31 December 2013

Will have a chapter ready for tomorrow.

I want to wish each of you a happy and productive New Year!

28 December 2013

Though Einar seemed quite ready to be done with the conversation that had begun outside, Liz did not want to let the subject drop, not now that they’d begun discussing it and he seemed, for once, not only willing to consider the possibility that some major changes needed to be made, but ready to recognize that he could not indefinitely continue on the way he’d been going.  She wanted to seize the moment, make something of it.  But would have to keep him awake, if she really wanted to get anywhere.  Already he appeared to be nearly dozing in the warmth of the fire, arms wrapped hard around his knees and head bent, eyes half closed.

Einar, in fact, was not anywhere near dozing off, the absentness Liz had taken for near-sleep resulting instead from a fierce struggle with a sudden sense of unreality that had begun creeping in around the edges of his mind, jungle trying to pull him in, sights and smells already beginning to drown out the world around him so that he felt trapped by the cozy confines of the parachute shelter, desperate for air, space, the freedom of the wide, windswept woods beyond this little world of family and firelight.  For some reason—dimly remembered promise, perhaps, to wait until the storm had passed—he made no move to leave, pressing himself instead into the fir boughs that made up the floor of the shelter, eyes closed and teeth clenched as he fought to remain at least somewhat in the present, failing, swamp-stench rising around him and the feeling of the bamboo beneath his body, hard ridges against raw-injured skin, bone, ropes on his arms cutting off all feeling as they raised him, all hope of escape, all life, pretty nearly, so that soon he was struggling for air, gasping and twisting in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure, allow his lungs to expand.  Wasn’t working.

Liz was watching, crouched beside him and spoke his name, and when he looked up at her she could see the trouble, a certain vacancy in his wide, white eyes, a distance.  He clearly did not know her, perhaps did not even see her, and she reached out to place a hand on his knee, but pulled it back, bad idea, best stick to words.

Her words, though spoken softly and insistently, did not seem to be having much effect, Einar glancing frantically at the walls, up at the parachute above his head and leaving her little doubt that he would do whatever necessary to secure his “escape,” should he see something that looked like a way out.  Right overtop the sleeping Will, should it come to that, out into the storm where he’d surely be lost and where she might not find him again before it was too late, if things continued for him as they presently were.  Without hesitation Liz grabbed the pot of half melted snow-water from beside the fire and in one smooth motion splashed its entire contents over his head where it ran in wet, slushy globules over his face and slipped icily down the back of his neck and along his spine.

Spluttering and shivering Einar was on his feet, ropes somehow mysteriously and entirely removed as he discovered that he was able to unbend his body, to rise, fir boughs beneath his feet and—strangely, no explaining—Liz there with him in the cage, reaching for him, blotting the icy water from face and neck.  He reeled backwards, trying to get away, not right that she should be in here with him, not possible, but there was nowhere to go, solid mass of the back wall bringing him up short so that he stumbled, fell heavily to his knees and crouched there staring at her, at the fire and the top of little Will’s head where he lay nestled in the sleeping bag.  Sight of the child finishing the job the cold water had started, and he looked away from her, knew what he had done.

Liz was beside him, leading him back to the fire and trying to help him off with his wet, icy clothes.  “I’m sorry about the water.  You were…somewhere else.”

“Water’s good.  Thanks.”

“It may have been good, but these clothes are going to start freezing on you if we don’t get you into something dry.”

“Don’t mind if they do.  Might help remind me where I am.”

“You’ll remember, now.  Here, give me those and I’ll hang them to dry by the fire.  They’ll be ready for morning.”  Einar complied, reluctantly gave her the freezing clothes and got into the dry set which thankfully had remained in the items Bud and Susan had sent along, but refused to wear the extra layer Liz was trying to give him.  It would, she insisted, help him save energy, keep him from being so very cold all the time, but he did not want to do it, insisted that such measures were only for days when it was well below zero, which—despite the ice in his bones—that day did not seem to be. She stopped insisting, but would not give up on the original conversation.

“Do you remember what we were talking about?  Before the jungle got in the way, I mean…”

Einar remembered.  “Yeah.”

“What do you think?  Willing to give it a try?  Eat more, start stepping back a little from that ledge you’re always teetering along, and see how it goes for you?”

Feeling trapped.  Wished she would have saved the discussion—which he knew was inevitable—for another time, because to be quite honest, all he wanted to do right then was to head out into the snowy timber and stand for a week without protection or sustenance of any kind, simply to refute the cage.  To refute what he had been, in there.  Instead, he kept silent for a long moment, watching the soft rise and fall of the sleeping bag where Will dozed, gurgling and laughing in his sleep.

