The Retreat

by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  Maeve fires, on purpose this time, but the action of pulling the trigger sends a new explosion of pain through her hand. The gun kicks again and she hits the ice at his feet. The power of the revolver is too hard to control and she reaches out to try and steady it with her left hand.

  There’s a fault down in the ice, taking a beating. Grinding now, any time he shifts his weight.

  He steps forward, then back. Weighing the risk.

  “Maeve, don’t be stupid. Think of how good we are together. Don’t waste that. Don’t throw it away.” He keeps coming and she fires another round between them, this time aiming for the weakness in the ice shelf. Pain flares from her palm to her shoulder and she almost cries out.

  The ice cracks and breaks away between them, a long furrow running through the lip, and Sim jumps back, his voice rising in anger and panic.

  “You don’t even fucking know how to use it! Give me the gun.”

  There’s the deferred, echoey sound of ice and loose rock ricocheting down the outcrop to the forest floor. She’s got the gun out in front of her and presses her arms tighter into the sides of her body to stop them shaking. He’s working to keep his voice low and steady.

  “That thing is coming up here to kill us both and it will be your fault.”

  “Get back, Sim,” she says. “I mean it. Get away from me. Go back to the center.”

  Her hand is locked in spasm now and she doesn’t know if she can pull the trigger again, if she can even make her fingers work—or how many bullets are left.

  She tries to listen for the huffing, the throaty bark of the bear below them, but the wind drowns everything out now. What’s coming down is not even snow but sleet, ice pellets, something she can barely see through. Sim stiffens; the silhouette she knows is him moving toward her again.

  “You’re being crazy.” He rallies, taking a few quick breaths.

  “Listen—” “Listen? What are you going to tell me this time, Sim? Sadie shot herself? That’s how she died? Anna had a terrible accident and locked herself—”

  “Maeve, I don’t want to do this here. This is what I’m saying! You’re in shock. I want to go back to the center. To the gallery. They won’t find us here.”

  “You used Sadie to get to me and then you threw her away. And Justin, what did Justin do wrong? Every time someone gets in your way, they end up dead.” She brings the gun up a little higher. “Not me.” She backs away from him, toward the lift terminal again. She’s reduced to a kind of limping hop, the snow around her staining red.

  He follows her steadily, though. His voice coming lower, down in his throat. “They won’t find us here, Maeve, and I need them to find us. You’ll ruin everything. Give me the gun.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you no? What is it going to take for you to understand? You need to leave. Go.”

  All at once, there’s a rush of sound up the escarpment. They both wheel to face it, Maeve with the gun jackknifing out in front of her. She fires, and it goes wild, the force of it sending her flying back. The smooth lip at the edge of the outcrop reverberates this time, and she can see the stress fractures webbing through the ice.

  From the ridge, a voice breaks through the air.

  Maeve grips the gun. She can feel the tremor rising through her body as she tries to understand.

  “Stop!”

  A figure emerges from the far side of the ridge, through the trees. His hood pulled tight around his face, his pack still on his back.

  Dan.

  Uninjured. Not frozen to death overnight, after all.

  Alive.

  Maeve hears herself gasp, a sob caught in her throat. She’s not alone. Dan moves slowly and carefully through the snow, his hands raised.

  He yells again: “Stop! Put it down!”

  Maeve realizes, suddenly, that Dan is yelling at her. The gun in her hands is still trained on him. She had assumed everything Sim told her was a lie. She thought Dan was dead, frozen like Anna or shot with his own gun, somewhere down the mountain. But if he followed Sim back up here through the night—

  She shifts, suddenly unsure of whom to keep in her sight.

  “Maeve!” Sim spins to face her. The two men flanking her and Maeve left swiveling to try and keep an eye on them both.

  Dan comes closer.

  “Maeve, put it down.” He’s still got his hands out so she can see them, but he’s approaching her sidelong, eyes trained on Sim. “I need you to give me the gun and get behind me. He’s dangerous—”

  “The gun stays with me.” Maeve’s voice has fallen a little lower, harsher. She’s starting to have a hard time getting breath into her body and it shows.

