26

Adelaide is gone. She ceases to exist, here on her sofa.

A gust of wind surges through the broken door, blazing the fire anew. A log pops, and Adelaide jumps. The old man tightens his grip on her thigh.

Sometimes there is little difference between beasts and men.

“Shhh,” he comforts. “It’s only the wind.”

Adelaide clenches the knife in her fist.

“Never mind ’bout the water,” he says. “I know you and me got history. And I don’t expect any kindness.”

The old man looks to his hounds growing more and more restless on the steps. He lowers a hand through the air, and they struggle to calm down. One dog refuses, prancing on his front paws, whining.

“I didn’t want this to happen,” he utters through a clenched jaw. “I only came for my children.”

The man removes his hand from Adelaide’s leg and wipes his nose with a cloth from his back pocket. He replaces the cloth. He replaces his hand.

“But I’ll tell you somethin’ you already know,” he says, his voice hoarse. “They’re more mine than they are yours.”

He sighs deeply.

“And I’ll tell you somethin’ else you already know.”

River creeps closer to the sofa.

“You won’t win this.”

Adelaide’s eyes water. She swallows back what feels like an anvil. The knife trembles in her hand.

The old man continues. “I never wanted to come back here, you know. I was happy enough to leave you be.” He spreads his hands. “Yet here I am. And I’ve lost my boys. Because of you.”

His voice is louder now. Sharper. River emerges from below the armrest of the sofa.

“I’m sittin’ here tryin’ to decide somethin’,” he says.

River’s nose. Her cheeks. Her shoulders.

“Do I take what I came for?”

Her hands. Her knees.

“Or does somethin’ need to be done?”

A bark from the doorway.

The old man points through the door, outside the cabin, his finger crooked and trembling. “Does somethin’ need to be done about that?”

Adelaide sees something in the old man’s face she hadn’t noticed before. Frailty. His cheekbones—high and sharp. His eyes—still dark and bewitching, but whites stained yellow with time, a thick burst of red at the corners. An abyss below them—cavernous, paper skin, spiderweb veins.

But old man or not, Adelaide knows he will kill them both tonight.

She tries to remind herself that, in the end, it doesn’t matter. There are no magnificent deaths. She has done all she can for herself, and for River. She can do no more. She is no mother bear. Perhaps she never was.

And then the old man sees River as she inches closer, her skin straining over rigid muscle.

The old man leans forward. His gaze softens, and he smiles. The dogs stand alert, watching River. Watching everything.

River growls and they become uneasy, spinning in place, barking, ears twitching.

Beside Adelaide, the old man speaks.

“Well, aren’t you even prettier than—”

Adelaide moves before she has time to reconsider, and the old man falls silent. Maybe he forgot what he was going to say. Or maybe he saw the knife flashing in the light—the knife Adelaide now holds, arcing toward him.

The blade sinks into the old man’s hand, through skin and muscle, and comes out the other side, lodging into Adelaide’s thigh.

The old man roars, and snatches his hand from her leg, splitting Adelaide’s skin. She cries out, buckling to the floor.

The dogs erupt. Yelping. Salivating. But River snarls, and they do not enter.

The old man stands and rises above her. He cradles his hand, blood seeping down his pants and onto the floor, his face like a bomb ready to detonate.

The dogs are so loud that the girl cannot think. One enters the cabin and the girl doesn’t know what to do to make him go away. Her mind is full of holes, like the tunnels through the trees that those small, fat worms leave behind. Yes, that’s what her mind is like.

The girl growls.

It is a growl like the kind mother makes—soft and deep, because loud is not always scarier.

The sound travels down, past the girl’s throat, where it goes into her chest and then her belly, before coming back up and out of her mouth. The dogs are scared of her, and so she growls at the dogs again and makes them even more scared.

One of the dogs leaps forward, looking into the girl’s big eyes.

The girl looks into the dog’s big eyes, and he takes a step back.

The others stay behind the first, but they watch, and the girl growls at them, too, and they cry. They are not brave, so they do not enter the cabin.

The woman crawls toward her, leaving her blood in a line across the floor. The girl can smell it. She thinks the dogs can smell it, too, and the girl tells them, No. Go away. She says these things the same way she would have said them to brother if he were here, and she needed to say no, or go away. But the dogs do not know her words. Sometimes you don’t need to understand the same words to make someone feel something, and the girl growls again—deeper, scarier—and the dogs back away from the door.

