Caleb was out the door as soon as her face vanished from sight - he heard a shout behind him, from Silas, and a cry of rage from Darla, up ahead - she was fast, but he knew the woods better than she did, and soon enough her mad rush was curbed by a root bent up at perfect tripping height. He caught her before she hit the ground, grabbing her arm and hauling back; she’d be dizzy for a few moments but he’d save her a concussion.
“That ain’t your man, Darla,” he yelled over her enraged screaming. He was reminded viscerally of tangling with a rabid bear and he kept his head down, eyes away from hers, and repeated “that ain’t your man” until she stopped screaming.
“You’re harboring a murderer, Caleb!” she shrieked in his face, tugging at her arm in his grip in vain. “You’re keepin’ a monster in your cabin!”
“He ain’t your man, Darla,” Caleb said again, focused and fiercely.
“How do you know?!”
“He told me so.”
“An’ you believed him?!” she shrieked, spit flying into his face.
Despite her actions, Caleb knew she was listening; if she was really aiming to get away, she’d be using her nails, her teeth, pummelling every weak spot she could find. “He didn’t lie,” he insisted, finally choosing to risk the eye contact. Darla glared at him, heaving with breath, but stopped hitting him. “That man ain’t a murderer, I know it.”
“He needs to be brought to justice,” she snarled.
“It won’t be justice bringin’ in an innocent man.”
“He killed her!” she railed, slamming her elbow into Caleb’s ribs. He winced and his grip slackened, and she pulled away from him, though she didn’t run yet. “He ain’t innocent, damn you, you weren’t there!”
“You weren’t neither!”
“I was, you damn bastard!” Tears were burning down her enraged face. “Rakel shouted when she saw Eva dead, and I helped chase him, I saw him run!”
“The innocent run when they’re hurt an’ they’re scared, Darla,” Caleb insisted, resisting the urge to put a hand to his aching ribs. “He was after the man that did it.”
“What man?!” she demanded. “There weren’t no other man there!”
“Damn it, Darla, I don’t know, I didn’t see what happened, but I know he didn’t lie.” Even as he said it, Caleb couldn’t help a curling feeling of doubt. He knew what he heard in Silas’ voice, and saw in his face, but this was a very strange man indeed. An image of his axe flashed into mind, the handle bending in thin air, the handle that Darla had whittled for him. The floor, rising to trip him and wrap about his ankles like rope.
“You didn’t see her, Caleb,” her voice broke. “This poor little girl, all broken an’ limp.”
“I know,” Caleb replied, and there was a deep grief in his own voice. He’d rarely go into town, and every time he had, Eva had seemed so bright, shining in her childlike surety that she could break the world before it would break her. Through Frankie’s tales of the town, he’d come to empathize with her, hearing about her falling in love with someone she knew the town would disdain and determined to see it through regardless. He’d silently cheered on her and Anne’s secret romance, and at the same time silently prayed that the world would treat her better for it than it had treated him.
And now, all those hopes and promise had been snatched away - by who? A man whose dead body had apparently disappeared? Or a man who had already proven himself to be mysterious?
“I don’t think he did it, Darla,” he said slowly, struggling to keep the doubt from his own voice. “An’ if I hand him over now, the mob’ll tear him apart before they’ll hear anything out of him.”
“An’ if we don’t care?”
Caleb raised his eyebrows slightly. “Then you might as well spit on poor Eva’s corpse, to hand off an innocent man to be torn apart for revenge in her name.”
Darla jerked back and leveled a poisonous glare at him. “He ain’t innocent,” she repeated. “I just know it.”
“He is,” said Caleb. “I know it.”
“You’ll know what’ll come of this now, Caleb.”
“I do.”
“Then damn your worthless hide,” she spat, “an’ damn whatever friendship we might’ve had between us. My good wood was wasted on you.” With a final look of loathing, she turned her back on him and stalked through the woods until she was out of sight.
Caleb hefted a sigh. That breath wasn’t enough though, and he sighed again. When still he felt as though some greater weight had hefted onto his shoulders, he merely turned and began the walk back to his cabin.
Something slowed his steps, however, as he neared the house. Silas Green would be there, anxious and awaiting some kind of answer, something that Caleb didn’t have. This knot in the base of his chest that had laid dormant for so long began twisting again. He wouldn’t step in that cabin now, he couldn’t. He couldn’t face it. So he turned aside, and began walking into the woods, letting his feet take him where they would.
