The Weight We Carry

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I sat there for a while, listening to the fire crackle softly at the center of Storm’s hut.

Thorn’s spirit was out there somewhere, wandering freely and apparently content with leaving his body, his family, and his life behind.

Worse, he had left it all for me to inherit.

And as long as his body remained alive, I could never go back home.

The truth settled over my shoulders like another heavy pelt, adding its weight on top of everything else that I’d been carrying since I woke up in this world.

I pushed myself up onto my feet.

The room tilted. I grabbed onto the nearest shelf and held on until the floor settled beneath me again.

Raven stood up immediately. “What are you doing?”

“Going home.”

My jaw trembled slightly when I said it, the word leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

I let go of the shelf once I was sure that the floor had stopped moving. Every part of my body felt heavy. All I wanted now was somewhere quiet to lie down. Somewhere I wouldn’t have to answer another question, hear another explanation, or face another person that was still trying to decide what I was.

Storm watched me from the other side of the firepit.

“You are more than welcome to remain here for the night,” he offered.

I shook my head. “I’ll be fine.”

“That’s what you said earlier,” Raven commented, “You weren’t even able to keep up with me on the way here.”

“I still made it, didn’t I?”

My feet thumped heavily against the floor as I made my way towards the entrance of the hut. The cold that leaked through the edges of the flap covering the doorway bit into my fingers before I'd even touched it.

Behind me, Raven let out a frustrated breath. “David, Rain said–”

“I just want to sleep.” The words came out sharper than I’d intended, but I didn’t have the strength left in me to soften them, “My hut isn’t that far.”

Neither Raven nor Storm made any move to stop me as I reached for the hide hanging in front of the door.

I pulled the flap aside, and a gust of cold air swept through the hut. I blinked as it struck my face, the sting offering me something smaller to think about than wandering spirits, borrowed bodies, and a home that I would never see again.

I stepped outside.

Snow crunched behind me before the flap had even fallen shut.

Raven quickly caught up with me, pulling her furs tightly around herself as she fought back against the cold.

“I’ll walk with you,” she said.

I didn’t have the energy left to argue. “Fine.”

The two of us started making our way towards the main path in relative silence, with nothing filling the air between us except for the sound of the trees rustling in the wind and our footsteps in the snow.

What conversation could the two of us possibly have held in that moment, really? Raven had just learned that her husband had essentially died in her absence, leaving her and Shade behind while handing his body off to a stranger from a completely different world. Meanwhile, any hope that I might have had left of going back to my old life had been extinguished. For as long as this body was alive, I’d never see my grandparents or the Willoughby homestead again.

I swallowed the lump I could feel building in my throat as we began approaching Echo’s hut. The warm light of a fire still burned from within as shadows danced in and out of the doorway. No doubt that was Echo as she did her best to keep Shade entertained.

Raven stopped at the foot of the path leading up to the hut, staring at it with uncertainty before glancing back up at me.

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright?” she asked.

Whatever defensiveness she’d had left in her had been completely drained. Now she mostly just sounded tired and a little bit worried.

“I’ll be fine,” I told her, repeating my words from Storm’s hut, “I just need to get some sleep is all.”

Raven stared at me for a long moment before looking back over at Echo’s hut. Her face twisted slightly as she turned back to me.

“What am I supposed to tell my son?”

The question came out in a whisper that sounded as desperate as it was painful, sending an ache shooting through my chest.

Her son.

Not mine.

Not ours.

Hers.

I drew in a deep breath and let it go in a sigh.

“You are his mother,” I said slowly, resting a heavy hand on her shoulder, “Tell him what you think he needs to hear.”

Raven glanced towards Echo’s hut again, then back to me. “I don’t think I can.”

I looked over towards the hut, watching the shadows that darted around and moved just beyond the hide hanging in the doorway. Over the sound of the wind blowing in my ears, I could hear Shade’s delighted laughter coming from inside.

I drew in another breath, trying to keep my voice steady.

“Whatever you decide to tell him, can you at least let him know that I’m not angry at him? That none of it was his fault?”

My voice broke before I could finish, and my jaw clamped shut as I blinked back tears that threatened to fall.

Raven noticed.

“Of course,” she said, slowly allowing herself to drift onto the hut’s narrow path, “Good night.”

Our eyes lingered on each other for a moment before she finally turned away from me.

“Good night,” I muttered.

I started towards my own hut, but my legs faltered beneath me. I caught myself against the back of a sled that had been left behind by the far-hunters, gripping it until the darkness cleared from the edges of my vision.

Then Grandpa’s voice rose from somewhere deep in my memory.

“Just one foot in front of the other, Davey. We’re almost home.”

He used to say that near the end of our longer hunting trips, when we were weather-beaten, aching, and tired from carrying our packs. No matter how exhausted I was, those words had always seemed to make the last few miles easier.

We could always count on there being a home waiting for us at the end of those trips.

I lowered my head and stared at the snow beneath my feet.

Just one foot in front of the other.

I couldn’t let myself think about where they were taking me now.

A low whistle pulled me out of the memory, and I lifted my head.

Bone’s hut stood just ahead, a dark shape surrounded by trampled snow. Light spilled out of the open doorway, casting shadows across Bone’s face as he stood near his work bench, watching me as though he had been waiting for me to pass by.

Bone jerked his head to one side as our eyes met, gesturing for me to come inside.

