Winter Rose

by Rachel A. Marks

  She doesn’t look at Luke; she walks past us and up the rise, back to the shack.

  “That wasn’t nice,” Luke says. He frowns at me, like he’s disappointed.

  “I’m not nice.”

  “You could try sometime. Might like it.”

  I bark out a bitter laugh.

  He shrugs and starts to reach out—maybe to grab me, maybe just to brush the snow from my shoulder—but I jerk back and whack his hand away.

  He stands there for what feels like forever, studying me, then finally asks, “Why do you do that?”

  I look away, to my hands, to my feet, shame filling me, and I don’t even know why. No one touches me. No one. “Do what?”

  “Why do you push people away?”

  I look at him then, anger rising in my gut. He doesn’t get to judge me. “So, you want to pretend to know me now? You want to be my friend, Luke?” I dare to step closer, even though he towers over me. I want to prove I’m not afraid of these men anymore. I’m in control now. “Don’t you know about the Ice Witch? Don’t you know what she does?”

  He doesn’t move. “Yes. She bites. She pushes. She tries to keep herself safe.” He raises his brow at me, daring me to argue. “But we’re not all Hunt, you know.”

  I suck in a breath, ready to lash out, ask him what the hell gives him the right?—how in God’s name does he know?—but he turns away and starts walking back toward the shack before I can find the words.

  *

  Later that night I leave several times to get wood from the side of the house for the fire. The stack I’m building fills half the hearth now. It isn’t needed but I can’t sit there and watch the two of them—Luke and Becca, huddled together by the fire, talking softly.

  If it wasn’t freezing out there, I’d sleep in the barn. As it is, I’m stuck, six feet away, biting my tongue so hard I taste blood.

  There’s a strange feeling overtaking me. It started when I saw Luke come from the trees this morning with his catch—or maybe it started that day in the woods, the first second I saw his eyes open, greener than spring hills...

  I’m not sure what it is, or why, but it’s a burning in my gut. It’s rage and urgency all twisted together into a lump of pulsing hot coal in my chest.

  I want to pull Becca’s hair out.

  I want to kick Luke in the shin.

  ...to touch his forehead, right above his eyebrow...

  I can’t be rid of it.

  But they’re just talking. I’m ridiculous.

  I go outside again, sit for as long as I can, and come back in, carrying a larger log—it cuts nicely into my arm, masking some of the strangeness under my skin. This time the two of them turn and Luke jumps up, coming forward. “Here, let me help you.”

  But the feelings in me are too strong. I jerk back. “I got it!”

  He holds his hands up in surrender. “All right.”

  Why hasn’t he left yet? It’s obvious he has no wish to. And Becca isn’t in any hurry to get rid of him. There’s a link forming. I sense it locking into place, like a door latching shut, and panic stirs inside me. There has to be a way to rid myself of his presence and how it makes me feel.

  I study him from my pallet as he sleeps. His smooth features, his soft brow, dark eyelashes resting on his cheek. There’s little freckles across the bridge of his nose and a small crescent scar at his hairline. His strong jaw is speckled with beard stubble, his arms lean and firm. He...

  He needs to leave.

  *

  The next several days I’m the first to wake. Becca’s suddenly tired all the time now.

  All the time.

  She tells me it’s like walking in quicksand and I ask her how she knows what quicksand walking feels like. She just rolls her eyes and sighs and lays back down. I watch her, though. I try to remember how Mamma’s sickness started.

  I try not to remember.

  She leaves her food untouched and groans whenever I put meat in front of her for supper.

  “You’ll never shake this thing if you don’t eat,” I scold her.

  She scrunches up her nose at a chunk of onion I try to give her. “I can’t bear the smell of it.” Then she turns a strange shade of yellow and runs off to the yard to spill her empty stomach into the snow.

  The incidents of vomiting increase as the days pass. She can’t seem to keep anything down, mostly just nibbling on bowls of snow. I start to worry when I see her shoulder blades poke at the back of her dress, like bird bones. When the bumps of her spine turn sharp and wicked-looking I berate her, and take my fear out on her a little. I’m ashamed, but I can’t pretend anymore like it’s all fine. She won’t leave me here like Mamma did. She just can’t.

  Luke makes it his job to find food, and trade some of the rabbit skins for supplies down at the shrinking miner camp. When I protest his dealings with the dark mountain men, he says, “Becca needs grain for bread, Rose. She’s gonna whither away to nothing, if she doesn’t eat.”

  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 bette
r 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 smi
le 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.