What the fuck have I gotten myself into?

I carry the unconscious woman inside my cabin.  I can’t even remember what she said her name is, but here I am, bringing her into my home where I haven’t had company since the first winter I was here.

I’m concerned about my kill.  Leaving it on the Jeep is a bad plan—a bear will surely smell it and pay me a visit.  A lot of the bears will already be in the hibernation dens, but some are certainly still out and about.  If not a bear, then some other carnivore or carrion eater.  It won’t last long, even with night approaching, and I don’t want to lose the meat.

Maybe it’s shitty to be more concerned about the caribou meat than I am about the human woman.  I don’t care.  Thawing out this woman had not been on my agenda for the evening.

Now that I have her inside, I have no idea what to do with her.  Her clothing is wet, and I need to get her out of it, but I don’t know where to put her.  I don’t want to lay her on my bed – she would just get the blanket wet.

With no other options, I squat down and lay her as gently as I can on the rug.  Solo comes up immediately, meowing loudly.

“I know you’re hungry,” I say.  “I gotta deal with this first.”

Solo is not impressed with my reason for delaying and continues to whine.

“Hey, can you hear me?”  I yell at her a couple of times but get no response.  After a bit of hesitation, I slap her face lightly, but she still doesn’t move.  If I had some smelling salts, they probably would have worked, but I live on my own and never had need of them before.

I need to get her warm, which means getting her dry.  I start undressing the woman, all the while trying to figure out what I’m going to say to her if she wakes up and finds me taking her clothes off.  I don’t want her to panic, but I have to get the wet clothes away from her skin.  It’s much warmer inside the cabin, but the warmth won’t be enough if she’s getting close to hypothermic, and I can’t check her for frostbite while her socks are on.

She remains unconscious as I strip her down to her bra and underwear.  Pushing the wet garments to the side, I dry her skin carefully with a towel as I check for any grey flesh.  She doesn’t have any signs of frostbite, so I finish drying her and crouch down to pick her up.

By the time I move her to the bed, she’s shivering.  It’s a good sign—her body has the energy to work to warm itself.  I cover her with the blankets and stoke up the fire to better heat the room.  Only dim light comes through the window now, so I light the kerosene lamp and a few candles as well.  Even little flames can help heat a small room.

I try to get her to drink a little water, but she’s not cooperating, and I don’t want the bed to end up wet.  I pinch her arm gently and watch her skin snap back.  She isn’t severely dehydrated, or her flesh would pucker.  Water can wait.  I hang her clothes and meager coat to dry out on the rack by the fire.

“Keep an eye on her, okay?”  Solo only responds by whining, but he’s going to have to wait, too.  I need to get the caribou back to the barn and stored where nothing can get to it.

I jog to the barn and grab the sled.  Once I have it back to the cabin, I untie the caribou from the hood of the Jeep and strap it onto the sled.  As I start to pull it back toward the barn, I wish I had found a husky pup instead of a cat.  At least when they grow up, huskies could help with the work.

I store the caribou in the barn next to another one I’ve already cleaned and dressed, separating the best meat into usable portions and preparing the hide for whatever use I might have for it.  I’ve built up a stockpile of furs over the years, and I usually end up with plenty of extra to sell or trade in the spring if I need a bit of cash to replenish supplies.  I never sell the caribou hides though—the skins with the hollow fur are the best for winter weather protection, and that’s worth its weight in cash around here.

As I walk back from the barn, the wind picks up.  I can feel the increased chill in the air and smell the impending storm before I even look up at the sky.  Dark clouds loom from the west.

Back inside the cabin, the young woman hasn’t moved.  Solo is absolutely screeching at this point, so my next task is to feed him.  I watch the woman as Solo sucks on the bottle I bought for him in Yellowknife, trying to remember what she said her name is.  I am pretty sure it starts with an S.  Maybe Sarah?  That doesn’t seem quite right.  It is a little more unusual than that, and short for something else.  I wanted her to leave me alone and hadn’t really been paying attention.