He hadn’t brought his axe, but that didn’t much matter to him; after what he’d just gone through with Darla, the thought of the axe made that knot tighten all the greater. So like most other things that made him twist on the inside like that, he walked away from it, put it out of his mind, and went wandering in the woods that were more his home than the cabin was. He found a patch of huckleberries and tasted them tenuously to make sure he’d identified them correctly. He had no pack, but he carried a few with him and snacked on them as he walked. A crow cawed above him, and when he raised his head, he saw a nest gathered on the upper branches. He found his favorite pond, fed by a small stream that came in the direction of the mountain, stirring the pool slowly before trickling back away down another path.
A few leaves brushed his hands, and after making sure they were indeed Fringes, he plucked a couple leaves and placed them in his pocket. He went along the trickling creek for a while, gathering little leaves and petals where he saw them, thinking about putting them to use for poultices, for tea, or even just for their gentle fragrance.
A bird sang to him from the branches of a sapling, and on a whim, he followed it as it flitted from twig to twig, piping out an alarm to other birds that a large creature was bumbling through the foliage. Once it finally flew far away, Caleb glanced around to catch his bearings, and realized he was in a clearing he didn’t recognize.
The trees had ceased growing in a near perfect circle, wherein grew a haphazard, unkempt patch of grass, some strands waving in the absent wind, laden with milk-white seeds, while the others seemed trampled together, like a messy haircut. One end of the clearing was backed by a large rock, eight feet up, the toe of the giant mountain.
In the center of the clearing was a dead rabbit. Its brown fur was matted with dried blood, around its neck, which was bent crazily to the side. Its eyes were black and wide, filled with an abyss that had swallowed it.
The noise of the woods had deadened. Caleb caught the sight of a squirrel’s tail as it raced away in a panic. A breeze wound its way through the tense air; the clearing seemed to breathe.
Now Caleb was wishing he’d brought his axe, though some distant part of him was telling him that not even his axe would be of any use here. With trepidation, he began to slowly approach the dead animal, sensing that it had been left there as a message for him, and he might as well interpret the message before searching for his escape.
The dried blood was gathered all around the neck, and nowhere else. Some creature with wide, powerful jaws had shaken the thing until it had died, and not bothered to eat it. Some creature had killed another, for no reason Caleb could fathom. He had seen dead animals before, plenty of times, yet somehow, this one set him back, this one made him tremble to look in its black eyes, an abyss that rolled its wide, infinite eye over him now.
A growl split the air behind him, and he turned to see a wolf standing on the large rock at the head of the clearing. It was as large as a man, seeming even larger; its black fur was bristled, and its massive paws gripped the rock with a ferocious command to the unyielding stone. All around him, bushes rustled, and Caleb saw the tips of furred ears emerging, yellow eyes glaring.
He backed away, tensing his own shoulder and back muscles as though he too had hackles to raise, inhaling deeply to get every inch of volume he could out of his already large frame. His elbows bent out, and he leaned forward on his hips as best he could as he backpedaled. The wolves surrounding him remained in check, unmoving. The lead wolf on the rock gazed down at him with what looked like abject contempt.
Wolves were not man-hunters, nor did they do any hunting during the day. Most wolves, upon coming across a man standing his ground in the forest, would leave to find some easier prey. The black wolf on the rock was not moving. It held itself at readiness, preparing to strike - the moment Caleb showed it an opening, it would pounce.
Caleb had tangled with wolves before. This wolf was acting like none he was familiar with. He continued to take small steps behind him as he showed his size, but none of the creatures backed down. He nearly tripped over the uneaten rabbit corpse, and a growl arose through the pack. A thrill of fear lanced along the back of his neck.
A root grazed the side of his foot and he glanced with his eyes to the side. He had reached the edge of the clearing, and a heavy branch laid a few feet away, as thick around as his arm.
Before he could think much further beyond that, he heard a snarl from ahead of him. Too late, he flicked his eyes back to the black wolf just as it launched itself off the great rock, crossing the clearing in two great bounds, spittle flying from its snapping jaws. Around it, the pack surged forward as one, a perfect flank with Caleb at the convergence point.
Caleb had no time to flank. A swift step back and to the side widened his stance, and now the great branch was in front of him. He scooped it up, needing both hands, and looked up as the lead wolf launched at him, killing intent in its yellow eyes. He let out a howl as he straightened, using the momentum of his movement to swing the branch up and around, sending it crashing into the side of the wolf.
