CEDAR explores the cello with no regard for the passing of time. Her fingertips, unused to the pressure of holding strings, become tender and sore. Her back and legs cramp.
She alternates between plucking strings, and drawing the bow across them. She holds the strings down at different points along the neck of the instrument and listens to each sound. She allows each note to sing to its full capacity before sounding another one.
Finally, she rises and looks about the room. “We should take out all the drapes, anything fabric, and let it air outside. I saw some buckets and soap in the kitchen. We’ll wipe everything down. Maybe replace a few floorboards. The smell won’t be so bad then. Also, we can bring down the canoe. I took a look yesterday, and it needs some work, but I think we can get it water-ready in time.”
Cedar glances at Ash’s leg. She cannot shake her unease about his injury. She has seen wounds less serious than Ash’s become infected. He ought to be near access to medication and hospitals in Sapphire City.
Cedar returns the cello to the corner, and Ash follows her to the kitchen.
The work fills the rest of the day. Utilizing the workshop’s well-stocked tools and materials, they begin with the canoe. After they plug the holes in the boat, they return to the house to make it more livable.
The sky is clear, and they leave the blankets and drapes hanging outside through the night. They lay out the blankets they had found in the workshop the night before, and sleep in front of the stone fireplace.
CEDAR WAKES THE NEXT morning with the lightness of spirit she had found in the summer restored. Ash is still asleep. Cedar throws off her blanket, welcoming the freshness of the chill in the air. She puts another log on the fire, assuming that Ash may not be as pleased to welcome a morning chill as she is today. The thought of winter used to fill her with dread, but this prelude of winter cold makes her feel more alive.
She goes into the workshop to inspect supplies for making traps. They will need meat for their journey. She finds everything she needs, neatly laid out and organized. She gathers her supplies and walks the circumference of the cabin clearing from within the trees, and thinks through the best placement for the traps. She is a careful hunter, sensitive to animal pain but never more grateful than now for the bounty that an animal can provide.
She hears a bird call and mimics the sound. She looks up to see a chickadee resting on a branch near her. She holds out her empty palm. The bird swoops, only to veer away without landing when it does not see what it is looking for.
“Someone has fed you by hand.” Cedar’s good opinion of the prior occupant of the cabin grows. She might find a stash of seeds somewhere. She makes a mental note to search the house.
She completes the circle around the cabin clearing and returns to the yard near the grave they had dug the day before. She stops to run her fingers over the carvings on the totem pole before returning to the house.
Ash huddles under both blankets. He lies closer to the fire than seems safe. The optimism she had woken with is replaced with a sense of foreboding. Fear tingles down her spine. She lays a hand on his face. He feels as warm as he looks. She had neglected to inspect his leg the day before. She pushes back the blankets from his lower body and pulls the pant of his leg up. She gasps when she sees his wound.
ASH OPENS HIS EYES at a touch. Cedar is cutting away his pants and examining his leg.
“Will I live?” he jokes as he tries to sit up. He falls back onto his pillow with a moan.
“Don’t move again.” She glares at him, and he suppresses a laugh. Not that he has to work hard to accomplish that. Laughter takes more energy than he has.
“As you wish,” he mumbles.
He is pulled from sleep again at the feel of her hands spreading something on his injured leg.
“What is that?” he manages through a pain and sleep-filled haze.
“It doesn’t matter, it’s the only chance you have.” She pauses. “Unless this guy kept a stash of antibiotics around somewhere.”
She rises abruptly and leaves the room, presumably to search every storage space on the property for medication that is a novelty in the north.
“Well, that’s encouraging,” he says into the empty room. He falls back asleep, indifferent to the knowledge that he hangs between life and death.
When he next awakens, she is sponging his face with a cool cloth.
“Not dead yet, eh?” he cracks.
“Be serious,” she says. Her voice is furious, but her touch is gentle.
His thoughts go to the last time he was sick, not counting when Cedar had nursed him through his food poisoning. It had come on him a few weeks after his mother’s death. His brother had been the one to sit by his bedside, to sponge his face and ladle warm soup into his mouth.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks, her voice now like her touch.
“Coal.”
Ash is too tired to answer her next question.
“Who is Coal?”
ASH SLEEPS THROUGH MOST of the following day and night. When he wakes, Cedar is asleep on the floor beside the mattress he does not remember falling asleep on. She must have dragged it out, though when or how she moved him onto it is a mystery.
He feels energy he has not felt in days and rises from the bed. He takes a blanket with him and drapes it across Cedar’s body.
He sees to his business outside, deciding to disregard the obvious fact that he is wearing pants that are not his own. Cedar must have found them in the dead man’s room. Back inside, he is exhausted. He gathers a few books from the shelves and returns to his bed. Among the stack is a book of musical notation.
He wishes he had the strength to lift Cedar onto the mattress. For a moment the idea of lying beside her on the floor flits through his mind, but he pushes it aside. He places the pillow beside her head where it rests on the bare floor. He lies down on the mattress, paging through his books.
Cedar’s voice wakes him as he is drifting off.
“We might be too late to beat the freeze.”
He rolls over to see Cedar’s head on the pillow, her gaze toward the ceiling.
She continues, “Likely the worst of it has passed. You need rest to recover. Your illness before we lost the boat, and now this, well, I think it’s better not to push it.”
“The stocks are good, we can winter here. How is game in this forest?” he asks.
