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I swallowed hard as bile lashed up my throat. “You stomped into my life and ripped away my forgetfulness. You showed me that if you could find my valley—a complete stranger with no business being here, then my family...” My voice cracked. My vision went black, then gray, then a kaleidoscope of reds.
Pinching the bridge of my nose again, I spat, “The fact that they never came back... It means they left me, and I can live with that. It’s what I wanted. My entire existence in this place was sacrificed so one day we could all be free. I’m grateful. I’m glad they’re out there, living lives away from here. Safe, hopefully. But the thing is—” I looked down at the girl by my feet, at the leash tethering us together, at the holes in my vegetable patches and the blatant lack of regard for winter prep, and I felt ancient.
I felt like the bear who had to gather and feast, a ticking clock in its soul, pushing it to eat more, forage and harvest, because if it didn’t, it wouldn’t survive hibernation. It would die in the dark, hungry and alone and in pain.
I was that bear.
And this naïve, belligerent girl had raided my pantry.
“The thing is...” The world flickered in and out. My grip on sanity slipping. “You owe me my life. I didn’t want it anymore. But you...you’ve gone and claimed it.”
My knees buckled, sending me crashing before her.
She gasped and tried to catch me, succeeding only in tangling our bodies together as we kneeled in earth as if we were about to be executed. And who knew, perhaps that was exactly what would happen.
Thanks to her, we would go hungry. We would be in pain. But the difference between me and that lonely bear was...I had her.
As grayness slithered over my vision, I mumbled the most honest confession of my life. “I can’t let you go because I’d rather die with you at my side than alone.”
Her arms trembled as she lowered me down, down, down.
My head hit dirt and my eyelids closed. Concussed nightmares dragged me deep, but not before I whispered, “I’m not lonely while you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”