathered, food packed and cabin closed up for the duration, Einar, Liz, Will and their uninvited guest started down towards the basin and the long, timbered steepness of the mountainside that separated them from the river valley, and their soon-to-be trapline.

1 October 2012

Breakfast finished, Liz tending to Will and Juni thoroughly engrossed in the carving of her first elk bone atlatl point after a quick lesson from Einar--he’d been hesitant when she asked…why teach the enemy how to make weapons?…but had finally relented, his love of passing on such knowledge overcoming any misgivings he might have harbored--all was quiet in the cabin that morning, the small sounds of life accompanying Muninn’s insistent tapping and worrying at a bone from the breakfast stew, soft crackle of the fire tying everything together.  A pleasant morning, or might have been, had not a number of concerns weighed so heavily on the minds of everyone but Will and the raven.  Einar, especially, struggled as he cleaned up from breakfast to come up with a timeline, some plan by which they might get everything that really mattered cleared out of the cabin and stashed safely before moving on, and do it without staying too long at what had become with the reporter’s intrusion a seriously compromised location.

Compromised only if and when she went on her own way though, he reminded himself, and though he was finding it exhausting to have such a guest on the premises, at least she was under their supervision while there, and unable to put them at any further risk.  Unlikely to do it, at least.  Was still some chance that, if really determined to do so, she could send a signal to passing searchers by way of an untimely and very smoky fire, or some such.  So, she must be watched, but posed far less threat to them while their long-term guest than she would once out on her own.  Still, the time must be put to its best use and that meant getting the remainder of their winter-frozen meat turned into jerky and packaged up for caching, a process for which Einar would have preferred them not have an uninvited observer present to learn their secrets and potentially contaminate the end results, but there was little choice, and as soon as he’d got the soup pot cleaned and set some water to heat for the tea he knew Liz would be wanting, he left the cabin to survey the raw materials remaining to be processed.  Part of an elk, a few cuts of bighorn sheep and a deer haunch or two represented the bulk of their frozen meat supply; they had, over the past few weeks, done reasonably well in eating and processing what had remained, wanting to get the job done ahead of the warmer months to come, and he was glad for the head start.

Though they had not yet cached any of the results, the jerky and pemmican was at least packaged in the sturdy, waterproofed baskets at whose construction he and Liz had become so proficient, and could be placed at the first opportunity.  Cold already after several minutes out in the morning chill without his parka--needed to take some time every day to work on his cold endurance, really felt as though he’d lost some measure of control over that particular aspect of his existence, still accepting and even enjoying the cold, but finding himself with increasing and somewhat alarming rapidity debilitated by its embrace--but determined to make the walk out to the meat-trees count for something, Einar braced himself against one of their trunks and lowered a deer haunch, meaning to bring it inside where partial thawing could prepare it for jerky-slicing.

That’ll be a good start, good plan for today if we get this entire thing drying, which with three of us slicing and hanging, we really ought to be able to manage.  Then when we get this done, hopefully in time for tomorrow, I’ve got other plans if they’re at all agreeable to Liz.  Had been intending to get down to the river one more time before the warmer weather really starts to set in, take a few beaver and muskrat for hats and warm things for Will, like I was trying to do last time I was down there.  Didn’t’ go so well that time, but I’ve…yeah, admit it, Einar, you’ve been getting a little more to eat lately, and that ought to help a lot when it comes to keeping yourself alive and unfrozen at night, out on the trapline.  May think you can get by on nothing at all, or that you ought to be able to, but sometimes the practice doesn’t go as well as the theory, does it?  So.  Time for a trapline run, and you might as well take the entire family this time, and the interloper, too.  Liz’d never stand for you going off on your own again, and you know if you leave the two of them alone for a week or so at the cabin, you’ll probably come back to a bloody mess and Juni’s scalp hanging from the ridgepole, or something like that.  Could happen, and besides, you wouldn’t leave Juni with your family, anyhow, on the slight chance that she really might have some ill-intent in all of this, and might try to make off with Will or summon the feds while you weren’t there to try and stop her.  Better take everyone along.  

Better be getting back to the cabin, too, for eating better or not over the past several days, he was still far from being able to effectively hold his own against the cold, and it was getting to him as he stood there immobile, especially with that frozen deer haunch over his shoulder, and he hardly wanted to have to explain himself to Liz if he ended up creeping back through the tunnel half frozen and entirely unable to use his hands.  Wouldn’t do, and he got moving, laboring back across the hard-frozen surface of the morning snow and depositing his burden at the tunnel mouth, pausing before diving in to listen for any sign of danger, hearing nothing but the soft, reassuring whisper of the wind in the spruces.

“Who wants to go trapping down on the river tomorrow?”  He tossed the question out as soon as he’d made it in through the tunnel door, not wanting to give Liz time to fuss over him for having frozen himself so in his short expedition to the “pantry,” hoisting the deer haunch up onto the granite slab they used as a cutting board as he awaited her answer.  Liz, somewhat to his surprise, did not object, instead nodding something that might almost have been approval.  We do need to get down there once before winter runs out, and he’s going to go mad sitting here all crowded into the cabin with me and our unwelcome guest and wondering all the time in the back of his mind if he’s figured things correctly, or if the feds are about to burst over the ridge at any moment in a fleet of choppers…a few days of trapping should do us all some good.

“If we’re going so soon, I’d better go ahead and make you some juniper tea, so your boots will fit for the hike.”

“Got to skip it today.  Just about did me in I think, that last pot of it I had.  Starting to do real unfortunate and unpredictable things with my heart rate, rhythm, even, and if it’s all the same to you, really think I’d better take a break from the stuff.  Just a day or two.”

“Yes of course.  Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Just did tell you.”

“I mean before…”

“Because I was sick of not being able to get into my boots, and needed to try something.  Juniper tea’s always done that to me, it’s just worse now than I ever remember, before.  More noticeable.  Need to take a break.”

“Yes, you do.  We’ll find something else to try to help keep your feet from swelling.  And no, going back to not eating anything is not one of the options, so you can just get that idea out of your head right now!  You know why it’s probably having a more noticeable effect now, don’t you…?”

“Sure, I know.  Heart’s just not as flexible as it ought to be, at the moment.  Not as forgiving.  Will get better.”

“Hopefully, if you keep eating.”

A dismissive shrug from Einar, but he did take a taste of the venison as he began slicing it for the first string of jerky; only one day to get ready for this expedition, so I’d better be working on it…