  But Dan keeps coming. He moves in, focused now only on Sim.

  “I followed you,” he says. “I knew you’d come back here.”

  He cracks his jaw slightly, and Maeve can see the dark bruise at one eye, a strange angle to his face—as though something is off. She realizes his nose is broken.

  Sim watches him rigidly, then turns back to Maeve. Surprised, but recovering fast.

  “Maeve. You can’t trust him, Maeve. Give the gun up. Give it to me.”

  Maeve begins to edge back, toward the lift. If she can just get farther away, she can keep both of them in sight at once. Her hand has fully seized now; she moves the gun between them, first on Dan, then Sim, but the pain of trying to hold it steady makes her arm shudder.

  “Stay where you are,” Maeve says again. Imperative that they don’t know that the weapon is almost useless.

  Dan still moving closer.

  “Maeve,” Sim says, matching him, moving in on the other side. “I didn’t kill Sadie. He did. That’s why he’s tracked me back here. He knows I know. Maeve—”

  She wheels to train the gun on Dan and he stops dead, hands up.

  “Where’s Justin?” she says. When he doesn’t answer, she brings her voice up louder, but it cracks as she tries to speak: “Karo is dead, Dan. She killed herself.” He flinches at the words but Maeve pushes on, working to keep from crying. “Sadie is dead too. Where is Justin, Dan? I want to know what happened to Justin. What happened out there?”

  “I’ll tell you when you give me the gun, Maeve. Put it down.” Dan’s voice is steady and as soon as she stops moving, he comes closer again. “If Sadie is dead, then Sim killed her, not me. Just put it down. I don’t want any more of this—”

  Maeve pulls back, thrown by his choice of words. If Sadie is dead . . .

  “There’s no if. I’m telling you she’s dead. Sadie—”

  Sim moves up behind her, and she pivots to face him.

  “It’s not true, Maeve. Don’t listen. He killed Justin out there on the trail. That’s why he won’t tell you what happened. He would have killed me too.”

  The two of them closing in, one on either side. Sim losing patience, his voice echoing.

  “Give it here, Maeve. Give it to me!”

  There’s a crack, the sound of ice splitting on a pond, and Maeve pulls up. Then a shudder down below: the ice tearing away from the rock this time in a sheet, the bear’s rough bark rising up around them.

  “Stay back, please—” Maeve says. Her voice is breaking and she realizes that she’s lost, she is crying. She’s going to die out here, bleed to death while a rescue chopper circles overhead. She will never get back to Talia and Rudy. She pictures them, their faces at the wide bay window, watching the driveway, waiting and waiting for her to come home.

  Dan is almost near enough to touch her now, she knows that. Maeve freezes, willing her hand to start working again, but it’s twisted and burning, locked around the gun’s grip. She can feel her shoulders sagging. She just wants him to take the gun away, to let her go. He steps in, reaching for her.

  “I didn’t kill anyone, Maeve.” His voice peels along smoothly, the trained, steady tone of negotiation. “Nielssen jumped me for that gun and disappeared back up the trail—and then Sadie was gone too. She followed him.” He steps in again. “You know
you believe me, Maeve. She would do anything to stay close to him. He had her scared of me, filled her with stories—”

  “He’s lying, Maeve. Look at him. Remember? Always in charge, holding everyone else down. Top gun—”

  Maeve looks from one to the other, reeling. Top gun. Not Sadie’s phrase originally, then, but the other way around: words that Sim had fed her. A way of setting her against Dan.

  Dan shouts over him. “Maeve! I told Justin to go get help. To keep going down till he found someone.”

  Her stomach flips.

  “Justin’s alive?”

  She glances up into the steel-gray sky, listening again for the engine hum. If Justin somehow survived, made it down far enough to find help—

  There’s a flicker in her peripheral vision, Dan moving in, and she spins back, hanging on, her bloody hand trembling.

