Hunted(9)

The weather worsened as they turned from the high road onto a smaller path into the woods, and they had to break their own trail through the snow, for no one had come this way since the storm had begun. Albe called out, suggesting they turn back and make for the inn several leagues behind. Yeva’s father said something in reply that she could not hear, but Albe quieted, tugging his coat more closely about his shoulders. She jumped down from the wagon, landing calf-deep in snow, and shouted over the wind, “Take my seat awhile, Albe.”

He protested, face flushing beet red, but she shook her head. “Please—I’d like to speak to my father in private.”

Reluctantly Albe let her give him a leg up onto the wagon as it groaned along through the snow. Yeva stepped over to her father and linked her arm through his, for warmth as much as companionship.

“That was kindly done,” he said, patting her hand.

“Right now, Albe is our only friend in the world.”

Her father’s hand stilled against hers, head bowing against the biting cold. For a time there was only the jingle of the horse’s harness and the groaning of the wagon, the dull thud of hoof on snow, the occasional distant thump as a branch gave way and dropped its heavy burden to the forest floor.

“I was a fool.” Her father’s voice was a whisper, but the quiet of the snow did little to hide it. “Such a fool.”

Yeva had never had to comfort her father before. Her heart squeezed with the kind of fear she never felt outside of nightmares, the kind of fear that made her blood pound. “It isn’t your fault,” she said finally, searching for any words that might ease the tension in the arm linked through hers.

Her father exhaled a grunt of a laugh, the mist of it hanging in front of his lips like a ghost. “We had enough. More than enough. That caravan—I was a fool to put everything we had into such a fragile venture. But I wanted more for you, for my girls—I wanted—”

His voice cracked, and with it Yeva’s heart. For decades their town, along with a vast stretch of the country, had been cut off from other parts of the world by marauders who intercepted travelers and convoys alike. The books her father owned all came from a time before the Mongols; the priests who had blessed Yeva at her naming ceremony were some of the last to make it through on their pilgrimages.

“You wanted the world for us,” Yeva whispered, hugging her father’s arm close against her body. “There’s no shame in that.” Still, her heart stirred uneasily. Had she not been berating herself the same way for wanting more than the life a husband like Solmir could offer her?

“I had the world,” her father replied, his pace faltering for a few steps until Yeva stopped too. Her father’s red-rimmed eyes met hers, the snow melting on his cheeks and trickling into his beard. “I was just too blind to see it.”

Yeva swallowed hard. “You have us,” she said softly. “We have you. That’s all we need. Come, Father—you’ll get stiff if you stop moving.”

As they continued, Yeva found movement warmed her, and that walking was much more preferable to riding on the wagon—but she had not been walking for three days through ankle-deep snow. After just half an hour she found that little-used muscles had begun to ache and protest the exercise.

As dusk fell the cabin came into view, the same white and black with snow and wood as the forest. The huddled occupants on the wagon leaped down, Albe unhitching the horse as soon as the wagon pulled into the lee of the house. Exhaustion made them all slow and stupid, even those who had ridden on the wagon, for the cold and the swaying, jouncing movement were nearly as wearying as walking. Asenka could barely move, her bad leg was so stiff, and Lena helped her through the snow with some difficulty. Yeva collected Doe-Eyes from her sleepy warm nest and whistled for Pelei, who had roamed too far, dancing around the trees, sniffing and shivering with excitement at their new surroundings. Albe put the horse in a dilapidated shed to be tended later, and everyone made their way to the house. It had lain unoccupied for the better part of a decade, and with a long breath their father shoved the door open for the first time since Yeva had been a child.

It was covered in dust and dirt, half the window shutters broken, drifts of fallen leaves and snow filling the corners. Something rustled in the back, its nest disturbed by the human arrivals. The only light came from behind the broken shutters and from a hole in the roof, plugged mostly with snow, allowing only for the cold blue glow of twilight through the ice. Flakes drifted down from the hole, glinting in the shaft of light.

This was not the cozy home Yeva had remembered from her childhood. She found herself wishing her father had listened to Albe back on the road—if he had, they would be warm and fed in an inn by now. But then, her father’s too-thin purse would be several coins leaner.

They all stood inside the doorway, dripping snow and ice onto the floor, surveying the dank interior of the cabin in silence. Asenka spoke first, taking a limping step forward. “Albe,” she said softly, “if you will be so good as to use the shovel there at the hearth and remove the snow from inside, I will lay a fire.”

Lena, as if shaking herself from a dream, stumbled forward to take her older sister’s arm and help her to the hearth. The two set to clearing leaves from the fireplace as Albe took the ash shovel and began hauling the snow out the windows. Yeva knelt and whispered to Pelei, one hand on his quivering shoulder, “Go on, I know you smell them. Remind them that this is our house.” When she straightened and pulled her hand away, Pelei was off to the far corner of the cabin like a bolt from a crossbow, sending frantic rustles throughout the leaves there as the house’s previous occupants fled before him. Yeva located the broad, sturdy table amid the debris and, with Albe’s assistance, set it on its legs and then smoothed her hands over its top to wipe off the worst of the dust.