The Icebound Land

33

A SMALL PATCH OF SUNLIGHT CREPT ACROSS THE SINGLE ROOM of the hut.

Evanlyn, dozing in a chair, felt the warmth of the sun on her face and smiled, unconsciously. Outside, the snow was still deep on the ground, but the sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue in the midafternoon.

Half-asleep, she enjoyed the warmth as it slowly moved across her.

Behind closed eyelids, she saw the bright red of the sun's glare.

Then, abruptly, the light was blocked and she opened her eyes.

Will stood before her, in the attitude that had become familiar to her over the past week. His hands were clasped together and his dark brown eyes, once so alight with amusement and fun, held nothing but a wistful plea. He stood patiently, waiting for her to react, and she smiled at him, a little sadly.

"All right," she told him gently.

The faintest trace of a smile touched his lips, seeming for a moment to reflect in those dark eyes, and she felt a renewal of the surge of hope that had been growing within her over the past days.

Gradually, but noticeably, Will was changing. At first, as she withheld the drug from him, he had convulsed in those awful shuddering fits, only recovering when she doled out a small portion of the warmweed.

But, as the intervals between doses had grown longer and the doses themselves smaller, she had begun to hope that he would eventually recover. The seizures were a thing of the past. Now, instead of being ruled by his body as it craved the drug, Will was becoming more mentally attuned to a smaller supply. There was still a need there, but it was reflected in the pleading, almost childlike behavior that she was seeing now.

After three days without a taste of the weed, he would come to her and simply stand in front of her, the message clear in his eyes. And, in response, she would measure out a helping of the ever-decreasing stock of drug that remained in the oiled cotton pouch. It was a race, she knew, to see whether his dependence would outlast the supply. If that were the case, she could see some hard times ahead for the two of them. She had no idea what his reaction would be if she refused him.

But she sensed that further deprivation would result in another bout of uncontrollable shivering and crying.

Perhaps, she reasoned, that was the next necessary stage in his rehabilitation. But, rightly or wrongly, she simply could not bring herself to witness that helpless, naked need again. Time enough for that when the warmweed finally ran out, she thought.

"Stay here," she told him, rising from the wood-frame chair and heading for the door. Again, she thought she saw a dim glint of pleasure in his eyes. It was gone almost as soon as she thought she had seen it, but she told herself that it had really been there, that she wasn't simply seeing what she hoped to see.

She kept the supply of warmweed in the stable, behind a loose board on one of the sidewalls. Initially, she was planning to conceal the oiled cloth pouch in the pile of firewood logs. But then she realized that she would use Will to fetch firewood and the possibility of his finding the supply of the drug was too awful to contemplate.

She had no clear idea what would happen to him if he took an excessively large dose. At the least, she reasoned, his dependence would soar once again to a new level. And there might possibly be more permanent side effects as well-even fatal ones. What she did know was that if Will found the warmweed and used it all in one massive binge, she would face weeks of the convulsions and shuddering fits that had seized him when he had been deprived of the drug before.

She wondered if his dulled mind could process the fact that she always left the cabin and returned with the weed; whether he was capable of putting together a cause-and-effect sequence and reasoning that the weed must be kept somewhere outside the cabin. She wasn't sure, but in any event, she took no risk, taking great care to check that he hadn't followed her when she took the pouch from the small concealed space in the timber wall. She looked carefully over her shoulder as she entered the stable and the pony looked up and snorted a greeting to her. But there was no sign that Will was showing any interest in her movements. Apparently, he was content to wait where he was, knowing that she would shortly return with the drug that he craved. How this happened, or where she found it, didn't seem to be questions that concerned him. They were abstractions and he dealt only in absolute facts these days.

She measured a minute amount of the dried weed into the palm of her hand, rewrapped the remaining supply and replaced it behind the loose board. Again, halfway through the sequence, she turned suddenly to see if she might be being observed. But there was no sign of her companion-only the pony, watching her with liquid, intelligent eyes.

"Don't say a word," she said to the horse in a lowered tone.

Remarkably, it chose that very moment to shake its head, as ponies do from time to time. Evanlyn shrugged after a second of startled reaction. It was as if the horse had heard and understood her. She replaced the pouch in the hollow and jammed the section of board back to conceal it. Stooping to the earth floor of the stable, she gathered a handful of dirt and smeared it over the jagged line that marked the join in the wood. Then, satisfied that the hiding place was concealed as well as it could be, she returned to the cabin.

Will smiled as she entered and, for one moment, she thought he had recognized her from the old days. The old days, she thought ruefully.

They were barely a few months ago, but now she thought of them as ancient history. Then she realized that his gaze was riveted on her clenched right hand. The smile was for the drug, not for her.

Still, it was a beginning, she thought.

She held out the clenched hand and he eagerly stepped forward, cupping both his hands underneath hers, anxious that not a grain should be spilled. She allowed the gray-green herb to trickle into his hands, watching his face as his eyes followed the thin stream of the drug. Unconsciously, his tongue darted across his lips in anticipation. When she had given him all of it-and allowed him to carefully brush the few minute crumbs that remained fastened on her palm into his own-he looked up at her and smiled again. This time, he smiled at her, she was sure.

"Good," he said briefly, and then his gaze fell to the tiny mound of dried warmweed in his hand. He turned away from her, hunching over the hand as he brought it to his mouth. Evanlyn felt that sudden glow of hope burn brightly within her once more. It was the first time Will had actually spoken to her in the time since they had escaped from Hallasholm. It wasn't much. Just the one word. But it was a beginning.

She smiled after him as he hunkered down in a corner of the cabin.

Animal-like, he instinctively cowered away as he took the drug, seemingly nervous that she might take it from him.

"Welcome back, Will," she said softly.

But he said nothing in reply. The warmweed had him once again.