Stef Penney - The Tenderness of Wolves

Even so, three of these tracks have outlasted the men who made them.

I find, when it occurs to me to look, that I have lost the bone tablet. It was still in my pocket when I left Hanover House, but now it has gone. I tell Parker this, and he shrugs. He says, if it is important, it will be found again. And in a way–although I feel sorry for poor Mr Sturrock, who seemed to hanker for it–I am glad not to have something that other people want so much. No good seems to come of such things.

I have been thinking of course, and dreaming when I sleep, of Parker. And this much I know: he thinks of me. But we are a conundrum to which there is no answer. After so much horror, we cannot go on–if I am honest, never could have.

And yet, whenever we stop, I cannot take my eyes from his face. The prospect of leaving him is like the prospect of losing my eyesight. I think of all the things he has been to me: stranger, fugitive, guide.

Love. Lodestone. My true north. I turn always to him.

He will take me back to Himmelvanger and then go on–back to wherever he came from. I do not know if he is married, I suppose he is. I never asked, and will not now. I know almost nothing about him. And he–he does not even know my first name.

Some things could make you laugh, if you felt like laughing. A while after I think this, Parker turns to me. Alec is several paces ahead.

‘Mrs Ross?’

I smile at him. As I have said, I cannot help myself. He smiles back in that way he has: a knife in my heart that I would not remove for all the world.

‘You have never told me your name.’

It is lucky the wind is so cold, as it freezes the tears before they fall. I shake my head, and smile. ‘You have used it often enough.’

He looks at me then, so hard that, for once, I drop my gaze first. His eyes do have a light in them after all.

I force my mind to turn to Francis, and Dove River. Angus. The pieces I have to put back together.

I force myself to feel the Sickness of Long Thinking.

And then Parker turns back to the dogs and the sled, and keeps walking, and so do I.

For what else can any of us do?