“Yeah, I’m willing.”

“Thought you might be.  How about some more soup, as a start.”

“That’s part of the trouble, though.  If I’m really going to do this, have to do it kind of slowly at first or I’ll run into a lot of trouble.  Probably already in trouble after the two bowls I had earlier.  You remember how it was before, person gets real sick, loses all the strength in their muscles—including the ones for swallowing and breathing.  Not a good situation.  Can mostly avoid it, if I go slow.”

“Ok, we’ll go slow.  And go easy on the starchy things, because that’s where the trouble comes from, isn’t it?  From your body re-adjusting to burning starches for energy, after being without for a long time.”

“Right.”

“But this time…well, you’ve been eating some.  I was hoping that might not be so much of a problem this time, so you could eat more sooner, and start doing better.  What do you think?”

“Think I’ve been losing some more weight lately, so had better go slow.”

She didn’t want to believe that, but knew he was probably right.  “Well, you were at 66 that time we checked at Susan’s, when we first got there. I don’t think you’ve gained any since then, have you?”

Einar shrugged.  Didn’t really think so, not the way things had been going, and Liz continued.  “Oh, what am I saying?  I know you’ve lost some since then, I can see it.  Several pounds, at least.  That’s a really scary number, you know?”

“Aw, doesn’t bother me much.”

“That’s the scariest part…”

“You want me to be bothered?”  He was starting to laugh then, saw the look on her face and stopped.

“No, I just want you to eat more soup.  Here you go.  Have this, and I’ll start some more.”

27 December 2013

Busy couple of days, will have a chapter ready for tomorrow.

Thank you all for reading!

24 December 2013

While Einar remained anxious to get out and work on the shelter roof, he found himself so full and sleepy after two mugs of Liz’s soup that any such movement would have been a real struggle, even had he not promised to wait for the storm’s ending.  Fighting to keep his eyes open, he propped himself against the logs of the shelter wall and watched in a dreamy haze as Will studied and dismantled yet another spruce cone, an unaccustomed warmth creeping through him as his body began putting to use the abundance of soup.  

Seemed that he hadn’t been warm—or anything approaching it—for many days, not a situation which normally would have troubled him in the least, but this time, now that the frantic pace of the past several days had slowed and he had a bit of time to catch his breath, something seemed different.  Wasn’t the fact that the cold—which had always been his friend and whose company he had all his life enjoyed in ways that few others seemed to understand—now hurt him, ached in his bones, knifed between his ribs and gripped his body in the iron jaws of inertia until sometimes it felt as though he would barely be able to go on moving.  This was a change, alright, but not one which disturbed him terribly, and sometimes he even saw it as a welcome thing in that it provided him yet another challenge with which to busy his mind and body.  

Trouble was that there seemed no way to shake this chill that had settled in his bones and seemed now to come as much from inside him as from out, even when he tried.  And he did try from time to time, because it was something a person ought to be able to do, might urgently need to do, living out as they did, his efforts meeting with less and less success.  Even the warmth of the meal was already fading as he sat there, leaving him once more all but immobile with cold.  A sure sign, as if he’d needed another one, that he had better be putting some serious effort into getting his body back in line, stronger, perhaps working to add just a bit of padding if he wanted to be of much use around the place.  He stretched, shivered, hurried outside to clean his soup mug. 

Or, he told himself, could just as well be a sign that you’d better be making more of an effort to get yourself to adapt.  You’ve always been able to adapt.  Maybe you’ve just gone all soft and lazy and aren’t putting out enough effort, here lately.  Eating too much soup.  A good long night out in the snow without your parka has always solved that for you in the past, given you some of your endurance and determination back, and ought to cure you of this nonsense, once and for all.  Past time to do it.  Well.  He knew what Liz would say to that, knew he’d have to be awfully insistent if he was to get his night out in the snow anytime soon, but he knew how to be insistent, so it shouldn’t be a problem. 

Right.  Not a problem.  You’ll find a way to make it happen, and most times, it would be exactly what you need, too.  Give your mind and body a little challenge, get them to respond, live up to the demands of the moment, and you’ll be on track again.  But not now.  You know why this is happening, why you seem to be losing ground so fast all of a sudden, and ought to recognize that it can’t be fixed by a night or two out in the snow.  It’s not about adaptation anymore.  There is no adapting to this.  Body can adjust to a huge range of different environmental conditions and situations if a person will give it a chance, push themselves a little and show some persistence, and you’ve had a lot of experience with that, know how well it works.  But you might as well face it.  There’s just no adapting to being severely emaciated and chronically under-nourished month after month while attempting to live a very active life out in the cold at high altitude.  Doesn’t happen.  You’re not adapting, you’re dying.  

