Out in the Cold
A Story about the Wilderness
In the autumn of 2022, I wrote a story called, “Into the Wilderness,” which was meant to be a standalone. In the spring of 2023, I wrote a story called “Out of the Wilderness.” At the time, I wrote about my intention to expand it to four stories with one for summer and one for winter. This is that third story, a story of winter. It takes place after the first and before the second. All of the stories stand by themselves and feature different characters, but together, they tell the tale of a small people, who leave their homeland, spend time in exile, and eventually return. The final story in the tale will come out this summer, and will tell of what happens after the return. The ending of this story is paywalled, but “Into the Wilderness” and “Out of the Wilderness” are free for everyone.
Three men walked through the dark forest, stepping carefully to avoid the spots where the snow covered over thickets of underbrush, where tangled branches might snare the unsuspecting foot and trip its owner. They headed towards the light of the distant clearing, but the light was bleak and the clearing was barren. When they broke through the tree-line, they were greeted by grey and white, sky and ground – the sky bitter and uniform, the ground flat and open.
The oldest man broke the silence. His head was totally bald and his white beard was hard and long and crusted with frost.
“The wilderness is filled,” he said, “with daily reminders that life isn’t meant to please us.”
“What will we do about Melin?” asked the tallest of the three men. He was walking in the middle, and he turned to ask the older man – perhaps three or four years his senior – the question.
“What do you mean?” asked the older man.
“He’s beginning to ask me questions. He wants to learn. He’s only thirteen, but he has a sensitive side. I worry that he will grow too invested too quickly, that he will burn out. He isn’t ready. The wilderness is hard for you and me, but at least we don’t expect anything else. I fear it will break him.”
“What does he ask questions about?”
“Civilization. The land we left.”
The old man grunted. There was a pause, filled only with the crunch of their boots in the snow. Finally, he said, “Abe, what do you think? He’s your nephew.”
The third man, who hadn’t spoken yet, was younger than the other two. Perhaps in his fourth decade, his beard was trimmed and brown, unlike the oldest man’s.
“I defer to you in these matters generally, Keven,” he said. “But I think perhaps I should speak with him. Calvin, perhaps you and I can work together on this. I assume he hasn’t asked you about his father?”
“No. I leave that to his mother. She’s spoken with him before about what happened.”
“As have I. He was my brother. I know I make the boy uncomfortable, but perhaps that will be my way in with him. He wants to hear more.”
“Do you think he’s ready?”
“He has to be,” said Keven. “The wilderness demands readiness of us.”
“That and patience,” said Abe.
“Indeed.”
Later, in the pale, white light of the late afternoon, the three men returned to the small settlement they called their home. Abe had been born here, and Calvin had been born along the way. Keven remembered nothing of the world their people had left behind, having been an infant when his family departed.
There was a wooden palisade surrounding a collection of thatched huts. A well, a few firepits, a meeting area, and an armory. One of the biggest huts belonged to the blacksmith, another to the tanner, another to the cooper, another to the doctor. Out here, every tradesman held a monopoly on his own scarce trade. It wasn’t uncommon for a woman to work a trade that in the civilized world would have been done by a man. There weren’t enough boys to be apprenticed to all the tradesmen.
The three men parted ways when they entered the village. Abe headed towards a thatched door on a hut with a tiny chimney, through which wisped grey smoke. He stomped the frost off his boots outside the door, and opened it.
Inside, his sister-in-law stood tending the fire. She was cooking some sort of stew. Her two smaller children were busy with what appeared to be the darning of socks. Without turning, she greeted Abe.
“Where’s Melin?” he asked.
“I sent him to fetch something for me,” she said. “Why? Do you need him?”
“I wanted to speak with him.”
She turned. “About what? I can give him a message.”
“About my brother.”
She met his eyes coolly. “And my husband,” she said.
“Yes, Jane.”
She fetched the boy, who seemed not to want to come. Abe asked him if he was doing anything the next day and the boy said he didn’t know. Abe told him that if he wanted to hear more about his father, he could come along into the woods the following day, to check and reset traps.
The next day, Abe took Melin trapping. They headed west, towards a series of ponds linked by small streams, where beavers built complex dams. As they walked, Abe engaged the boy in light conversation, asking him about his siblings and what he was being taught, what he was reading. He waited until they were laying the first snare to bring up the boy’s father.
“Melin, do you remember much of your father?”
The boy looked at him and was silent a moment. “He died when I was only seven,” he said. “Right after Annie was born.”
“Yes, but how much do you remember of him?”
“Enough, I think. Not as much as I wish. I remember he used to tell stories about the kingdoms of men. Kingdoms he’d never seen, but kingdoms my grandfather – sorry, your father – told him about.”
“Your grandfather told your father and me many of those. He had many stories.”
“Uncle,” said Melin, pausing what he was doing and looking hard at Abe. “I’m ready. I’m ready to learn. I want to learn.”
Abe had to look away to suppress a smile. He wished, not for the first time, that he’d had children of his own. He wished that Melin had been his son, and not his brother’s. And he wished his wife hadn’t died, or his brother. The boy wasn’t ready yet. Abe wasn’t sure he’d been ready himself. He wasn’t sure any of them had. The men and women who’d first set out into the wilderness, his father among them, had known it would be cruel, but they hadn’t known how cruel.
“Melin, I’d like to teach you everything I know,” said Abe. “But, if you’re going to survive out here, you’ll need to learn to stop hoping for anything else. You still expect we will be called for, that we will go back. You have to give up those hopes. You and I will live out our lives and die out here in the wilderness, without ever seeing the civilization we dream about, the lands we tell stories of.”
“You don’t know that,” said Melin.
“I think I do.”