Solo drinks as much as he can fit into his tiny stomach.  I swear he’s glaring at me for making him wait.  When he’s finished, I rinse out the bottle while he decides to check out the woman in the bed.  She’s still lying on her back, just as I left her.  Solo starts out at the foot of the bed, sniffs at the lump under the blanket where her feet are, and then walks right up her legs, over her stomach, and stands on her chest.  He stares at her face for a minute, carefully sniffing her nose.

He seems unimpressed.

“Women are trouble,” I tell him.  “They’re best avoided.  Sometimes you can’t help it though.”

Solo jumps down and entertains himself with a bit of bark he finds on the floor near the fireplace.  I get caught up in watching him for a moment, trying to figure out how he could be so entertained just by pushing the bark around on the floor, but he seems happy enough to do it.

I should be so easily entertained.

As it is, I’m just tired.  Between last night’s interrupted sleep, the hunt, and hauling this woman around, I’m about ready to lie down myself.  It’s not late at all, but the sun is starting to set, and it will be dark quickly.  I light the oil lamp and make some extra food when I cook dinner, assuming the woman will be hungry when she wakes up.  Those donuts couldn’t have lasted too long.

While I eat, I crank my weather radio and tune into the forecast.  As I suspected, there’s a storm on the way, and it’s looking like a big one.  Several inches of snow are expected, followed by dropping temperatures.  I glance at the unconscious woman, wondering just how long I am going to be stuck here with her.

She’s still out when I’m done eating, and I’m kind of at a loss about what to do next.  For a while, I just stare at her, taking in her features.  She’s pale white with light brown hair, which means she isn’t from anywhere around here.  I remember the few words she spoke to me, and I know she’s from the States and probably from the Midwest.  Why would an American Midwest girl be this far into the Northwest Territories in the first place?

I remove my shirt and socks, then my jeans.  Glancing at the woman in the bed, I leave my boxers on for her sake.  She is bound to freak out when she wakes up in a strange place, and the last thing she would want to see is my dick waving around.

I stand in the middle of the room, looking back and forth between the chair and the bed and getting colder by the minute.  I toss one more piece of wood on the fire just to buy myself some time.  It would be most chivalrous of me to grab an extra blanket and sleep in the chair, but that would just kill my back, and I need to finish the caribou tomorrow before the storm hits.  I also need to chop more wood, and doing that with an already aching back would suck.

Without knowing what else to do, and being totally unwilling to be gentlemanly enough to freeze my ass sleeping on the floor, I climb over the woman and slide into the blankets beside her.

Her body is still a little chilly, even under the blankets with the fire roaring.  I move a little closer to her, pressing my body up against hers.  I am encumbered with a vague memory of the last time I was in bed with Margot as a winter storm approached.  It’s been awhile since I felt soft skin against mine, and I hope I don’t make a fool of myself.

Some things are more easily controlled than others.

I shiver a bit and pull the blanket up over my shoulder.  I don’t know what to do with my arm.  I try just laying it down my side, but it’s completely unnatural and uncomfortable.  I’ll never be able to sleep with it in that position, so I slowly, carefully, slide my arm across her bare stomach and rest my fingers against the mattress on the other side of her.

“Please don’t wake up and punch me in the face,” I mutter as I close my eyes.

She doesn’t.

In fact, she’s still asleep when I open my eyes.  I’m in almost the exact position I was in when I fell asleep—with one arm tossed over her.  Her hand lies across my forearm and her head is tilted toward me.  Her skin is warm now, our combined body temperature creating a pocket of heat under the thick blankets.  The firelight is dim, but I can still make out her face.  Her breathing is steady, which is a good sign.  The light is too dim to know for sure, but I think she has color back in her face as well.

While I’m still staring into her face, her eyes open, and she grips my arm tightly with her fingers.

