Gil

With both Livingstons tucked away in their beds, I return to my room. Though I dress down and lay myself in a comfy bed, I doze only fitfully, awakened by each little sound only to toss and turn and think of that girl some more.

Irritated, I rise before dawn’s light has even begun outside my window and dress myself in leathers. Leaving my sword, I take only my dagger and rifle as I make my way out into the cold morning air. 

Perhaps another walk will clear my head, I think as I make for the woods, eying the mountain in the distance.

A long walk.

Evie

After bidding Gil goodnight I cry in my room a long time, heart heavy with regret. I waver for several hours and really consider staying after all. I can stand for leaving everything else behind, but the thought of never seeing him again hurts so much more than I was expecting. Almost more than I can bear.

Sounds of the family returning home rouse me, and I feel my determination harden as I hear their awful voices calling to one another and congratulating Yelena on her triumph tonight. I listen with a growing sick feeling as each of them turn into bed upstairs, knowing with a kind of certainty how Stepmother will treat me in the morning for the ‘spectacle’ I made with Gil on the dance floor.

It’s all the resolve I need.

I wait until the house is still before changing into my boy’s clothes, taking the pack containing all my worldly possessions, and stealing out the window and away into the night.

I sleep fitfully in my new environment, not quite as comfortably as I’d hoped. My cave is cold, my bed of pine needles is lumpy and prickly. If not for Gil’s coat shielding me from the cold and the worst of the needles, I’d be miserable indeed.

Nuzzling deep inside it, surrounded by his scent, I can imagine this warmth comes from him, and it helps to calm me a little. Like this, I’m able to finally drift off just before dawn.

When I wake sun is streaming through the cracks in my door and the little hole in my roof. I yawn and stretch, pulling Gil’s coat tighter around me against the cold as I move sleepily through my cave.

I seriously love this old thing. It really was a lifesaver last night, but it’s more to me than that. I know it was probably just a whim, but I was so glad when Gil gave it to me.

Gil…

Already, I miss that evil face of his so much. 

It’s no use thinking about him, I tell myself, pushing down the lump that’s started in my throat. I’ll never see him again. All I have left of that man are memories and an old coat.

His coat gives me comfort. So long as I wear this, I’ll never truly be alone out here. So long as I wear this, part of him will always be with me…

Doing my best to suppress this sudden sense of loneliness I feel threatening to overwhelm me, I move my door, wincing as the bright sunlight hits my face.

“Am I dreaming right now?”

I start at the sound of a man’s voice and freeze. He’s standing only ten feet away, holding a rifle easily in one hand, sweat glistening off of his broad forehead as he stares at me in disbelief.

“Hoi, Funny Face—did you just come out of a hole in the ground?”

Gil?!

What’s happening right now? Did I want to see him so badly I’m starting to hallucinate?

We stare at each other for what might be a full minute, each dumbstruck, not quite believing our eyes. But he’s no apparition, and neither am I.

Well, I determine, adjusting rather quickly to the idea, if he’s really real and really here, there’s only one thing to do for a friend standing on my front lawn.

“Would you… like some coffee?”

Gil blinks a few times, scratches his head, then in a somewhat bewildered voice, he finally answers.

“Yeah.”

Gil

Earlier this morning I picked up an unusual trail. A human’s footprints on the east side of the mountain. Intrigued, I followed them, not really expecting much to come of it. Certainly not expecting this.

I sit on a rock outside of Evie’s cave and watch her build a fire. With her hatchet she chops off slivers of kindling from the firewood she’s gathered, from her cave she produces loose dry bark, stalks of brush and pine needles, and lays them all out according to size. Then, arranging a little flammable pile of the smallest bits, she strikes flint to her hatchet a few times to produce a spark.

It lights on the pine needles and a thin curl of smoke rises up. She’s on her hands and knees, blowing it, coaxing up that small tongue of flame, feeding it slowly with bits of pine needle and brush at first, and slowly building her way up from there until the flame’s steady enough to take a few pieces of firewood. Then she sets a grate over the flame and takes a cast iron cook pot down to the nearby stream, filling it with water and returning to set it to boil.

I watch fascinated as she returns to her cave to bring out a cup and a bowl and a bag of coffee grounds. When the water begins to bubble she adds the coffee and sticks another log under the grate. Letting it cook for a few minutes, she stirs it with a metal spoon and finally uses the sleeves of my old coat to protect her hands as she pours the dark liquid into the cup and bowl.

“Careful,” she murmurs, setting the cup on the rock beside me and taking the bowl for herself. “It’s hot.”

It’s all so incredibly surreal, I think as I sit across from her beneath the morning sun, waiting for my coffee to cool. Like a waking dream. And yet somehow I do not question a single thing about this moment, as though everything taking place here is perfectly normal and natural. As though we’ve been doing it all our lives.

I watch Evie take a sip of coffee from her bowl, and she colors. “I only bought one mug,” she explains, indicating to the cup on the rock beside me. Lifting it to my lips, I sample the brew. It’s strong with the faintest trace of ash. Like the coffee I had on the front lines.

“It’s good,” I say, and she squirms a little with satisfaction. I catch myself smiling faintly and I set the mug down. “So, what’s this all about?” I ask, gesturing to her camp. “How long have you been living in the mountains?”

“Last night was actually my first time sleeping up here. But I’ve been getting everything ready over the last week. After Yelena pushed me down the stairs—”

“She pushed you?”

“Mh,” she nods, and her shoulders shrink a little as she grips her awkward drinking vessel closer to her breast. “I’d put up with a lot of abuse until that point, I never gave it much thought, to be honest. It was just… life. But that morning, she sent me to your rifle range, and then she pushed me down the stairs and Stepmother…”

She trails off, and I become distantly aware of my fist clenched tightly atop my knee. My anger is instinctual, I recognize. Like my instinct to protect her. To think she’s been putting up with so much that she was finally driven to this extreme, I’m so incensed I can’t trust myself to even speak.

“Anyway, I’d had enough. I couldn’t count on anyone’s charity. I was willing to work but had no place to stay. I even considered going to the brothel, but… Then I found this cave. It was nice inside. Homey. And I thought, why not stay here? I know these woods so well, I know how to forage and hunt. I’m sure if I gave it my all, I could survive just fine. And like this, I’d finally be free.”

“Then, last night…” I say, feeling an ache I can’t quite explain begin in my chest, “all last night, you knew you’d be leaving?”

“After I returned your coat.”

I swallow. “And you didn’t say anything?”

Evie’s mouth falls open just a little. Our eyes are locked at this short distance. Neither of us moves. Then at last she closes her mouth and lowers her gaze to the fire.

“I couldn’t let anyone stop me. Not even… not even you.”

To think I might have lost her. To think I nearly let her slip right between my fingers. If I hadn’t happened to be out for a walk this morning, if I hadn’t caught her trail, this little fairy might have vanished from my life forever.  

I already know I can’t let her stay here. It’s far too dangerous for anyone to be on their own in the wild, to say nothing of an unarmed woman. But I can’t just dismiss her efforts, either. I can tell she’s put a lot of thought and work into this plan, and I want to recognize that before I attempt to convince her to come back down to civilization.

“Show me.”

Evie gives me a questioning look.

“Show me your cave and your stores. Show me how you’re going to survive out here on your own.”