him peace. He’d say them over and over again until his heart settled, and he could find something good about the day. About life. About his presence in a world that only made sense in a physical way. To Jak, the writings of the woman were his friend, she was his priest from the story that he’d never actually read, and his teacher. He loved her, even though he’d never met her. He visited her sometimes too, in the bottom of that canyon. He sat outside the car where she’d died, said words to her and the man. He wondered if they’d died right away or if they’d suffered. He wondered where their child was—the girl. He felt so much sadness. He wished he could have saved them. He wished they were alive and he could meet them. He would ask the woman all the questions in his mind and heart. She had so many more words than he knew.
In his pretending, she answered. He closed his eyes and heard her speak, clearer now than the faded voice of his baka.
It had been five winters since he’d found the car and the blue bag, and while he would never say his living was easy, the writings he’d found had made things . . . better. He wasn’t sure exactly why. He only knew that the writings had changed his mind about wanting to die. Had he really wanted to die though? No. He had wanted the pain to end, the loneliness. The writings had made him care about living.
His muscled legs pushed one board forward, then the next, sliding across the snow, his breath puffing white in front of him for only a brief second before it was snatched up by the wind.
Movement caught his eye and he slowed, his muscles tensing as he spotted a person far off to his right. Hide? Slink? No. He crouched low as he loaded an arrow into his bow, looking through the scope.
It was . . . a woman?
Jak lowered the bow and arrow, standing back up, his fast heartbeat slowing down, questions circling in his mind. Fear.
The woman was fast-walking toward him, taking big steps in the snow, sinking down and then with a lot of trying, lifting her foot again and again. Jak was still with shock and confusion. As she got closer, Jak saw that she wasn’t wearing any winter clothes and much of her skin was showing. And she looked like she was crying, big chest-moving wails that came to where Jak was standing.
Jak took two steps toward the woman at the same second that she spotted him. She stopped, and then moved toward him again, picking up her footsteps, tripping and getting back up. “Help!” she called. “Help!”
Jak moved toward her quickly, and she tripped again, pulling herself up, her wails getting clearer the closer she got. “Please, please!” she cried. “I need help!”
“What happened?” Jak asked as the woman collapsed in his arms, shivering and crying, her skin purple-red and covered in goosebumps. Her wide gaze moved over his face, her lips shivering so hard, her whole jaw was shaking.
“Lost . . . the enemy chasing me . . .” Another big shiver went through her, stopping her words, and Jak’s skin prickled with unease. The enemy? He looked behind her, from where she’d come. He’d always felt mostly safe from other people in this wilderness, safe from the war and whatever might be going on out in the world. Nature had been his enemy . . . any other danger seeming very far away. But now . . . here was a woman running from this enemy that he’d only thought of as the booming voice behind him telling him the only goal was survival.
“Please help,” she cried softly looking at him in a strange way. Jak took off his animal-skin jacket, the one he’d made himself, held together with long strips of the tough, stringy parts between deer muscle and bone that he’d bleached and dried in the sun. He wrapped the jacket around the woman as her knees gave out, but he caught her, lifting her easily into his arms and heading toward his cabin.
When he got there, he set her down in front of the open wood stove, wrapping his blanket around her bare legs and throwing another log on the fire so it leaped and grew, the warmth traveling farther into the room.
The woman began to move, pushing her long red hair