by Amber Burns
A shadow suddenly fell across Nina. It draped itself over her shoulders and fell heavily over her head. The hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention, and she sat up perfectly straight.
“The middle of fucking nowhere,” a low voice growled. “Poetic. We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere; sure is beautiful, isn’t it?”
3
By the time Rowan had finished hanging the cured meat to dry, dusk had begun to tickle the tops of the trees. Rowan strung the last of the salted pig belly from the bits of twine, carefully securing it to the rafter. He tugged it, testing to make sure it was safely attached to the solid wooden beam. Then he stepped down from the chair, nodded to himself, and wiped his hands upon his apron. Flecks of rock salt caught in his beard and he chuckled, brushing them free with his muscular forearm. Then he hung the apron from a hook on the back of the kitchen door and headed outside to wash his hands.
Rowan ducked, bending his long, tattooed body to fit beneath the door frame. He began to walk across the lot, but after taking three slow steps, he stopped. The dusk was too beautiful, it commanded his attention. He paused and tilted his head up towards the glorious purples and pastel oranges that splayed themselves across the darkening sky. A half smile twisted its way onto his face, and he spread his arms and breathed in the beauty of the falling night.
“If you were a living woman,” he found himself saying. “I would hold you in my arms and kiss your dusky lips until you turned into morning.” The moment the words left his lips he dropped his arms and instinctively checked behind his shoulder, instantly embarrassed by his romantics. Then he caught himself, and laughed, his body relaxing. “There’s no one there, Rowan,” he chuckled. “No one to judge you. Not anymore.”
He grinned and picked the large white bucket from its silver handle. He swung it through the air, singing softly to himself as his steel toed boots traced the remainder of the route to the well.
Rowan dropped the bucket lightly to the ground beside him and set to work fetching water from the well he had worked so hard to dig. His arms worked the black iron pump, his arms surging with power, muscles flinching so that they made his tattoos look like they were jumping up and down. The water poured, cool and clean, from the mouth of the spigot, and Rowan pulled the bucket beneath the iron lips. He grinned with satisfaction as the bucket filled with water.
Walking back to his cabin, swinging the bucket of sloshing water gently back and forth, the dusky sky riding his shoulders, casting shadows across the ridges of his muscled body, Rowan could not help but smile to himself. He felt perfectly content. The wind kissed him lightly on the neck, rustled the hairs of his beard; the smell of fall hung thick and pleasant in the cooling air. He was about to open the door back to his cabin when he heard it.
A shriek, piercing and hair-raising, echoed through the forest, bouncing off the rocky inclines and getting caught amongst the top of the trees. Rowan dropped the bucket and turned, squinting, trying to discern the direction the scream had come from. There was no other sound for so long, just the simple sighing of the forest readying itself for another night, that Rowan began to wonder if he had not just imagined it.
“Is it finally happening?” he mused out loud, running his hand over his beard in thought. “Am I finally losing it? Has living out here all by my lonesome finally made me go a little mad? Could I really be imagining hearing things?” He frowned and strained his ears, trying to pick up the slightest scream or call for help.
But no sound came, none out of the ordinary, at least. After one more moment of listening, Rowan shook his head and shrugged. He again picked up his bucket and placed his hand on the door knob, ready to enter the coziness of his cabin once again.
“Uhhahhhhhghhhhhhh!!!!!!”
There it was again. Rowan set down the bucket full of well water and huffed. This time he walked towards the edge of his property, to the place where the trail he had carved through this portion of the woods began. He stood at the edge of the trail and cupped his hand around his ear, listening. He heard something else. A very faint:
“Fuck, fuck, FUCK!”
He dropped his hand. The curse words had confirmed it, the originator of the cries was definitely human. Rowan turned on his heel and jogged back to his cabin. He threw open the door and grabbed his rifle from its place above the mantle. He gripped it in his tattooed fingers and again ran out the door. He ducked under the overhanging branches of a naked limbed tree and began to slowly jog down the trail and into the forest. Every few minutes Rowan would stop and pause, listening carefully for any other cries or yelps that might help him get a better sense of the direction he ought to head towards.
After jogging for about twenty minutes, Rowan began to catch the distant and faded sound of crying. The wind carried it to him, small wisps of shuddering tears. He began to slow his pace to a quick and sure-footed walk, his ears and eyes alert as night began to lay herself heavily upon the forest. As he walked onwards still, Rowan would catch snippets of tears, carried through the darkening sky. The further he got towards the heart of the forest, the louder the tearful cries became. Rowan’s eyebrows slanted downwards, and his eyes narrowed in practiced concentration. He gripped the gun and gritted his teeth. He felt his body tense with the effort of tuning in so deeply to all of his senses, his muscles twitched and jumped, sensing every movement that occurred in the darkening landscape that surrounded him. He, the hunter, the plaid-wearing, gun toting, tattooed bear, patrolling the grounds of his kingdom for whatever trespasser this might be, screeching painfully into the night.
