Page 22

Chapter 22

Erik

L illian is a very quick student.

After we walked back to our worksite on the shore, I assisted her in sitting onto the logs by the curing fire and began to explain the process of twisting sinew for the making of bowstrings.

I have a tightly woven basket of ligaments that I have already pounded into threads. She marvels at the collection, then asks about the others soaking in a carved wooden bowl of water from the lake, and listens with rapt attention as I explain how to wind three or four of the wet strands together until they bend back upon themselves, before stretching them and tying their ends on the frame that I have built.

“They dry together, which tightens their bond and locks them in the spiral shape,” I say, holding up a three-ply cord that I made earlier in the day. Then I add more threads from the basket to the bowl, before offering it to her.

She nods, eyes sparkling with the desire to try it herself. I cannot help but admire her as she carefully separates three threads from the bowl and spins them deftly between her soft, gentle fingers.

“It’s like spinning wool, almost,” she marvels. “I had no idea ligaments were thin like this.”

“They are not. You must pound them with a rock until they break apart.”

Her face turns slightly green at that, so I quickly change the subject.

“The fibers are very strong. Plant fibers can also be gathered and spun in a similar way, but those are far better for static objects like baskets and shades. But for hunting, a more flexible material is better.”

She has finished her string by the time I am done speaking, and she stretches it over the frame easily, despite the stiffness in her legs. With the two of us working together, we complete an entire army’s worth of strings before the sky has even settled into the orangey-pink of pre-dusk.

“Well that was fun,” she says, slapping her wet hands to her thighs and making the flesh there jiggle enticingly. Her lips curl up into a grin when she asks me, “what’s next?”

By the time I return from the forest with dinner, my unlikely companion has whittled and quilled an entire quiver’s worth of arrows. I highly underestimated her abilities. Upon seeing the pile beside her, bone-straight and well-feathered, surprise and something else—pride, perhaps?—fill my chest.

“That is so many!” I praise.

“Is it too much? How many do you need?”

Her face flushes with embarrassment, and I grin to reassure her. “It is always good to have more. This is enough for today.”

Without thinking, I stoop down to kiss her pink cheek, freezing when my lips are a hair’s breadth away. I hear her breathe in, and I realize my mistake.

I straighten. Then I turn and carry the skinned squirrels to the shelter for cooking.

I hear a cough from outside, before the tell-tale sound of shifting sand that lets me know she has gone for a walk.

That is good. It is important she stretch her legs and build up her muscular endurance. I am not sad in the least that she is gone.

I do not long for her. I do not desire to kick myself for making her feel unwanted, like I do every morning when I pull myself from her arms.

Liar.

I do not need to justify my actions to you.

What about her?

What about her? She knows the reasons I cannot submit to my desires. I have explained what is at stake.

Hmm.

“Why do you insist on being so cryptic?” I shout, banging the cooking spits against their supports and almost snapping the thin wood. My anger is all the more fiery for the despair that saturates it. I resent the voice for coming back more than I ever did for it existing in the first place. Its crimes are far more abhorrent when juxtaposed against their absence. I stare at the heavy, iron pot in the corner of the shelter, the one in which I boil bones for broth and skins for leather-making. I consider bashing it against my own head, if only for a moment of silence.

You call me cryptic, but it is you whose actions are without logic, human.

I scoff. “I do not expect a monster to understand. What do you know of protection? Of affection?”

I know a great deal. More than you.

What makes you say that? I revert back to mind-speak as I worry that Lillian may return to hear me talking to myself.

My lover and I communicate. Even when we quarrel, separating for centuries at a time, I am still honest with my feelings. I do not know another way to be.

I have been nothing but honest with Lillian.

Is that so? Were you honest when you denied her affections? Honest, when you made her feel as though she were undesirable?

My self-righteous indignation turns to ash in my mouth. I reach for the water skin, only to find that it is empty.

I stand and leave the shelter, heading to the lake shore to refill it. When I emerge from the forest, Lillian is standing at its edge, watching the horizon over the water.

Her face is slack and unreadable. She has not noticed me, and I do not want her to.

So I slink away like the detestable creature I am, unable to face my own companion for fear of seeing my sins in her eyes.