Signs of Love

by Skye, Harper

  “So what happened…”

  “Well, I took one look at the land and that was it. I just knew. So I spent the rest of that year working and saving every penny I could. And that next spring I moved out here and bought a trailer. Started working on my house.”

  “I’d love to feel that kind of clarity,” Ailsa commented, mostly to herself. “The feeling that I belong here and this is what I’m meant to do.”

  “Life out here has its up-sides,” Zach agreed. “But it’s not always a bed of roses. There’s things that creep up on a person…” Zach took his eyes away from the trail and looked around then. He looked way up towards the tops of the tall fir trees that surrounded them. But he didn’t continue the thought.

  “Look. There’s an eagle’s nest up there.” He pointed, and Ailsa followed his gaze until she saw the massive nest jutting out on a branch, silhouetted against the bright morning sky.

  “What about you then?” He asked.

  When Ailsa lowered her gaze from the treetops, she realized he was watching her. His brown eyes ran slowly over her face, and it felt to Ailsa as if he were looking for something.

  “I grew up in a place called Oban on the west coast of Scotland,” Ailsa began.

  “Ah, so I’m going to get more than the one-word answer then,” Zach nudged her shoulder as they began to walk again.

  “You want me to say ‘the Highlands’?”

  “No no…” Zach raised his hands in mock surrender. “Go on.”

  Ailsa looked sideways at him, biting her lip. Zach laid a hand on her forearm. “You’re like a wild thing woman, you scare so easy. I was just teasing you. Go on…you grew up in Oban.”

  She could still perceive the warmth of him when he lifted his hand away. Her arm was tingling with the energy of his touch and she took a deeper breath. “I’m from a wild place. Maybe that’s why I’ve got a bit of the wild in me.” She made a face at him.

  “I’m from the suburbs. So I don’t have a good excuse,” Zach replied joking back. “So it’s a wild place then, these Highlands that you’re from.”

  “Not wild like this. There’s no bears. But the land is wild. All the way up the west coast and into the north. There’s land that rolls out and…sings in its own way.” She shook her head. “I can’t describe it really.”

  “Can you play it?” He asked, nodding towards the case on her back.

  Ailsa pulled at her long hair that had worked its way out of the knot at the back of her neck and fingered the strap of her fiddle case. “Yeah I can play it.”

  “Play me something then.”

  So she brought out her fiddle and began to play, softly at first, listening as the long notes echoed through the woods. And then faster, until they had been walking to the music for the length of four songs. Ailsa’s feet began to fill with the energy of a reel, and she skipped ahead, almost dancing in her hiking boots as she played.

  Her right arm pulled the last note, long and low and final, and she dropped her arm down to her side to rest. Suddenly she realized how tired her arms were. Slowly she lifted the fiddle from under her chin, gazing out across the forest to the lake as if she could see that last note floating away through the woods. She turned her head when she heard him step close to her.

  “Come here a sec.” His voice sounded low, as if he also didn’t want to disturb the final strains of music on the breeze. As if he were speaking to some wild thing that might dart off into the forest at any moment.

  Ailsa took two steps to close the distance between them, and it was then that she saw the look in his eyes. Ailsa felt his rough palm against the side of her cheek, so lightly placed it was like the caress of the breeze. And then she felt the warm pressure of his hand as he lifted her face towards his.

  She could feel his breath against her mouth. For a split second he paused, holding her eye and looking so deep down into her that Ailsa felt her breath catch in her belly.

  And then he pressed his mouth against hers, the roughness of his face grazing her chin, and she found herself reaching out to meet his kiss with a force she had not felt move in her for a long time. She longed to bring her hands up to him, to feel the warm strength she could sense moving in his chest, but her hands held her fiddle and bow and she could not drop them.

  So instead she let him kiss her. Kiss her like she needed to be kissed. Kiss her until her toes tingled. Kiss her until she felt alive.