I considered it for a moment as I looked past him farther up the mountain. Thorn’s hut sat dark beneath the trees. No light meant no fire. No fire meant gathering wood, coaxing embers back to life, and sitting alone in the cold until the place had warmed up enough for me to fall asleep in.

I didn’t have enough left in me to deal with any of it.

Bone disappeared inside without waiting for an answer.

After a moment, I followed him.

Bone’s hut was as messy on the inside as it was outside. Every wall had something piled against it – firewood, bundles of hide, and half-finished projects that had been left lying about. There was little left in terms of available space, save for a table that sat low near the floor, a large bed towards the back, and a few feet of open space surrounding the firepit in the center of it.

Bone acknowledged me with a grunt as he tended to several fish cooking over the fire. I lowered myself next to him, making sure to leave plenty of space for him to work.

For a while, neither of us spoke. I stared into the flames and tried not to think.

“You know Thorn’s hut isn’t that far,” I eventually said.

“Mine’s closer,” Bone stated flatly.

I glanced at him as his attention remained on the fish.

Fair enough.

Silence settled between us again.

It wasn’t the comfortable silence that I had grown used to sharing with Bone. There was something expectant beneath it, as though he had questions that he was waiting for me to answer.

“I heard you panicked today,” he eventually said.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said quietly.

“Heard you also went to see Storm…”

“I don’t want to talk about it…”

The harshness that came through in my voice made him stare, but he seemed to understand as he allowed me my space and returned his attention to the fire.

When the fish was ready, he placed it in front of me. My eyes immediately gravitated to the fish’s green and red scales.

A whole sockeye salmon.

“Your favorite,” Bone muttered.

My teeth clenched.

The scent of smoke and cooked salmon filled my nose. Suddenly, I wasn't sitting beside Bone anymore. I was back in the cabin, snow pressing against the windows, Grandpa sitting across the table as he separated the bones from his fish while Grandma sliced a freshly baked loaf of bread.

I couldn’t make myself take a bite.

Bone waited a moment.

“You sure you don’t want to talk about it?” he asked.

I turned towards him and gave a weak attempt at a smile.

“Promise you won’t laugh?”

My body didn’t wait for an answer.

The first sob tore out of me so violently, I folded inward. I dragged in a breath, trying to force everything back down, but it broke apart in my chest and came out as another.

Bone didn’t laugh.

He didn’t tease me, demand an explanation, or tell me to pull myself together. He simply sat beside me as I dropped my weight onto my hands and cried.

“I’m sorry…” I eventually blurted out, “I know I probably sound ridiculous right now… Crying over red fish…”

Another sob tore through me as Bone draped a large pelt over my shoulders and shifted himself closer.

“You’ve been carrying something heavy,” he said, wrapping an arm around me, “Set it down for a while.”

And that did it.

I collapsed against Bone’s chest, and told him everything.

At least I tried to.

Thorn. His spirit. The body he had left behind. Raven and Shade. The life he had abandoned, and the stranger that he had chosen to leave inside of it.

My words came out broken and tangled between breaths. I doubted Bone could understand half of them.

But he understood enough.

At the realization Thorn had willingly left his life behind, Bone’s body went rigid. His arm tightened around me, and his fingers curled into the pelt until I could feel his knuckles pressing against my back.

For a moment, his face hardened into something cold and furious. Then he looked down, noticed I was watching him, and forced his anger from his expression.

“My grandparents…” I choked out. Their faces rose into my mind, and my voice collapsed all over again, “They'll never know what really happened to me… They’re going to think that I drowned… They’re going to bury an empty coffin. They won’t know that I’m still alive over here…”

Bone met each broken sentence with a soft grunt. It was oddly reassuring in a way. He didn’t offer me any empty words about how everything was going to be alright. No grand speech about being strong, or how I was going to get through this. He only offered what he could: a warm pelt, his arms around me, and the time I needed to grieve.

Eventually, when there were no more words left in me, I pulled myself away. Bone set a waterskin in my shaking hands.

“I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye,” I whispered, tears still streaming down my face, “I didn’t get to tell them that I loved them.”

Bone looked down into the fire.

“Or perhaps you did.”

I lifted my head and stared at him.

“Not with words,” he muttered, prodding one of the burning logs with a stick, “But people know when they’ve been loved.”

My hands tightened around the waterskin.

I tried looking back on my life at the homestead. Waking up early to feed the woodstove before Grandma got out of bed. Letting her take the seat closest to the woodstove to warm her aching joints. Making breakfast. Helping Grandpa unload his truck. Pointing out the spot in front of the barn where Grandma had slipped so it could be fixed. Watching him work on the snowmobile.

I had helped them out with about a hundred different tasks around the homestead. Not because I was forced. Not out of any sort of obligation to them for taking me after I’d lost my parents. But because I wanted to look out for them just as much as they looked out for me.

My friends used to say that I was crazy. They thought life on the homestead was too inconvenient. They’d say Grandma and Grandpa always gave me too much work to do. Said that they never gave me the freedom to go out and be a kid.

But I never minded it. From my perspective, my contributions helped. My grandparents struggled less. Worried less.

I was useful. I was needed. And I was wanted.

I hoped Bone was right, and more than anything, I hoped Grandma and Grandpa had understood every word I’d never thought to say.

Bone offered me the salmon again. It had gone lukewarm beside the fire, but I managed a few bites and drank deeply from my waterskin before my eyelids grew heavy.

I only vaguely remembered leaning against Bone’s shoulder as the last of my strength left me, my eyes slipped closed, and the desire to sleep took over. 151Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgVzGY6ag6p

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