The Retreat

by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  She didn’t save herself. The studio manager heard the noise of the fight from the hall, came in and pulled Iain out of the room. Talked him down.

  They were old friends. He was used to it.

  Without that interruption, Maeve is sure he would have killed her. Just lucky? The broken bit of mirror, bloodied, lying on the ground beside her. She picked it up and saved it, a reminder, a promise to herself that she would never allow anyone to do that to her again.

  Like beach glass, a souvenir, locked safe in her childhood jewelry box. Wedged beneath the tiny dancer who pirouettes on cue whenever the box is opened.

  “I’m all right on my own,” she says when they’re back in the warmth of the lobby. “If you want to stay in there. If you want to work.”

  She’s trying to buy time, but Sim’s eyes change and she stumbles on, too quick to grasp at an opportunity.

  “What if we both do? What if we run this retreat ourselves—come on, you said it—” She’s bright and airy, as though none of this matters, as though she is simply trying to please him, that’s all. “Complete seclusion, right? You do your thing and I’ll do mine, and I’ll meet you back here later.”

  She can feel herself flushing with relief. The studio cabin is still there, the key in her coat pocket; if she can get out to the studio, she can lock the door. Her mind is moving fast. There’s still days’ worth of food in the kitchenette. No power, but that cast-iron pot could be made into a kind of heater, a firepit, a stove. There are blankets and a first-aid kit in the cupboard. She can be safe out there, alone, waiting for help to arrive.

  “Work? You mean out there, in the cabins? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “It must be almost morning.”

  “No. What? Maeve, that’s crazy—it’s dark and there’s no heat in that place. Hasn’t been for days. It’s unusable.” He comes closer. “If you want to dance, you can dance for me.” When she doesn’t answer, he says it again: “Dance for me. I like watching you.”

  Maeve nods.

  “I know. That’s why you sent Sadie into my room, isn’t it? So that you could watch me.”

  He says nothing, and she turns toward the door.

  “You can’t go outside.” His voice rising behind her. “I won’t let you.” His hand on her shoulder now; she stumbles, spinning back.

  “What happened to ‘We’re not animals’?”

  She realizes she’s forgotten to smile.

  “You’re so different. Like something changed,” he says. “I can’t figure out what you want. I mean, what?” He gives her hair a flick, but gently, off her shoulder. “What do you want? Do you even know?”

  “I just—I don’t want to be cornered, okay?”

  “Cornered?” He works the word in his mouth like it’s some other language. “Look, Maeve—” She starts to back away, but he’s already reaching for her again, his hand closing around her arm.

  For a second, she’s back at the freezer door: the shine of Karo’s hair, slick as an oil spill, when Maeve bumped against her. How dark it must be inside when the door closes and locks.

  Karo wedged the door open for her. Karo, in pain and perhaps delusional, made a choice to kill herself. There’s desperation in that story, but dignity too.

  His grip on her arm tightens.

  “Just come here, listen to me.” He pulls her in; he’s got her by both shoulders now. She turns her head away, or tries to. “Maeve, come on.”

  His thumb in the soft place just under her collarbone, the hard tip of it pushing in. She brings her elbows up, adrenaline surging.

  “Don’t—” Maeve pushes him off, hard. “Don’t ever touch me like that again.”

  The force of it surprises him; he almost laughs. He grabs at her arm, her wrist. As she twists away, her palm splays, the long scar across it shining in the low light. She holds it up.

  “My husband did that,” she says. “My ex. So do not touch me like that again. Get it?” She shakes him off.

  “Maeve! Okay, I’m—”

  He steps in again, and this time she backs up without tripping.

  “I can’t stay here with you.”

  His expression changes: slowly, like he’s only now realizing that she’s serious.

  “Don’t be like this. Don’t!” With every step she takes away from him, he follows her. She’s not funny to him anymore. “Don’t do this.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “No, I’m not.” The words come so quickly she can’t respond. “Why are you trying to ruin this?”

