19 August 2012

After Einar’s fourth day on the trapline without anything to eat and only occasional sips of icy water to drink—he’d consistently refused Liz’s broth, as well as the stews she continued to offer him—Liz knew she must make some effort to rein him in.  Though keeping his route short as he had promised her, and having enough success in his daily rounds to render the task at least moderately useful, he was managing to wear himself out so thoroughly each day that she could sometimes scarce tell whether he might be dead or asleep when finally he laid down for the night, and she knew that, with his continued refusal of food, the line between the two must be growing perilously fine.

He’d been freezing all night for the past several, regardless of how many hides Liz might pile over him once he’d closed his eyes in sleep and could no longer object, not doing much better by day, shoulders, arms, everything icy to the touch and his face a seemingly permanent and progressively unsettling shade of purple-grey.  Attempting to discuss the matter with him late one morning after his return from the trapline, Liz pointed out once again the seeming fallacy in the logic which allowed him to go on avoiding meals so that his legs and feet would be fit to carry him on the trapline—to harvest creatures whose meat he would never allow himself to taste.  It was, she pointed out, an unending circle which could only lead to one thing, and by the looks of him, pretty soon, too.  Einar did not like to hear it, having been clinging most tenaciously to his belief that, based on the fact that he was indeed able to maintain the trapline and keep his feet fitting in the boots that would hopefully prevent their eventual loss, he must be doing right.  Or as close to it as he could reasonably hope to come.

He was, in truth, quite lost and had been for the past week or so, struggling—though perhaps not quite hard enough; mostly he just tried to ignore the fact and keep himself working too hard to do much thinking on it—to find his way in the world.  The trapline was, at times, the only thing keeping him more or less tethered to reality, but was at the same time sapping what little energy he might otherwise have had to put towards the rational thought which might have warned him of the need to turn in another direction, before it was too late.

Liz, determined to find some way to reach him, alter his course, even if she had to knock him unconscious and pour soup down his throat for a few days, pondered the matter, wondering what might be at the root of his present lostness.  Of the thing that was driving him, she was reasonably certain.  Though he hadn’t spoken of the matter and had not tried to read the transcripts since his last failed attempt after their recovery from the snow, she knew from the distant look in his eye and the way he jumped whenever she touched him that these matters must be foremost in his mind.

She did not wish to broach the subject once again.  Had done so too often for her taste already—and certainly for his, she was sure—and did not want to be nagging him or doing anything which must be thus interpreted.  There was, however, certainly no sense in going on the way she had been for the past four days either, watching him quite literally waste away before her eyes while she repeated her calm and logical petitions for him to consider resuming his eating.  No more time for such things.   They had got her nowhere and, she could see, were not likely to do so.  And so, against her wishes and probably her better judgment, too, she determined, sitting there and watching as he shivered away what she knew must be nearly the last of his remaining strength, too far from the fire and stubbornly unwilling to change out of the damp hide in which he had cloaked his upper half for the journey, to try once again to reach him on his own territory.  Dangerous country, indeed.

She never had the chance to start.  He’d been watching her, also, mind reasonably sharp if indisputably wayward and wandering behind the haunted, unreadable mask of his hollow face and hunger-glazed eyes, and he spoke first.

“You want me to give up the trapline.”

“No.  I want you to eat.  And I want…you know, every time it seems like things are getting a little better, and some glimmer of hope is beginning to appear…well, you just end up right back here.  For a man who can so easily see and put together patterns out in the world where others—myself included—wouldn’t have so much as an inkling how and why all the little pieces fit together…you sure are clueless when it comes to recognizing patterns in yourself!”

Einar, living up to her accusation, gave her a blank stare, reasonably clueless, indeed, as to the source and meaning of her sudden anger.  “So I can keep the trapline?  It’s doing pretty well, considering…”

“Oh, forget the trapline!  Trapline isn’t the problem, it’s just the latest…whatever you want to call it.  The latest rock for you to bash yourself over, and sure, you can keep it so far as I’m concerned, because if it was gone, you’d just find something else.  Don’t you see?  Don’t you see the pattern?”

