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He started to nod, but caught hihtened, just…" But he couldn’t think of a better word

Lesya stepped nearer to hiain Her chest rose and fell with each breath, and she reached for his hands and took the his eyes

"Stay and heal, Jack Perhaps this part of the woods see here to fear You are safe with ers touched, a spark traveled up his arh him For a moment he felt the same intimacy that they had shared beneath the furs, terrified into silence as the Wendigo passed by, hungry for their flesh How long since he had been this close to a girl? Too long And he had never been so close to one as lovely and delicate, as open and earnest, as Lesya

If she was a witch and had bewitched hiic to er to please And when she said he would be safe with her, he believed her She had kept hio’s nose That seeh

"I should finish my stew," he said

Lesya squeezed his hands excitedly and nodded "Yes, you should And I have wine, if you’d like sorinned It wasn’t whiskey, but ould do just fine

Lesya was as good as her word Over the days that followed, she cared for hihts wrapped in furs and blankets, and during the daylight hours, when Lesya wandered the forest in search of gaathered fruits and vegetables fro the scent of her froether, she cooked a marvelous array of meals for hiarden After a few days he stopped wondering at the ih Lesya protested, wanting him to rest and recuperate, after the third day he refused to remain indoors while she waited on him so completely He could not chop wood, and could only carry a couple of logs at a tiue when he wanted to help her gather vegetables for dinner That s helped Jack to feel immeasurably better He needed to work, and to have a sense of usefulness, and soon his thoughts drifted back to the journey that had brought him here, and the purpose hich he had left his own hoh At her insistence, he read to her by candlelight after dark Her bookshelf included a copy of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, and whenever Jack read of the passionate, doomed love of Sydney Carton for Lucie Manette, they both pretended not to notice the way his voice quavered, just a bit

Yet in quiet hts returned to his own ho for some word of his arrival in Dawson Wanderlust and a thirst for adventure had led hi him on, but he carried their hopes and expectations with hi in the woods with Lesya felt like paradise, as first one week passed, and then another, he became torn by his desire and duty

SheLesya asked him to ith her in the forest

Hand in hand they strolled ah above the the forest seemed so ordinary, and Lesya must have taken different paths every day, for there were no trails worn down by her passing

On most days, they talked as they walked She had a way of persuading him to tell her stories of his life, and he needed little encouragement to talk of his time as an oyster pirate or dockworker But he also spoke of his dreams and ambitions in a way that he had never revealed to anyone before, and he revealed the tale of the thirty days he had spent in jail, a hellish draht hies, and they discussed books they had read But other than that she would reveal nothing of herself Jack wished she would tell him about her life, and yet at the saic in her touch he had no doubt But he never pressured her to discuss the true nature of her house or garden, and Lesya never volunteered the inforhts to the as happily as lovers on an afternoon stroll in the park

And yet…

Jack felt they were not alone A presence kept pace with the He kneas not the Wendigo, for he would have heard it, even caught its scent, if it stalked theh he had been keenly aware of the absence of his spirit guide in the days he had spent in the woods with Lesya, this presence was not that of the wolf

Sori, and though froe shadows shifted deep in the forest, Jack saw no sign of any real danger

And when they stopped in a different clearing, where the trees grew tall and bent inward and the sunlight shone down so brightly that it turned the spot into a golden cathedral, Lesya reached up to caress his face, and then she kissed hi, after he had lost count of the days he had spent in Lesya’s cabin--more than three weeks but not quite aa cup of strong tea and studying the trees beyond the clearing The night before, Lesya had traced her fingers along Jack’s biceps and declared that he needed h he now felt quite recovered--more healthy even than before he had left San Francisco--Jack did not argue A look into the girl’s alreen he only ever noticed when their lips parted after a kiss, was enough to still any arguht have within him

If Lesya wished to cook him a special meal, by all hts with her passed by like drea way to time spent within the cabin walls, warm by the fire, or over the stove with the wondrous aroht hiined one could know For tonight she had proone out to hunt

Without weapons

Jack could not help but wonder how she would trap or kill the animal, how she would carry it back to the cabin, and where she would store whatever they did not eat But he had learned the fruitless nature of asking such questions Lesya would only sht to know the ansithout having to ask it

Left on his own, he had made tea and sat down to atteinal French, but soon the war lured him outdoors Now he found hi around Lesya’s cabin, curiosity niggling at hin that any trees had been cleared to make way for the cabin There were no sturound that the removal of thelen were uniforardens in a circle

Jack set his tea on top of the bookshelf, just inside the door, but he carried his book with hi Alexandre Dumas on a wander, find a fallen tree upon which he could sit in the sunshine, and read Being with Lesya made him so consistently breathless that his desire to explore the forest had been easily sated by his ra walks with her But they seemed to take different routes every day, and Jack liked the idea of getting to know these woods

He couldn’t stay here with her forever, though there were times--moments when she looked at him just so, or when he held her close and breathed in the shed--that he wished he would never have to go back to civilization If this slen was fated to be the only bit of the wild he would ever conquer, part of him could be content with that

But only part In his heart, he knew that he could not stay, and that parting froht of his fa news of his journey, he buried those thoughts deep With the scent of her still in his head, his hands still rehts of leaving for another day Another week Perhaps he could stay until suarden in front of the cabin The flowers seely vivid, but the trees in the forest had none of their luster From white birch to black pine, they cast ordinary shadows, and if there see from their branches than he had heard in the wooded walks of his past, Jack ascribed that to their distance froe of the clearing, studying the base of a tree His gaze roamed from one to the next, and he knew that the uniformity of the circle around the house was no trick of the eye Shifting the book to his left hand, he pressed his right pales pressed into his flesh, but the bark felt entirely ordinary to hiic suffused Lesya’s hoic here--a tree re the knuckled roots where they plunged into the earth, and his gaze pursued an iinary path back toward the cabin Perhaps the roots intertwined He’d toyed with the idea that the cabin was part of the forest, but noondered if the oppositeof trees--ap alen behind The book felt good in his hand, the texture of the cover a comfort to him, a real and familiar tether to the civilization he had left behind The thought brought a smile to his face The hours he had spent in Dawson City had not inspired within him any faith in its connection to civilization, but compared to this place--presue, a tiny place of order aenuine e of the Yukon Trail and survived the cruelty of ors of the wilderness But when he had set out to conquer the wild, to better hireater than the powers of nature, he had never is he would encounter Back on board the Uo had been only a story But in the white silence of the far north, ly real