1 The last to have died

"So-" his father gasped, pressing his hands too deep into his father's abdomen.

"Da don't." He dropped to his knees before his father, pressing his own dirty hands to the puddle of blood seeping from his father's stomach. Little pieces of things that should be kept inside kept trying to sneak through his fingers; they felt slimy and hot. The air steamed with the heat escaping from his father's body. His father's face was pale with lips pressed into the thinest line.

"You." His father gasped. "Kill me."

"Da no." His eyes darted around the scene. Fat flakes of snow were already covering the bear's tracks. Skeletal trees loomed over them. The brush was near dead. The forest was as quiet as a cometary.

"HELP!" He screamed again. The wind whipped around them and carried his plea to the heavens. There was nothing but more snow. Should he pack the wounds with snow? Would that bring a cold death? "HELP!"

His father's hands wormed their way from his and the wound, they rose into the air until they found his cheeks. The strength left his father's arms right away. His father's fingers ran trails of blood from his forehead to his chin.

"Father don't. Save your strength. We'll figure this out. Everything will be all right. Ma's going to make us a big pie when we get back. We'll do it. I just need. I just. I."

"Boy," his father said. His voice was a hoarse whisper, but there was steel there as well. "You mind me now, hear?"

He nodded, eager now for his father to make everything okay.

"Get the hatchet yonder."

He dove into the snow a few feet away, painting crimson amongst the white. He found the the hatchet; his hands were caked in pink slush. His fingers couldn't do much beyond hold onto the hatchet. His breaths were wet and torn. The wind nipped at his exposed flesh, and the water hardened beneath the winter's attention. He stomped back to his father's side.

Somehow his father raised up on one elbow. His father must have activated [Resolve]. It would only buy a few minutes. "Boy come and hear me."

He did as his father bid. It was hard. His body was slowing down. He was freezing like everything else. "Yes da."

"If neither of us make it back, our family won't be making it either, hear?"

He nodded. They had run out of food around the time his older brother had gotten to coughing all the time. There was not much water and but a few bits of lard left. Without any men, his ma and cousin wouldn't make it to spring. No one in the village could afford to help this winter. The winter had gone on too long. During the long winters folk looked after their own, and that was it. Sometimes folk had to let a few of the old or young go. Both of them knew this. There was no need for his da to be wasting words on it.

"Boy do you hear me?"

"Ya da." He sniffled. He couldn't feel his hands, but he hadn't felt the hatchet fall either. He looked down and saw blue-white flesh curled around the oak handle beneath a film of pink frost. It took him a moment to force his eyes back on his papa. Even then he couldn't meet his pa's eyes.

"Boy, you gotta make it back, hear?"

He nodded. What else could he do?

"If I die here, you'll have a corpse and nothing."

"But, I'd have you. Ma would have you. We'd-"

"-Die with me. Time to do a man's work." His father free arm rose up to the nicked head of the hatchet. Rust lined the edge. It was old. Iron wasn't cheap. "Get on."

He had to make his eyes meet his fathers. What he saw was fierce slits of raw will. It was that unholy will power everyone always praised his pa for. There was nothing his pa couldn't do when his pa set his mind to it. Well, the bear had disagreed that, and so had the winter. He shook tears from his eyes.

"You do this, and maybe, just maybe." His father dropped onto his back and stared up into the flurry of snow falling around them. "Maybe you get a good drop." His father nodded. "You get a measure of me, too, now you know that boy."

"I'd be a killer!" He shouted, falling to his knees. He couldn't shake sense into his father without letting go of the hatchet, and his hands refused to do that. He stared at his hands now. They had work to do. They were already moving to do their work. He tried to reason with them. He'd be flagged. Surely they must know that?

"Do it now. Ya hear? Do-"

The hatchet came down at an angle, catching his father's throat and shearing into the jaw were it got stuck. He fell forward, eager for one last touch. He needed to remember what his father's touch felt like. He would never know. The body burst into golden motes. He retched a few mouthfuls of bile over the blood snow that had held his father's body. A body that was gone like it had never existed. There was no more proof of his father's existence. Tears piled into frozen mounds along his eye lashes.

There was warmth flowing into his body. A portion of his father's essence, mingling with his own essence, making something more than the sum of its parts. He flung the hatchet from his hands. He buried his face into something that wasn't the bare earth nor the snow. His hands were cold but not freezing. He tried to roll off whatever it was, but this new thing rolled with him.