He didn’t.  Was having a difficult time, following her tirade, actually, because he was so cold, meager warmth of his travels leaving him and the ice settling once more in his bones.  Which, he supposed with a hint of a wry smile which he knew he must never allow near enough the surface for the clearly dead-serious Liz to detect, was probably part of the pattern.  Whatever that meant.  “Tell me.”

Liz shook her head in exasperation, studied his face in an attempt to gage how serious he might be.  Unreadable, as usual, but he seemed to rather lack the strength for guile, and besides, it was seldom his way.  He seemed sincere.  “Surely you must know what I’m talking about.  Every time things start to go a little better for you and there seems some chance you can get strong again like you were before and like I know you want to be…you find some reason to go back to your old ways and end up right at death’s door again, teetering on the edge.”

“Aw, I’m plenty strong, and working on getting stronger, too.  Want me to show you?”

She pushed him back down beside the fire.  “No, I do not want you to show me.  You’re nearly dead, Einar.  You somehow manage that trapline every day, but the rest of the time you can barely get your legs to support you, and what little muscle you have somehow managed to keep will surely be gone after a few more days of this nonsense, this starving and freezing and pushing yourself through the snow.  What’s the goal, here?  You’ve said you want to live, to be here for little Snorri, but you sure don’t act like it.”

“Yeah, I do.  Want to.”

“Do you want it more than you want to keep on living back there in the jungle with all your…ghosts and memories and all of that?  I know it’s not entirely your choice, sometimes a lot less than others and I’ve seen how that goes for you, but at some point, you’ve just got to try and decide on your priorities.”

To which he had no answer, couldn’t even entirely get his mind around what she was asking him to do, and though he sincerely wanted to do right by her and the little one, all he could do was to shake his head and stare at the floor.  “Got nothing to do with…jungle and all of that.  I’m just trying to stay alive here, stay useful so I can run my trapline, and if I eat right now...feet swell up and I can’t get my boots on.  Simple as that.  Doing my best.”

“Oh, Einar, can’t you see?  It has everything to do with the jungle and ‘all of that.’  The things you’re doing to try and stay alive don’t make a lot of sense, most of the time.  Right now they certainly don’t, except maybe in that context.  Even if you don’t realize why you’re doing it…”

He shrugged.  Sure.  Sure, it influenced him.  Couldn’t deny that, though his actions at the moment—well, when he thought about it, couldn’t really even effectively counter her argument that it, too, had been largely inspired by his ongoing connection to past times.  Would have liked to counter it, but he kept silent, nodding.

“It’s a part of me, sure, all of that.  Can’t just turn it off, come to some sudden realization and be a different person and say ‘right, of course,’ and have it all go away.  Can’t be other than what I am, and right now—well, if you had any idea how hard I’m trying, here, just to go on breathing…”

“I know.  Sometimes it just doesn’t look like it from out here.  Looks like you’re trying as hard as you possibly can to do something else.  You’ve got to do this your way, I know, but will you please, please just eat today?  You’ve got to see that the way you’re doing things right now just isn’t working.”

“It’s working.  Can do this.”

“For how long?  Another day or two, maybe, before you end up face-down out there in the snow?  Maybe not even that long.  I know that the closer you get to that edge, the harder you have to push yourself.  And that’s usually a good thing, a strength that keeps you going, but this time, it’s going to kill you.  Eat today.”

“Really not hungry.”

“Of course you’re not!  You’re too far gone to feel the hunger, but you know it’s there.  This rabbit you brought back just now from the trapline—I’m going to turn it into a soup, and I want you to at least have some of the broth.   It can’t hurt you.  Won’t even make your feet swell, if that’s still what you’re worried about.”

