pt 4
When I asked him about the thing on the door he told me it was there to confuse anything that was trying to get in. Later during that winter I found out it's supposed to be a rune for illusions or disguises, I guess the idea is that it would help make it harder to tell what was inside the cabin if something got inside the
The next few days we went out hunting, for the first while we didn't catch anything. It wasn't helped by how we needed to head a fair ways away from the cabin before we saw signs of animal life and Dana always insisted that we be back before night fell, on top of that he didn't bring a gun ever, just a bow and some arrows. I know bow hunting is a common enough practice but given that bears roamed these woods I figured that it would be nice to have something with a little more stopping power.
When I mentioned this to him he said that it would cause more trouble than it would prevent. Eventually we actually managed to find and snag a buck, it was a nice one too, enough meat that we would be alright for a while. We threw it on the sleigh and began dragging it back home.
Yet more hours ticked away before we got back to the cabin and something rather interesting was waiting there for us; ravens.
Normally this wouldn't seem so strange but when I hadn't seen signs of life save the trees in this area for almost a week, it seemed a little off. Dana stiffened up when he noticed it too. When I asked him about it he told me
>'Drop the sled and come with me, we're going to need to butcher this fast"
Not sure where this was going but remembering our conversation from earlier and figured that it would be best to just go with it.
We circled around the cabin, the ravens sitting on the roof watching us the whole way. Lying in a small snowdrift in front of the door was a rabbit's head, just the head, cleanly severed.
The snow was still a bright red so it had to have been pretty fresh. There was also little indent through the snow leading up to it, made it look like it had been thrown over here.
>"Well, it could be worse. We didn't really need the head anyway."
When I asked what he was talking about he told me
>'it's only right to return a gift with a gift, take that inside and meet me near the butcher shed." (a little ways off and past the "Wall" a couple feet off of the treeline)
that evening we butchered the deer and when we were done my grandfather took the head, antlers and all, and walked out into the woods a short ways before gently setting it down and coming back.
We brought the rest of the meat over to the cabin and Dana took the rabbits head off the table where I had placed it. That night we had rabbit stew and potatoes. When I asked about why we were going to just eat something we found sitting there he told me it would be rude to ust throw it out and it wasnt wise to "insult the neighbors"
'There are other people out here? I thought you lived alone."
>'Alone? No, I just don't live by people."
'Who are your neighbors?" thought I already told you; the tomtenissar live here."
I didn't really have a good response to that.
The next morning when we went out to check the fence O (as was becoming routine) I walked out to see the spot he put the head down. There was nothing there, not even a bit of blood.
The next few weeks went by in relative peace; we would collect firewood on every so often, we went ice fishing occasionally, and every morning we cleared snow away from the cabin.
The temperature continued to drop as the winter solstice drew near, the already short days becoming a scant few hours of near perpetual twilight. You'd think it would get old seeing the same setting sun throughout most of the day but you'd be wrong, it managed to be breathtaking each and every time, I probably would have stood there staring at it all day if I wasn't being ushered along by Dana. Things probably would have continued much the same way if I hadn't fucked up one night.
It was somewhere around mid-December (you start losing track of the days out there, especially when they are mostly night) and we were going ice fishing again.
We set out early, as the sun was just barely peaking over the distant mountain range, and hiked for about an hour until we reached a small frozen over lake. We set about like always, checking the ice's thickness and cutting a hold, etc. After only a few minutes into it we heard the snapping and cracking of branches behind us. We both stopped and stared for a few moments before my grandfather said it was fine though I could tell he was bothered, every so often he'd look back and scan around the trees.
We weren't having much luck with the fish and were about to call it in for the day when I got a tug on my line. I pulled up a big trout and thought that this was great, we hadn't had fish in a while. When I turned to see if my grandfather had noticed I saw him just sort of staring at it. A little confused I gave it another look over and saw that it had a few huge gashes taken out of it, little indented lines cutting through the grey scales.
>'Throw it back, this isn't ours to take." "o-ok then."
I was a little nervous at this, although not too much had
happened during my time here I had at least managed to
pick up that when Dana got weird like this it was best to
not argue. I threw the fish back into the pond and we
started making tracks back to the cabin. Along the way I
noticed that the trees near the lake, the ones we heard the
noise coming from, had huge cuts taken out of them. Not
like an axe or bear claws, more like numerous small
chunks had been ripped out and thrown around. I asked
what that was about and Dana just started walking faster
and said we shouldn't come back here, it wouldn't be safe.
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