Free Anna From Away by D. R. Macdonald Page A

loneliness was sharp and childlike for a few minutes, indulgent, she felt weak with it. But of course the man
had
to leave, in every respect he had to go home, get a hold of yourself, you’re a little delirious, Anna. She drank quickly the dark tea, delicious. It swam warmly into her, her head drooped. She listened to her breathing slow.
She is on ice. Snow-flakes whirl like reflections from a mirror ball as she spins, in a maelstrom white against a dark sky, skates on her feet, she can feel the laces tight, hear the blades carving arcs in the ice, it is like dancing, flakes melt coolly on her eyelids, she has no partner, she just flows in a kind of wild joy, heightened by fear, pulled this way, that way, a faint wind around her, and through the swirling snow a dim, ambiguous figure watches, she knows it is watching her, she is pleased and troubled by its attention, by the mad grace of her motion, of her spread wings, trapped as she is. The ice flexes like a thin, pulsating floor as she nears something black, a fiery mouth, yawning, hugely out of proportion to its head, this is a dream, she says aloud, but that gives her no comfort. In the dark around her, she senses men, her whirling body stops, solid and still as ice. There is the frantic dog tearing at its chains, why can’t she skate away like she wants to, as she once did as a girl, when all she had to do is turn and … Murdock leans over her bed in a strange kitchen, she is abashed by her fever, it seems quaint, his hand is warm on her face, slides inside her robe to her breast, she can feel its heat, its touch, she takes a deep breath. Pneumonia’s the thing, the old danger, he says gravely, his voice a soft brogue, like a boat being rowed slowly, and he tucks her tighter under blankets of worn and heavy wool, I should take you to the hospital but the road is terrible iced, ah, you’re looking better now, I’ll carry you to your house, warm as toast there, and she says, No, I want to stay here, my rooms are cold, can’t you see my breath …?
    Was it possible to feel more alone than she did now, at this waking? The ceiling light burned. She did not hear the dog. Oh, God, she had to get out of this robe damp with sweat, she forced herself, weeping and shivering, to climb the stairs to the bedroom and find the long flannel underwear in the chest of drawers she could never get the camphor out of, it frightened her now, that smell of illness. But the flannel felt good and she lay down, swathed in bedcovers, the night running in tremors through her body. That patch of open water she’d left behind would be skimming over ever so thinly now, a thickening skin of ice. New snow would conceal it, curious birds would pepper it with tracks, and she, some morning soon, would take her pen and ink to them, and, in her imagination, the dog she hoped was gone.

VIII.
    H E WISHED HE COULD FORGET about the dog, damn it, he was chilled to trembling now, wet from the chest down, a wind was whisking snow into his face. But he’d told her he would go back, and the dog, poor creature, wouldn’t survive the night anyway, coyotes could menace it to death. He pulled his watch cap down tight and retraced their steps, then veered off to go round the pond to the north side where the ice would hold him. The dog whimpered, hearing him, seeing the light. Murdock, shaking and out of breath, kneeled at the trap, the flashlight throwing the dog’s writhing shadow across the ice. Black Lab mix. He murmured to it as he worked and calmed it, the animal growled but let him pry the jaws apart. It hopped free, limped off a ways and set to licking its hind leg, the raw cut Murdock caught a glimpse of, and though he tried to coax it home with him, the dog gimped slowly off toward the woods and was gone beyond the flashlight though he could still hear its panting. Had enough of men, have you, pup, their goddamn steel contraptions?
    The flashlight shone in the ragged break where Anna had fractured the