It’s been snowing all day. It started lightly just after the sun rose and has been steadily picking up pace with every hour. Two in the afternoon and it’s falling thickly.
Amber’s eyes are honey-yellow, just like her name. She goes by ‘she’ even though it doesn’t feel clear to her which she really is, a she or a he? Others are similarly confused by her gender, for she prefers her hair short and her flat-chested, taut body feels most comfortable in boys’ clothes, but since the world likes to divide itself straight down the middle—black and white, on one side or the other—she has no choice but to keep herself to herself, constructing her own world where the grey area she inhabits is the norm.
Amber loves storm days, living on the edge, driven by the possibility that her tiny house might lose power, that she might have to survive just on the wood from the shed and the food in her cupboard. She thrives on self-sufficiency.
It’s a cold climate. The losses of her past have left her happier frozen. She starts a fire in the woodstove, coaxes and keeps it at an even temperature – she likes her heat controlled. Her house is dark, on the edge of a wood, just like Little Red-Riding Hood’s grandmother’s house. There are wolves in the woods, but they don’t bother her like the wolves in her heart. The river beyond the woods is frozen, but only in places.
She had woken up that morning ravenous. Wrapping herself in layers of wool she had fried eggs and spinach, covered them in grated cheese and ate until her belly was bursting. She couldn’t eat fast enough, she inhaled the food as if she hadn’t eaten for days, nourishing something more than just her skin and bones, perhaps she was needing something more intravenous.
Looking out—hardly any visibility—she sees the wind and snow whipping around the house, tying it up, creating shelter, keeping her safe. The lines on her hands are multiplying. Her skin is dry and chapped, the veins showing more, the freckles darker, the skin leathery and thick. She is not yet forty. She thinks she will be next year. It’s easy to lose track of the years when you live in the wilderness. She is on her third cup of coffee. Caffeine is her drug of choice. She can’t be without it. She drinks it in a tiny porcelain cup, dark seaweed green—it’s bitter and hot—in a slow drip until her head reaches the point of optimum buzz. Although it doesn’t last long, the twenty minutes her brain is wired is worth every drop. This is how she makes it through the day: tea, coffee, food. These get her to lunch time. It’s only in the late afternoon, when the light dissolves into dusk, that the struggle truly starts.
Still, not yet, it’s only a few minutes past two. This is the time when she sits in her armchair next to the fire and dozes, relaxing into the loss of consciousness with relief.
#
There’s a loud tapping sound. At first, she assumes it must be frozen snow hitting the glass but something about the pace of it, the stop and start of it, forces her eyes open. She turns towards the source. There’s something, someone, there. It couldn’t be a bear broken out of hibernation could it? No. It has to be a person. She might prefer a bear.
She strains to get a better look through the steamy windows. She knows not to open the door, to assess from the inside. She has been burnt too many times to rescue without reserve. She shivers. Her body temperature had dropped while she was asleep. A sudden bang and crackle, as the log on the fire drops into the ashes, startles her. She puts another log on top. The tapping comes again. What the hell is someone doing out there in the middle of a snowstorm?
She is angry, mad that she is being put on the spot by this person who is out in this weather. She doesn’t want to open the door and let them in, she wants nothing to do with them. But the tapping is only going to get louder, and by the time it has transferred from the window to the front door she feels pushed into action. She opens the door and in steps the person, taking too long, letting snow and a gale blast into her warmth. She slams the door shut and curses under her breath.
When she takes her balaclava off, since now Amber can see that it is a she, her face is red, from the cold, but her eyes also, bloodshot red framed with white. Amber is surprised to find that her anger has dissipated, instead she is feeling nervous – there are niceties she should be going through, but she doesn’t know them, that’s why she has barricaded herself here, built her own defense against nature, not expecting that it would be a human that would break through.
“Should I remove my coat?” asks the woman.
Amber holds out her hands and takes the frozen coat, moving it towards the fire, draping it over the chair, hearing the drip-drip immediately as the moisture in the material melts and falls to the floor. The woman is looking around. Amber feels self-conscious, she feels as though the woman is looking at the inside of her, not the books on the shelves, the china on the table, the sheepskin rug on the uneven, wooden floor.
“I don’t know you.” She knows this is a ridiculous thing to say. But what else do you say when a stranger comes into your house to shelter from a storm?
“Ophelia.” She holds out her hand. It’s white and swollen.
“Amber. Be careful to warm your hand slowly. That looks like frostbite.’
She knows this from experience. She was careless (her parents were careless) as a child and now she has scars on the back of her hands to show for it. She has scars all over her body. The ones on her skin are easier to explain than the ones that are hidden.
Ophelia walks as if on auto pilot toward the fire, seeking warmth. She holds out her hands, despite Amber’s warning. Amber grabs a nearby shirt and drapes it over her Ophelia.
“Slowly.”
The warmth of Amber’s hand causes Ophelia to shiver. They both notice it. They both don’t want to notice it. They move clumsily through the moment trying to find a place where they might feel comfortable. Neither will sit. Ophelia stands, Amber paces. She puts the kettle on the stove. It feels right to heat water. She will offer her tea or hot chocolate, that’s what a host does. In the end she offers neither, she makes a pot of coffee, pours it black into cups, delivers it without question. Ophelia takes it, drinks too fast, startling herself, burning her lip. Amber looks away. She goes to the table, her back to the fire, her eyes fixed on what would be the horizon, if she could see through the thick, billowing snow, still falling.