It was after about an hour of walking that Rowan caught a glimpse of a light. It was a tiny, rectangular brightness, about a mile north of where he stood, he guessed. He squinted, confused. It seemed to be moving ever so slightly, or was it blinking? He began to stalk towards the light, body hard and ready, crouched towards the ground, concealed by the combination of tall grasses and dark night.
About ten feet away from the light he stopped. He took a breath and raised his gun, pressing the sight against his eye. He blinked, his dark blue eyes staring at the magnified image. He lowered the gun and uncocked it. Then he strode forward, bent, and picked up the cell phone.
“What the…”
Rowan rolled the iPhone in his large, rough hands, stunned at having found it in the middle of the forest. He stared hard at it for a moment before tapping at its screen with his index finger. The date and time leaped into view. He stood holding the phone in the palm of his calloused hand for one moment longer. Then he slid it into his pocket and turned his attention back to his search.
The weight of the phone in the pocket of his jeans felt foreign and odd, but Rowan refused to let it distract him from the task at hand. Taking a deep breath, he filled his lungs with the familiar refreshment of clean country air. Then he turned back to the trail, taking several moments to retrace his steps so that he arrived back at the location he had been standing when he had last heard the sounds of crying bouncing through the trees.
He took a few steps, and then stopped very suddenly. He froze, becoming as still and solid as the trees around him. He stared straight ahead, not a single muscle on his toned body moving. There, a few feet before him, sitting several paces in front of a large outcropping of silvery gray rock, was a girl. Her back was to him so that all he could see was the long hair that tumbled down her neck and past her shoulders. As he took a silent step forward, his heart leaped into his throat, and it took every inch of restraint he possessed in order to stopper a gasp from escaping his lips. For as he had taken that single step forward, the moon had slid its way through a gap in the tangled forest ceiling and flashed itself across the girl’s head. And Rowan had noticed that the girl wore a gleaming mane of bright fiery hair.
“The woman of fire,” he whispered to himself.
“Well yeah,” the girl was saying to herself, her voice flat and tired. “We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
Rowan stood to his full height and drop
ped his gun slightly to his side.
“The middle of fucking nowhere,” he said in his deep, earthy voice. It was a voice that truly matched the forest. “Poetic. We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere, sure is beautiful, isn’t it?”
The girl spun around so suddenly that Rowan was afraid she might fall over. She raised a rock high in the air and reared her arm back as if she aimed to smash Rowan in the face. Like lightning, his own arm shot up to grab the rock from her hands. The rock was sailing through the air to land seemingly several miles away before the girl even realized what had happened. She stared, pretty pink lips hanging open in shock, as Rowan brushed his hands off on his pants and cleared his throat.
It was then, standing about three inches away from the stranger’s face, that Rowan realized he had no idea what to say. He had not spoken to another human for over a year, and the beauty of this girl, her hair like the flames that had danced for him just only the night before, completely overwhelmed him. Dirt streaked her pale face, lining her cheekbones and clinging to her neck. Her hair was tangled, and dead leaves clung to the golden ends, rustling slightly as the wind played over her body. Her breasts heaved up and down, her breath rushing in and out of her perfectly shaped lips, flushing her cheeks the color of freshly bloomed rose petals. It was all he could do not to reach out a tattooed hand and brush the mud from beneath her eyes.
“You lost?”
Those were the words he found himself saying to this girl who had shown up at the heart of the forest. She stared back at him as if she had not heard the words at all, her breasts still heaving up and down in such a way that Rowan found it difficult to concentrate on her green eyes, though they sparkled with a sort of light that Rowan swore was made of the stars themselves. He cleared his throat, forcing himself to remain smart. He did not do this, he did not feel this way about people, ever; he was independent, strong willed, and had never felt distracted since first calling the forest his home. He blinked rapidly, filled his nostrils with the sharp, cool air and felt some of his normal aptitude and focus returning to him.
“You lost?” he repeated, and it seemed as if his words caused the red headed stranger to suddenly jump back to life.
She choked on her heaving breaths and coughed violently, sputtering back into the moment. Her face instantly clouded over with an anger so sharp that Rowan felt it stabbing him like a knife, flying out of the center of her electric green irises. She opened her mouth, then slapped it shut again, then opened it again, her fists clenching into small, hard ball at her hips.
“Who the fuck are you to ask me anything.”
It was not a question. Her words shot out of her mouth like punches. But Rowan was not alarmed. He slid his gun into his holster and slowly crossed his arms across his chest. His biceps pressed against his abdomen, hard and sculpted.
“I am the man who has run for an hour, responding to screams he heard echoing through the forest,” he replied, his voice steady and solid as the rock that stood behind them. “I am the man who is holding a gun, and I am the only person around for miles and miles and miles.
The girl met his stare with fiery defiance.
“And you,” Rowan continued. “Are the girl who seems quite lost, and quite alone. And you are missing a shoe,” he added, glancing down at her bare foot. “And the one shoe that you do have does not seem to be the type of gear appropriate for hiking the twelve hours it would take to get you back to the nearest side road.”
