Work Text:
If you are living in silence
With violence in your bones
Sorrow in your marrow
Blood running cold
Heal I beg you
Heal I beg you
Heal I beg you
Heal
-Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth
This is what she remembers:
The smell of human bodies, so thick in the air it filled her mouth and almost choked her. Never before had she encountered a smell she could touch. It coated all surfaces and hemmed her in. It was on her hands. She held them up in front of her, silhouetted against the small flame they provided her with, in the space where they forced her to stay. Her hands looked clean. They did not feel clean.
That sharp, prickling taste of the food that she’d finally sorted out, with some fumbling from Goodsir, was meat. She rolled the dry flesh over her tongue. It was fine. It would do. She never took to the dark water Goodsir had smilingly called ‘tea.’
Goodsir’s breathless laugh at the skepticism on her face every time he, or another man, set down the tea in front of her. Why they continued to offer it when she hated it, she did not know.
The glare from the shrewd, small-faced man with the book who she had surmised was there to watch her, to prevent her from leaving. He looked at her as if she was the one who smelled of sweat and sick and things she didn’t have words for. When he was there she sat with her back to the corner and her knees to her chest. She hated him, she hated his eyes. She willed a hole to form in the wall behind her so she could tumble out on the ice once more.
The old man who looked at her altogether differently than the man with the book, and Goodsir too. There was an ease about him, an undeniable calm. He was not afraid of her. He spoke to her in an even voice with nothing accusatory in his tone, placing food and tea (why the tea?) down beside her. The sound of it reminded her of the low rumble of a herd caribou migrating across the land.
That his name was Bridgens.
That he noticed.
That he brought her a book. (“Book,” Goodsir had said, softly tapping the cover with two fingers, the effort plain in his features. “This is a book from Mister Bridgens.”)
The images inside: of animals differently made than the ones she knew; of women in dress that gave them an unnatural shape; of plants, the likes of which she never had seen. (“That’s a flower,” Bridgens had said, tracing the dark lines of the image. “They come in all sorts of colours.”)
The totems and items left by the other men. Some would stay and they would gawk at her. She would gawk right back until they were sent away.
That Bridgens was kind to Goodsir, and Goodsir seemed grateful for his presence. Not all the men were kind to Goodsir.
That Bridgens often came to where Silna was, gathered supplies, and then returned up the ladder from whence he'd came.
That he looked in on her every time.
That once, he showed her that he was sewing, mending holes in clothes. He passed her the needle he used, and it looked miniscule pinched between his large fingers. That he showed her how he mended, and he let her do it too, for a moment. (That he smiled and said “Beautiful work, my Lady.”)
The wooden box, that gleamed an unfamiliar colour in the dark, that Bridgens could open and close it with a small, golden key. (“Key,” Bridgens had said, and she had echoed it back. “You’re a clever one,” he had said.) She loved the dull thunk the key made when he inserted the teeth into the small entrance. ("Lock." " Lock .") She loved that he could make the box refuse to open, on his command, with a single twist of his wrist.
(She does not remember what was in the box.)
That whenever Bridgens came down to open and close the box she would join him. She would press her ear to the side to hear the slide of the key and the click of the lock when the box opened. He let her try it herself.
The warmth of his fingers on hers, as he pressed the metal of the key, hot from being on his person, into her palm. The way he curled his larger hand around her smaller one. Slow, with no request in it.
No one else had touched her like that in this place. Easy, steady, generous, kind. (Goodsir might have, if he dared to touch her at all, which he didn't.)
That she missed her father.
That the key was hers. That it felt different from the offerings the men left outside the place where she slept. Little carvings that had the taint of fear on them.
That she had a friend. Bridgens had given her a gift because he was her friend.
This is what she remembers:
That her legs carried her back to them. Her mind was as blank and visionless as the blizzards that set upon them in the depth of winter. It was only forward, forward, forward with blood running down her chin. It froze to her skin, a violent and ineffective armour.
The heat of the flames that licked at the edges of her vision. That the mens’ mouths opened as if to scream but she couldn’t hear it. One roaring swell with no distinction. The night swallowing them whole.
Goodsir’s hand cupping her chin and his arm pulling her forward with more strength than she had ever imagined him to have. His eyes creased in agony and fear and defeat.
That he brought her back to the ship. (“Terror” he had said some time ago, and she had repeated it to herself in that lonely space, her now absent tongue tangling with the unfamiliar syllables). Other voices cried out his name in desperate benediction and with obvious reluctance he left her side. She fell asleep on the elevated sleeping mat, lying on her side like he had insisted.
That he treated the wound in her mouth and it burned, as if the fire she had seen turn men to ash was now burning bright and eager inside her skull. Bridgens held her hands.
Her vision blurred when he was done, her limbs so slack and useless as to be unattached from her body. She thought she saw her father above her, eyes darkened in reproach.
That Bridgens carefully, carefully, removed her furs, manipulating her limbs like she saw mothers do with their children. With a sad and tired sigh, he took a damp cloth and cleaned the blood from her skin. It had run down her neck, her chest, between her breasts to her stomach.
That sitting up was all at once much too difficult, and that he laid her down with his hand cradling the back of her head. He tried to relax her hands, curled into fists for hours and hours and days. When he finally succeeded, he saw that in her right hand, she was clutching his gift.
(“Oh, my Lady.”)
With another cloth, clean of the blood he had washed from her, he gently cleansed her ears, her cheeks, her eyelids. Each tiny pressure, the soft drag across her skin brought her closer to sleep. As he pulled a heavy blanket over her and brushed her hair back, she sank into a dreamless sleep.
When she finally awoke, her furs were there beside her. The blood that had saturated them was gone, only having left the faintest shadow.
This is what she remembers:
The ache in her shoulders as she pulled the Captain on the sled behind her.
The way her eyes stung with tears from seeing Goodsir’s body disassembled. Knowing that they had done that to him - not animals, nor monsters, nor spirits, but men.
Another body, out on the land, alone.
The familiar profile of a friend.
That he looked as if he could be sleeping.
His cold, stiff fingers, wrapped around a book. Those same fingers that had held her hand, that had bathed her, that had brought water to her lips and brushed her hair and had squeezed her shoulders.
She wished she could say his name, so he could live one more time.
There is a key on a string of hide that she carries against her bare skin. It burns hot from the warmth of her body and reminds her that she is alive.
At night, alone, she presses it to her lips. She silently recites the names she can remember. She places it in her mouth, where her tongue used to be.