With a knife in her hand, Lynn relaxed. The methodical work of field dressing restored her spirits, and once she surrendered the knife to Eli the task of instructing him took all her concentration. His inexpert knife-handling skills would’ve cost him a finger if she hadn’t been there, and the look on his face when she instructed him to reach into the rib cavity and pull out the heart was enough to make her glad she was.
She removed her own gloves. “Here, I’ll show you,” she said, and stuck half her arm into the warm depths of the deer, emerging with the dripping organ.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, the color in his cheeks she’d noticed earlier suddenly gone.
“Beats eating grasshoppers,” she shot back, and Eli burst out laughing, catching her by surprise and causing an unguarded smile to spread across her own face. “What?”
“Just you, standing there with blood up to your armpit and a heart in your hand, happy as can be.” Eli stifled another laugh. “And my mom had a musician all picked out for me.”
“Fat lot of good that would do you out here,” Lynn said, turning her attention back to the carcass and trying to ignore the pleasant flush that had crept up her cheeks. “Boost me up into the tree and toss me the rope.”
The two of them had the deer hung in a few minutes. “It’s cold enough now, you can just let it hang for a bit to cure,” she said. “One of us will show you how to butcher.”
Eli wiped the sweat that had beaded on his brow despite the cold weather. “Thank you,” he said, catching her gaze. “For everything.”
Lynn kicked snow over the purple mound of organs and grunted. “You’re welcome. How about in exchange you tell me about these water maps?”
“Stebbs tell you about that, or Lucy?”
“Both,” Lynn said. “But Lucy let it slip first.”
Eli sighed and looked up at the carcass. “Neva’s got this idea in her head that if she treats her like an adult, Lucy will act like one. But I knew she couldn’t keep her mouth shut.”
“She needs to learn,” Lynn said. “I’m guessing you didn’t know she can douse?”
“What’s that mean?”
“Witch water,” Lynn tried again, but Eli’s face remained blank. “She can find water good as any of those satellite things. Better even, since the water she finds is underground.”
Eli swallowed once, hard. Lynn was glad to see that city or not, he was smart enough to know what kind of danger that put the little girl in. “It’s genetic,” Lynn explained. “Someone in your family is able to do it, though Stebbs says it can skip generations. I’m guessing whoever it was never even knew, living in Entargo like you do.”
“Did,” Eli corrected. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know about the water maps, but we’re going inside to talk. I can pretend to be tough for two more minutes, but I’m freezing, and I think we’ve got enough conversation to last the afternoon.”
Lynn glanced up at the sun. “I can stay a little,” she said hesitantly. “But I’m not sure how welcome I am inside.”
“Neva’s not in there,” Eli said. “She’s out at the grave.”
“By herself?”
“I couldn’t get her to come away,” he said. “Once the snow stopped, she went right to it and started clearing away the drifts. I’ve been watching the deer upstream, and I knew they came to the same spot every morning, so I needed to be there at the right time. But Neva wouldn’t budge, so I had to leave her behind.”
“She been there all day?”
“Mostly. I got the deer about right after sunrise, dragged it back here, and went to check on her. I took her something to eat, but she refused to move.”
“She dressed well?”
“Well enough,” Eli said, and Lynn didn’t miss the shiver that went through him. She guessed that Neva was dressed better than Eli, and that he’d given the better coat to her. The idea of being in the small shelter alone with Eli caused a different kind of heat to flush through her. She clamped down on it, the need to know more about the satellites outweighing her nerves.
The little house was warm. She put the pack from Stebbs down next to the stove and stripped off her coat, wet with snow and smeared with deer blood. She hung it over the back of one of the mismatched chairs to dry. “Stebbs got you set up nice,” she said as she sat at the little table that was pushed into the corner. She kept her gaze firmly on its top, not allowing her eyes to wander to the loft where Neva and Eli slept together. Not after what Stebbs had told her.
“I got that myself,” Eli said as he sat down across from her. “One afternoon when he was over I went out, found it along with the chairs. Of course, every piece came from a different house, so they don’t match.”
Lynn felt her lips flicker into a smile without meaning to. “You’re used to things like matching furniture?”
“Oh, yes, a coordinated dining room,” Eli said, fake wistfulness creeping into his tone as he ran his fingers over the tabletop. “I miss it more than tap water.”