  At last he pulled back, ever so slightly, resting his forehead against hers. And they stood for a long moment together like two trees among the woodland, holding the truth of what had just happened between them.

  “Don’t move.” Zach whispered unexpectedly into her ear, and she caught an urgency in his voice that seemed out of place. Then Ailsa felt his arm grip tightly around her, pulling her body flush against him.

  When she turned her head, she saw the bear. It was less than a hundred feet away, its fur dark and matted in places, its eyes small and black.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Zach said, calmly raising his voice above a whisper. “And don’t run.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Ailsa said. And she wasn’t. She didn’t know what she was. She didn’t have a name for it. But it felt like a recognition, some wildness that animated the bear also echoed in her. She was fascinated.

  Slowly the bear turned on the path to face them and raised itself up onto its hind legs.

  “Hi there beauty,” Ailsa said, speaking to the bear as it turned its inquisitive eyes towards them. “Hi there bear. This is your forest. We are just visiting. We’ve gone for a walk. Don’t mind us.” She said these things slowly and calmly and firmly. Looking into the face of the bear as its black nose wriggled in the air catching their scent.

  “We’re just humans. And you’re a bear. We’re just going for a walk in your forest. You don’t mind us. We’re just looking at the trees and doing human things.”

  Zach slowly shifted against her, reaching for something in his pack. Ailsa could feel his other arm around her, and she could feel the strength of him that was used to working with trees and the weight of wood.

  “Go on bear.” Zach said, his voice calm and commanding. “Go on now. Get on with your day.”

  The bear dropped down onto its forearms and without a backward glance, lumbered off through the woods on the other side of the path. Ailsa and Zach stood very still for a long time, watching the bear go and then listening to the crashing sounds of it as it moved through the forest.

  At last Ailsa glanced up at Zach. “That was amazing?”

  “What the kiss?”

  She nudged him roughly with her right hand that still clutched her bow.

  “Oh you mean the bear…” He chuckled and slipped the bear spray back into the side pocket of his bag. He held the bow while Ailsa put the fiddle back in its case, and then handed it to her, watching as she loosened the bow hairs and fitted it away in the case as well.

  “You ready to head back then?” He asked as she slung the case across her back. Ailsa nodded. But then she stopped and reached out, placing a hand on his chest, stepping close to him again.

  He found her mouth easily this time, kissing her as if they had always done this. As if they hiked and saw bears and kissed all the time. Within seconds Ailsa had lost herself in the taste of him. His warm tongue pressed into her mouth like he was trying to know her. And to her surprise, she opened herself up to him. Heat grew between her legs and she tilted her head further back, changing the angle of their kiss and driving her tongue back into his mouth, as if she wanted to know him as well. What was happening? Ailsa couldn’t think. But she could feel something cracking open, a very small crack in the armor she had created. And it felt like something inside of her was trying to get free.

  When she felt him pull back, Ailsa took a deep breath, nerves suddenly catching up with her. Her heart was beating with her life in her chest and she didn’t know whether she was afraid or elated. But then Zach smiled. His brown eyes crinkled at the edges, and Ailsa felt
her heart slow and for no reason she could name, she felt okay again.

  “Ready?”

  She nodded and they both set off back down the trail. Far across the water, Ailsa could just make out the place where the dock jutted out into the water. It had taken them over an hour to get this far and neither were in a hurry to get back.

  After a moment, Zach looked over at her and held out an open palm. “Now that there’s been kissing, I was wondering if I could hold your hand,” he asked formally.

  When she offered it out, his hand seemed to swallow hers. They walked this way in the silence of the trees for awhile, giving all their attention to those hands and the way it felt as Zach slowly rubbed his thumb back and forth across hers.

  “You really saw that bear,” Zach said suddenly, looking over at her.

  Ailsa gave a short laugh. “It was hard to miss.”

  “No, I mean, you saw her. You saw the truth of her. What she was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The path narrowed between two trees and Zach hesitated, waiting for her to step through.

