Mara woke near sunset, her entire body aching, and for a fraction of a moment, she imagined that she was laying beside Davy, spent and used.
But the illusion couldn’t persist for long. Not with the hard ground beneath her, the rough wool blanket scratching at her chin. Not with Nick’s tinkling chatter somewhere distant, laid over the low rumble of Eli’s voice.
Immediately, she sat up, pushing the blankets off and looking around. The entrance to the draw lay ahead of her, offering a glimpse of the open prairie–yellow-brown soil cast in orange by the setting sun, pocked by tufts of pale grass and scraggly shrubs. It didn’t look much different in the day than it had at night.
She twisted around and found her companions higher up the draw, near to where it formed, an abrupt crease, like some old god had pinched the fabric of the earth and drawn it backward into the hill. Nick and Eli knelt side by side, fiddling with something on the ground made of sticks and twine.
Curious, Mara pulled on her boots and went to see what they were up to.
“Hi, Mama!” Nick said when he saw her, flashing her a toothy grin.
“Morning, my love.” She crouched at his side. “What are you two working on?”
“Sner!” Nick declared happily, senselessly. Mara looked to Eli.
“A snare,” he clarified. “We saw something skittering back here and thought we’d try to catch it.”
Mara eyed the jumbled assortment of sticks and twine at her feet. “It looks perfect, Nicky,” she said, pulling him in to kiss his cheek. He pushed her away and went back to his project. When she looked back to Eli, he just shrugged. She knew that shrug. It was the ‘at least he’s entertained’ shrug.
She gave him her own patented ‘at least he’s quiet’ shrug and turned her attention toward the opening of their little ravine and the vast expanse of prairie beyond. “Where would you say is the best place to get some privacy, here?” she asked. It hadn’t even come up the night before. Her body’s only need had been a resounding, demanding thirst for sleep.
“You can leave the draw. There’s a stand of trees to the left. Just keep an eye out. If you see anything, get low and hurry back.”
She did her business by the trees he’d described, appreciating the view before her now that she could see more of it. The plains were nothing like the majesty of the towering Loftland pines or the severe austerity of Ashfall. There wasn’t much to them at all. Just soil and scrub and the occasional hill like the one they’d made camp in, little more than wrinkles in the otherwise smooth fabric of the earth. The landscape was so starkly different, she felt as if she might be on an entirely different planet.
Jarring simplicity aside, there was undeniable beauty in the vast, unbroken emptiness. The wide, clear dome of the sky stretched from one horizon to the next so that she could mark where the vivid red and glowing orange of the sunset faded upwards to pink and gold and then to pale blue. The sight made her heart quiver, made her fingers twitch. She wanted to run, not away from anything but towards some unknown but magnificent adventure.
Leaving behind the view, she returned to the draw and joined Eli, who was repacking his bag. Nick played happily in the corner with his bungled snare.
“Should I worry he’s going to catch the skittering animal you saw?” she joked as she knelt and opened up her own pack.
Eli snorted. “I wouldn’t add that to your list of concerns, no.”
“Thank you for entertaining him.”
“It’s no trouble. He’s a good kid.”
They’d had this conversation dozens of times over the past weeks, but something was different. There was a subtle tension in his voice, a low hum of dishonesty that she recognized immediately. She’d heard that same tension in her own voice, back when Davy used to come home and she’d spent all day wrangling their son. This is a labor of love, but today it’s more labor than love. She looked up from her pack and studied his face–not something she did often. He’d proven himself a man who didn’t care for intense scrutiny.
“Are you alright?” she asked, scrutinizing intensely. It was hard to see anything in his face, half-covered as it was in weeks’ worth of beard growth and always so studiously impassive. But the shadows under his eyes weren’t usually so heavy, she didn’t think. “You promised you would sleep.” He’d sworn that they didn’t need a watch. That he could stretch his senses further in the plains and they would wake him if there was any danger.
His brow scrunched in a frown as he glanced at her, still transferring items from the waterproof bag back to the outside pockets of his pack–compass, map, fishing gear, soap.“Of course I’m alright.”
“You look tired.”
Dark eyes flicked to hers, then back down. “So do you. It was a long night.”
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“I don’t feel as tired as you look. Was it all the magic you used? You might be close to bur–”
“Mara,” he interrupted, voice hacking off the end of her sentence with all the finesse of a dull blade. “For the last time, if ever I am stupid enough to extend myself to the point of burnout, I will tell you. I wouldn’t keep something to myself that would put you in danger. I promise.”
Mara slumped back onto her heels, chest hollow. She had no right to have her feelings hurt after all the times she’d snapped and snipped at him, especially in the mornings when she was still waking up and all he’d done to earn her ire was be kind and make her tea. But her feelings were definitely hurt, if that ache behind her sternum was any indication.
“Okay,” she said, turning her attention back to her pack and stuffing her little drawstring bag of toilet items into one of the smaller outer pockets. “I’m sorry I asked.” Eli finished reorganizing his pack and rose without speaking, disappearing out the mouth of the draw, bow in hand.
