Winter Rose (4 page)

He’s right, of course, and I’m glad for his willingness—even though I hate the thought of another connection with those men. I would have gone south to trade, walked an extra two days to find another settlement instead. But Luke says we don’t have the time and I reluctantly agree.

He seems fine with his strange role in our lives. Some days he stays gone ‘til the sun’s setting, and I wonder at those times if he’ll come back at all. And then, I wonder at him when he does. What’re we becoming to him?

I only escape the shack to gather wood or to fetch water now and then; Luke’s ability to supply precious things like soap and grain, his talent at the hunt, make my life more confined than ever, and here I am, always grinding the wheat or corn, always making bread or cakes in the fire, always close to the sickbed. I miss my daily hunts and feel the walls start to close in a little more as the hours and days pass.

I mend Luke’s pants and two blankets. I scrounge around in Mamma’s herbs and look for something to sooth my nerves. Instead I uncover something that might sooth Becca; dried mint leaves in a brown glass jar. I make a tea and it seems to help her stomach. I use it sparingly, though, not sure how long it’ll need to last.

“Thanks, Rose,” she mumbles to me as I hand her a cup. The steam curls up and brushes her cheeks. She sighs. “I’m so sorry to be a bother.”

“You’re not a bother, Becca. Just get well.” I watch her sip the tea and then look out the window to the falling snow.

*

For six, maybe seven weeks Becca’s ill. She grows so thin and frail-looking, her fingers like white bone, her eyes rimmed in darkness, I wonder some mornings if she’ll wake up at all.

Luke is a permanent fixture now, like a soldier beside her, guarding when he’s home. His eyes are wary whenever they watch her from across the room, but I see him hiding his worry from her, acting fine whenever she’s looking and telling her jokes to try and get her to laugh. I hear him whisper to her when she holds his hand, that he’s not going anywhere, that he’s here for her.

He obviously cares for her. It’s plain on his face. Plain in the way he sits beside her in the evenings and reads to her from the Bible by firelight. In the way he looks in her eyes for long moments, like he’s speaking without words.

The fire grows in my gut, and I begin to realize I’m not going to be able to stop it. They’re so in sync, like music timed just right. It’s beautiful and impossible not to envy. It makes something in me spark, something I’ve never felt before, something I don’t understand.

And it terrifies me.

He’s sitting beside her pallet, leaning against the wall. His eyes drift closed and his chin dips down, like he’s starting to fall asleep.

“You should lay down,” I say. I motion to his pallet when he blinks up at me.

“I’m not tired,” he mumbles.

“You can leave her side for a little while. She won’t die just cause you slept in your own bed.”

He looks away, into the fire. “She told me she feels better when someone’s close.”

“It doesn’t have to be you.”

“Well, it is.” He leans his head back against the wall.

The way he’s dismissing me makes the irritation rise. “Why’re you still here?”

He closes his eyes, like he didn’t hear me.

“You can leave, you know. We don’t need you.”

“You do.”

I scoff. “Excuse me?”

He lifts his head and looks straight at me. “
You
need me.”

I open my mouth, then shut it again, not able to find words to snap back.

A smile peeks out the side of his mouth, and he looks satisfied. “You’ll see.” He closes his eyes, leaning his head against the wall again.

I sit there and watch him fall asleep, trying to still the rattling in my head—he’s going to make me crazy, all this jumble of thoughts and feelings is going to turn me mad.

I realize I’m not afraid of him. Maybe I never was. His masculine ways are alien and his hands still make me shake. But he never tries to touch me, anymore. Like he sees how it makes me feel. Like he knows I might break apart if he does. But...

...but, I think...

...I wish it was me he cared for.

I do.

God, help me.

It’s a sting, sharp in my chest. I wish he’d sync with me instead of Becca. That he’d tell me jokes and try to make me smile.

*

“You feeling better?” I ask Becca one morning after Luke went out for the day.

She nods and takes a bigger bite than normal from her bread. “I suddenly feel very hungry.”

“Well, that’s a good sign. Maybe the bug’s left for good.”

She looks at me—a funny look, like she’s not sure what to say. “No, Rose.”

“No, what?” I laugh, I can’t help myself—her face is so strange.

“I…I haven’t had my courses,” she says.

I frown at her, the laughter gone. “Your courses?” This doesn’t sound like good news, but she’s not upset.

“I think….” but she doesn’t finish.

“Think what? What’s going on?” Then it comes to me. The thing Mamma said so long ago when the men first came, before she couldn’t say anything anymore. “You’re with child.” I hear the words leave my mouth and ice fills my veins.

Oh, God. No.

Wasn’t it enough that those men stole our innocence—that they’d oozed through our life for a year like poison? Now they’ve left behind a demon child.

