We sit across from each other at the rickety table, which is so narrow that our knees touch underneath it. The kerosene lamp throws shuddering shadows against the stone walls. Wind screeches outside. Wolf has positioned himself equidistant between us, his chin on his paws, waiting for any accidental bean overflow that might fall his way.
I eat, but beans taste like beans no matter what, and I'm starving enough to devour every last little lentil there is. Even that's not enough: When I'm done, I use my finger to mop up the sauce, which is not something I'd normally do in front of another human being, but we're pretty far past decorum at this juncture. I mean, the man has carried me unconscious and held me while I ugly-cried and been literally shot in my general vicinity.
The social contract has been voided.
What happens next is anyone's guess.
Afon finishes his own plate in about four bites—big, efficient, joyless bites—and stands to wash the dishes as best as he can with the meager supplies available to us.
I watch his back. The sweater is dark enough that the bloodstain doesn't show anymore, but I know it's there, just like the tattoo, both of them proof that he will conceal anything from me if it spares him just a second of tough conversation, because he's an emotionally constipated mountain of a man with the communicative abilities of a junkyard toilet, and if he could just spend one goshdarn second contemplating what it's like to bemein this situation, then?—
Oh, hell.
Screw it.
I can't do this anymore.
"Afon."
He grunts and stops scrubbing the plate for a second, though he keeps his back to me.
"The tattoo on your ribs."
His hands stop moving. Just for a beat—a half second, maybe less—before they resume rinsing. "What about it?"
"The swallow with the key. What does it mean?"
"It's a tattoo."
I give him a slow, vicious clap. "Oh, wow. Incredible. Thank you for illuminating me. Let me rephrase: what does itsignify?"
"It signifies that I sat in a chair and someone put ink in my skin."
I can feel my blood pressure climbing. "Afon."
"Caroline."
"Has anyone ever told you you're an asshole?"
"Many people," he replies somberly. "Most of the ones I've met in my life, actually."
I pinch the bridge of my nose. He's trying to throw me off track, but I can't afford to get lost in the weeds here. "Afon, my father drew that exact symbol at the bottom of the last letter he ever wrote me. The one he left with Matvei. It's half of what brought me up this mountain in the first place."
Afon sets the plates down. He turns around and leans against the makeshift counter—which is really just a shelf nailed to the wall—and crosses his arms over his chest. In this posture, backlitby the kerosene lamp, arms folded, jaw set, he looks exactly like what he is: a concrete wall.
"It's late," he says. "You should rest."
"You keep doing this!" I shove back from the table angrily. The chair scrapes against the stone floor with a sound that makes Wolf's ears twitch. "You keep opening a door halfway and then slamming it in my face. Every time I get close to something real, you shut down. And I have beenpatient.I have been so patient that my therapist would weep with pride. But I can't—I physicallycannot—pretend for one more second that there aren't things you're hiding from me."
Afon's expression doesn't change. His arms stay crossed. "The symbol is not something I can explain in a sentence," he says.
"Then use two sentences!" I cry out. "Use ten! Use a hundred! We're in a cardboard freaking box on the side of a mountain and there is literallynowhere for you to go!"
Almost automatically, his eyes flick to the door, as if he's testing my assertion. Like,Well, maybe I could make it if I just went out right now…
But then he sighs and looks back at me. I guess even Afon Satyrin has his limits when it comes to freezing to death as an avoidance tactic.
"I told you," he says, "when the time is right, I'll tell you everything. But there's an order to it, and this isn't?—"