  He won’t slow down and she lifts an arm to protect herself. But then something changes—he closes the gap too fast. She catches him hard on the jaw.

  The surprise of it throws him off and when he springs up, it’s with a backhand. More force than she was expecting: there’s the scrape of wood on wood as the table behind her skitters and Maeve hits the floor.

  There’s a breath, her hand to her face. He lets his arm fall.

  “Maeve—”

  “No—”

  She’s already pushing herself back along the floor, trying to get away.

  “Wait. Wait. I’m sorry—” Sim drops to his knees. “Maeve. That is not me. That’s not what I’m like. I am so sorry. We’ve all been through a lot. Look at me.”

  He’s crawling toward her. He’s still trying to get close. Maeve glances over her shoulder, trying to keep from getting trapped against a wall. She’s aiming for the lobby’s back door.

  “Just stay with me here. Okay? Stay with me.”

  She scrambles to her feet, backs farther away.

  “No—”

  But he’s on his knees in front of her and just keeps coming.

  “I need some space,” she says. She’s closer to the back door with every step. “Don’t worry about it. Just—now we’re even,” she says. “Right?”

  Maeve can feel herself start to shake. The tremor exploding inside her, a freight train trapped at her chest. Everything moving at once.

  Outside it’s still dark. She can make it to the studio cabin in fifteen minutes, even in deep snow. At worst, in bad weather and against the wind, twenty. But if she tries to run, will he follow?

  She still has her coat on—that’s how cold it is indoors—and she roots around inside the deep pockets. The two flares are there, and the cold can of bear spray. There’s the hatchet with its smooth blade, the box of matches, the roll of duct tape. And down under that, what she needs most: the studio key. She scoops it smoothly into her palm, the bear claw hooked neatly into the key ring. She pauses, the tip of it pricking at her own thumb. Anna’s claw.

  Her lucky claw.

  “Maeve, I want to start this over—”

  He’s on his feet again. He’s so much taller than she is, and his stride is so long.

  “Maeve—”

  She’s almost got her hand on the door. He moves toward her, and his foot slides against something on the floor. Maeve looks down, squinting. It’s some little bit of paper.

  She slides a hand inside her coat, to her breast pocket. The photo is gone. It’s somehow fallen out in the moment her body hit the ground. Her breath catches.

  He moves just a single step back, but it’s enough for him to see what she wants. He bends and peels the photo strip off the floor. Looks down at the images, then back at her.

  “Yours?”

  She knows she should go, start running, but somehow she can’t. Not without that photo. She can’t leave them behind.

  “Maeve.”

  He’s holding it close, like a lure.

  Maeve steps in, haltingly, her hand out. She can see the pictures, the faces upside down from where she is. Distant now. The paper has gotten wet at one corner, and in the bottom photo the image wavers, as though the children are floating away.

  She can’t do this on her own.

  “Give it here,” she says.

  He presses the thin strip against his chest.

  “Can we do that? Start today over.”
>
  She wants to punch him. She wants him to understand this kind of powerlessness, how it feels to comply only because you’re afraid not to.

  “Just fucking give me my photo.” She lurches forward and grabs the strip out of his hand; the corner tearing as she spins away.

  “Maeve, did you hear me—”

  She’s almost out when he catches up again. His body suddenly between her and the door.

  “Maeve. Listen—”

  “No.” She holds up a hand. “You listen. I am asking you: Do not come closer. Please. Do not.”

  She heaves a chair between them. Waiting for the right moment. In case she has to fight her way through.

  “Maeve—”

  Maeve—

  Iain, his open hand knocking her back, her brow smacking the mirror behind her. Maeve, he says. Maeve. Just look what you’ve done to yourself.

  That one time, the only time she ever raised a hand back at him.

  Sim shoves the chair and grabs for her shoulder. She spins, trying to wrest herself away; when he hauls her in, she bites his arm, hard. He yells out and grabs at her hair, her neck. Maeve tries for the hatchet, grasping, but it’s deep in her coat pocket, blade up; it slips and she can feel it slice her palm before she can get purchase.