While he was gone, Mara finished as well, packing up her sleeping roll and lashing it to the outside of the pack, grateful that she didn’t have to cram everything inside like she had the night before. She set the pack aside and went to check on Nick, who wanted nothing to do with her and shooed her away when she tried to help him construct his snare.
At least the day was consistent, and maybe that was why her feelings were so hurt. She was used to helping. Her dream of Davy, erotic as it had been, had left her less with a feeling of sexual release and more with a warm sense of being needed. Davy had been so distraught, the despair in his eyes a poignant ache that only she could soothe. And she had.
Here in reality, she couldn’t even play with her son or inquire after Eli’s well-being without being cut off at the knees. She was running in circles, it seemed, caught in an endless cycle of resolving to make herself useful and discovering that there was no use for her to fill. Over and over, panicking in the tunnel, despairing in Loftland, hiding in a tree in Ashfall, tearing her feet up, nearly drowning, frozen insensate, dizzy with the heights, too weak, too inexperienced, too nosy. Over and over. Resolve and collapse. Determination and disappointment.
Footsteps drew her attention to the mouth of the draw, a long shadow preceding Eli’s return. He carried a dusty-brown hare in one hand, its body limp. In the other, the bow and a small collection of sticks.
He knelt a few feet away and began digging a hole for a darknight fire. Without speaking, she took the hare and began dressing it.
“I owe you an apology,” he said before she could offer her own. “If I burn out, I can’t protect you properly. You’re entitled to inquire if you think I’m nearing a limit.”
Mara focused her attention on the hare, slicing a clean, shallow line across its back and pulling the skin away from the flesh. It was a skinny thing, nothing like the fat game of Loftland, or even the rangy, muscular animals of Ashfall. Mostly bone and gristle.
“I’m not worried that you can’t protect us,” she said, once she was calm enough to say it quietly. “I just want to help. I can’t swim and I can’t hunt and I can’t fight, I know.” She sliced off the hare’s head. “But you don’t have to protect me from every little thing.” She separated the tail. “You can let me do a little more of the work around camp, especially if you’re tired.” She hacked off the four feet and set them aside with the head and the tail. “You didn’t even wake me when Nick got up. You just took care of him. You take care of everything.”
“I’m sorry?” That edge was back in his voice, and it punctured the ballooning ache in her chest. She wanted him annoyed. He should be annoyed. She was. There was meant to be friction in a relationship as constant as theirs had become.
“It’s okay,” she said pertly, carving the hare’s body open from anus to breastbone. “I forgive you.”
“How fortunate.” More fortunate was that the fuel he’d gathered was as dry as his tone. She heard the crackle as it caught fire, smelled the smoky scent of burning. Her mouth watered in anticipation of the meal to come, her body desperate for fuel.
They didn’t talk anymore after that. Mara glanced once at his face, but it was set in stony lines reminiscent of Ashfall, his eyes shuttered. After that, she kept her focus on her task, slicing what little muscle the hare had into thin strips to roast over the fire.
The mutual petulant silence carried on through dinner, each of them interacting with Nick but not with each other, and they managed to exchange a mere eleven words through the course of breaking camp– I’ll carry Nick from Eli and We’re running low on water. One flask left from Mara.
Darkness fell, and they set off into the night, and Mara wondered if Eli felt as suddenly and profoundly silly as she did beneath the uninterrupted dome of stars. She lagged behind, head thrown back, drinking in the immensity overhead, letting it engulf her own troubles and worries until serene acceptance washed over her in a warm wave. Breaking into a shuffling jog, she drew even with him.
“I was acting like a child,” she admitted, the words flowing easily into the thin, dry air. “Which is ironic, considering the whole crux of my argument is that you don’t need to treat me like one.”
He didn’t speak for a few steps, and her irritation flared at the idea that he might not accept her apology. Then–
“A friend of mine loved reminding me that I can be ‘stiflingly overbearing.’ Those are his exact words,” he said, and from the edge of sadness in his voice, she knew who that friend had been. “He was right. So are you.”
“You’re not overbearing,” she said, because he wasn’t. He didn’t try to control her or tell her what to do. With rare exception, he was honest with her, even when the truth was unpleasant. He just did everything himself, including things she ought to be doing. Which was somehow worse, because in addition to being annoyed, she also had to feel guilty. “I understand you’re just trying to do right by us. And I’m grateful. I’m so grateful. I just want to help, that’s all. If you can teach Nick to make a snare, you can teach me, and then that’s one more thing I can do so that you don’t have to.”
“You’re right.”
As nice as that was to hear–Mara was only human, and therefore loved to be told she was right–there was a burning tension in her stomach that told her the conversation was incomplete. More needed to be said, though what it was eluded her. She couldn’t even tell who needed to say it, whatever it was.
“Thank you for looking after Nick,” she tried, and knew immediately that wasn’t it. “But next time wake me up.”
“You’re welcome.” She couldn’t see his face in the darkness, but she could hear him smiling. “And I will.”
That wasn’t it, either.