The woman reaches for the girl, says words to her, but the girl does not hear them. The girl is watching the man coming closer to them, growing taller, and the girl wants his blood to leave a line on the floor.

She growls at the dogs once more and then leaps at the old man. She can already taste his blood in her mouth.

Adelaide screams as River launches over her. She reaches for the girl, but is too slow, her reflexes further muddied by pain.

The hounds bay at the door. They leap and circle the steps, staring at Adelaide with predator eyes, ready to bite, destroy. She doesn’t understand why they have not entered.

The old man hurls himself across the living room, launching River from his back. She lands on the sofa, legs spinning above her like an overturned crab. She barks angry syllables, and pulls herself upright, leaping at the man once more.

Behind her, the dogs test the boundaries of the cabin. Stepping in. Stepping out. Howling.

The old man screams as River sinks her teeth into his arm.

Adelaide can see the knife still lodged through his hand, the handle protruding from between the bones. She can get to it. She must.

Adelaide pulls herself to her knees, gripping the side table for support, but it collapses beneath her weight, and the lantern explodes against the ground. Adelaide careens backward, slipping on the lantern fluid now dripping down her skirt and pooling among shards of broken glass.

The girl tries to bite the old man’s neck, but she cannot reach.

She kicks at his body, but she is too small.

The old man reels backward, grunting as he thrusts the child over his shoulder, launching River across the room. She slams against the wall, and the knife spins from the old man’s hand, clattering to the ground.

Adelaide scrambles toward it. She no longer feels the pain in her chest, the gash across her leg, or the puddle of cold lantern fluid sheeting down her legs. There is only the knife in her hand.

Adelaide stands. Behind her, the clock ticks, finally offering solidarity.

Yes-yes-yes.

She holds the blade out before her. Ready.

Ready.

Adelaide rises. She can barely see the old man in the corner of her living room, but she can see the barrel of his shotgun, the muzzle—clogged with dirt and marred by rock—mere inches from her face.

The blade in her hand is suddenly absurd, but she tightens her grip anyway.

“Why do you make everything so goddamned difficult?”

His voice echoes across the small room, and Adelaide nearly crumples to the floor.

“I should kill you right now. Both of you.”

Adelaide closes her eyes.

“Goddamn it.”

Adelaide waits.

“I came for one thing. One goddamned thing.”

She waits to die.

“I lost my boys ’cause of you.”

Silence fills the room, and Adelaide braves a peek at the old man.

He shudders before her, the shotgun swaying in his grip. Adelaide takes a small step back, shifting the knife to a better position in her hand.

Behind him, River stands and stumbles, her head bobbing from side to side.

The old man grasps the thickest part of the shotgun, and Adelaide holds her breath.

“Goddamn,” he says, the word erupting from his lips. He exhales in a long whistle.

“I know you didn’t hurt my boys. I know it wasn’t you.” Though his words are lenient, his voice is harsh, enraged.

The old man adjusts the shotgun, holding it more like a stick than a weapon. He tucks his injured hand against his chest and dips his chin toward it.

“You ’n me got history, but now I came for what’s mine, and I ain’t leavin’ empty-handed.”

He points the shotgun at River.

“I’m takin’ her with me, and you ain’t gonna stop me,” he says.

“So take her,” Adelaide says, hardening her grip around the knife, and stepping closer to the beast moving toward her daughter.

The room spins around the girl. Her body hurts. More than all of the woman’s hurt, and mother’s hurt, and the man’s hurt, all bundled together. The man’s fingers have left spots on her arms. The spots burn, like he is still holding her. Like he is still hurting her.

The girl stands by the fire and waits for her legs to become strong. She is not scared. Not anymore.

Maybe a little scared.

The girl is so close to the fire that she can feel it on her skin. She touched it once, many moons ago. She can still feel the hurt if she rubs her fingers together.

The man is stronger than the girl. And braver than the girl. But the girl stands by the fire. And she knows that fire hurts.

The girl reaches into the fireplace, clenching her teeth against the hurt on her skin, the smell of her burning hair. She stands before the man, brave as mother, holding her weapon—a piece of tree glowing like the sun.