Hunter McCormick's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The stove kept Hunter warm under the magnolias, but the ground did not. Three nights now he had slept on frozen dirt with only a blanket. His back ached. His hip went numb by dawn. The dog burrowed against him, shivering. Hunter woke before light and stared at the canopy. He needed a bed, off the ground, tonight. He had the tools. He had his father's old sketches folded in his pack, lines of a barn that never got built. He studied the joints his father drew. A simple frame. Four posts, cross rails, a slat platform. He could cut it from the planks he'd hauled down. He set to work with the axe and hand saw. The pup watched, ears up, chasing every falling chip. By noon he had four posts sunk and rails pegged. Then a voice came from the tree line. "You built a whole house on a hill and now you're sleeping in the yard." Hunter turned. A man stood at the edge of the canopy, dark hair, dark eyes, a coffee cup in his hand though there was no coffee for miles. Sky. His friend from town. Two months ago Sky's boyfriend had vanished into the Faewilds, and Sky had barely slept since, chasing a way in before the gate sealed for good. "You look worse than me," Hunter said. "That's fair." Sky crossed to the frame and toed a post. "This holding weight?" "About to find out." Hunter laid the slats across the rails. Sky knelt and held the ends while Hunter pegged them tight. They worked without much talk. Sky lifted, Hunter fastened. The pup carried a stray peg in his mouth and dropped it at Hunter's boot. "Why not just finish the cabin?" Sky asked. "Frost cracked the plan." Hunter drove a peg flat. "This buys me the winter." Sky nodded once. "I know about buying time." He didn't say more. He set the last slat and stood back. Hunter tested the platform with both hands. It held. He piled the blankets on top and pressed down. Solid. Dry. A foot above the cold ground. He sat on it and felt his shoulders drop for the first time in days. "You'll sleep now," Sky said. He drained his empty cup out of habit. "Thanks to you." "You'd have done it alone. Slower." Sky looked toward the ridge, toward the dark cabin shell against the gray sky. "That's still the one that matters. The one you want her in." Hunter followed his gaze. The bed solved tonight. But the cabin sat open on the hill, roof bare, the question still waiting inside it. He had traded ground-sleep for a plank bed. He had not moved one board closer to the walls he built for her. "It matters," Hunter said. "I just can't reach it yet." Sky set the cup down. "Then we figure out the roof next."