As the sun lit the high peaks, he began to teach her. He was not a patient man by nature, but with her he found a deep, slow patience he did not know he possessed. He started with the things around them. He took a piece of charcoal from the fire and on the smooth plain wood of the table. He wrote, "Cu," he said, tapping the tin mug.
She watched, her brow furrowed. K. Uh, P, she repeated, her tongue clumsy around the sounds. He wrote, F I R E. Fire, he said, pointing to the hearth.
Fi, she said. She was a fierce student. She learned with the same intensity she had applied to chopping wood. She demanded more. He found an old water stained primer he had bought for Lara and they sat by the fire at night, his large scarred finger moving beneath the simple words, "The dog runs.
The dog runs," she would repeat, her voice soft. "One night she looked up from the book, her eyes bright with a sudden, painful understanding." "Words!" she whispered, touching the page. They they stay. They do not go away like breath.
That's right, he said, his throat tight. They stay. They're a kind of memory. She touched the word of love on the page. She had asked him what it meant, and he had tried to explain.
It was what he felt for this cabin. It was what she felt for the sun. It was the warm. She had nodded as if this made a kind of sense. Now she traced the letters L O V E.
"Love," she said, her pronunciation perfect. She looked at him. "It stays." She in turn shared her own world. She no longer hummed her songs in private.
She sang them low and clear. As she worked, they were simple, melodic chants that spoke of the land. He asked her what they meant. "This one," she said, her hands busy grinding corn. is for the corn. It asks the mother to wake up, to feed us.
And that one, the one you sing when it rains. It is for the thunder to thank him for washing the sky so the deer can see. He tried to repeat the Apache words. His throat, used to the blunt, hard sounds of English, could not shape them. He butchered the sounds, and she stopped, her hand over her mouth.
A sound bubbled up from her chest. A laugh. It was not a smile, not a quiet expression of contentment. It was a real light, unrestrained laugh. The sound startled him.
It was the first time he had heard true, uncomplicated joy in this cabin. It was a sound he wanted to hear again. The guilt for Elara had not vanished. It had simply shifted. It was no longer the sharp, isolating grief of his solitude.