4 December 2011

Outside the sun was sinking low, and Liz sat with her back to the cold stone of the stove, wrapped in a bear hide, warm, weighing probabilities. Einar was going to die. Stubborn and physically sturdy as he had always been and would, she had no doubt, remain to the very moment of death, everyone has their limit, and by remaining hungry and virtually immobile all day in the dark, freezing interior of the cabin, he was seriously pushing his. Couldn’t go much further like that. She could hear it in the way he breathed, see it in the dazed stumble of his movement when he tried to move at all, which wasn’t very often. All day he had been rising feebly now and then to try and exercise himself warm but he’d always stopped, exhausted--at the end, she had no doubt, of his strength; he’d been there for days, had only recently been starting to do a bit better as he ate more, but was still walking the edge and would be for many days, just a missed meal or two away from being right back where he’d started until he managed to put on a bit of weight--long before he’d had enough to do him much good, and now even those attempts were fewer and farther between; he was wearing out, and would soon be still.

Now in the dimming light of the fading day she tried talking to him once again, but he wouldn’t respond. Perhaps couldn’t, or perhaps, lost in the shadowy world that seemed often to claim him at such times, he simply viewed her as the enemy, something to be resisted. She was beginning to think that must be the case. He wouldn’t speak now even when she asked him a direct question--are you ready for some pudding? I’ve got pudding here, it’s not warm but it sure is good, little Hildegard and I have been enjoying it but we’ve saved you some--fought her when she finally approached and tried to wrap him, against his will, in the bear hide. Ill-advised, and she knew it, but was at a loss for other ideas, couldn’t bear to go on sitting there watching him slip away. After three such attempts, she had to give it up. Weary and uncoordinated as he was, his resistance remained emphatic, and she couldn’t put the baby in that position.

She wished Muninn would come back, knowing that he had, from time to time, been able to get through to Einar when he seemed beyond human communication and also seemed to know, with an almost uncanny precision, when such action was called for, but it was the bird’s habit to be gone all day when the weather was fair, so she did not expect to see him until sometime after sunset, and by then it might very well be too late.

Which left her with the probabilities. All alone in the almost-darkness, sitting there staring them in the face. The helicopter might come back. Might. Might have been waiting for darkness, and the full return of the cold, to make another pass, searching for confirmation on whatever faint heat signature they might have picked up on, that previous night. A possibility. In which case the fire she was seriously thinking of lighting might give them away. Would give them away. But if she didn’t light it, Einar would die, and soon, and she’d be left all alone there with the baby coming and winter in full swing, and the possibility that the helicopter still might make its return at some point in the future as she struggled to get through all that…

Only one thing to do, really, one thing that made any sense. Start a fire. If the sight of it brought Einar out of his fog and back to the present--a real possibility, as she saw it, and he wouldn’t be too happy about its presence, but she didn’t care--all the better, and if it didn’t…well, at least its warmth would give him some chance of living through the night way over there in the damp, dark shadows of his chosen refuge behind the water barrel. Too dark to see what she was doing, so she lit a candle--still not entirely certain that she was going to go through with it, that she had the courage to risk all that flame and heat just then, but heading in that direction--set it on the stove for a bit of light. Saw Einar’s eyes in its faint glow where he huddled against the far wall like some wounded, half crazed wild creature, and she didn’t like the way they looked. Glazed. Staring. Starving. Empty. She didn’t know him. Was pretty sure he didn’t know her, either, and that frightened her a bit. For the baby. For several reasons. Put your hand on him, Lord. Reach him. I don’t know how.

Only she did know how, had a good idea of it, at least, and was suddenly without any doubt as to the correctness of starting that fire. Thank you. Kindling in place, nest of tinder ready and waiting, she struck sparks. Flames curling upward, a blessed hint of warmth already radiating out into the icy, inky silence of the room. Working, Liz heard a sudden shift and a scrape behind her, Einar moving, rising, and she lowered herself to hands and knees, blowing on the new little tendrils of flame, nurturing them, hair rising on the back of her neck--danger, so real and present she could almost smell it--but she kept at it, not turning around, not yet, live, you’ve got to live…

Wrong. Something terribly wrong over there and it took Einar a good deal longer than he would have liked--staring in dazed and horrified fascination at the growing smear of orange over on the other side of the cabin, brain screaming at him that it meant danger, imminent, final, fate worse than death, but rather impolitely refusing to explain why--to figure out what it was, longer still to act once he knew--though the matter was urgent, so terribly urgent that he nearly choked on the rising panic that welled up within him at his inability to respond any more quickly--but act he finally did, body a numbed, wooden thing that seemed as though it must belong to someone else, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge his commands and betraying him when finally he did coordinate its sinews sufficiently to get him up to his feet, freezing up for several seconds and refusing to move at all but he knew what to do, fumbled around with one claw-stiff hand and then the other until he managed to grasp with all the force the combined pair of them could exert--not much, but enough--a sharp-pointed stick from the willow cage they’d built to hold the insulation around the water barrel, jamming it into his hip until the pain became sufficient to send a shot of adrenalin surging through him, heat racing, blood moving, just what he’d needed…

Moving again, moving quickly now, hurtling himself across the cabin before he could freeze up again and throwing himself at the stove where the fire which threatened their very existence rose and flourished and had already begun releasing visible heat, waves of distorted, shimmering air that would be the end of them, and quickly, if he didn’t do something. Brought up short, splitting pain in the side of his head and it tried to send him under but he fought it, got back to hands and knees and sought once more to close the distance between him and that ever-increasing blaze, ready to pound it out with his fists if he had to and keen to crush any obstacle that lay in his path, but Liz was there, right there in front of him sitting in his path with face grim and terrible in the flickering firelight, eyes flashing and the rabbit stick raised, ready for another strike, and he knew her, didn’t want to crush her, of course, even if he could have, but still wanted at that fire and suddenly all the strength went out of him, resolve replaced by a growing confusion and he sat down heavily, eyes meeting hers with an unspoken question, and Liz, relieved, nearly weeping, was more than ready to answer…