Rage danced behind the girl’s pupils.
“So,” Rowan said calmly. “Who the fuck am I to ask you anything? Let me answer that. I am your only chance of making it out of here alive. That is who I am to ask you anything. Of course, you don’t have to answer,” he continued, arching an eyebrow slightly. “Whether or not you choose to respond is entirely up to you. I don’t mind either way.” And with those words, Rowan turned his back to the girl and began to walk back towards the direction of his cabin.
“Okay wait,” the girls sputtered out behind him.
It had taken but five steps for her to respond. Rowan stopped walking but kept his back to the girl. He waited.
“Okay, wait, yes, I am lost, and yeah, I guess I need some help.”
Rowan breathed out quickly. He turned to face the stranger once again.
“I’m glad you decided to answer,” he said, looking at the girl. “Leaving you for dead out here wouldn’t have weighed well on my conscience.” And he turned his back to her again and began to walk through the overlaying shades of green and gray, back towards the spot in the woods that he called home.
Nina followed the strange dark man through the forest, trying to keep track of him amidst the shadows that tangled with the light. Following his trail proved more difficult than she originally expected; he was as dark and sturdy as the trees they walked past. She found it tricky, with her inexperienced eyes, to pick him out from the other forms that decorated the landscape of the forest at night. She also found it difficult to concentrate on anything but his body. When the moon flashed through the trees, it caught pieces of this stranger, this man. She saw flashes of the shape of his bare arms, working to push branches out of the way; the form of his waist, swaying back and forth, squeezing through narrow pathways between trees, curving paths for Nina to follow; the flinching of his ass, purely muscle. She tried to not to take him in, but her green eyes would just not relent, leaping and relaxing, working his legs forward, ever forward, towards what, she did not know.
After about a half hour of silence, Nina cleared her throat.
“Hey,” she said tentatively to the figure carving his way through the darkness, to the man that led her path. “Hey!”
He did not respond.
She took a few more careful steps through the undergrowth, her right foot still fitted tightly into the precious stiletto, and stopped. She bent down quietly, her eyes still on the mysterious bearded man who walked the forest in front of her. She slipped her foot out of the shoe and lifted it above her head. Before she had the chance to second guess her instinct, she hurled the shoe forward towards him and succeeded in smacking him, hard, in the small of the back.
“Holy shit!” he cried, his voice breaking into a higher register.
She was surprised to find herself giggling. Giggling, in this situation? The middle of an unknown landscape, following a potentially murderous stranger to who knows where, and I’m giggling? Nina shook her head, shaking away instinct, settling back into the comfortability of practiced suspicion, and learned privilege. She cleared her throat again.
“Ahem,” she coughed. The man finally halted his fast pace and turned to face her. In the very dim light, she was able to see an unimpressed sneer carving its way across his face. “Well,” she continued. “Now that I have got your attention…”
“You did more than get my attention,” he snarled back. “You effectively put a serious bruise on my back. What the hell was that?”
“That,” Nina said calmly, staring him in his black hole eyes. “Was a very expensive shoe. Which I shall shall want back just about now, thank you very much.” She stared at him expectantly.
The man stared back, completely uncomprehending. Then, a single eyebrow arched its way up his forehead, and he glanced at the place on the ground that Nina’s Louboutin stiletto lay. He glanced back at her. She slowly raised her hand, palm faced upward. He crouched and grabbed the red-soled shoe in his hand. He stood back up and held it up to her, staring her down with eyes filled with disgust.
Nina stared the stranger straight back, her face completely neutral, her eyes boring into his own. Her face maintained its emotionless, blank slate appearance as she forced him to continue to maintain her gaze. Yet inside of her, she was experiencing something completely different. While she kept her face blank and composed, her insides were another story altogether. Beneath her cool exterior, Nina was a roiling storm of emotion. Lightning bolts of electrical attraction flashed across her middle and made it difficult for her to concentrate on
anything but the shape of this man’s muscles, his build, the way his well-carved abs pressed up against his thin shirt. The shadows playing across his tattooed flesh made her want to run her fingers across his foreign skin; she felt fire and color exploding within her mind, her breasts, and it was all she could do not to grin or perhaps scream while she continued to maintain his stare. She was not sure whether joy or fear was the correct response to the intensity she was experiencing in feeling his eyes on her own. So instead, she held fast to her sturdy neutral outer mask. She kept her hand steady and outstretched, and she maintained the intensity of her controlling gaze. She held him before her until she could no longer physically bear it; and then she released him by ripping the shoe from his grip and shoving her foot stubbornly back inside of the red-soled prison.
Nina did not break her eye contact with him as she shoved her foot back into the shoe. She let the shadow of a wince flash across her face as she felt the tight edges of the high heeled shoe smash against the blisters already decorating her foot. But she forced herself to stand up and continued to stare at the strange man. His own gaze began to twist slightly, became warped under the intensity of her own eyes. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of darkness and silence, she spoke.
