Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
I stare into the steam, eyes burning, until I realize Erasmus is crouched beside the chair, close enough that I can smell the smoke trapped in his beard.
“You found out the truth, then,” he says, and his voice is as flat and cold as the forest outside.
I don’t answer, but my face must tell the whole story. He nods, as if he’s seen this scene a hundred times before.
“I told you,” he says. “Some come here to lose what’s chasing them. Some come to get lost on purpose.”
I sip the tea. It tastes like pine needles and heartbreak.
Erasmus stands, stretching with a groan, and grabs a tin of antiseptic from a shelf. He pulls up a little wooden stool and takes my right hand in his, flipping it over to examine the cut across my palm.
“You’re not the first, you know,” he says, voice low. “Talon McKnight invites a girl up here every year, like clockwork. Some last a week. Some last longer. But they all leave, sooner or later, never to come back. A lot of them leave with tears in their eyes.”
The words sting, but they also make sense in a way nothing else has. I nod, staring at the floor, trying not to cry again.
“He never hits them,” Erasmus says, as if that’s something. “He never hurts them, not physically. But he uses ‘em up, just the same. Then they vanish, and he moves on.”
He smears ointment on my hand, wraps it in a strip of old bandana, and ties it off with a neat square knot.
“You’re a smart girl,” he says, meeting my eyes. “You know what you have to do now.”
I shake my head, a slow, shuddering motion. “I don’t know anything,” I say, and my voice cracks. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Erasmus watches me for a long moment, the lines in his face softening just a little.
“Sometimes,” he says, “you have to get lost before you find your way out.”
He stands, walks to the mantle, and picks up a small wooden fox, ears alert, tail curled around its haunches. The eyes are painted black, two pinpricks of knowing. He presses it into my palm, closing my fingers around it.
“I carved that for you when you first showed up,” he says. “Thought you’d need it.”
I run my thumb over the grain, feeling the notches and ridges, the hidden patience in every cut.
“The fox knows when to trust its instincts,” Erasmus says. “So should you. Take him with you and keep him close.”
He tosses another log on the fire, the flames roaring up, as I clutch the fox tight, the tea cooling in my lap, and stare into the bright orange light.
I don’t know what happens next.
But for the first time since I left the cabin, I want to find out.
Erasmus’s old pickup sounds like it’s chewing gravel for breakfast. Every pothole jars my spine, every lurch and grind feels like a warning shot from the universe. The old man sits behind the wheel, both hands gripping it so tight his knuckles look like pale river stones. His scarf is wrapped three times around his throat, his face as blank as the snowdrifted woods blurring by outside.
I clutch the wooden fox in my lap, rubbing its ears like a worry stone. The heater works, but only barely; my breath ghosts out of my mouth, and I can feel the tremor in my hands as I try to hold them still. My knees are streaked with dried blood, jeans crusted and stiff, but I can’t bring myself to care. Every cell in my body is too busy replaying the last twenty-four hours on a loop, like some fucked-up highlight reel from a reality show nobody asked to watch.
We drive for a while without talking. The road curves, the sky leaks a watery gold, and somewhere far off a crow barks out a complaint. Erasmus doesn’t look at me, not even once, but I can feel him thinking, the way a wolf can smell blood through a mile of forest.
I break first. “How many?”
He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand.
He takes a breath, then lets it out slow, the sound like a tire going flat.
“You sure you want to know?” he asks.
I don’t, but the question is already out there, and I can’t take it back. “I do.”
He shrugs, shoulders hunching under the weight of the world. “More than a few. Less than twenty, I’d guess. Sometimes they show up together. Sometimes one at a time. Always pretty, always smart, always a little lost.”
I stare out the window, watching the trees flick by in a silent, endless parade.
“He ever… keep one?” I ask, voice a splinter in my throat.
Erasmus smiles, but it’s not kind. “All the girls are gone by the spring thaw, one way or another.”
There’s a pit in my stomach that just keeps growing, filling up with every ugly thing I’ve ever feared about myself. I grip the fox tighter, sharp wood biting into my palm. I try to remember a time when I thought I was special, when I thought any of this could be different.