  She doesn’t care what happened anymore. She just wants that helicopter to see her and she wants Dan and Sim gone.

  Dan steps in one more time.

  Suddenly Maeve feels herself fly forward, Sim lunging into her from behind. She lands hard on her knees and then they are both on her, Maeve in the middle as the two men grab at her, rip at her frozen hand. There’s a dull thud as Dan’s fist connects and Sim is thrown back. Maeve seizes the moment to push away, but Dan catches her elbow and wrenches it back, holding her there—then Sim’s hand closes tight on her wrist, twisting.

  He’s trying to aim the gun, Maeve realizes suddenly, his fingers over hers; she braces herself with her good leg, fighting him, trying to force the muzzle to the ground as Sim works to slide the gun out of her damaged hand. When Dan lunges in again, his fingernails tearing at her arm, she screams and brings her teeth down into his hand and there’s a blast.

  Dan pitches forward into the snow.

  Maeve, suddenly free, reels back; the gun hits the ice and skids away. She is shaking, her bloody hand flat and open now. Her own ragged breath, her heart pounding in her ears.

  Sim, still on his feet, stares down at her from above. Then he leans in and grabs the weapon and fires. But it only clicks. Empty.

  “Maeve—” There’s a moment of silence as he looks at the gun, lying inert in his own hand now, then at Dan on the ground.

  His whole face changing.

  “Maeve,” he says again. “What did you do?”

  Maeve slides back along the ice.

  For a moment, she really doesn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

  She shifts again and the ice sheet underneath her slips; she can see all the places where it’s cracked and broken now, the long furrow widening as Sim moves carefully around on top of it, edging his way toward her. When Maeve moves, it shifts again.

  “That wasn’t me, Maeve.”

  Maeve looks over to where Dan slumps, a wide, dark stain moving out from his broken torso. Close range, the blast has blown his chest open.

  “You—you wouldn’t let go,” Sim says.

  Maeve looks at Dan again and her head spins. It’s hard to focus. There’s so much white.

  “But it’s okay. No one will ever know. I promise. It’s over now.” Sim crouches down, watching her as she tries to slide away from him. “We’re not getting out of here alive, Maeve. Don’t you see? This is the end of our story. Come with me now—don’t ruin it. They’ll never find us here, in the snow. We’ll be buried. But back at the lodge, in the gallery—think of it. Think of their faces. They’ll find us in the gallery. That will be our legacy.”

  There’s a beat as the horror of what he’s saying sinks in. This is the end of our story. Maeve sees the whole narrative spooling out like rope. First his quiet attention, then a growing obsession. Now, stranded for days, he’s devised a way to make them both immortal.

  Her hands are shaking. Blood from her ripped palm runs down her wrist.

  They’ll find us in the gallery.

  He leans in to grab her and she kicks out in self-defense—there’s a sharp crack from the ice shelf underneath them, the sound ricocheting and echoing in the morning air. Below, the noise of it seems to rouse the bear, and it charges against the rock wall; the ground shakes beneath them. Sim lurches back. But then he pushes slowly up onto his feet, moves toward her again.

  The cracked shelf around him rumbles. Like a train, Maeve thinks. It feels like a train.

  She heaves herself back. There’s a rolling clap as a fissure in the shelf moves between them. A chunk of ice breaks and falls away from the lip beside him. Sim freezes.

  “Maeve—” It comes out throaty, a whisper, as though the sound of his voice will be enough to cause the ice shelf to break away, dragging him with it. His face goes slack with fear, eyes wide. He looks just like a child.

  Then he reaches for her, his palm upturned. “Maeve—”

  He wants her to save him.

  Instinct is what shows up when you’ve learned something over and over, from experience. Karo’s voice in her head. Maeve looks at him pleading there, and wants to laugh. It finally makes sense. Every dream. She thought she could somehow control the bear—not understanding, in those dreams, there was no bear. The moment of transformation—there was only Maeve.