He stared at the ground as she made the soup, doing his best to comfort Will when he woke and began whimpering for his own breakfast, speaking softly to the child and then singing when that did not work, wanting to pick him up for further comfort but knowing he must not, near as he was to toppling over every time he raised his head.  Yeah, strong.  You’re plenty strong alright, not even able to lift your infant son for fear of falling with him…and the tears came, at that, singing stopped and Will looking up at his father with a mix of curiosity and alarm  in his clear grey-blue eyes, and when Liz brought him a pot of broth, he drank.

It was too rainy in the hills this week to get many good distance pictures, a very wet week, and quite hazy from distant wildfires when clear, so here are a few of the smaller, closer things...


Oregon grape, after the rain...

Unidentified mushrooms (anyone know them?)

Fire in the sky...

Thank you all for your patience, and thanks again to Philip and Mike for keeping things interesting in my absence!  

11 August 2012

Well, I'm taking off for the high country for a week or so.  Hope everyone has a good weekend, and a good week also. Will be back with more chapters next Sunday.

Thank you all for reading!

10 August 2012

Three days later, and Einar was more sure than ever about his predictions of an early spring.  All around them things seemed to be thawing, melting, and even Muninn the raven was growing restless with the strangeness of it all, leaving the cabin for longer and longer stretches of time to soar high above the timber, calling, seeking, perhaps, others of his own kind with whom to consort about the strange new developments.  The snow had taken on the definite characteristics of spring, soft and slushy in the day and freezing to a hard crust at night, allowing both humans and animals to skip effortlessly over its surface during the still-frigid morning hours.  Einar, his movements perhaps not as effortless as Liz’s but full of enthusiasm nonetheless, did his fair share of  the skipping, taking full advantage of the easier travel conditions to establish a short but fairly productive trapline in the timber above the cabin.  Many mornings he would return with two or three rabbits and sometimes a squirrel or two which had found their way into his snares, Liz questioning whether the meat and furs thus provided were really worth the energy he was expending in securing them, seeing as he had so little to work with just then, but she mostly kept her concerns to herself.  The trapline was giving him something to do, getting him out of the cabin for a while each day without sending him miles from the place to freeze in the snow, and that made it enormously valuable, in her eyes.

The new ease of movement brought by the unseasonably warm days, however, did not extend past the early morning hours, snow surface quickly becoming soggy and then sticky as the sun hit it, rotten, and this brought its own set of challenges, especially for Einar.  Moisture quickly soaked his improvised boots as the snow softened, mukluks and their relatives being well and good for the dry, cold snow of winter but performing less adequately when temperatures began climbing.  Einar, suffering more from the worry of potentially losing more toes he was from the rather constant hurt of existing with continuously wet and half frozen feet, was glad when finally the swelling went down to a degree which allowed him to carefully ease his feet into his regular, waterproof boots again--a feat which had unfortunately been accomplished by his almost entirely giving up eating, once more.  He’d figured--amongst other things--that this would be less detrimental than losing a foot or two to the additional damage which would surely result from walking about in the soaked, freezing hides and furs for a few weeks, and though Liz had not been so sure, she hadn’t put up too much resistance upon discovering what he was doing, and why.  The goal was, after all, an admirable one even if his means were questionable; she no more wanted to perform a field amputation on one of his feet than he wanted to have it happen.  She just hoped he’d try and start eating again after the swelling had been absent for a time, and she began working on ways to waterproof his improvised mukluks, should he show no inclination to do so.  That would effectively remove his excuse and--she hoped--help her talk him into resuming his regular infusions of stew and broth.

Broth.  That had become something of a contentious issue between them, Liz certain that, scientifically speaking, there was no reason at all why Einar should not be able to go on drinking broth without risking renewed swelling in his feet, and his refusal to try it seemed to her nothing short of a sort of deliberate, purposeless stubbornness, something of which she knew he was more than capable.  That would not do, not in this case where his very life almost certainly depended on the speedy resumption of the sort of eating he’d been doing for a week or so prior--depended on his doing better than that, really, increasing the amount to a significant degree--and she was determined to see that things start heading back in the right direction.  He could eat broth, and he would.  With honey added, and a good dose of her secret ingredient, too.  She was eating well, and there was more than enough for Will, including a stash which she’d collected and frozen out in the snow, against a time when she might find herself for one reason or another unable to provide for him for a day or two.  She laughed a little, milk and honey, sounds like the Promised Land…and might be just the ticket, so long as he’s only aware of the “honey” part.  If I can get him to take the broth, at all.

