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“I know the angels will watch over you.” Mom’s the nicest sort. She may true and real believe that the angels are here protecting us, but if so, I ain’t never seen any, nor do I expect to.
Guess that brings us back to something I said earlier. Crys’s man, his name was Dan too, just like the son he ain’t never met. Crys was three months toward a cradle when Dan, never the whit wiser about his darling’s condition, trekked out on a hunt. Wandered a bit too far past the grove. What we found of him after was little enough that we could’ve buried him using one of his broad leather shoes for a coffin. Nah, if there’s angels that watch over us, old Dan wouldn’t have met that kind of end.
Now, what I’ve told of that story is from bits and pieces I put together over the years. I was nine when it happened, and sure as true, my mom and daddy hid what they could of it from me. But I knew back then there were beasts out past the grove. And sometimes beasts a good deal closer, which is why me and Andy are two of the fastest little sprites you’ll ever see. The slightest shadow off in the dark means, whoosh, just like that, back into doors. It’ll put the spirit of all nine hells in your lungs if you see anything more than a shadow, type of creatures live out here.
So half the night, I’m up thinking of the beasts that tear up the space between where I am and where I’m going to. The other half, I’m thinking of what’s really scaring me.
See, I went into that panic learning about my mum’s wedding dress being the tunic I’m wearing, but it wasn’t just because I imagined myself getting married in the same getup. It’s that I know my mum (and probably my daddy too) are imagining that exact same thing. The way it works in the wilds is you marry who you want. We don’t have arrangements, we don’t have promised children, we don’t do that here. We’re too free of spirit. Sometimes I just wish we were a little less free, though, because how it works is we’re expected to hitch up our skirts, tuck ‘em into our belts, and go trudging through the mud until we’ve hunted ourself a boy.
The way it works is, here in the wilds, it’s for the most part the boys who hunt, so it’s for the most part thems that don’t wind up coming back. It leaves to bit of an imbalance. That and the fact that we all live on a sort of sprawl makes partnering tricky. We’re one of the closer homesteads to Marsh, which means we’re closer to other human souls, but it’s still a ten-hour trudge each way to the outpost, and not a journey to make lightly.
Besides Marsh and the other outposts, it’s mostly just a family or two tied together by a stake of land. The nearest homestead we have to our own is about three hours walk off. They’ve a boy named Derek. He’s about the closest thing to an eligible bachelor as we have in these parts, and let me tell you, that is a depressing way of recognizing just how sad our prospects are. Derek’s got half his teeth still present and accounted for, and has a mighty summer beard. ‘Cause summer here, some are there. And the boy—well, he’s not dumb, and I’ve seen him skin a hare, and he’s a fine man if what you care about is sustenance in the wild—but he’s about as capable of conversation as your average doorknob.
Point being, who the hell do I have as prospects? I don’t like thinking about it. I’m young, and fine with being young for a long while yet. If I happen to meet my most wonderful hunter and provider on this journey, I’d just as soon give him directions to my abode and invite him to stop by in maybe five or six years. Only there’s a part of me that knows that, going away for the weeks I am, my family hopes I’ll find myself a man and come back his willing carcass slung over my shoulder. And here I am, wearing my mother’s wedding dress.
Don’t get me wrong, I hope to start a family some day. I do. The hard truth is it takes more than one woman all on her lonesome to tame these parts. It takes more than a few of us. It takes a tribe. We’ve got seven here in our little tribe, but even that is just scratching by. It was easier before Dan got torn to tiny shreds. And plus, hate to think of it though I do, Granddad’s only got so many working years left in him.
I don’t want to find a man.
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