  She looks down at the claw in her hand and lunges back, anchoring it deep into the safe ice behind her. She throws her good leg high, then brings the heel down with full power into the widening crevice in the shelf.

  Sim drops to his knees just as the long fracture in the ice comes apart, lurching, grabbing for solid ground. Maeve grips the claw like an ice pick and kicks again, hammering into the shelf with all her strength twice, three times. There’s a deep groan as the lip breaks apart under them; she pitches her body back up where it’s safe just as the weak layer begins to slide.

  “Maeve!”

  His arm flails, grasping for her.

  Then he’s gone. The forest below like a hand, closing around him.

  Maeve stares after him, breathless; the empty space where his body was. There’s a long and blinding howl from below. A shudder runs through her, every muscle quaking, and for a moment there is nothing beyond that.

  The scar on her hand now matched by a newer wound. It’s stopped bleeding. Finally. Maeve closes her other hand over it, protecting it, trembling with effort.

  Wind sweeps along the ridge. Her ears are ringing and it’s hard to concentrate. She can hear her own breath, but can’t seem to get enough air. She knows what this is: shock setting in. She needs to keep moving while she can.

  She pushes up to standing. Dan is lying only a few yards off, his body blown apart in the cold.

  Maeve turns away, dragging her bad leg. There’s a new scent in the air, a stronger, heavier musk rising up from the forest. Metallic. She doesn’t look back.

  Somewhere in the clouds above, the hum of the chopper grows louder. She can hear it; she’s following that sound only. It’s hard to see anything through the gray morning. Black spots, like the missing pieces of a puzzle, drop into her view. Like a bad connection. Pixelated. She cannot seem to stop shaking.

  To the east, the sun is rising, stronger and stronger every minute. She lifts her eyes, following the light. The steady blink of a searchlight still skims the morning haze.

  At the lift terminal base, she eases herself up onto the ledge and tries sliding out into the open, then stops and sinks a hand into her coat’s deep pocket instead. She can’t climb out onto the lift. Not now, not the way she wanted to.

  But she’s already imagining how her dancers will look. How to make these movements, this broken body, into something beautiful.

  The bear is behind her now. Maeve reaches down and lights a flare.

  Acknowledgments

  A very big thank-you to the teams at HarperCollins in Canada and Mulholland Books in the United States, and extra-specially to my wonderful editors, Iris Tupholme and Helen O’Hare, who helped me in a million ways but mostly by loving this story as much as I do and sharpening it at every turn. To my agent, Samantha Haywood: You make it possible for me
to do my dream job! Early readers and excerpt readers who held my hand: Sharon Bala, Miranda Hill, and Bianca Spence (to whom this book is dedicated and who also talked endlessly with me about dance and helped me to better understand it). For bear knowledge, resources, and advice, Jay Butler and Claire Cameron. For sharing her process and her story and many helpful videos of her own practice time, my childhood friend Allison Cummings (and, by extension, her company, Sore for Punching You). The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, for providing inspiration and elk (but, thankfully, no bears). Caroline Clarke, who worked patiently with me to create the map of the High Water Center for the Arts. ArtsNL for financial support that made working on The Retreat so much easier.

  Most of all, to my family, who are kind and fun and funny and take my mind off murder. And especially George Murray, who reads every draft, listens to every worry, and to whom every book should be dedicated, forever.

  About the Author

  ELISABETH DE MARIAFFI’s debut book of short stories, How to Get Along with Women, was longlisted for the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her first novel, The Devil You Know, was named one of the Best Books of 2015 by The Globe and Mail and the National Post. The Globe and Mail also chose her most recent novel, Hysteria, as one of the Best Books of 2018, and both novels were shortlisted for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Elisabeth de Mariaffi lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland, with the poet George Murray and their four children.

  elisabethdemariaffi.com

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at harpercollins.ca.

  Also by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  How to Get Along with Women

  The Devil You Know

  Hysteria

  Copyright

  The Retreat

  Copyright © 2021 by Elisabeth de Mariaffi.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.