Einar, for his part, had stopped being concerned about eating the day after he stopped doing it; the swelling did indeed begin to go down fairly quickly, and that was all he cared about.  Had to be able to wear his boots for protection in the wet snow, or he’d lose a foot or two.  Might do so anyway, he had to admit when he allowed himself to look at the thing head-on; healing had been coming along pretty well so far despite his occasional use of the feet and the fact that he’d barely been getting enough nutrition to allow his body anything to spare on rebuilding damaged tissue of that sort, and now that he’d chosen boots over dinner--a choice which might have proven unnecessary had he considered the possibility of simply staying inside when the snow was too wet for his improvised mukluks, but the thought had never occurred to him--he knew the healing would inevitably slow even further.  But would hopefully continue.  Would be enough.  He shrugged, went back to packing the cache of freshly-dried jerky whose completion had occupied him since returning from the trapline that morning.

Made from a pitch-coated willow basket which he had just that morning finished waterproofing, the cache was packed full of carefully-preserved jerky, part of the yield of the meat they’d been pulling down from its places in the surrounding trees and drying against the coming of warmer weather, and he was pleased with the way it was turning out.  Most of the jerky he’d simply left as it was when finished drying, packing it into rough wrappers of sewn rawhide and stashing in the basket, but a portion of the jerky he’d pounded to a fine powder and mixed with liquefied bear fat, pouring this also into rawhide envelopes and packing the resulting pemmican in the basket, as well.  The two varieties of food ought to provide them the energy they’d need for a good week of marching through the timber, and would, just as soon as the snow melted back well enough that they wouldn’t be leaving too many tracks in placing the thing, be concealed along one of their most likely exit routes from the basin.  Einar was determined, now that the season was on its way, to prepare at least two of these baskets each week, setting them aside until placement could occur.  So far, he’d assembled three in three days.  Fast work, but working with food in that way--slicing and drying the jerky, batch after beautiful batch, packaging it neatly in rawhide and turning other portions into pemmican--seemed to help get his mind off the fact that he wasn’t eating it, and that, from his perspective at least, was a good thing.  And a productive one.  Liz could hardly complain, so long as he was getting so much work done.

She could offer him broth, though, and Einar knew he was in trouble of one sort or another when he saw her leave the stove with an unusually determined crispness to her step, cross the room and seat herself beside him, holding the soup pot…

9 August 2012

No chapter today, but here are some freshly picked Yellow Transparent apples for everyone to try...

Back with another chapter tomorrow.

8 August 2012

Dawn, and Einar was outside to greet it, having lived up to his promise to Liz and remained in the bed all night, but growing increasingly restless as morning approached.  Cold as the night had been there was something in the wind--chill, restless, singing a tempestuous tune in the spruces and setting winter-bare aspens swaying and clacking together--that spoke to him of spring, a changing of the seasons, and he’d needed a closer look.  Now he stood, part of his weight supported by a fallen aspen in an effort to spare the more seriously frostbitten portions of his feet, staring off through the timber, breathing deeply of the breeze that flowed down from snow-locked ridges far above.  Changing, warming, it lacked the icy bite he might have expected after a storm such as the one they’d recently endured, giving further confirmation to his suspicions of an early spring to come.  Coming, it was, and little doubt, but spring certainly hadn’t arrived yet, and he shivered, tucked hands beneath his arms in an attempt to preserve some feeling in them.  Still not doing any good with the cold, really, and in one sense it disappointed him that winter should be departing before he’d had the opportunity to better acclimatize himself to its harshness.