He felt the graze of the creature’s fur as its flight was taken off-course, the force of the blow sending it heavily back to earth, skidding along the dry grass, digging up clods of dirt, before finally slamming into a tree. Caleb levered the branch back to a threatening position, growling again with the effort. The pack had skidded to a stop, and, oddly to Caleb, were gazing at him with almost confused expressions, as though suddenly uncertain of their course and their prey.
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He growled loudly and lumbered forward, stomping the ground. Perhaps now that their leader was defeated, the rest would scatter if they thought he was too tough a catch. Several of the wolves were backing away, wary eyes on him; a few glanced at the downed black wolf. Caleb could see the rise and fall of its chest, confirming that it lived, but it did not stir, and at last the pack departed, flowing around the clifflike rock, eyes never leaving Caleb’s until they were too distant for practical attack.
He looked to the black wolf, wondering if he should kill it - whether as a mercy or as a precaution, he wasn’t sure. The pack couldn’t be too far away though, and he didn’t want to press his luck. He leaned the heavy branch against a nearby tree and left, keeping his eyes on the black wolf until the sight of the clearing was swallowed up by foliage. Even as he turned his sight back to the path, he thought he caught a glimpse of the hateful glow of yellow eyes snapping open behind him.
Caleb had little time to gather his wits, however. As he approached his cabin, he saw that he had more guests to deal with.
A crowd of people were assembled in the clearing in front of Caleb’s cabin. Every one of them turned to regard him as he came out of the woods, and the force of their attention halted him in his tracks.
Everyone he knew from Froδi was there. Ståle and Rakel both eyed him uneasily, the only two that seemed to have strong doubts about the whole situation. Magret and Gunnar, Eva’s parents, were next to them, glaring ferociously through reddened eyes, seeming so close to pouncing on his throat that he was forcibly reminded of the wolves he had just escaped. He was surprised to see Einar with his pregnant wife, Alda - Frankie had mentioned he hadn’t returned yet from Oslo - and he stood protectively close to Alda, eyeing Caleb in outright dislike. The only one of the group not paired up was a rough-looking, unshaven man hovering at the edges of the group - his beard was wild and bushy, as long as Caleb’s but not as well-kept, and he peeked out at the goings-on through squinting, disinterested eyes. Caleb had to go into his memory to remember who this man was, and finally recognized him as Skaug, the other loner of Froδi, not nearly as friendly and focused less on the woods and more on drink.
Stacy was at the head of the group, of course, and standing like a lieutenant at her side was Darla. The latter glared hard at Caleb as he walked up to the clear leader of the group, and again Caleb felt a pang at how quickly he’d turned this former friend against him.
“You’ve been awhile,” Stacy commented, but Caleb held up a finger and went into his cabin without a word. Silas was nowhere to be seen, but he couldn’t worry about that right now. He leaned down to pick up his axe and, hefting it a moment, walked back outside.
Darla gave him an angry, incredulous look, and Stacy’s expression hardened as he returned to them armed. “Afternoon,” he greeted them both. “Ain’t safe for y’all to be out here. I just got back from tangling from those wolves we’ve been hearing the past few nights, an’ they’re real aggressive. Goin’ around in the day, too, so it’s probably safest for you folks to head out soonlike.”
“Not happening, woodsman,” Darla spat on the ground between them. “Awfully convenient you come right out of the woods talkin’ about day-walking wolves, and unharmed on top of it. I find it more likely you’ve gotten in the habit of lyin’ to folks who’ve considered you good up to now.”
“Darla,” Stacy interrupted without taking her eyes off Caleb, “you’ve said your piece.”
Darla subsided to fierce stares.
Stacy’s arms were crossed, and her hawklike stare bore into him. “Darla says you’ve got the murderer in your house,” she stated. “She saw ‘im on your couch, bein’ tended to.”
“Aye.” Caleb kept his own stare on Stacy, feeling like he was going up against the wolves again. “A wounded man comes into my home, I’m gonna put a bandage on ‘im.”
“Even when ‘e killed a girl?”
“Silas didn’t kill her.”
Stacy raised her eyebrows, and Darla seemed taken aback. “Silas, huh? You’ve gotten awfully friendly with ‘im already, have you?”
Caleb felt himself bristling and his fist clenching around the axe. “I’m callin’ a man by his name,” he replied stiffly. “Specially when he’s done nothin’ wrong.”
