East

He spotted the tracks in the fresh snow outside of his cabin first thing that morning and immediately felt a sense of dread within the deepest pits of his stomach.

There were only a handful of times that a hunter wandered onto his land in the past few decades—but all of those times he had been acutely aware of their presence; watching secretly from the corner of the cabin window, rifle tightly in hand, until they moved on— as they always did. But none had ever come near the cabin; nor had he ever remained so dangerously unaware of another’s presence on his lands. Maybe he had been sleeping too soundly… letting his guard down after so many years of careful diligence; or maybe his keen senses were finally beginning to fade. He didn’t know which he feared more—being found or losings his wits. He knew the wilderness preys on weak old men.

The tracks were odd to him for every reason. They were too brazen in how they crossed directly in front of his cabin as if taunting him with their discovery. But he also considered how their path seemed too straight and intentional, as if the destination were the lake further east and not his cabin at all. The lake was frozen solid this time of year allowing for easy passage to the forests beyond, but this was something only someone with knowledge of his lands could know. Not only did the winds and frigid temperatures make survival outdoors for more than just a few minutes impossible —but most baffling were the print themselves… small and slender as if belonging to a woman, or even a child, and barefoot with the noticeable imprint of a heel and toes.

He knew the tracks were calling to him, beckoning him to follow. Lost in his thoughts, he had forgotten all about the cold winds that now burned his exposed face and hands. He briefly considered going back inside to warm himself by the fire and retrieve his rifle lying on the chair, but turning away even for a moment felt impossible. Without realizing, he had already begun trekking in the direction of the lake—aware that his skin was turning raw and that his body was sure to freeze before his return. The lake was about a half mile east, and on a clear day, visible from his cabin. However, today, the swirling snowy winds made it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.

As he forced his body on, he could finally see the vast open space surrounded by pines. If one hadn’t known that a sheet of sleek icy glass lay hidden beneath its snowy surface, it would be easy to think it were just a meadow in a forest. He was practiced enough to know where the icy shoreline began and there he stopped and waited. His eyes caught movement up ahead of a figure with long dark hair in a thin white dress walking slowly and methodically across the snowy lake.

He had known something of the history of these lands from his grandfather who had befriended the natives, the only peoples able to thrive out in these wild lands. They spoke of a woman who came from the East, the direction of new beginnings, who would come to guide a weary traveler onto his next destination. He remembered his grandfather speaking of seeing such a woman on these lands more than once. At the time he worried the old man was going crazy from so many years of isolation in the small cabin. Watching the ghostly form now, he was unsure whether she was indeed a ghost or a hallucination; or that perhaps he was also becoming a crazy old man himself.

He had felt this sensation before. The searing pain throughout his limbs gave way to numbness, as if he had had no body at all. His mind wandered dreamily in and out of lucidity. As a young boy he had come to live with his grandfather in the old cabin built by hand. Young and inexperienced in the ways of the wilderness, he had attempted to cross the thawing lake too late that first spring and had plunged into its frozen depths. The seizing cold that overtook his warm body made him unable to breathe. He recalled the familiar sensation of slipping away, standing at the threshold of something that felt as warm as a tender embrace and easy as a nap.

The last thing he remembered before the peaceful sleep overtook him was the image of a delicate feminine figure walking towards him from beyond the icy lake.

.......

He opened his eyes in his own bed, the lids heavy and his thoughts foggy. He heard the crackle of a fire and felt a wave of warmth on his bare arms. As he got up to regain his bearings, he remembered the dark-haired woman just as appeared right there in his cabin kneeling down before the stove to add another log to the fire, seemingly unaware that he was awake.

He studied her, noticing her paleness; a deathly white that matched her snow-colored tunic splotched with dirt and mud. Her hair was black and hung long and straight over her shoulders. Her legs and feet were bare and dirty but revealed marble skin un-reddened from cold. He wondered if blood pumped through her veins at all.