  “Well…” his voice drew the word out as if he were thinking how to explain. “Most people do one of two things when they see a bear. They either get completely terrified. They see the bear as a monster that’s going to attack them. Or they see it as this oddity, like in a zoo. They want to get close to it, get a picture. Like the bear is there for them on their big Alaskan tour.”

  Ailsa nodded slowly, listening.

  “But you really saw what she is…”

  “She’s a wild thing,” Ailsa finished. “A beautiful wild thing.”

  Zach looked at her as they walked. Then she felt a slight pull on her hand and she realized he was asking her to stop. “You saw something in her that…” he paused. “How do I say this…that you recognized. Something that’s inside you. And you let it be what it is. You didn’t try to change it or make it something else that is easier to understand…”

  “Yes…”

  The words hung between them, and Ailsa realized that perhaps Zach understood this because he felt this way too, like there can be a wildness inside a person that echos not in the company of people but in the mountains and the winds and the forests. And in the eyes of the fox and the bear.

  “I’m glad that I’ve met you, Ailsa.” His face was open, and all the smiles and flirtatious games were gone and there was just him. Zach. Standing in the forest. Telling her the truth.

  She reached up to touch the side of his face, tracing her fingers along his temple and down to his jawline. It was the way she touched her fiddle sometimes, she knew. In the moments she really treasured it.

  “Which is a problem of course,” Zach said, trying somehow to bring a sense of lightheartedness back into this voice that seemed to hold a deeper tremor of emotion. “Because with wild ones, you know you’re always gonna have to let them go…”

  Chapter 7

  “Finally!” Seb flicked his eyes to their clasped hands as Ailsa and Zach emerged into the open space where the cabins stood among the trees. “That took long enough!”

  “Quit giving me a hard time, man,” Zach answered good-naturedly, squeezing Ailsa’s hand gently. “I have my own pace with these things.”

  “A snail’s pace,” Seb laughed back. “Hey I took your turn at lunch since you were gone, so you’ve got dinner duty.”

  “Thanks,” Zach nodded. “Is there anything left?”

  “In cabin two. There’s ham and cheese and stuff.”

  Ailsa felt Zach let go of her hand, but the next instant she felt the heat of his palm against the small of her back. “You hungry?” He touched her now as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As if they had broken through some unseen barrier and now they could be together the way they were supposed to be.

  Ahead, Ailsa caught sight of Aaron staring at her. He had obviously clocked Zach’s arm around her, although he quickly adverted his eyes and walked past them as if he hadn’t noticed.

  She nodded. “I’m just going to put away…” she shrugged at the fiddle case against her shoulder. Seb was grinning at her, and she tried to stop herself from grinning foolishly back, but a smile kept pulling at the edges of her mouth. Happiness. It was a little unsettling.

  Ailsa waved and turned away from them towards the cabins. She only had a week left. Her flight back to Scotland left next Monday, and she had to be on it. What am I doing? Ailsa wondered to herself. But then she did what she always did, buried the past so that she wouldn’t have to think about it. Pushed the future so far ahead she couldn’t catch a glimpse of it. Focused on her feet walking along the dirt path, the cabin up ahead, the thing she was doing right now. And above all, she tried to stop looking at her hands.

  After that they were always together, eating dinner, sitting on the deck chairs, taking the canoe out on the lake. They moved about the campsite like dancers, parting briefly only to find each other again.

  “Ailsa…come here a sec…” Zach called to her the next afternoon as she walked up from where she had been reading in the shade. When she reached the place where he stood next to his cabin, he pulled her around the corner and pressed his mouth to hers with an urgency. “I just needed to kiss you,” he tried to explain. His breath came against her, and she reached up to feel his heart racing in his chest. Slowly she ran her hands over his thick shoulders and down his biceps, his forearms. He let her touch him, watching her as she learned the way he felt and the way he was. It felt so new. It was as if she had never fallen in love before. As if she had been asleep for years and had suddenly been jolted awake by the presence of this man.