“That’s a nice hole in your cabin door,” Stacy said, still not breaking her stare. “Like someone broke in, real desperate like. Imagine what’d happen to the rest of your house if lots of people were desperate, like to go after a killer hiding inside.”
So it was like that, then. “Your father built this house,” he reminded Stacy.
“An’ he’d help me tear it down, if he were here.” She didn’t move an inch. “We ain’t lettin’ this man go. We can’t leave Eva an’ her family without their vengeance.”
“And I can’t let you kill an innocent man in Eva’s name.”
“Then we’re at an impasse.” Her glance briefly dropped to his axe and back up. “You can’t win this. You’re one, an’ we’re ten. If you want us to go through you to get to ‘im, we will.”
Caleb considered for a moment. She was right; she wasn’t going to budge, and neither was he. And he had no chance of winning any sort of confrontation that was sure to follow, though there was no way he’d let them through without a fight. “You’d lose as much as you’d win,” he promised, emphasizing the point by hefting the axe again. He saw Darla’s eyes drop to stare at it.
“You’d really try to kill some of us to protect a stranger?” Stacy demanded bluntly
“I don’t want to,” he retorted, feeling like ice water was bleeding through his veins and his muscles. This was escalating fast, too fast. “But I’ll defend myself and him, if need be.”
“The need will be,” said Stacy, and she raised her chin; a cold, clear light came to her eye. In a flash of awareness and adrenaline, Caleb realized what she was about to do. Here she was general, and now negotiations with the enemy had passed. The crowd behind her had been watching the exchange, and at the raise of her head, they ceased to be townsfolk and tensed as one, becoming soldiers ready to begin the siege. She opened her mouth to let loose the battle cry, to command her troops to charge.
“Proof,” he blurted.
Stacy paused, halfway through the breath that would give the command.
“I ain’t budgin’ an’ neither are you,” Caleb said, repeating his earlier thought, breathless as he worked out what he was going to say. “But we don’t really want to hurt each other, aye?”
She raised an eyebrow. Caleb took it as assent.
“But I’ll budge if you prove Silas ain’t innocent,” he said. “I won’t have murderers in my cabin. Prove he is an’ I’ll stand aside. Hell, I’ll burn the house to the ground along with you. Or prove he isn’t an’ I’ll help you find the true killer.”
“We ain’t detectives,” Darla spat.
“Then find one,” Caleb snarled back. “Unless you really don’t care about findin’ Eva’s killer, an’ just want to kill someone convenient in her name. I’m sure she’d love that. Silas’ll be here ‘til then, you can be sure he won’t be leavin’ ‘til we get this sorted out.”
Stacy’s nostrils flared. She bore into Caleb with her narrowed-eyed stare, but she said nothing.
“Like we’ll trust you to keep ‘im here,” Darla snorted.
“You can.” Caleb didn’t move his own stare from Stacy either.
Darla looked back and forth between Caleb and Stacy, as though suddenly realizing Stacy hadn’t denounced Caleb’s offer yet. “This is stupid,” she snarled, more at Stacy than at Caleb. “Rakel saw ‘im! She saw ‘im walkin’ away from a dead girl!”
“She saw someone,” Stacy corrected her. “It was dark, and neither you nor her got a good luck at this man Silas.” At last, she took her gaze off of Caleb and turned to Darla. “No one’s gone back in the house, have they?”
Darla stared at Stacy, true incredulity written over her face. She glanced once at Caleb again before sullenly answering Stacy’s question. “Just to move Eva outa there. Magret an’ Gunnar slept at my house.”
“Then we’ll go an’ find something to convince this stubborn woodsman that he’s got a murderer under his roof, even if we gotta give Byunsberg a call to find it,” Stacy declared.
The crowd behind them murmured, and an outraged cry sounded from the edges. Caleb looked over to see Magret and Gunnar being held back by Ståle and Rakel, screaming at him, at the cabin, at Silas inside. Ståle yelled for reinforcements, and the drunken Skaug lumbered over to put an imperturbable hand on Gunnar’s shoulder while Einar rushed over to hold back Magret. Stacy gave them an unreadable look before turning back to Caleb.
“What if there’s no proof to be found?” she asked in a low, cold voice.
“Then we go back to our impasse,” Caleb replied, making his voice just as chilly as hers. .”I still won’t let you execute a man if we don’t know he did the deed.”