I brace myself, expecting her to freak out when she wakes up and finds herself in a strange place, lying in an unfamiliar bed with an unknown man lying beside her.  She lies perfectly still for a long moment before slowly looking around the room.  When her gaze finally reaches me, I’m surprised at the calm look in her eyes.

“Where am I?” she asks softly.

“My cabin.”

“How did I get here?”

“I found you on the road.  You passed out.”

She looks around the room again before she focuses back on my face.

“You bought me donuts.”

“Yeah, I did.”  I snicker softly.  “You were trying to steal them.”

“I wasn’t.  I don’t know how they got in my pocket.  I guess they must have fallen off the shelf.”

Her explanation is about the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, far more implausible than the many, many excuses and claims of innocence I heard from my comrades in prison.  She doesn’t seem phased by my look of incredulity but rather directs her attention lower.

“Where are my clothes?”

“Hanging up by the fire,” I say.  “They were wet.  Getting wet in this weather is a death sentence.”

She nods slowly.  I’m still waiting for the panic to set in, but she remains calm.  She looks around the room again as she takes a deep breath.

“What were you doing out there?” I ask.

“They just left me there on the road.”  Her voice is a monotone.

“Who did?”

“Two guys.  I met them outside the gas station.”

“Wearing hunting gear?”

“Yes.  They said they would give me a ride to Yellowknife, but when I told them I didn’t have any money, they started suggesting other ways I could pay them.  When I refused, they dumped me beside the road.”

I narrow my eyes as I stare at her face.  Her story is perfectly plausible, but her tone of voice is so matter-of-fact and emotionless, I don’t know if I should believe her or not.  There’s definitely something off about her.  I’m tempted to confront her, but I don’t even know what to say.

“You’re pretty calm about all of this.”  I raise my eyebrows when she looks at me.

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” I say and then pause for a moment before continuing, “I kinda expected you to be more scared, I guess.”

“Of what?”

“Me.  Being in a weird place.  Something.”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

“No.”  The word comes out of my mouth automatically.  As soon as I say it, my throat tightens.  I don’t intend to hurt her, but I know from experience that there is never a guarantee.

“Is there something dangerous in this place?”

“Well…”  I’m not really sure how to answer.  Any given place has a certain level of danger associated with it, but I know that isn’t what she means.  “I mean, there’s a fire, which is potentially dangerous, but there isn’t a minefield under the floor or anything.”

I don’t tell her I also have guns around the place.  It’s not information I think she needs.

“I guess all that’s left is in the unknown,” she says.  “If I were to be afraid of that, I’d always be afraid.”

I can’t really fault her logic, but her attitude is still unsettling.

The kitten must have felt left out of the conversation because he chooses that time to jump up on the bed and walk up the woman’s leg.

“Is there a cat on me?”

“Yeah,” I say.  “That’s Solo.”

“Hi, Solo.”  She reaches out and lets him sniff her hand before she rubs his head.

Solo closes his eyes and pushes against her touch.

“He’s so tiny.”

“Yeah, just a kitten.”  I shift my weight and reach out to run my hand along Solo’s back.  He mews and crawls onto me, and the woman smiles.

I don’t know how to take her.  She seems perfectly at ease waking up in a stranger’s bed with a mangy kitten standing on her.  She should be upset.  She should be worried about my intentions or something, but she remains perfectly calm.

Maybe her brain hasn’t defrosted yet.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Bishop.”  I look at her face.  “Yours is…?  Sorry, I can’t remember.”

“Netti.”

I narrow my eyes at her again.  I can’t remember exactly what she had told me her name was before, but I am sure that wasn’t it.  I consider calling her out on it, but I don’t know what the point would be.  Maybe she’s more frightened than she’s letting on and trying to protect herself.  Maybe she lied in the parking lot of Broken Toy’s Gas and Goods.  Maybe my memory sucks.

I know it’s not my memory, and I decide to just ignore the change of name.  I can’t imagine it matters much anyway.  The storm can’t last more than a day or two, and I’ll drag her back to Whatì and forget she ever existed.