  This man she could only have for a week.

  “I know…” She felt the muscles in his chest shifting under her hands. They had done little more than kiss so far, but Ailsa couldn’t help her mind wandering to what Zach had looked like with his shirt off when they had been out in the canoe that morning, the muscles in his back carved by his life as a carpenter, his back arching broadly up from his waist. She couldn’t stop thinking about him, couldn’t stop herself from touching him. It was the first time she had felt alive in so long.

  But then the dream came back.

  The black night. And the lights coming, and the terror as she screamed their names and no one answered.

  Ailsa started from sleep and found herself tangled in her sheets on the top bunk of the cabin. Panting to catch her breath she listened. Had she screamed out loud? Had she woken everyone up? For a moment she fought to claw herself back into reality. The wide silence and the soft snoring of Jess in the bunk below told her everyone was still asleep.

  Fuck. Ailsa sat up in bed and pressed her palms against her eyes. She hadn’t had the dream in months. Not since she left Scotland again to go travelling. A new place most days kept her mind too full to wander back to that dark place. It was why she left, again and again. She was trying to outrun that dream. Because it was all she could think to do.

  It was still night, still cold and yet her heart raced with the panic the dream always brought. Pulling the blanket around her, she eased out of bed, pulled on some extra layers and rewrapped the blanket around her.

  She wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. Not after the dream. She had had enough years of experience to know.

  Ailsa slipped out the door, holding the blanket up off the ground, and made her way towards the dock. The night was old and blended easily into the bright Alaskan morning that was already spreading wide across the land. She cocooned herself in the blanket at the edge of the dock and let the calmness of the lake bring back her breath until her mind fell still and she simply stared out at the water, lost from time and place.

  That was how he found her. She was still staring across the lake when she heard the creak of footsteps walking along the dock. He eased down next to her. His feet bare, his jeans riding loose at his waist.

  “You’re up early,” he began.

  But then he saw her face. It must have looked flat and brok
en, the way she had seen herself look in the mirror after one of these sleepless nights, as if the dream itself had etched its dreadful footprints all across her face.

  “Have you been here all night?” He asked it softly and moved as if he would take her hand in his, but then thought better of it and clasped his two wide hands together in his lap instead.

  “I have this dream…” She said. But that wasn’t right, was it? “It’s not just a dream…” Ailsa looked at him, and it was like looking at someone through a fog. “I get like this sometimes.”

  “Can I sit with you?” He asked, his voice low, resonating deep in his chest.

  She nodded. Slowly he put his arm around her shoulders and brought her into him. Ailsa suddenly realized how tired she felt. She leaned her head into his shoulder. They sat like that for a long time, looking out across the lake, watching the breeze flick at the surface of the still waters, occasionally following the path of a bird as it glided past.

  Finally she felt Zach shift against her. “I think folks are going to start waking up soon.”

  “I don’t want to see anyone right now.”

  “I figured. I’ll take you somewhere.” He helped her stand up and brushed her hair gently away from her face.

  “I’m not going to be good company today.”

  Zach shook his head. “Ailsa, we haven’t known each other that long, so you don’t really know me yet. But I’m old enough to know life isn’t always good. Serious shit happens to people. Shit has happened to me. So you don’t have to pretend it’s okay when it’s not. Sometimes things aren’t okay.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll wait for you.”

  She had brought her fiddle, and he had led her down a different path, away from the lake and into the rising land. They walked for a long time, Zach clapping and whistling and calling ‘Heyo bear!’ to let the wildlife know they were coming. After an hour he pointed to a large rock halfway up the hill. “Let’s stop there.”

  They sat on a wide ledge of the rock looking out over the pointed tops of the trees. He was comfortable in the silence of the woods, Ailsa realized, and after awhile she stopped worrying that he would ask her something, try to make her talk when there was really nothing she could say. He just sat next to her, allowing a small space between their bodies. Allowing her to be with herself and not forcing himself into her space.