Normally, he would have spent a good deal more time chopping holes in the ice and lowering himself into the resulting space of open, black water until his breathing settled down and he could come to some mastery of mind and body, breathing life and warmth through his freezing limbs until they were freezing no more, and function returned.  Not that it would have done him much good, this year.  He’d tried, more than once.  The margins for error, always tiny when dealing with such things, were gone.  Wiped out entirely by the realities of his physical state, which in one sense made the thing all the more challenging, alluring, a challenge to be overcome at any cost, but Liz kept telling him he was going to do himself in if he kept after such pursuits that winter, and she was right.  Had nearly done so a number of times, without even meaning to put himself in a situation where his abilities would be called into question, simply by existing in his current state.   If he wanted a challenge, all he’d got to do was sit still in the cabin for an hour or so with minimal clothing, and he’d find himself faced with just about all the challenge he could take.  Didn’t like it, but facts were facts, and that was indisputably one of them.

Though the weather was taking a decided--and very early--turn, the snow and cold would be with them for several months still in some capacity, and he’d be doing well simply to bring himself through that time, without deliberately adding too many extra burdens.  Which knowledge would not, of course, stop his trying, but it was at the same time good to keep things in perspective, as much as one could.

He shivered, turned to more fully face the wind, which was already beginning to rise from the valley instead of sweeping down from the heights; a normal daily trend, but coming hours early this time; the valley breeze smelled of sunlight on damp soil.  He wanted to retrieve those traps, spend his week or so taking as many beaver and muskrat as he could before the quality of their fur began declining for the spring, but still his feet remained too swollen to wear boots, wrapped instead in the furs and hides which had protected them on his trek up to the spring after those transcripts.  They appeared otherwise to be healing, frostbite amazingly having done little permanent damage and the pain a bit less with every dressing change, but he knew he’d almost certainly re-injure them if he insisted on making that trip to the valley before he was ready to wear his boots, again.  And that would be the end for the rest of his toes, and probably for the rest of him, too.  Not a very promising outlook.

The troublesome swelling was due mostly to his lingering frostbite injury, but was also, he knew, was a result of his trying to eat a bit more.  Seemed it happened every time, even when he was careful and took the whole thing slowly instead of simply diving in and devouring whatever was set before him when he‘d decided to start eating again, and every time the swelling began to appear, he’d back off on the amount he was eating and return to the near-starvation that had got him into trouble in the first place. Which virtually guaranteed a future need to repeat the entire process yet again.  It was tiring.  He was tiring, inclined more and more to simply let the process play itself out, however it might go.  Would be far easier than starting and stopping the process over and over as he’d been doing for the past year or so.  But the easiest answer was seldom the best one as he well knew, and this situation was no exception.  Easiest answer would leave him dead within a couple of weeks in this case--might as well be honest about it, Einar.  Be really stretching it to expect any more than a good week or two out of yourself at this point, if you quit eating again--and that simply would not do, not with spring coming, jerky to make, beaver and muskrat to trap…  Shook his head, took another deep breath of the wind and turned to go back inside.  The swelling in his feet would simply have to be endured; he knew it would go down in the end, if he kept on the right track.  Which he could do, if he really wanted it--and that was the entire problem...

Enough already.  Frustrated with himself, he slammed a fist into the nearest spruce, skinning knuckles and drawing blood.  Did it again.  Helped, somehow.  And didn’t seem to hurt the tree, in the least.   Now.  Get in there and give Liz the all clear on the fire you know she’s been wanting since last evening, and then slice up another batch or two of that jerky, why don’t you?  Maybe even do the fire yourself, if she’s still in bed.  Goodness knows she’s been doing enough for you, these past few weeks.  Way too much.  Got to quit letting that happen, because it’s all backwards.  Especially with little Snorri depending on her for most everything, still.  Not for long though, from the looks of him. Kid can’t wait to get moving, cover some distance on his own, and soon as he’s out and doing that, I ought to be able to help her out a lot more with him, take him wandering with me from time to time and…  The thought of it scared him, somehow, of his doing such a thing under present circumstances, and when he again resumed his walk to the cabin, it was with a determination not only to start that fire for Liz, but to fix breakfast and have a good portion of it, himself.

