Cove Belle's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The trail dropped fast through pine and shale, and Cove kept her bow loose in her hand the whole way down. She could smell his fire before she could see it. Wood smoke, river damp, the iron tang of fish blood on a stone. She told herself she had a speech ready. She told herself her voice would hold. By the time the trees thinned, she was lying to herself about both. She stopped at the treeline because a small cottage stood there, slumped under a netting of green vines. Someone had lived in it once and let it go. Cove pressed her shoulder to the door frame and used the wall to hide the rest of her. From there she could see the whole bend of the river without being seen. He had built things. A bench sat at the water's edge, legs cut from long bones, seat laid in flat river stone. A leather jacket hung over the back of it, the same jacket she remembered, scarred at the elbows from a fight he had never explained. Past the bench, a footbridge of grey planks and rope crossed to a flat gravel bar. He had set his fishing rod on the far side. He had set it where he could watch both banks at once. She meant to step out. She had walked down the ridge to do exactly that. But her throat closed when she lifted her chin, and she knew the first word out of her mouth would shake. He would hear it. He had always heard it. Three winters ago he had told her she was safe and she had believed him because his voice did not shake. If hers shook now, he would know every wall she had built since was thin. She pressed her forehead to the vines and stayed hidden. Then she saw the bones. Off to the side of the bench, half tucked under a tarp, someone had piled skulls and long bones into a heap as tall as her knee. Deer, mostly. A bear jaw. Smaller things she did not want to name. He had been camped here longer than the smoke suggested. He had been eating off this river for weeks, waiting, building a seat for two and a bridge she would have to cross. He had planned the whole shape of her arrival. Anger climbed up her throat and shoved the shake out of it. Cove stepped out of the vines and onto the open bank. "I'm not crossing your bridge," she called. Her voice held. It held flat and clear and mean, and it carried over the water. On the far side, a man stood up slow from behind the rod and turned to face her. She had said the first thing on her own ground, in her own words, and the door she came down to close was already swinging on its hinge.