The coat was too large. The sleeves hung past her wrists. She'd folded them back twice with the efficiency of someone accustomed to making do. She had two pieces of firewood under one arm. She set them on the stack, stood and looked at the ridge.
Gideon split another log. Let the silence settle. What do you see? He said actually asking movement. Maybe an hour ago near the timber line.
Could be deer. He set down the axe. Looked. The ridge was still pale gray white. The pines's dark and waited.
Or, he said, or someone watching to see if smoke rises from this chimney at the same time every day. A beat, which it does. He stood with that because she was right. Seven years of the same schedule. Fire at the same hour.
breakfast, fence work, barn, evening meal, fire down, predictable as the seasons, which was a virtue he'd always told himself, which was also, he now understood, a map of his habits, and maps could be very useful to the wrong people. How do we change it? He said, "You're asking me. You know this kind of problem better than I do. " Something shifted in her face.
Not surprise. In the vicinity of it, vary the smoke, she said. Morning fire before light. Let it die. Rebuild at midday.
Make the pattern unreadable. She looked at the barn. And we stopped leaving one set of prints to the wood pile. Different paths make it look like more people or fewer. Depending on what they expect, he nodded.
This was not caution. This was practiced field tested intelligence. Knowledge earned by living in a world where predictability could be the last predictable thing you ever did. The creek. The creek, she said.
Does it freeze solid? The edges. Center runs under wide enough to cross on foot. If you know where, show me. Tomorrow when Amma is rested.
I want to know every approach to this cabin. Every way in, every way out. A pause. The way you know it, and the way I know it. Together, he picked up the axe again.
because his hands needed something to hold while his mind adjusted to the specific fact of being asked to share knowledge of his own land. Not take it, share it as equal parts of a shared problem. All right, he said. She went back inside. He split the next log harder than necessary.