We finished eating. He took the plates and told me to get ready. I went to my room. I put on my coat and boots. I braided my hair to get out of my face.
I looked in the mirror and groaned. I have gotten skinner due to the fact of never eating a full meal and protesting harder than the teens of the 1960s. I was older in a way, but more worn down, like an old doll. I was used up and ready to be thrown out.
“Are you ready Tavi?” William asked from the other room.
“Coming,” I said pushing away the mirror and walking out of my room. I met him by the front door and started our walk. We didn’t take the same path we did the first time.
The snow was making my hair wet and fogged up my glasses, but like William, I wanted out of that cabin too.
“Tavi, do you like snow?” he asked me.
“No,” I told him.
“Not at all?”
I shrugged. “Sorry.”
He looked up to the sky, and let the snow hit him. “I love the snow. I love it all. I wouldn’t mind going that way.”
“What do you mean?”
“If I had a choice, I would like to freeze the death,” he told me.
“Freeze to death?”
“Yeah, you know that old Robert Frost poem, “Fire and Ice”? I would love for the world to end in ice. It seems so peaceful to go that way. Fire is too quick, so painful. Ice would numb you. One day the world is going to end, and one day, we will all die.”
“Why snow? Why ice?”
“Just feel more peaceful.”
“What about you? Fire, or ice?” he asked.
I thought about it for the longest time. “I would like to go with the people I love the most around me. I would like them to hold my hand and tell me they loved me.”
“I see.”
“But if you had to choose between that, I would want ice too,” I told him. “Fire is too painful, too quick.”
He nodded. “Yeah. You want to play I-Spy?” he asked.
“Sure,” I agreed.
“I spy something brown,” he said.
“Tree?”
“No.”
“Dirt?”
“Yep,” he said. “Your turn.”
“I spy something green,” I said.
“Tree?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, my turn,” he said. “I spy something white.”
“Snowflakes,” I answered.
“Yes,” he smiled. That was too easy.
“Oh, my turn, I guess,” I said looking around. “I spy something blue.”
“Um, I don’t see anything blue. Sky?”
“No, that’s grey, blue.”
“Um, I don’t know.”
“Your jacket,” I told him with a smile.
He looked at me and laughed. “Okay, that was a tricky one.”
“It was right under your nose,” I laughed back.
“Fair enough, my turn,” he said. “I spy something hopeful, and meaningful, and beautiful.”
We both stopped. He looked at me and smiled.
“Is it the snow again?” I asked.
“No, it’s you.”
He did something that threw me off. Something I didn’t think he would ever do in front of me. I wasn’t sure how to react. He started to cry, and I don’t mean just a few teardrops or anything, he bawled. I stared with my mouth opened and not sure what to say to him.
“Um, why are you crying?” I asked in a near whisper.
“I’m sorry,” he ended up saying. “I’m sorry, kitten, I just want to give the best for you. I should have been there, I should have took you the second I saw you. I would have given you the world, to give you whatever you needed. I love you, Tavi, I love you so much and it hurts that you can’t see that-”
“William,” I started.
He fell on his knees. He started crying, and I didn’t know what to do. He was so big, so monster-like, but he poured out his soul to be, “I would have done so much. I would have taught you how to fight. I would teach you how to paint. I would have loved to hold you. I would have loved all that. Tavi, don’t you get it? I wanted you, when no one else really did. You would have been so much happier here. No one else wanted to love you as much as I did.”
“William, that’s not fair, I . . . that’s not . . .”
“You were left alone so much as a child, and I could have helped you. I don’t want to punish you, I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to love you.”
“William, you . . . I don’t think you love me.”
Tears started to flow heavier. “I love you so much, kitten. I love you-”
“William, you don’t love me. The thing you did to me . . . in the doorway. If you loved someone, you would have never done that.”
“That was a miscommunication.”
I was dumbfounded. Shaking my head, I said, “I did not want that. It wasn’t right. . .”
The words fell off. I did something that threw me off too. I started to cry along with him. Not as much as him, just teary eyes. “Tavi, please, understand, please understand, I never wanted to hurt you, you to be in pain. I hoped I could have made you happy, made you safe. I understand I have done some things these last few months that I shouldn’t have. Please, please, can you ever forgive me?”
I thought about it for the longest time. I thought about all of it. I thought about how lonely he was, and how he had lost his family in that fire. I thought about the snow being his only friend for the longest time and how sad that was. He was alone. No one to love him. No one left in the world to truly love him.
The thought that maybe I could have changed him, make him better, not make him feel so alone did cross my mind. I even thought that maybe it was my fault, that if I had been nicer to him, none of the bad stuff would have happened.
Maybe even if I told him I loved him too, just to make him happy, maybe things would have been better. To try harder, to listen to him more, maybe I should have done that. It really crossed my mind, and I was about to tell him, until I looked passed him.
The doe was next to us, watching. I sighed, looking back at him. I reached out and touched his chest. Even sitting down, he was almost as tall as me. I felt his heart beating, and I stared at him. I felt as though the snow had stopped, froze in time.
He raised his head up. I felt his heart beating fast; I could feel the one thing that made him human. “I wish I could love you, and make you happy, and be what you needed . . . but I can never forgive you for what you did. William, you kidnapped me, abused me, got me drunk, tore me down . . . took away my innocence. That makes a human, any human in the world, worse than a monster.”
I took away my hand, but he grabbed it and held it against his forehead. He started to bawl even more. He kept saying the word ‘please’ over and over again.
“William,” I started. He got up fast and pulled me into a tight hug. My lungs were being squeezed. He held me and cried. I didn’t know what to do. I found myself reaching up and hugging him back. I forgot everything he had done to me and felt sorry for him.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry Tavi,” he told me.
Getting free from him, I held my hands up and yelled, “Stop!”
He suddenly stopped crying, and narrowed his eyes at me. He shook his head, and started to walk back to the cabin. I followed him, with no words exchanged between us.683Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmpi8nQn2i2