“We won’t be at an impasse for very long,” she promised, and made the threat clear with first a look to the axe still in his hand, then a moment where she ran her eyes over the cabin behind him. “You can be sure of that.” Finished with what she had to say to Caleb, she turned her back on him and went to the crowd of people milling uncertainly behind her. About to follow her, Darla’s gaze went back to the axe in Caleb’s hand, and she frowned for a long moment before joining her.
Any relief Caleb felt at deferring the confrontation was short-lived when he began examining the axe. The curve in the handle wouldn’t be easily noticeable to the layman, but it was apparent to him, who used it every day, and it would be apparent to the woman who had fashioned it in the first place.
There was nothing more he could do here for now, he decided, as he looked back over the mass of people now surrounding Stacy as she spoke in a sharp, clipped voice. Magret and Gunnar no longer needed to be held back from attacking him that moment, but they stood unfocused, swaying on the spot, eyes rimmed red.
Caleb couldn’t stand to remain outside with so many people any longer. He quickly turned and retreated through the door to his cabin, locking the door as he went. But the tremulous, hunted feeling didn’t go away.
He knew Silas had to be somewhere in his cabin, but he didn’t care. Caleb buried his head against the door, pressing his body against it, as though he could reinforce the whole of the cabin with his strength, as though he could push away the intruders that came to threaten his home.
I’ll burn the house to the ground along with you, he repeated to himself dully. The cabin was a part of his body. It was like a second skin. He could never have burned it down.
His foot brushed against an opening, and he looked down to see the splintered hole broken through the bottom of the door. Whatever nonsense Silas could do with wood, he’d have to do it to fix the damn door, and suddenly Caleb needed him to do it now.
He turned and stalked through the doorway on the other end of the long room, the area where his bedroom and bathroom was. He heard voices coming through the door of his closed bedroom - Silas’, along with a young woman’s. Without hesitation, he pushed through the door.
There was Silas, sitting on the ground against the wood of the wall. His eyes were a thousand miles away as he spoke. On a stool borrowed from the dining room was a girl, around sixteen or seventeen, leaning her elbows on her knees and listening with a focused, unsmiling face.
“- quite a long time ago,” Silas was saying. “All the more tragic to our people to lose another of the leyline abbots, though I am told thy words for such a title mean something different to your culture. I was the only one to have been given the gift of Traveling, and thus I was made - well, Master Caleb called me a ‘lawman,’ and that is close enough to my reckoning, for thine understanding.”
The two were so deep in whatever Silas was saying, they hadn’t seemed to notice Caleb’s entrance. “There are only two of the abbots left now, hardly enough to stand against the poachers, and what is more, Durweard’s crime did not make sense. I know he had no desire to live in your lands, and the death of the abbots harms him as much as it harms all else. I was charged, then, to return Durweard alive, that we might understand the nature of his crime, and the motivation.” He heaved a deep sigh. “I had no idea the lengths to which he would go to escape me, nor the vicious appetites he had acquired in his travels through these lands -”
“Silas,” Caleb croaked.
Both Silas and the girl jumped and looked around, spooked. “Master Caleb,” Silas said when he had recovered, “my greatest apologies. I had not noticed thine entrance.”
He gestured to the girl, who had leaped up from her stool at the surprise and now stared at Caleb, stony-faced. “This is Anne,” he said, looking to Caleb warily. “Thou wast gone for but a little while when she entered the cabin by the same way I had made my entrance. She was here for vengeance, but I have explained my tale to her, and she understands the death of her beloved was my fault, but not done by my hands.” He pushed himself to his feet, using the wall behind him as leverage as he grimaced through the pain. “Thou wast gone a long while,” he said, his tone making it a question.
Caleb needed space, and he didn’t want to deal with people now. He’d deal with Anne’s intrusion later. “Both of you,” he rasped, pointing at the door, “out.”
Anne and Silas looked at each other, then quickly made for the door.
“Silas,” Caleb said just before he closed the door.
“Yes?” the man paused.
“Fix my door,” he growled.
Despite the bedroom door being closed, he still felt their presence through the wood. He tried his best to ignore it, and once he had shut himself in the closet of his room, he was able to forget their presence entirely. The darkness and warmth cloaked him, and he sat there, controlling his breathing carefully, willing himself to relax and calm down, until under a pile of Frankie’s old flannels, he fell asleep.