“It will be more than enough to see us through. Animals do not avoid the forest as most humans seem to.”
“It’s settled then.”
She looks at him.
“What?” he probes.
“You do not mind? I mean, you have your own life in the south.”
He tries to keep his shrug nonchalant. “I like adventure. And it seems like we’ve gotten the possible death part out of the way.”
“We will have more time with all those books. And the cello.”
Ash laughs out loud.
“I do believe you are infatuated with a piece of wood,” he teases her.
“If this is love, I’ll take it.”
He laughs again. The overwhelming fatigue in his limbs keeps him from acting on his impulse to take her into his arms.
“I found some music books, but I think some lunch is in order before I try to remember how to make sense of all those notes on the staff,” he says.
She rises to a seated position. “I have soup left. You barely ate, and I made enough to feed three of you.” She leans close and asks, “What’s a staff?”
He laughs. “You have to wait until after lunch.”
CEDAR ESTABLISHES A ROUTINE as Ash recovers. She checks her traps each morning and spends some time in the workshop. She works on refinishing the canoe, and other projects around the yard and the cabin.
Ash is slow to recover his strength but has found a routine of his own. He attempts to take on most of the kitchen duties. Even these wear him out, and Cedar comes in often to help. Otherwise, he alternates between sleeping and reading.
One evening after they share a meal, Cedar positions the cello in front of her, near the warmth of the fire. Ash shows her how to pluck a scale. Cedar repeats the exercise as Ash peruses the bookshelf. He collects a stack of books and returns to his seat by the fire. He begins to flip through the pages.
Cedar stops playing and runs her fingers up and down the instrument. The strings feel textured beneath her fingertips. The neck is smooth, and the carved scroll at the top feels as elaborate as it looks. She examines, with her fingers, every part of the instrument, memorizing the feel.
She watches Ash as she continues to explore the instrument with her hands. She already cares for him far more than she had ever cared for Star. What would it be like to have both heart and body involved? A thrill runs through her with the knowledge that they will share this home all winter. She will hear his laugh every day.
She rebukes herself. They are friends, and nothing more.
Even with this reminder, there is happiness here. Ash laughs often, and his joy is infectious. His laugh goes up a pitch from his usual speaking voice and spills out with no restraint.
She tries to remember what Grandma’s laugh sounds like.
As for herself, she does not remember ever laughing. She appreciates a good joke and smiles easily enough. She was told she did not smile until she was ten years old, and Grandma painted a picture of her as a serious, somber girl.
Cedar does not believe it. She remembers laughing, but she cannot remember the cause of that laughter.
Her fingers absently run up and down the neck of the cello, grazing a series of rough etchings. She stops to look and catches her breath. There is an inscription, delicately etched into the instrument with tiny knife markings.
For Lavender, with love.
She stares at the instrument. Her fingers tremble as flashbacks flicker through her mind. A kiss on her head for a last goodbye, the sound of her mother coughing, a warm bed, and a kind stranger’s voice.
ASH LOOKS UP FROM his books. He moves to Cedar’s side.
“Cedar?” He lays the cello on the floor and crouches beside her. He takes her cold hands in his own, stilling their trembling with his firm grasp.
It is several moments before Cedar speaks. Her eyes are bright with tears, but she smiles.
“I’ve been at this cabin before.”
Ash tightens his hold on her hands.
She continues. “My parents fled their town when King Marcus sent his mercenaries here. My grandma told me that everyone in town knew my mother played music, but she never told me what instrument. I do not remember…no, I do, but just little flashes. She would play sometimes in the park, and all the kids would dance. I remember dancing.” She pauses at the unexpected memory. “I remember telling my mother not to forget the music. I remember Mom and Dad loading the instrument case in our canoe.
“I don’t know whether to love it or hate it.” She looks at the cello. “King Marcus’ men found us. I remember Dad saying goodbye to me and my mother. He saved our lives.” She takes a shuddering breath. “Grandma told me my Mom was sick, and died on the journey north, but I didn’t remember until tonight. She was coughing. I stayed at the cabin with a man. His name was Badger. He tried to take care of my mom.” She looks around the room. “Do you think it was the man we buried?”
“If it is, he died having done more good than most of us manage,” Ash says, his voice thick with emotion.
Cedar withdraws her hands from his grasp and retrieves the cello. Ash returns to his chair, watching her.
She takes the bow and pulls it in long slow strokes across a string. Her hand wavers, but she repeats the motion until she maintains a steady pressure against the string.
“I remember laughing, with my parents. I would dance and laugh with my dad as my mom played.” She looks from the instrument to Ash. “They thought music was worth the risk, even though it cost them their lives.”
“Now there’s a thought,” he says. The faint hoot of an owl sounds from outside, but neither move.
Ash breaks the silence. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh.”
Cedar startles. “Is that what you’ve been thinking about all this time?”
“Not only that.” He shifts in his chair. “I was remembering the old myths I would read as a child. About music unleashing some sort of secret power in Danbarrah.”
“Really? I’ve never heard those stories. But then, Grandma wasn’t enthusiastic about music.” Cedar looks at his stack of books. “Will you read to me? You have a beautiful voice.” The high points of her cheeks tinge pink.
“Yes,” he says, sorting through the stack for what will be the first of many books he reads aloud to her. “Don’t think you will always distract me so easily though.” He waits until she meets his gaze, however briefly, before saying, “I will hear you laugh one day.”