Liz came then, Will fast asleep in the sleeping bag after his own meal, knelt beside him in the snow where he crouched with half-cleaned mug forgotten in one hand, spruce-needle scrubber in the other.  She took them from him, finished the washing.  “What’s on your mind, Einar?  What’s got you so quiet today?”

Tell her?  He couldn’t.  Not in so many words, not as he’d just gone over it in his mind.  “Oh, kind of feeling like I need to go out and sit in the snow for two or three days, without any soup or...anything.”

Her voice was low, quiet.  “That’s not going to fix it, you know.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Yes.  Can’t keep doing this, Liz.  Can’t make it work anymore.”

“Don’t keep doing it.  Let it go.  You’ve got to let it go, this getting-along-on-nothing-but-air.  I know you’ve been eating some, but you always go back to that when things start to get difficult.  Always.  I’ve seen.  You can live without it.”

“Don’t know if I can.  Don’t really have any other way to…”

“Yes, you can.  You have us, and you have your work.  A roof to build, traplines to set up and run, life to live.  You just need to keep eating.  Get back in the habit.  It will get better.”

“Feels like…surrender if I try that.  Giving up.  Giving in.  Just because things got too difficult.”

“Just like in the jungle, in that cage, when your captors kept offering you food and water, if only you’d talk to them?  That kind of surrender?”

Bowed his head, eyes on the snow at his feet as the tears came, frustration, shame, miserable, feeling trapped, exposed, hating that she’d brought it up.  Nodded.

“I know.  But it’s not.  You never did surrender when you were in that cage, didn’t give an inch.  I think you forget that, sometimes.  Just like you forget that you’re not in there anymore.  Don’t have to be, anyway.  You can come out now, if only you’d let yourself.  Eating is not surrender.  It’s just meeting basic needs that have to be met in order to go on living.  And believe me, things will still be plenty difficult, if it’s difficulty you need.”

“Wouldn’t be the same.”

“This is killing you.  It’s going to take you away from us.  That’s surrender, if you willingly continue down that path.  Giving up.  Taking the easy way out.”

“Nothing easy about it.”

“No.  There isn’t.  It’s about the most difficult existence I could imagine, and I’m constantly amazed at how you keep going and make a life for yourself, and for us, despite the difficulty.  But in some way, it’s got to be easier for you than the alternative.  Than facing life, and all of your memories, without it.”

Couldn’t argue with that one.  She had him.  “Yeah.”  He was really shivering by then, starting to have trouble with words, despite his best efforts.  She took him inside, added a few sticks to the fire and set some snow to melt for tea, hopeful, sensing the change in Einar, a willingness which had not been there before, time, perhaps, to start coming home… 

23 December 2013

No chapter for tonight, but I will have one for tomorrow.

Thank you all for reading!

20 December 2013

While winter still reigned in the mountains, spring was on its way to the valleys below, and this meant the busy time had arrived for Susan and her greenhouse business.  Already she had started rosemary, chives, winter squashes and twelve varieties of Siberian tomatoes for later sale to the public as garden sets, Bud given the task of keeping them warm and thriving by managing the wood stoves that heated the place.  Following their visit from the feds the day of Einar and Liz’s departure, things had gone along reasonably quietly for the couple, both of them spending several weeks at Bud’s house in Arizona during the winter while he attended two separate primitive skills gatherings at which he had made a yearly habit of appearing. 

Here, he caught up with old friends, taught tracking and trapping courses and introduced everyone to his new wife, who showed up wearing a beautifully fringed white buckskin dress he’d specially commissioned from a friend for the event, and a muskrat hide vest he’d made for her, himself.  Here, also, she brain tanned her first fox hide, learned to dig clay from the creekbank and fire her own pottery in an improvised kiln of stacked rocks, became a fairly decent shot with an atlatl and made began several friendships which would last a lifetime.