Too late.  She was already up, already had a fire built and ready to light, and was slicing up venison for a breakfast stew when Einar ducked through the tunnel and poked his head inside, blinking in the dimness.  Though trying hard not to let him see it--not that he would have been likely to notice--she was tremendously relieved to see him, had been intending to give him fifteen more minutes or so before going out searching.

“Quiet out there this morning?”

“Windy, but otherwise quiet.  If you want to have a fire…”

She’d already struck sparks before he finished saying it, flames climbing enthusiastically through her nest of dry aspen bark fragments, nettle fiber scraps and milkweed down, and he smiled at the speed with which she had managed the thing.  No hesitation on her part, that was for sure.

“Well, that’s good.  It’ll help the jerky dry so we can get that second batch moved in over the fire where it’ll be quicker to dry.  Got a lot of meat yet to dry, and then this spring when the snow melts out some, I plan on building us a bunch more caches, some in the basin but most on the other side of the ridge, down in the valley, all the places we’d have to go if we headed out of here in a hurry.  That jerky’ll make a good addition to the caches, lightweight and long-lasting.”

Light weight and long-lasting…just like you, I guess.  “Yes, we should have enough jerky to put in some caches, it’s looking like.  That’s a good idea.  We got a few put out last fall, but with the baby coming and all that was going on, I know we didn’t do as many as you wanted to.  Always good to have more options.  What’s your hurry, though?  It’s still a couple months until the snow’s gone, and you’re acting like you have spring fever already!  What’s got into you?”

Einar shrugged--oh, you don’t want to know!--added a stick to the fire and hurried to busy himself with jerky-slicing.

7 August 2012

Evening came and with it the sharp chill typical of the first truly clear night after a big storm, but the skies remained quiet, and Einar was glad. Still, he did not like the idea of a fire so soon after the strange meanderings of the tiny plane, wanted to wait through the night to be sure nobody was coming back.  Liz pointed out that no plane such as the one he’d described would likely be flying at night, anyway, and though he agreed, still found it best to wait on rekindling the fire.  Candles seemed alright though, and Liz took full advantage of this allowance by lighting three of them, hoping they’d do at least a bit to combat the chill which seeped increasingly through the walls to settle in a layer above the floor, which was, almost inevitably, where Einar had chosen to park himself for the evening.  Wasn’t working too well for him, hands too stiff and shaky to reliably slice meat for their second batch of jerky as he was attempting to do--first round had yet to finish drying in the heat of the fire, but neither he nor Liz saw any reason to wait on getting the second batch sliced and hung--but still he kept at it, working more slowly in an attempt to avoid chopping off too many fingertips, but quite adamantly refusing Liz’s suggestions that he move the entire operation to the bed where he could be warmer.  No surprise.  She knew he’d made quite a concession, as he saw it, in cutting short that trapping expedition and in most everything he’d done since, largely staying in the cabin and allowing his feet to heal as well as they could when really he would have preferred to be out testing himself in the snow, and she could hardly blame him for clinging to that one small thing, that need to test and challenge himself if only by rejecting the warmth of the bed in favor of that hard, cold floor.  Let him do it, if he must.  He would live.

Not if he intended on staying there all night though, might be a real challenge in that case, and after an hour or two--cold supper eaten, Einar’s portion a good deal smaller than she might have wished, but he’d said he could manage no more, and she did not challenge him, Will fed and put to bed and she finally growing weary and joining him--she really began worrying, especially when he seemed either unwilling or unable to respond to her inquiries.  Gone too far.  She got up, crouched beside him in the dim light of the single candle he’d left burning, saw that he was no longer working at the jerky, knife grasped hard in one hand and the other spread palm-up in front of him, looking all stiff and strange and mottled with cold.  She’d seen him like that more than once in the past, knew, something weighing heavily on his mind, that he’d almost certainly remain thus all night long if she didn’t do something to get him moving again.  Fairly sure of the subject that occupied his mind--still hadn’t finished reading the transcript since recovering it from the snow, and she knew he’d been wanting to do it--she figured one certain way to get his attention would involve going for the recently-recovered documents in their carefully-secured orange envelope up in the rafters, seizing the thing and threatening, perhaps, to hold it above the candle…but that was to be saved, so far as she was concerned, for the direst of emergencies.  Surely lesser means--such as simply speaking with him for a time--would have some effect.

