An admonishment rose in Luke’s mind and vanished again instantly. Joey pinned him with her gaze and moved toward him, reaching out. Her voice came to him like a distant cry lost on the wind.
“Give me time to feel this, Luke. I want to understand your world, become a part of it—”
He stopped her. He used all the force of his will to keep her back, and she drew up short, smile fading.
“That was never part of our bargain,” he said harshly.
The look in Joey’s eyes took on a dangerous cast. “We can always change our bargain, Luke,” she said.
He could not answer. Looking away, he smelled the air and let the wilderness fill his senses. It would be dark within a few hours, darker still with the late-afternoon sun lost behind the clouds and mist. Ahead of them, a few hours’ hike to the west, lay a number of rocky inclines, stable cliffs that would grant them a night’s refuge. They would be moving gradually down into the valley and away from the high country, but he could take no chance of delaying their return if the weather worsened.
One more night before Val Cache, and a few more after that. He could bear that much. He had no choice.
Luke looked through Joey as if she weren’t there and bent to retrieve his pack. “We’ll push on,” he said. “I want to make at least another ten kilometers before dusk.”
He turned without waiting for her protest. But as he began to walk, his ears strained for the sound of her breathing and the creak of her pack as she moved to join him.
Moving alongside Luke as the snow danced, Joey felt the slow warmth of contentment melt the cold between and around them. Impossible to be angry when everything had become so beautiful; if Luke seemed to be doing his best to ignore her, she found it absurdly easy to forgive him. She hardly noticed when he began to pick up the pace, caught up in the wonder of something she had never before experienced.
The snow began to stick to the ground, first in small patches and then in an even, pristine blanket. Joey made a game of shuffling through it, kicking it up so that it clung to the toes of her boots. She wondered what it would be like when it was deep enough to wade through, how much fun it would be to build a snowman, or have a snowball fight—things Luke had probably taken for granted as a child. Common things, which to her were small miracles.
Luke was silent, doggedly leading her along the course of the stream that paralleled their way Joey found herself drifting behind, hardly aware when Luke snapped a command for her to keep up. A snowshoe hare, still mottled brown in the molt that would alter its coat to winter white, bounded across their path. A browsing bull moose and his cow, moving down the slope to the more sheltered valley, briefly challenged them and then crashed off into the forest. Small birds quarreled over the berries that remained on currant and chokecherry shrubs.
It was all wonderful, and she only realized how tired she was when Luke stopped at last, in a level area flanked by stretches of bare rock and cliffs. The snowfall had been heavier here, already an inch deep under their feet It lent the wilderness a profoundly peaceful beauty.
“We’ll camp here for the night,” Luke said, studying the terrain. He hardly glanced at her, dropping his pack to begin the first steps of making camp. Staring about the place he had picked, Joey thought it would be nice to rest here. She plopped down on a rock, dusting the snow from its surface Easiest now just to let her mind go blank, listening to the familiar sounds Luke made as he began to set up camp. She should be helping him, really, but she was so tired.
Some time passed, she was vaguely aware of it, felt it more keenly when she noticed the dampness of her clothing, the way it clung to her skin. Not comfortable at all. It would be nice to take it all off, she thought. Her body began to shake, and she could not seem to make it stop. Ridiculous.