“What is it, Rose? Stop looking at me like that.” Fear laces her words.

I clench my jaw and hiss through my teeth, “How could you?” I turn away—the hurt in her eyes is too much. It’s too heavy with everything else. But I’m not staying silent. “Couldn’t you have been more careful?”

I lose hold of reality for a second. All I can see are their faces. Smirks and smells that pull my stomach up into my throat. Teeth gone yellow. Stale smoke and oil in their hair. And it’s like Hunt’s ghost rises from the floor of the room, his voice, thick with drink, his hands that grope, tear, take. His eyes dark as coal, looking hard at me, wanting revenge.

He holds the ax in his hand, dripping red with blood.

I try to blink him away and say frantically, “We have to get rid of it, Becca.” Even I’m a little afraid of the force in my voice. But I’m more afraid of Hunt, of him following after me, always there.

I hear Becca’s breath catch behind me.

“There are ways to be rid of it,” I say, when she doesn’t answer. It’ll be better for Becca. For me. It’ll be better if it just didn’t happen at all.

We’ve got to get free of this curse.

“How can you know such a thing?” she asks, sounding breathless.

I turn from my vision back to Becca, and lift my chin, defying her to argue. “Mamma showed me the herbs I should use.” The blue, glass bottle, filled with poison.
In case
, she said.
In case
. She knew this would happen with Becca giving herself to them. She warned me after that first day with Hunt. She pulled me to her bedside and made me take the herbs from the shelf. Made me find the blue glass in the rows of bottles.

In case.

I resent her a little for making me be the one to keep the knowledge. I can see by Becca’s face Mamma never told her the way to be sure.

I shouldn’t always have to be the strong one.

“No, Rose. I won’t ever—how can you even think…?” She stands, the chair legs scraping at the floor. “I’m going—I’m gonna have this child. A baby. You won’t kill it. You won’t come near it.”

She’s shaking but I see the determination in her eyes, I see the decision is already made. She means every word.

She’s going to let them haunt me. Always chasing after me. And what about the baby? Will it be a boy, too? Will it grow into his father and tear at the purity of this world like a demon that clawed its way out of Hell?

Or will it be a girl?

A girl, like Becca.

Like me.

My throat goes tight with the thought. “Rebecca, this baby’s born from sin! It carries the blood of those beasts that tormented us! How can you curse it to live? How?” I get louder in volume and pitch ‘til I’m almost screaming. “You’re being selfish. You’re only thinking about yourself, you’re not thinking of the baby at all. Of how this life will make her feel, how it’ll hurt her. You can’t let it happen again. If you really cared about her, you’d let her leave this world before she feels the eternal death of it!”

The blackness comes closer and closer. Smothering me. Hunt’s shadow, a curse over me, over my life, making me want to stop breathing just to keep from feeling it. And now it’ll start all over again, another girl born to be corrupted and hardened by this horror.

The thought of her, this tiny babe, all sweet cream and innocence, sends me over the edge of a cliff.

I release a sob and break into a thousand pieces, crumbling into a heap on the floor, trying to find air past the knife in my chest. I shake and gasp and crack and lose myself in all the black, until I feel like my body might fade to dust from all the torment inside me.

I pray that it does.

Becca kneels beside me and takes me in her arms, comforting me, soothing me with her words, something I never do for her. “It’s all right,” she says. She kisses my forehead and brushes back my hair from my face with her bone fingers. “You have to let it go, Rose. Just let go.”

I’m not sure how long we sit there. My face, my neck, my hair, everything is damp with my tears. But I can’t move. I can’t seem to see past the fracture in my heart.

I don’t hear Luke come in, but I feel his arms around me as he helps Becca lift me off the floor. I don’t fight him as he gathers me onto my pallet and nestles beside me—I can’t. I let him hold me like a child, hold me like Mamma used to when I had a nightmare. And I watch as Hunt’s ghost fades into mist and sinks away, as the darkness slips back into the shadows.

I cling to Luke’s chest like it’s all that’s keeping me held to earth. He’s warmth and strength. He’s the rock in my storm. He pushes back the shadows and for the first time since I can remember I feel safe.

PART FOUR

I awake, emerging from sleep slowly. I didn’t have a nightmare. There was no blood in the night. Is this what peace is like?

And then I feel him, arms surrounding me, strong and unyielding. His breath fans my cheek. His steady pulse moves against my palm.

I stiffen and look up at his sleeping face, my own heartbeat quickening at his closeness. 

He smells like pines and earth, and some distant scent all his own.

My fear turns me to stone.

Fear he might touch me. Fear that he won’t.