Back at Bud and Susan’s mountainside home above Culver Falls, Muninn had even settled in to some degree, though clearly still mourning the loss of his people and often, even after all that time, taking off now and then on days-long flights, presumably searching for them.  Between these times he spent his days roosting on the front deck railing where he was afforded a good view of the surrounding country, flapping or hopping into the house whenever offered the opportunity and perching on the back of Bud’s kitchen chair to give his long-winded opinion about the world and all its inhabitants in the raspy raven’s voice which Einar had come to know so well.  Bud, who had been annoyed at first by the brooding black presence hanging over him whenever he ate and glaring at him as if plotting how best to dart in and peck out his eyes, had to admit that he was starting to get used to the bird.  Raven didn’t mean any harm.  Just missed the crazy human to whom he had for some unknown reason chosen to attach himself.

Susan, too, missed the little family, kept them constantly in her prayers and wondered every day how they were getting on in their new home, what new things Will had learned or accomplished, and whether they had found a place where they could really settle and get down to the business of life.  The most difficult thing, and one which she simply had to accept, was that she would probably never know…

*  *  *  *

Einar staying for the moment, sipping his soup and planning construction on the roof so he could begin as soon as the snow slacked off, Liz emptied the drop bag, lining up the food that remained.  Einar scooted over nearer, began helping her.  Peanut butter, split peas, almonds, raisins, good, dense stuff, but it wouldn’t last them forever.

“Guess we’d better take an inventory of what we have left from Bud and Susan, huh?  See how urgent it is we go back after some of that moose.  Don’t like the idea of being in that canyon again with whatever was going on with the guys on the rim, but it’s an awful lot of food to just walk away from.  Once we get set up here, I could go back for some if I have to.”

“We could go back, if you decide it’s a good idea.  But not unless you’re pretty sure it’s a safe thing to do.  It’s not like you to want to retrace your steps like that…”

“Not seeing an awful lot of trapping prospects up here, to be honest.  Not in the sort of weather we’ve been having.  Nothing much out and stirring, and you’ve got to have plenty to eat for you and Will.”

“Oh, we’re alright for now I think, between this stuff and the moose we brought.  It will hold us for quite a while.  For all of us though, for you, too!”

“Right.  I’ll get out trapping just as soon as this snow slows down some.  Rabbits and such are bound to be out and moving at the first opportunity.  Will be hungry after the storm.  That’ll help us stretch what we’ve got until we can either get back for some moose, or I get a more regular trapline established.”

“We’ll be fine.  I just need you to eat your share right now, so you’ll have the energy to do that trapline…”

“I’m eating my share!

“Not of this split pea-grouse bone soup, you’re not.  You’re just sipping at it.  No way you’ll even keep up with the energy you’re expending going at it like that, never mind getting enough to let yourself start putting on some weight again.”

Einar hurried to gulp down a portion of his soup, unable to deny that she had a point.  While split peas were a good, nutritious food and he was happy they were now no longer on the run and had time to cook such things, he knew they were starchy enough to cause him some muscle and breathing trouble, potentially, if he should eat too many at once after such a long time of consuming nearly nothing.  Didn’t want any of that sort of trouble, which he’d experienced several times in the past, but was at the same time reluctant to explain the situation to Liz, since she seemed not to realize just how far behind he had once allowed himself to fall, nutrition-wise.  Well.  Best just eat the soup, hope he could keep any unfortunate effects from showing.  Definitely time to start remedying the situation, and perhaps the soup could be a good first step.

Because of the high level of activity demanded of him by the life they lead, he had managed to retain as much muscle as was possible under the circumstances, but with his body having fed almost exclusively on itself for so long, this was not nearly as much as he might have wished.  Increasingly, he found himself frustrated at the hesitancy of body to meet the demands of will, legs giving out unexpectedly under the weight of a wind-felled aspen which his mind told him ought not have been any problem at all.  Though he did derive a certain satisfaction from the struggle of keeping himself going despite this challenge and accomplishing all the things demanded of him by their rugged life along the canyon, he knew he needed to be better able to provide for and defend his family than his current condition allowed.  Liz saw that he had finished his soup, poured him another mug full.

17 December 2013

It took Einar, sitting beside the fire and breathing steam from his cup of broth, a good while before he began warming adequately to do much besides shiver and stare, a fact not lost on Liz but one which she saw no need to bring to his attention just then.  He would, in all likelihood, simply explain—soon as he was able to speak coherently—that had she not insisted in his coming out of the storm he would be in no such predicament, fire being at the root of his entire difficulty.  And he would mean it, too.  She just smiled and shook her head, left him to warm and turned her attention to Will, and to the simmering soup.  When finally Einar was through the most intense portion of the warming and able to make himself understood again, he began eagerly explaining to Liz his ideas for the roof.

