Lightning flashed, and for an instant I saw the gnarled branches of dead trees above, like massive claws burst from the earth, trying to drag us down with them.
The rolling thunder followed us. We made our way to the valley below; I could see the sky about to rain. The clouds were a slick gray, and getting darker. We weren’t fast enough.
Sara disappeared in the downpour; I panicked, called out, and her hand grasped mine.
The storm drowned out our voices; I was grateful that she couldn’t hear my cry.
We should have made camp hours ago. It was my fault. I insisted, even though the air was heavy, the humidity of a summer storm, and the scent of rain was unmistakable.
Now we were lost. Travelling with Sara, travelling blind, I tried to lead us, but my guess was as good as hers. Finally, she began to pull on my hand. Just barely, I could hear her voice over the rain and the thunder.
“I see something!”
I wanted to pull back, to let go, but I knew I was lost.
I couldn’t tell where we were heading, but I had the vague impression we’d left the trail.
Suddenly, she was leading me through a doorway.
A doorway?
Just like that, the rain was gone; not stopped, I could hear it beating on the roof and the trees outside. But no longer was it drenching us. We were surrounded by wood, inside a sparsely furnished room, with a large fireplace set into a stone hearth.
A cabin!
“How did you find this place?!”
“It was just a sudden, really strong hunch,” she said, taking off her wet jacket and hanging it on a pegboard next to the door. She set her pack down and rolled out her sleeping bag in front of the fireplace.
“That’s one impressive hunch,” I thought out loud, noticing the firewood stacked neatly near the hearth, the cabinet stocked with food, and the cooking pot suspended above the fireplace. Next to the stack of firewood there were bundles of what appeared to be sage. There was even a bed, though it was a single.
“Check this out,” Sara pointed to the floor near the fireplace. There was dirt there, as if the floor had never been finished. It stopped just short of the stone.
“It seems like the hearth was here long before the cabin. This is ancient.”
“Yeah, like the cabin was built around it. Weird.”
We began to take a closer look at the stones, and in each there were small carvings. Many appeared to be runes, though others were more like simple hieroglyphics. A symbol that depicted a figure standing inside what seemed to be a heart was repeated on several.
“Any idea what this might be?” I asked.
“No clue.”
“We could take a look around outside tomorrow,” I said, “maybe there’s a sign or marker somewhere. At any rate, I don’t think anybody will object to our being here tonight. We can leave some money behind, for the food.”
Sara nodded, and before I’d finished hanging up my own drenched coat and unloading my pack and bedroll, she was already looking through the cabinets. Soon enough, thanks to my spare matches, we had a fire going. We were able to make stew with the provisions left behind. I put the money into one of the empty containers, with a note of apology for having made ourselves at home.
After eating our fill, we sat on our sleeping bags and stared at the fire. Between full stomachs and the sound of rain, I felt drowsy. The air felt just as heavy inside as it had outside, before the storm.
It was clear to me now why I hadn’t wanted to make camp when I’d known we should. I didn’t know what to say, and I was afraid to say anything. There seemed a good chance that was why Sara hadn’t insisted we stop either.
“Any guesses about this place?” I finally managed to ask, grateful to have some idea of a way to break the silence.
“The hearth reminds me of a shrine,” she said, “though I can’t imagine who would have built one out here.”
“Hmm, it does seem like a religious thing, with the runes and all. And the sage.”
Sara stood up, stretched, and moved over to the bundle, and took a patch from it. She sniffed it and tossed it into the fire. I thought it was my imagination, but the fire seemed to change color for just a moment. We both took a deep breath. The scent wasn’t quite sage, though even now I’m hard-pressed to say exactly what was different about it.
Whatever it was, it did relax me. At least, the pressure in my head to find something to say had let up. As Sara sat back down, she looked at me, the first time she’d really looked at me all evening. I felt myself tense up again, more quickly than the incense had helped me unwind.
“Adam, are we okay?”
“What do you mean?” I lied.
“We used to talk,” she said, and for a long time she left it at that.
“We still talk.”
“You used to really tell me what...was really going on, with you.”
She sounded so sad.
