We lay there for a long time, the fire shrinking to coals, the cold held at bay by our combined heat.
When I woke, her hand was on my chest, fingers spread wide, as if anchoring me to this world. The storm outside had died, leaving the woods silent and waiting. I turned, watched her sleep, and knew that whatever came next, it would be easier with her beside me.
***
By the time the second storm hit, the hut was cold as a crypt, every seam of the wall whistling with wind and night. Scarlette sat hunched in the glow of a stubby candle, her legs tucked under, one foot bare, the other bandaged in a modern art of gauze and comfrey leaves. The fire was dead but for a single red coal, and the air was thick with the smell of burned fat and the raw, damp musk of animal. Our animal, mostly.
I watched her from the pallet, where I’d set up camp with the battered coat as a blanket and my boots under my head. She had the look of someone measuring the silence, testing its weight. I thought about what to say, how to tell her that in another world I’d be halfway to Mexico by now, but here I was, tied to a little hut and a girl with more scars than sense.
She spoke before I could. “Did you ever have a family, where you come from?” She didn’t look up, just stared at the blue flicker in the candle and waited.
I took a second to work through the question, like maybe she was building to a trick. “Had one. Didn’t last.”
She nodded, as if this was only confirmation of something she’d always known. “It’s better, then,” she said. “Better to have none than to have one that wants you dead.”
The words felt like a punch, but I kept my face neutral. “Is that why you run?” I asked. “Because you think they’ll kill you?”
She drew her knees tighter. “Not kill, exactly. Just erase. Turn me into something I’m not. A wife. A mother. A secret.” She glanced up at me, the lines of her face going sharp in the waxy light. “They say the church can forgive any sin, so long as you confess. But what do you do if your sin is that you want to live?”
I sat up, boots hitting the dirt. My own sins were legion, but not one of them felt as sharp as that.
“Where I’m from,” I said, “they tell you to suck it up, or else. You learn to hide the wild parts. Make them into something useful. Or you end up in a box, or a cage, or dead in a ditch.” I flexed my hands, the wolf tattoo leering up at me in blue-black. “But at least there, nobody pretends it’s for your own good.”
She stared at my arm, then reached over, her fingers tracing the line of the ink. Her touch was careful, almost reverent. “They have legends of men like you, here. Sometimes the stories are warnings. Sometimes they’re wishes.”
“And what about women like you?” I asked, trying to keep it light. “Any stories for them?”
She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that belonged on a knife. “Only the kind that end in fire.” Her eyes stayed fixed on my hand, on the way the veins and ink twisted together. She squeezed my palm so tight I felt the bones flex. “I’m not going back,” she said, voice flat. “Not even if it means dying out here.”
I didn’t argue. She’d already made that choice.
I reached into my jacket, found the flask, and passed it over. She took a long pull, wiped her mouth, and passed it back. I felt the burn as it went down, warming nothing but my resolve.
We could have left it at that. But I wasn’t built for silence, not when the world was closing in. I wanted to say something real, so I did.
“You’re not alone in this,” I said. “If you want to run, I’ll run with you. If you want to fight—” I shrugged, “I’m pretty good at fighting.”
She laughed, the sound sudden and sharp. “Are you good at running?”
“Better than you’d think,” I said.
She glanced at the door, at the black square of night behind it. “They’ll hunt us, you know. Even if we leave tonight.”
“Let them,” I said. “They won’t catch us.”
She seemed to like that. She stood, limped over, and dropped onto the pallet beside me, the air between us charged with static. She pressed her side to mine, the heat of her body a shock in the cold room.
“Tell me about your legends,” she said. “The ones about men who turn into wolves.”
I shrugged, but the old stories spilled out. “Some say it’s a curse. Some say it’s a blessing. Depends on whether the wolf eats you or saves your life.”
She listened, head on my shoulder. “And you? Which are you?”
I thought about the taste of blood in my mouth, the hunger that was never quite gone, the way her skin felt under my hands.
“Both,” I said, and she nodded, as if that answered everything.
The candle burned lower. Scarlette traced the lines of my tattoo with her fingernail, slow, careful.