His eyes open and he greets me with a smile. “You’re awake,” he whispers. “You okay?” He rubs my shoulder gently, one human comforting another, but to me his hands are made of fire.

He must notice I’m trembling. His smile fades, and he says, “I’d never hurt you, Little One.”

I look away, shame filling me as dark memories cloud my head again. “I’m not a child,” I say. Like a confession of my sin.

“I know.” He puts his finger under my chin and lifts my eyes to his. “I know what happened to you, Rose.”

My mouth opens to say something, to deny it all, but he cuts me off.

“Don’t do that, Rose. Rebecca told me about Hunt ‘cause she was worried about you.”

Just the sound of someone else saying
that man’s
name aloud makes my whole body shiver. The pain creeps back inside me, the sweet warmth of Luke’s arms fading as the ice fills my heart again.

I look over to Becca, her small body curled on her pallet, her dark shadowed eyes closed in a fitful sleep. She whimpers and clutches at her blanket and my chest tightens. I start to rise, to go to her, to tell Luke he should comfort her and not me—

But he takes my face in his hands, his fingers catching in my hair. “Never think you deserved that, Rose. You did the right thing.” His eyes turn hard with anger and pain. “The bastard deserved to die. He deserved worse.”

I look at him in shock and amazement. He’s in pain. For me.

Then the strangest thing happens, even stranger than my peace—I reach out to him and bury my face in his chest.

He isn’t afraid of me. He knows and he isn’t afraid.

I didn’t even realize it mattered, but the relief that fills me is a rise of my soul, tingling in my fingers and toes.

He strokes my hair and I don’t pull away. I let him comfort me. I let him give me something I’ve never had from a man’s hands, and lie in wonder at the feeling of the warmth that fills me again. Just for a moment.

Daylight’s coming and Becca will be awake soon.

*

When I wake up again, Luke’s gone and Becca’s at my side.

I sit up and mumble something about breakfast, but she takes my arm and says, “No, Rose. Just relax.”

“You’re the sick one, Becca, not me.” I don’t let my protest sound too strong. I’m enjoying this small gift of rest.

The things I said last night to her, the hurtful horrible things, they come back to me and make my heart sick. I try to find the words to say, I’m sorry. That I don’t hate her, it’s not her fault. But I can’t. There’s nothing to say that’ll take it all back. 

“I feel fine,” she says. “Besides, it’s about time you have a turn getting fussed over.”

I give her a weak smile and she gets up, moving to the hearth to busy herself with something. And it’s like none of what we said happened. 

That day I slumber off and on, awakening to the sounds of Luke and his boots on the wood floor, of laughter and soft voices, of the crackling of the flames. I imagine Becca and Luke, tucked in each other’s arms. They whisper and look at each other with longing. Luke’s eyes are full of hunger. Full of longing and love.

I wish it was for me.

But I know, deep down, Becca deserves it more. Even I know—I feel it in my bones—like I can smell ice in the air and know the snow is about to fall.

I’ll never be the one to be loved.

*

As the days pass I find myself smiling, more than I can remember smiling in a long time. Like in my other life, Before. When there was green and amber coating the world instead of grey and white. Like when Mamma was alive and young, when Becca and I played in the summer fields, wheat growing as high as my five-year-old head, while Pa and Mamma would harvest the grain. She would chase Becca and me through the stalks ‘til we rolled and giggled and all the dust flew up, then fell like golden snow into our hair.

Before we moved to the top of this mountain.

Before.

And the smiles begin to wipe away the memories. The nightmares fade a little, more and more each day.

There are days that pass when I barely think of the shadows and ghosts at all. I feel them there, waiting at the edges, but I can pretend. I can block them out and find peace for a moment.

Most of these times are when I go with Luke to catch supper. We throw snow at each other and laugh at nothing. He opens up his world to me and tells me about the places he’s been—so many stories, so many different places. He paints me pictures in the air with his hand motions and tells me about his parents, their deaths, how he set out on his own, sleeping in boxes and train-cars and even trees. His adventures become fairy tales in the telling, full of adventure and mystery, and I soak them in and see them as they come alive.

I let him talk and enjoy the warm sound of his voice. I watch the way his smile makes little dimples in his cheeks and how the snow falls onto his broad shoulders. He treats me like a friend and I feel less and less of an Ice Witch, every time he brushes my arm with his hand, or gives me a little tap as he runs past, challenging me to a race. These memories fill me, and push back the ones I don’t want anymore.

And I love him for it.

I never say anything about him leaving again. I can’t think what I’d do if he did. What if, like Pa, he disappears into the flurry of white and Becca and I are left alone again? It’s strange and alien, caring, but I can’t help it. He really has no reason to stay, though. Maybe he’s waiting for Becca to finish her confinement, make sure she’s okay, and then he’ll leave.