  She pulls it out, the pain of the gash shocking enough to make her gasp and fumble. The handle catches on the edge of the pocket, and in an instant it flips away, steel blade ringing against the stone of the hearth. He’s swearing at her or swearing with the effort of trying to fight her.

  She gets her fingers around the can of bear spray instead, bringing it up and slamming it into the side of his face like a weapon until he goes stumbling back.

  When he lifts his head again, he’s bleeding—the edge of the can has cut him at the brow. Blood runs down over his eye and he dabs at it with his arm to clear his vision. Like he can’t believe what he’s seeing, the blood staining his sleeve.

  Iain looked up, his cheek cut and bleeding. She’d caught him with the edge of her ring. He came at her then for real. Threw her back against the mirror, then kicked it in.

  She’s on the ground with a long silver shard hidden in her fist. Waiting.

  Just a moment too long.

  She jams her hand back into her pocket, searching again for the key inside. There’s no room in the center that’s safe enough, no door that can’t be kicked down. But the studio is there for her. It locks tight: he can’t get in, can’t even watch her from outside. It kept her safe from a bear; it can keep her safe from a man.

  Maeve shoves the last chair in Sim’s path and goes for the door.

  She skids across the ice, then falls, landing hard; a layer of frozen crust forces its way down into her coat at the collar. Snow everywhere. At her neck, in her ears. Inside her sweater, her boots, her bra. A night of new weather, ice pellets and freezing rain, has made the terrain that much more hazardous. Maeve takes a long inhale. The air is so sharp it hurts; the pain gives her something to focus on. She gets back on her feet, trying to brace herself against the wind, and scrambles to a small clump of trees, the only place she can’t be seen from the building.

  The photo is still in her fist, snow-covered and sodden. The other hand a bloody mess. She spreads her fingers, and the new wound softens, filling with blood, the length of her palm and running the line of her old scar almost exactly. Her head spins. Everything from her pockets now spilled out on the frozen ground. She gropes through the snow with the bloody hand, and the cold feels good.

  The studio key is there, still hooked to the bear claw, a shadow against all the white.

  A moment later, she hears the whine of the back door yawning open against the wind. Sim’s voice, caught and lifting away through the blowing snow. Yelling her name.

  “Maeve—Maeve!” A pause. Then: “You know Dan is out there somewhere. No one knows the terrain better than him. Not you. Not me. He can survive out there, Maeve—you can’t.”

  The wind comes up and it’s suddenly no different than her dream—the howl of it, the snow, all just the same. Only a crazy person would follow her through this.

  Her injured hand stings and she rips a strip of duct tape off the roll and wraps the wound, but she’s bleeding freely now, the palm washed in blood, warm and copper-scented, every time she flexes. The tape won’t hold on her damp skin. She needs to get inside fast.

  Another bang as the back door opens up and falls shut again. A light arcs through the blowing snow—the beam from his flashlight. Then a flicker from the woods. Maeve snaps to focus on it: a triangle, the fluorescent trailhead marker that points the way to the cabins. A beacon, a sign.

  She jams the bleeding hand inside her pocket and starts running.

  She knows when he hits the woods behind her by the sheer sound of it: the sharp crack of falling ice, frozen branches splintering, his voice coming throaty and harsh. She can’t make out the words anymore. It all sounds like heavy breath, something forcing its way through. But it’s not an animal; the sweep of his flashlight is still there. She can tell he’s moving fast, the beam surging and flickering ahead. He must have guessed where she’s going.

  She moves from marker to marker, searching for her own trail, whatever path between the center and the cabin she tramped down herself over the past days. The solar lights are buried now: the new storm has coated everything in ice, and she slides when she hits the clearing around the studio, has to kick and dig in with her heels to break through the heavy crust.

  At the studio door, she slams her good hand against the lock.