I felt the room begin to spin; the sight of her next to me, but apart from me, began to change. That face, older but just as beautiful, became distant, up and away. I hadn’t been able to see any kind of beauty in a very long time. Now that face, the face of the woman I’d fallen in love with so many years ago, was rising above me, out of reach.
“It’s just...the world, the job, the way things are these days...” I muttered, but she didn’t believe me and neither did I.
“I feel alone.”
If I’d have tried to touch her, my hand couldn’t have reached her shoulder.
“How do you think I feel?!” I snapped. “I can’t balance all this. Not with what happened at work, not with...”
I didn’t have to say it. As the words hesitated on my tongue, she drifted further up and away. At least, that’s what it seemed like from where I was sitting. There’s no doubt how it seemed to her.
She stood up and tossed another log on the fire, prodded it, and sniffled. I wanted to believe she was catching a cold, that we’d been out in the freezing rain too long. I knew better.
Outside, the rain was pounding, battering the roof of this sanctuary, this waypoint. I pretended to fiddle with the remnant of the stew in my bowl, which I could barely hold now. She dried her tears when she thought I wasn’t looking. And then she turned to me, standing so tall.
“We spent this entire hike barely speaking. It’s been months like this. This isn’t how we were. It’s not us!”
Her voice cracked, and she didn’t try to hide it.
“We’re not kids anymore.”
“Is that so?! Well, you sure aren’t acting like an adult!”
Her voice seemed so much louder now, so far above me, and as if to emphasize the point the thunder roared outside, rolling down through the valley.
“Okay, Adam,” she wiped away the tears on the sleeve of her flannel shirt, “let’s lay it all out here. Because I can’t keep going like this. You don’t talk to me. You don’t spend time with me. You don’t tell me anything. I had to twist your arm to even convince you to go on this trip, and even then, you have barely said a word to me the entire time. I’m trying, Adam, I really am, but I don’t know what to do, and I...I don’t think you care. And if you don’t, then I shouldn’t either. Is this it? Are we done?”
The change was smooth and, like so many things, seems so obvious in hindsight. At the time, we didn’t notice. I was like a mouse next to her. We had went on as if nothing had changed at all, only because it felt like it had been that way for so long already. It was just a little more obvious now.
Looking up at her, though, I finally realized that the distance had nothing to do with her.
I was the one who had dwindled.
The scent of the incense seemed to flood the room, though the fire receded and threatened to go out, and Sara seemed so much farther out of reach than before.
I burst into tears.
The world went dark. When I opened my eyes again and wiped away the mist, I saw her face, writ larger than life itself, the life we’d shared, in front of me. Those massive pools of her eyes looked right into mine.
“I’m still here,” she whispered. “Just be here with me.”
Sara held me close, and I felt the warmth of her breast, my body pressed up against her. She took me to the bed, and held me to those enormous lips, and covered me in kisses big enough to swallow me whole. Wrapped in the palm of her hand, I felt smaller than ever, and it wasn’t easy, but...I felt like she’d pulled me back from the edge, she’d pulled us both back. I had failed twice over, and I owed her the same care. I owed her so much.
But for now, I could only be small, and be held, and be warm.
The night went on, the fire grew once more, and eventually the rain stopped.
Sara tucked me into the breast pocket of her flannel and kept an enormous hand over me, and I felt safe, and I said things I’d never wanted to say. It wasn’t the only talk like that we needed to have, but it was a start, though a very rough one. After carrying so much alone for so long, I knew I had done enough, and now I had to share that weight. I told her how sorry I was, and how much I loved her, and how this was no time or way to say goodbye. Maybe we weren’t okay, but we still could be. We would be.
I said so much that eventually she shushed me, and cooed me to sleep, when her own tears had dried, and when she’d nearly drowned me in those enormous kisses.
When the morning came, the fire was out, and the skies were blue. I awoke to find her next to me; thinking back now, when we’d arrived, I could’ve sworn it had only been a single bed. We held each other for a while. And then we cleaned up and left, without ever looking around for any sign of who might have built that cabin, or why. It didn’t seem to matter. The trail was clear, and we still had miles to go.
Along the way we talked more, about this, about that, and everything in between. It was like it had used to be, and yet it was new. It felt like first step in a long journey, and we would walk it side by side.