The fire in the barn burned for two hours. By some grace of construction, the heavy green lumber he'd used on the north wall that had never properly dried, the barn didn't fully collapse. The east side held. Rex and Clara had broken through the paddock gate and were in the yard, visible from the cabin window, standing in the snow about 50 yards out. Spooked.
But standing, Rex was doing that thing he did, that ears forward, "I have opinions" thing. Alive, Hadley exhaled. When the immediate danger had passed enough to breathe, when Malone's men had pulled back into the dark, and the fire was burning down to something manageable, Hadley took the rifle and went to check the barn, and stopped at the doorway because Tsula was already there. She'd gone out the back while he was watching the front. He would address that later.
Later. For now, she was in the east corner of the barn where the fire hadn't reached. Sitting on the hay-covered ground with Clara's head down against her shoulder and she was singing. He didn't know the song. He never would.
It wasn't his to know. It was something old and specific and not meant for translation. But the sound of it, low and rhythmic and continuous, the kind of sound that exists to tell something frightened that it isn't alone. The sound went through him like the first warmth after serious cold. Clara was still.
Not frozen with fear still. Just still. The way animals go still when something soothes them below the level of thought. Tsula sang and Hadley Cross stood in the doorway of his half-burned barn on a January night and didn't move. Because there are moments that ask you to stay at the edge of them.
That ask you not to walk in, not to speak, not to name what you're seeing because naming it would make it smaller than it is. He stood at the edge. He looked at Tsula with her hand on Clara's neck and her eyes half closed and her voice steady and clear. Despite everything that had just happened, despite the fire, despite the men in the dark, despite all of it, she was steady. He thought about Eleanor, how she used to hum when she was worried, under her breath, just sound.
Like she was reminding herself she was still here. He thought about all the ways people hold on to themselves when everything is trying to shake them loose. He stood there until the song ended. Then he walked away quietly and went back inside. And he sat down and he didn't notice for several minutes that his side was hurting.