“You’re cold.  When are you coming to bed?”

“Need to be cold.”

“Sure, but not for this long, you don’t.  What about your feet?  You’ve been doing so well, really need to keep them on track so you’ll be ready to go out trapping again soon…  You need to do something about how cold you’re getting.”

A silence; she was beginning to think he hadn’t heard her, when finally he shifted position, spoke.   “I’ll fix it.”

Einar got up then, struggling cold-stiff and more weary than he would have liked to admit to his feet and doing the exercises he had developed since receiving the rifle from Kilgore, lifting, swinging, holding it out straight from his body for as long as he was able, and at first it was all he could do to keep his grip on the thing but he warmed slightly as he went, doing better, moving faster.  Kept it up until his arms were shaking with exhaustion, entire body trembling and he was in danger of dropping the weapon.  Leaned it against the wall then, sinking to the floor with chin on his knees and arms wrapped about them, resting, soon very cold again and barely able to keep his eyes open.  Enough of that, so far as Liz was concerned, and she hoisted him to his feet, led him to bed and rolled him beneath the bear hide, responding rather forcefully to his somewhat sleepy objections.  “It’s night and it’s cold in here and you’re coming to bed one way or the other now, either with the rabbit stick or without it.  Your choice.”

She didn’t seem to find it too funny when he responded by rather sincerely mumbling, “with, please, if you’re gonna insist on one or the other,” tucked the hides in over him and secured them with the heavy logs she’d previously used to help prevent midnight wanderings.  That got his attention.  While the rabbit stick--either threat or reality--might not have bothered him too much, the sense of confinement brought by the logs certainly did, and he squirmed out from beneath the hides when she went to blowout the candle, ended up on the floor again by the time she returned to the bed, curled in an unobtrusive little ball against the door, where he had hoped in his sleepy state to somehow avoid detection.  Didn’t work of course, Liz pulling him back to his feet, giving him a halfhearted whack with the rabbit stick for good measure and guiding him back towards the bed.

“Ok, no logs.  I’ll leave them off if you’ll promise to go ahead and stay here for the night, instead of freezing yourself on the floor again first chance you get.  I can’t sleep knowing that’s going to happen, and you have to know it would be too much, cold as the night’s bound to get.”

“Wouldn’t know unless I tried.”

Exasperated and wanting to snap at him, Liz struggled to restrain herself.  “You don’t always have to try.  Sometimes you just have to use common sense and think about it.  You know what’ll happen if you sit up all night.  Now come to bed before I have to use this rabbit stick for real.”

Grinning slightly despite the obvious anger rising in Liz’s voice he followed her, allowed the hides to be drawn rather conclusively over him and secured on her side, if not on his.  He’d stay.  Could see that she was serious about not being able to sleep if she knew he was going to keep leaving the bed, and he wanted her to sleep.  Needed to get her rest so she could be there for Will, have the energy to care for him during the day, so he let her get her arms around him, feeling trapped but putting up no objection, trying to relax and hoping for a bit of sleep, himself.  Too cold to sleep, and he was just then beginning to realize it there in the warmth of the bed, lay listening to the breeze in the spruces outside and trying his best to push from his mind the turmoil that had kept him rooted to the floor all evening, wind calling him, envelope calling, bidding him out into the wild, moonlit snow to face the things he knew were waiting for him, would be waiting, even if he delayed answering, and Liz--silent--calling loudest of them all.  He slept.