  The lock, the handle, the door itself—all immovable. All frozen, iced over, buried. The ice is clear and solid and an inch thick. She looks over her shoulder, frantically presses the warmth of her body against the door, thinking maybe she can melt it. The flicker of his light from the woods—she knows she has to move again.

  But there is nowhere else to run now.

  She could try to make it to the village herself. Or burrow into the snow and hope, at least, to last till morning. The only real possibility is to somehow backtrack and lock him out of the main building, but Maeve knows immediately it won’t work; he’d smash a window in before he froze to death. The thing that made the studio cabin so secure—no windows at all.

  Wind whips at her ears, her fingers. She realizes she’s shaking. Back in the woods, he calls her name again. He’s never going to give up. She starts going over contingencies the way she used to with Iain. Ways to talk him down, ways to protect herself. Keep space between the two of you, look around for anything that can be used as—not a weapon, per se, but in self-defense. She wishes the shovel were still hanging over the studio’s front door.

  The binding around her hand gapes, and Maeve looks down to see a dark stain spreading in the snow at her feet. Her palm slick with it. She knows what the scent of warm blood can attract out here: in the woods, there’s the man, but there’s also the bear. The thought makes her gag a little bit, but she holds it in her mind.

  All this time, she’s let others build her fear of the bear. Anna with the violence of her rougarou dreamscape, Karo with her dismissals. Dan more than anyone with his locked doors and bear spray and rules. But Maeve is the only one who dreamed of the bear, night after night. She’s the only one who now knows where it lives. And the dark terror she’d felt for days, the feeling of something there, watching, waiting at her door—it wasn’t an animal at all. She thinks of Sim’s spiny hand looming from the gallery ceiling, the way it seemed to pin her to the floor. Paralyzed. Unable to protect herself.

  She fingers the claw in her pocket, remembering the dream moment, like this one, at the cabin door when it grew right onto her hand. Are dreams predictions or practice?

  From deep in the trees, she hears the gun go off. A warning shot.

  He is never going to let you go, she thinks again.

  No. But she can use that against him. She squeezes her fist shut and counts to five, waiting to see the stutter of the flashlight beam one
more time. Then she runs.

  She is small and light and she knows how to move fast.

  She’s going to lead him to the bear.

  In the sky, there’s the barest hint of the coming day. The wind brings new snow with it, picks up the light top layer at Maeve’s feet, making the ground in front of her sway and dance. She strains to make out the horizon, squinting to where she knows the ridge begins and beyond that.

  Beyond that, just glitter.

  In the clearing there was just enough light to guide her, but back in the woods, it’s still too dark to see. Maeve skirts the edge of the tree line, trying to keep the brighter open lip in sight. Her injured hand has gone numb, and she’s glad of it—glad to be rid of the distraction, even though she knows it’s probably a bad sign. It can’t be long until morning now. Can it? She glances up at the branches, willing some little bit of brightness to break through.

  But the mesh of trees seems endless here, getting thicker rather than thinning out. She turns and heads deeper into the canopy. The woods all look the same now. The same darkness, the same reach of limbs, the same stillness. The farther she goes from the open wind tunnels around the center, the quieter it is. The sound of being swallowed.

  Somewhere in the distance she hears the crack of a branch and she stops, frozen. The sound coming, not from behind her, but somewhere far ahead—someone or something moving through the forest. For a second, she thinks of Sim’s story and her stomach tightens as she imagines Dan out there, waiting. Then she immediately throws the image out again. Sim was lying, he’s a liar, the story just a diversion, and now it’s slowing her down. If anything is out there, it’s an animal. The bear—and that means she needs to move faster, not freeze up.

  She’s banking on finding the bear before Sim finds her.

  Maeve waits a moment longer for another noise, some kind of confirmation—that huff, or the familiar musky smell—but nothing comes. Then another crack, behind her now.

  She hears her name again.

  “Maeve! Maeve, don’t be a fool! You’re not alone out here.”

  She whirls around, looking in all directions, but she can’t see Sim anywhere, can’t tell exactly where the voice is coming from. Then, far to her left, a swoop of light.