“You…” He croaked softly, his throat and vocal cords constricted from cold. She glanced up at him, and her starkly contrasting features were softened by unusual gold-colored eyes that appeared warm and almost human. 

“Hi,” she said while stoking the flame with her hand. “I hope you don’t mind that I undressed you from those wet clothes.” She pointed to his clothes, laid out neatly in front of the fire.

He stared at her in disbelief.

“I had to drag you back here,” she explained. “By your feet. You’re quite heavy. You passed out near the lake. I think you died actually. Your lips were blue and you felt cold as death. But now that you’re awake, I think it’s safe to save you’ve survived.”

He began to sit up, but remembered he wasn’t dressed and pulled up the covers, embarrassed.

“I’ll get you something warm to drink,” she said. “That might help with your voice.”

The little cabin contained just one room, built by his late grandfather who had survived decades of bitter winters within the same old drafty walls until the wilderness had finally taken him. He thought about how he had left the cabin and his grandfather many years ago as a young man with big dreams of making his way in the world; But when life veered far from his plan, he had traveled east by foot day and night for months—arriving finally at the old, long abandoned cabin that was to become both his sanctuary and prison.

He watched the woman fill the kettle and place it on the wood stove. Even if his brain and vocal cords hadn’t been recovering from freeze, he would have still struggled with formulating words as he couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken them out loud. But despite this, she seemed to already know all of his questions.

“You’ve been unconscious since this morning,” she told him handing him his mug of dark steaming coffee. He took a sip that felt as if it burned his insides from throat to gut. He watched her, remembering suddenly the dread he had felt when he first came across the tracks in the snow.

“Who are you?” he asked in a loud whisper, regaining command of his voice.

“East,” she replied.

“…Your name is… East?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yes.”

With that one word, he knew that she knew everything about him. How and why he had ended up in that cabin. What he had done. Dread and anger filled him.

“How is it that you are alive, East? Considering that I nearly froze out there and all you are wearing is that?” He asked bitterly as he tilted his chin towards her dress, realizing now that the muddy splotches she wore were from the bottoms of his boots. A half a mile is an impossibly long way for such a small woman to drag a body as large as his and she did not look particularly strong.

She silently took a seat in his only chair by the fire and gazed at him with those strangely colored eyes. “I don’t mind the cold,” she said finally.

“You…don’t mind it?” he said with a mocking laugh.

“Cold doesn’t hurt me.” She clarified and the corners of her mouth moved up into a soft smile.

As he tried to make sense of it all, she stood up and walked over to his bedside. Speaking gently and direct she told him, “Now that you are awake, you can come with me. We will keep traveling east over the lake and beyond the forests.” He knew her request was not a question. Since his near drowning as a boy, he had never stepped foot onto the frozen lake and it terrified him that she seemed to know this.

“I don’t understand,” he answered.

“I know. But once you come with me, you’ll see that you don’t mind the cold anymore either. And you will no longer be afraid of walking on the frozen lake.”

He lay there pondering how tired he had grown from years of loneliness and isolation, and how tempting death’s peaceful offering had been for him. A gust of icy wind rattled loudly against the drafty old windows, taunting him that the wilderness waited; just as it had for his grandfather and every man that turned old before him.

…..

Together they trekked through the snow under a moon lit sky. East led the way until they stood at the shore before the snow-covered lake and she turned to look at him. She met his eyes and smiled, and he understood now that she wasn’t exactly a woman or a ghost—but something else entirely.

“Let's go for a walk,” she instructed reaching out her hand to him with a small smile. He glanced back in the direction of the tiny old cabin in the distance, but the longing to return was gone.

He nodded, taking her cold hand is his and stepped tentatively onto the powdery surface and the icy depths beneath. She was right that the cold no longer bothered him. Together they continued east on a path he had started on long ago but with a new destination….one that lay past the frozen lake and its forests beyond.