The cold hit like a sledge, but I ignored it. The woods were transformed, every branch rimed in ice, the ground hard enough to bite through boot leather. The sky was perfect, no smudge ofexhaust or jet trail, only the hard blue of winter and the yellow promise of sun.
From the ridge above the lodge, I could see farther than I’d ever seen back home. The forest rolled away in folds of black and white, and beyond it, a patchwork of fields bordered by stone walls. A cluster of rooftops huddled in a hollow, smoke rising from one or two, the rest quiet and dark. Beyond that, a river, thin and silver, cuts through the valley like a blade.
I listened. No cars. No hum of transformer or power line. But there were other sounds, a crow, somewhere off to my right. The clatter of wood on wood, maybe from the village. And faint, but real, the ring of a bell—clear, old-fashioned, not some digital shit, but the kind that summoned the world to prayer or warning or both.
I stared at it, heart pounding, the facts lining up with a slow, awful certainty. The air smelled wrong because it was clean, untouched by chemicals or burnt rubber. The village looked wrong because it was built for horses, not cars. Even the sun felt sharper, like the world itself had peeled off a layer of smog and was seeing me for the first time.
I was in the past, not just out of my own world, but out of my own fucking time.
I looked down at my hands, still scratched and bruised from the fight, still marked with the ink of the life I’d built. The tattoos were wrong here. They didn’t belong. I didn’t belong.
But the girl did.
I pulled a branch off the woodpile, whittled the end to a point with my knife, and drove it into the ground beside the door. It was a signpost, a marker. If I was going to survive, I’d need to stake out some territory.
When I went back in, Scarlette was awake. She watched me with clear, suspicious eyes, like a cat that might purr or scratch depending on the next move.
“You’re awake,” I said.
She nodded, voice rough from sleep. “You didn’t leave.”
“Didn’t plan to.” I stoked the fire, got it going again. “You hungry?”
She hesitated, then nodded again.
I found a crust of bread in the corner, picked the mold off, and broke it in half. She took it with both hands, ate slowly and deliberately. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.
“Where are we?” she asked, after a while.
I looked at her, really looked, and tried to decide if the truth would help or hurt. “Somewhere we’re not supposed to be.”
She chewed this over, lips pressed thin. “Did you follow me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Guess I did.”
She stared at the fire, then at the splint on her leg, then at me. “You fixed it.”
“Had to,” I said. “You weren’t going to do it yourself.”
She smiled, barely. “I would have tried.”
“I know,” I said. “But you don’t have to, not right now.”
A bird called outside, close. She flinched, then relaxed. The old fear wasn’t gone, but it was tamed for now.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. Then she leaned back against the furs and closed her eyes, just for a second, as if trusting me not to ruin it.
I watched her, then the fire, then the window. The village in the distance was already waking up. Smoke from the chimneys. The bell, again, calling out to a world that didn’t know we existed yet.
It would find us, eventually. Trouble always did.
But for now, the circle had given us a reprieve. A place to breathe, to heal, to plan. Maybe even to start over.
I sat with my back to the door, one eye on the girl and one on the horizon, and waited for the future to catch up.
It always did, in the end.
Scarlette
