The Monster's Wife(79)

Adam stood and stretched. “We must find shelter for the night.”

He took her hand and dragged her towards the ferns, where the dried bed of an old burn made a path. When they got higher up, he let go of her so that she could climb, grabbing onto clumps of bracken, grit driving under her nails. It was slow going and he disappeared over the brow of a brae while she was still struggling. She’d almost reached the top, when she lost her footing. She seized the trunk of a gorse bush, knowing how its roots were strong and went down deep into rock. Her other hand flailed.

His hand caught her wrist and lifted her easily. He held her by the shoulders, steadying her. Their eyes met. Last night, she’d been planning to kill him. As she stared into his broken face, she imagined how he would have snapped her neck if she’d tried. He will kill you. His hand brushed hers, took hold of it. Their faces were so close she almost tasted him. The skua flew over them, casually vicious. When a skua did that, it meant a death was coming they said. White sheets stretched in her mind. A hand reached out. She dropped Adam’s hand and walked on, feeling that if they stood there staring at each other any longer, what was left of their world would go bad.





71


Oona walked close to the brow of the hill, too close, so that she could feel the valley’s undertow. Adam fell in step with her and tugged at her sleeve.

“What is it?”

She stopped. “Look at that.” She pointed to where a hawk hovered in the wind, fierce and alone, waiting to plunge. “It feels nothing when it kills, save hunger.” She looked into his face.

He ran his finger over his lips. She wanted him to tell her, without her even having to ask, that it was all lies what Victor had said. That he’d never so much as stepped on a worm. But she already knew that wasn’t so. If they were really the same, he had fury running through him, like her. And he thought about killing, like her.

In the end, he said nothing.

They walked on. There were strands of bramble here and there, snaking up from the cliff edge, pish-the-beds and sorrel hidden in the grass. She knew they’d soon be hungry again and began to pick the fruit and flowers, dropping them in her skirt lap, murmuring under her breath, because the vine bloomed crookedly, the heavenly gardener could not spare his son. She wouldn’t think of blood or sheets, or Victor, or the men. She would cast them from her mind.

“You move slower with each step.” He stopped to let her catch up, but didn’t reach for her this time.

“I found these.” She showed him the tangle of plants in her skirt. “We could make a soup from this sorrel if there’s a pot.”

“Sorrel soup?” He grimaced. “There is something like a barn over there, piles of stones but no roof.”

She followed his gaze. “Not a barn. There are old tombs here. Cairns, they call them. No-one goes in those.” The clearness of the memory made her smile.

“Good place for us, then.” He struck out towards them.

“Wait,” she caught his arm. “They stay away from those places because people buried their dead there.”

“You fear that the dead will rise from their graves?” He smiled wryly. “And what do you think we are?” He turned back towards the tombs.

“We are the dead,” she whispered.

The sun shining overhead looked bleak and her thoughts of making soup seemed foolish now. She let the leaves fall from her dress. Near her feet, a slow worm slithered between blades of grass, its nightshade eyes gleaming. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Above her, the sky darkened. The first fleck of rain hit her cheek.

It was damp in the old cairn and the air smelled of mouldering leaves. When she crawled inside, she remembered the tales of bitter ghosts who sucked breath from the living. She crouched low, cradling her knees in her arms. He curled on his side as an animal would, turned away from her.

In the night she woke and found his arms wrapped around her again. When she pulled him closer, he woke and murmured half in English, half in German. The parts she understood seemed to be about living beneath a pile of wood and digging turnips. She closed her eyes and imagined him alone, as she had been. Outside an owl hooted. His lips brushed her neck. She fell asleep clutching his hand, her fingernails digging a little way into his skin in case he thought of running off.





72


Oona knelt on the grass outside the cairn breathing shallowly. She picked up a flint and began to rub it on a dry patch of stone. Adam had made it look easy before, striking the flint, hitting up sparks so that they touched fire to the curling hairs of tinder snugly tucked between pebbles. She’d known how to do it once, but her memory was fogged. Angry now, she pounded until her arms ached and the flint bit into the soft flesh of her palm.

As the sun came up over the next hill and stretched yellow fingers between dark lashes of fern, the flint struck sparks in its furrow and the tinder caught, tentatively at first, then bolder. Red light ate along the tawny threads and she laid lengths of dry grass across it, blowing gently, building a thatch, until she had the beginnings of a fire. She threw the drier twigs over it, coaxing, her back tense with the fear that she would smother it. She rocked back on her heels. It was good. It was alive.

She picked up the roots she’d dug from the hillside, weighing their cool heft in her palm, brushing off clods of that good kind of muck. When the fire had burned a while, she pushed them into the ashes. She stood and stretched and smiled. She’d woken with a warm feeling inside her, like when she reached in the hen’s nest at home and felt a chick’s wings unfolding. She turned so that the sun would stroke her face, closing her eyes, remembering Adam’s teeth on her neck, gently biting her in his sleep.