My throat goes tight with the idea and urgency stirs. I can’t go back to how it was before he came. I wonder if I could work a spell to keep him here. Drawing him in with smoky lavender, knotting a thick rope to his pallet. A little crushed rabbit bone, a bit of ash from burning a piece of his shirt, sprinkled in the doorway, and wishing, wishing, wishing...

We walk home from one of our hunts and I find myself thinking about it. I frown at the snow and Luke comes up from behind me with the catch of three hares over his shoulder.

“What’s tuggin’ at you?” he asks, as he comes up to my side.

“Nothing,” I try to push the thoughts aside, forget the Ice Witch again and smile up at him. His nose is red from the cold, so I decide to tease him about it for a distraction. “You could light our way in a fog with that thing,” I point at him and release a giggle when he gives me an offended look.

He pretends to run into a tree, then falls with great theatrics, catch and all.

“You’re insane,” I say, shaking my head.

He rubs his nose. “I don’t think it works very well.”

“I think it’s your brain that needs fixing.”

He raises his hand so I can help him back up.

I take it and he yanks me, pulling me down into the snow with him. He chucks a bunch of snow, blocking my vision, then starts rubbing the icy flakes into my hair with a mischievous laugh.

I squeal and whack his hands away, half-heartedly telling him to stop.

He complies and falls onto his back, huffing out big puffs of icy air. “Who’s the fool now?”

I let myself fall beside him and we lie together, arms nearly touching, staring at the treetops, catching our breath.

It’s quiet for a long while, my clothes soaking in the melting ice beneath me. I barely feel it as I listen to the creaking limbs above and the
thump
of snow clumps falling. To the sounds of Luke shifting beside me.

He breaks the silence first. “Do you know why you frightened me that first night?” he asks.

I go still inside, shocked and confused by his question. Why’s he bringing that up now? “You thought I was a witch,” I say, quietly, “that I would eat you.”

He laughs again, a loud, surprised laugh. “Yes, the Ice Witch, you were. But that’s not why I was frightened of you.”

I sit up and stare at him. “It wasn’t?” I can’t think of any other reason.

His smile shifts, growing timid. His nose and cheeks get even redder.  

He clears his throat and sits up beside me. “It was just…When I saw you that first day I did think of...of the man that disappeared.”

I’m glad he didn’t say
that man’s
name aloud. It seems every time he’s a thought, it brings him near.

“But then I woke up in this strange, warm place,” Luke continues. “It was soft and full of smells I remembered from being a kid, fresh corn cakes cooling and pinecones burning in the hearth.”

He leans closer and reaches out, slow, tentative. His fingers trail to mine and I watch them touch with wide eyes. I can’t move. I can’t think. I don’t want to breathe. An ache fills my chest, twisting and fighting it’s way up my throat, as he takes my hand in his.

“You sat there, in that horrid chair, beside me, asleep,” he says. “Tears shimmered on your cheeks. I saw you crying and was worried—I didn’t know you were caught in a dream—I touched you and you jerked away, you screamed. You almost put me in my grave, I was so scared.”

It’s strange and frightening to think he saw me so vulnerable. I don’t know what to say, what to think.

“Suddenly you were the witch,” he says. “You were power and rage, your shoulders straight, and your eyes bright enough to burn right through me. But it was different than when you found me. You were so beautiful, so small and feminine. It was hard to understand anyone being frightened of you. But I was. I was terrified. I was afraid you’d seduce me and leave me to die.” He looks down at his hand, wrapped around mine. His thumb brushes against my palm as he hesitates, like he wants to say more but he’s not sure. Then his eyes meet mine and he says words I couldn’t have imagined him saying to me, not ever, “I wanted you in that moment, Rose. I wanted you unlike I’ve wanted a girl—a woman—ever. And it terrified me.”

My heart crashes against my ribs. My fingers go hot from his touch. His story echoes Hunt’s words: “
You tease me with those light blue eyes, like winter frost. They haunt me…just let me have it. I need it.”

Oh, God, help me. Will I always be the Ice Witch? The girl who draws men into madness.

I stare at Luke. Waves of shock course through me, knowing how he’s seen me this whole time. How I never knew...

...he wanted to touch me.

He’s nothing like Hunt. Not in any way.

But he’s a man.

What’s he thinking now? Is he holding my hand, thinking of—

“I shouldn’t have told you,” he says, searching my face. His brow creases with worry. He pulls his hand from mine in the same slow way he took hold of it.

I shake my head and scramble to my feet. I need to get away, from him, from my feelings for him. My longing to feel his hands on my skin, to have his smells overwhelm me again.

But it’s all impossible. It’s all too terrifying.

Luke stands and reaches for me.