She has the unsettled feeling that she has seen this woman somewhere before. Something in her face is achingly familiar. They have exchanged stories somewhere in the past or in the future, forgetting all the details, remembering only the nuance of emotion that now shows in the eyes and the facial expressions of Ophelia as she sits by the fire and removes her shoes. She isn’t dressed for this weather, her socks are thin and decorative, no sign of underlayers or the defenses that Amber routinely employs against the weather at this time of year. Her coat is not even waterproof. It is heavy, warm perhaps, but not suitable for a storm.
What has brought her here? The question runs around and around Amber’s head, like a dog chasing its own tail. This is not a place you might end up accidentally, not unless you had walked out of town into the woods, walked fast without discretion, walked or ran with fear or desperation?
“I had to leave,” she says with the somber tone that you might use in a confessional box, reading Amber’s mind. “I couldn’t stay any longer. I didn’t know where I was going. I started out and walked and I kept walking. That’s all I knew at the beginning, I had to keep walking. The storm was just starting. I didn’t think about how it would feel once I got tired, I couldn’t think even one minute into the future.”
It’s not in Amber’s nature to ask questions. She doesn’t want to reveal and so she doesn’t need to know. She brings her coffee to the fire. Sits on the floor. Silent. Next to Ophelia. They sit side by side, one pale face framed with jet-black disheveled hair, one red face framed with blond. A mismatched pair.
Nothing is slowing down outside. The wind is picking up, pushing at the windows with crushing force. Snow is turning to hail, sounding out complexed rhythms onto the glass panes, everchanging, driving harder and faster into Amber’s brain.
Ophelia does want to talk after all. Her voice is soft and deep. Amber cannot quite place her accent, something about it suggests an otherness that she can’t put her finger on. When she breathes in, the air catches in her throat, rasping imperceptibly as though she is asthmatic. She should give her something other than coffee. She doesn’t need to be brought to her senses; she needs to be brought out of them. She remembers the bottle at the back of the cabinet in the kitchen. Her cousin had given it to her a few years ago. She didn’t know what it was. He had brought it back from Siberia, some kind of spirit. She had put it in the cupboard, knowing that she wasn’t going to drink it any time soon, but now she remembers thinking that there was going to be a time in the future when she would need it. Need? Want? These are the thoughts that clog up her brain on a daily basis, these are the thoughts that stop her from functioning like everyone else in the world, these are the thoughts that have secluded her away in this storm, in this cabin in the woods. She had never imagined that anyone else would ever join her.
As she looks into the deep blue circles of Ophelia’s eyes, she tries to recall something she has said. All this time Ophelia has been talking, she has heard her voice, the rise and fall of it, the words a constant stream of sound, something like a foreign language—impossible to distinguish where one word starts and the next ends.
Attention deficit disorder. Auditory processing. These had been two of the terms that had been tossed backwards and forwards when she was a child. That was before. After, none of that mattered. It was only a problem when she was with others, when she was compared with the group.
The light is fading. Ophelia pauses. Is she waiting for a response? Waiting for Amber to say something? But Amber doesn’t want Ophelia to know that she hasn’t heard or understood anything.
“Drink?”
Ophelia nods with a smile, her mouth twisting at the edges. She has a scar which follows the line of her top lip – an accident? Surgery?
Amber stands on a stool and opens the cupboard. A bag of rice falls out, crashing to the floor, sending the tiny pellets in all directions. Ophelia leaps up to help. Amber brushes her away, too harshly, shocking her with the tone of her voice, the grate of her heightened tone slapping its way into Ophelia’s soft vowels without apology and leaving them sad and soggy in the pit of her mouth.
Amber immediately regrets her lack of control. Another problem she has always had. Eager to make amends, she pours two glasses of the spirit on ice. It’s dark brown, the color of maple syrup. It smells strong, not rancid, but not like anything she has ever smelt. They click their glasses together like long lost friends and Ophelia downs hers in one gulp. Amber’s throat closes as she takes her first sip and she struggles not to gag. Ophelia’s face betrays nothing.
“I’m not used to visitors,” Amber says, pouring herself another and downing it easily this time.
“I’m grateful you let me in.”
Ophelia’s eyes. It’s Amber who breaks the stare every time. She’s guzzling the syrupy drink, it’s calming her nerves, allowing her to breathe a little more slowly. She wonders how it would be to lean forward, to take Ophelia’s fragile head in her hands and to put her mouth up to her lips.
In an instant there it is. Her lips are soft, salty. The thump of Amber’s head echoes the rhythm of her heart. Usually she would be unable, but the alcohol has lowered her defenses, leaving her unconcerned about self-preservation. For once, at her own peril, she succumbs to desire.
#
Afterwards they lie next to each other, staring at the ceiling, their bodies covered by heavy wool nested between cotton sheets.
Amber takes a deep breath and reaches for the pack of cigarettes and the lighter that she keeps next to her bed. Ophelia is still talking. She doesn’t ask any questions. She has everything she needs for now. She lays back pulling the covers over her and curling into the tight ball that she sleeps in every night. Tonight, though she falls asleep fast, crashing hard into the dark corners of her subconscious.
#
The next morning Ophelia is gone. There is no trace of her except for some long strands of blond hair on the brown rug where the fire had kept them warm the night before. The storm is far away – a translucent blue sky holds the sun, already burning its way into the snow that blankets on the ground.
It’s on the news later that morning. The body of a woman has been recovered from the river. The body has not yet been identified but the few details are enough for Amber to know without doubt that it’s her.
It’s not the death that stops her heart. It’s the fact that it never happened – neither the kiss nor all that she imagined might have followed. She gasps for air, weighed down by the reality that they had fallen asleep side by side, parallel lives, and long before dawn Ophelia was already speeding off on a different track into the distance.