The cabin lay tattooed with shadows; the fire sputtered. Jonah fed firewood into the stove, again, as he had for years. His life an endless loop of the same tired beginnings. A path too worn. A life of aborted trajectory.
No more. That life was over.
“Let’s get that coat on you,” he said.
He held out his hand.
She hesitated, took it.
Her hand was warm and soft, and so small. Her grip strong.
He took her to the back room and got the coat. From the trunk, he dug out a pair of rubber boots, dried and cracked, and shut the lid and had her sit on it.
He handed her the coat and she slung it onto herself then clawed at her scalp. He made a note to pick up RID at the store.
“Warm,” he said. “Let’s get boots on you.”
He picked up a boot and tipped it upside down. A sprinkling of mouse leavings spilled from it. He reached his hand in to straighten the lining and a startling, heinous pain bit into the web of flesh at his thumb. He howled and tossed the boot. A spider latched to his flesh, its brown sac abdomen pulsing. “Fucking Christ,” Jonah hissed and smashed the spider to brown juice and grabbed his wounded hand. The girl shrank from him, eyes alert with terror.
“It’s okay. It’s dead,” Jonah said.
A fierce pain lit his hand and fire streaked up his arm; the muscles twitched. What creatures this world unleashed. A spider waiting in the dark of a boot. A memory of a spider flared in his mind and died out.
“All gone,” he said, sweat washing from him. He tried to flex his hand, the joint and muscles stubborn and rigid, as if set upon by rigor mortis.
He ground his teeth against the pain as it spread and pulsed in his jaw. His heart felt as if it might burst from pressure.
Sweat dripped from his forehead, spattered on her.
“Let’s see if they still fit,” he said, his voice sounded odd, his jaw fizzed with a remote numbness.
She dipped her toes in the boot and he slipped it on.
“Perrfect,” he said.
Cinderella’s glass slipper.
He took hold of the laces best he could, fingers unable to grasp fully, and pulled. The laces turned to dust in his hand. He blinked back sweat, a hot sting in his eyes.
“Let’s trry the otherr.” His cotton tongue disobeyed; his voice, a muddied river.
He slipped her foot into a boot. Perrfect.
He stood. The room listed. He reached out to steady himself.
She was there, next to him. Keeping him upright. Her arms wrapped tight around his waist. He put his good hand toward hers. The bitten hand sang with pain at the center of his palm and his fingertips quivered. His heartbeat was too weak and too fast.
She took his good hand. “Okay,” she said. “You okay.”
He wanted to take a flashlight with them but he’d be unable to hold it in his injured hand and didn’t dare go into the woods among the mines without holding her hand with his good hand. They’d have to muster in the dark.
“I knoww the waay,” he whispered. “I knoww the waay.”
They ventured onto the porch, his hand in hers and her hand in his. He stood with his legs far apart to steady himself.
Rags of snow seeped up out of the darkness at the knuckles of tree roots. He let his eyes soak up what light the night would give.
“Holld my hand tiight. Don’t let go.”
She gripped his hand.
“Careful,” he said.
And they stepped off into the dark together.