“Got most of those aspens down to similar lengths now, and figured we could lean them at an angle against this back wall we already have.  Not quite as big or nice as the old cabin, but I’ll build us something better, if we decide to stay.  Lots of trees around for the purpose.  Figured we could…” paused for a minute as the shivering seized hold again, head bowed and arms pressed tightly at his sides in an effort to control it.  “Could heap the roof up with spruce needles to help keep out the wind and moisture, conceal the place until it gets all covered with snow, use branches and a few more aspens to build up the sides…”

“That ought to provide pretty good shelter, as wind-free as this place already is because of the terrain.”

“Yes.  For the wind, figured we could use the parachute inside the shelter, kind like a tapestry in an old castle.  Hang it from the ceiling and let it come down along the walls, secure it in place here and there so it doesn’t sag too much, and it’ll help with insulating, trap air between its fabric and the roof, keep out any drafts and snow that might try to find their way through.”

“That ought to reflect a lot of light, too, being white.  Make the place nice and bright inside, when we’ve got any kind of a fire.”

“Thought you might like that.”

“Yes!  A lot easier to do projects when it’s bright inside the shelter.  If the parachute is to be like a tapestry in an old castle, though, I’ll have to embroider scenes on it, battles, wolverines, your first successful wooly mammoth hunt…”

“Wooly mammoths haven’t lived here since…”

“I’m kidding!  I know they’ve been extinct for quite a long time, but wouldn’t it look entirely appropriate to see one come ambling up through the timber out there, back all matted with snow and you wrapped in that wolverine hide and challenging it with a spear?”

Einar laughed.  “Yep, that’s me.  Wolverine slayer, mammoth hunter and all-around caveman.  Sounds about right.  Hey, can you imagine how warm a mammoth hide would be?  Too heavy to wear, I expect.  Heavier than a buffalo hide, even.  But surely the best bed quilt that ever existed.  Too bad the critters are gone.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.  Sure would be neat to see one, and you’ve got a point about the hide, but if they were still around, you’d probably insist on challenging one hand-to-hand without any sort of weapons, just to see if you could survive being stomped.  Wouldn’t you?”

Laughing, getting to his feet and standing over the fire, Einar drained his cup of broth.  “Well, there’s really no other way to know for sure, is there?”

“See?  That’s why I don’t mind so much that wooly mammoths, sabre tooth tigers, pterodactyls and some of the other larger former inhabitants of these mountains are now extinct!  Because you’d just have to challenge them, if they were here…”

“Pterodactyls are not extinct.  I’ve shot one down with my bow.”

“Right.  Large, flying predators with armor.  Guess I’d just never realized that pterodactyls were rotary-winged creatures!”

“Sure!  Sure they were.  Can hear ‘em coming from miles away.”

“You know, I was just thinking last night that it’s been quite a long time since we’ve heard a pterodactyl, even in the distance.  The quiet sure has been nice.”

Einar glanced anxiously at the sky, sinking a bit lower in his stance as if certain he was about to start hearing that distant rumble even then.  “Yeah.  The quiet is good.  Have to wonder how long it will last.  Hopefully until Will is big enough to use a crossbow, so he can go hunting with me!”

“Crossbow?”

“For the pterodactyls.  Crossbows made with leaf springs from abandoned trucks.  Or from pieces of other downed pterodactyls.  Works pretty well either way.”

“Oh!  Yes, I guess it does.  Hopefully you and Will won’t ever have to hunt those particular flying creatures again, but if you do, I’m sure you’ll be ready, both of you.  I have no doubt that he’ll be learning to build and operate a crossbow by the time he loses his first tooth—if not even sooner!”

“Never too soon to start learning.  Is it, Snorri?  Come here.  I’ll tell you how it works.”

Will just laughed and went on precisely and methodically picking apart the spruce cone with which he had been entertaining himself, delighted at his father’s addressing him but not entirely understanding.  Not yet.  That would surely come, with time. 

Having described to Liz his vision for the roof and found it to be to her approval, Einar was anxious to get started on the project, leaning the angled logs and pinning up the parachute-tapestry on walls and ceiling, but Liz caught his arm, insisted he stay.

“Not now.  Not yet.  You haven’t had any soup, and besides, if you move the parachute while it’s storming like this, all our things are going to get snow blown onto them.  It can wait.  Maybe tomorrow the storm will finally be over, and then I’ll help you move the logs, stack them up, hold fabric while you tack it in place—everything!”