The Way North
Copyright© 2025 by Art Samms
Chapter 8
We didn’t see a soul for two days—not even a distant plume of smoke. Just trees and tall grass and sky. The air had turned warmer again, thick with late summer. We moved with quiet purpose, saying little but reading each other’s silences.
By late afternoon of the second day, I spotted the barn. Old, weathered gray. Half a roof caved in, but the other half still solid. We approached slowly and cautiously. It was the kind of place you had to assume wasn’t empty until proven otherwise.
We slipped inside, and it smelled like hay and dust and something vaguely sweet. A good sign. It meant animals had been kept here recently—maybe still were.
We’d just started making a spot in the corner when the barn door creaked open behind us.
Lena turned first. Her hand instinctively brushed toward the knife on her belt—not to draw it, just to feel it was there. I froze where I stood.
An old woman stood in the doorway. White hair pulled back tight. Thin as a broom handle, with a slight tremble in her arms. She wore a shawl and a long faded dress, and her eyes locked onto us without fear, without surprise.
“Ma’am,” I started, hands up, voice steady. “We don’t mean harm. We just needed a place to—”
She didn’t react. Not a blink. Not a sound. She just tilted her head slightly, watching our mouths.
I glanced at Lena, who stepped forward cautiously. “She ain’t hearin’ us,” she whispered. “She’s deaf.”
The woman raised her hand and pointed firmly—once at us, then at the ground. Then she tapped her chest and pointed to the house a short walk away, tucked behind a windbreak of tall hedges.
Lena nodded slowly. “She sayin’ ... stay. But stay quiet.”
I nodded in return. “We can do that.”
She left us to it without another word. She turned and walked back toward the house, her steps slow and deliberate.
That night, we kept our voices low and our fire lower. We shared what food we had left and dozed under the eaves where the wind couldn’t find us.
In the morning, Lena and I made a decision without speaking. We both stood at the same time, brushed ourselves off, and walked toward the house. The least we could do was help her.
She opened the door when we knocked—already expecting us. She didn’t smile, but there was something open in her eyes. Something kind.
We swept and scrubbed and patched what we could. Lena took over the hearth, cleaning out the ashes and starting a new fire with the flint I’d given her. I did what I could outside—hauling water, fixing a sagging fence post, clearing brush.
By sundown, she had us seated at her tiny wooden table with a full spread laid out. Stew thick with carrots and beans and something smoky I couldn’t place. Warm bread. Even a bit of preserved fruit. I hadn’t eaten that well for a good while.
She didn’t eat much herself—just watched us with a tired but pleased expression, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
When we stood to leave, full and ready to roll out our blanket in the barn again, she raised both hands, waved them gently toward the floor inside, then pointed to us, and finally mimed a pillow against her cheek.
“She wants us to stay inside tonight,” I said.
Lena looked surprised but not unwilling. “She’s a kind one. Real kind.”
We nodded, thanked her the best way we knew how—with hands to hearts and grateful nods.
That night, we slept on a woven rug near the hearth, a fire crackling softly beside us. The old woman had already gone to bed in the other room.
Lena pulled the blanket up around her shoulders and whispered, “Maybe there’s more good people out here than I thought.”
I looked into the flames and replied, “Maybe just enough.”
The old woman gave us a light breakfast—porridge, maybe cornmeal, and a few dried berries. She served it without fanfare, just nodded when we thanked her with our hands over our hearts and a few awkward gestures that meant more than words could. We stepped out of her tiny home into crisp morning air, grateful for the warmth in our bellies and the kindness that still lingered in her doorway.
By midmorning, we were back on the trail, moving quiet, the way we always did now. The road sloped gently and narrowed, winding through a patch of woods. Birds chirped high above. It could’ve been a good day.
It wasn’t.
The man stepped out from behind a tree like a ghost—thin, dirty, and mean-looking, with a knife already in hand. His eyes jumped between us, then fixed on me. “Drop the bag,” he said. “And you—” he nodded at Lena, “drop the knife.”
She hesitated, jaw tight. I gave her the smallest nod. Her hand opened, and her knife hit the dirt with a soft thunk.
He pointed the blade at my chest. “Backpack. Off.”
I slipped it off slowly and handed it over. He dumped it out, sneering at the odd assortment of clothes and scraps that fell out. His fingers snatched up my wallet, flipped it open, looked at the plastic cards inside. “What the hell is this junk?”
He tossed it to the ground like garbage.
Then he told Lena, “Put the rest back in the bag.”
She didn’t move until he raised the knife slightly again. Her eyes turned to me, then down, and she did as he said—moving slow, deliberate, like she hated every second of it. My boots crunched softly in the leaves.
He took her knife and shoved it into the pack. Then his eyes roamed over to me again. “Nice shirt. Take it off.”
I froze.
“You deaf?” he snapped. “Off!”
I peeled it off, handed it to him. He stuffed it into the backpack too.
“Now lie down,” he barked. “Face-down.”
I hesitated, and he jabbed the blade toward my ribs. “Do it.”
I dropped slowly to the dirt, arms out. I heard him stepping closer. Then—
“Take his boots off,” he ordered Lena.
I lifted my head a little in disbelief, but she was already kneeling by my feet, her fingers working at the laces. Her hands were shaking. The bastard wanted everything.
Then he turned to her. “That bag. Hand it over.”
My mind raced. The bag had the trap. The canteens. Her flint striker. The last of our real tools. I looked to the ground and spotted it—my lighter. It must’ve fallen when he dumped my pack. I inched toward it slowly, hand outstretched.
I grabbed it, sparked it once. A sudden little flame burst to life in my fingers.
The thief spun around. Springing to my feet, I raised the lighter and stepped toward him fast, waving the flame close to his face.
“What the—!”
He leapt back, stumbled, and bolted into the trees, clutching the pack and everything he’d taken. He didn’t look back once.
I killed the flame.
Lena was already beside me, helping me up. I looked down at myself—barefoot, shirtless, and still buzzing with adrenaline.
We stood there for a long moment, hearts pounding.
Then we took stock.
He’d gotten my new shirt. My boots. The knife. My backpack and everything that had been inside it. Including my phone. Including my coins.
I didn’t say anything to Lena about that part. No point in dragging her down with disappointment she couldn’t fix.
But we still had her bag. Inside it—the trap, the canteens, the flint striker, the old clothes I’d been wearing before. I pulled out my t-shirt, faded yet from another time, and slipped it over my head. It felt ridiculous now, but it was better than nothing.
Lena passed me a quiet look. “You all right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Just ... barefoot. That’s all.”
She gave a quiet, bitter smile. “Least we still got our lives.”
I nodded again, slower this time. “Yeah. That’s worth more than anything he took.”
But when I sat down and slipped the canteen into my packless hands, the weight of what was gone—especially those coins—hit me hard. I’d have to start all over.
And next time, I told myself, I’d keep the lighter closer.
We walked without talking, our feet heavy, the silence between us not angry, just drained. Every step reminded me that I had no boots—sharp rocks, twigs, and cold earth biting into my soles like little punishments. Lena didn’t say it, but I could see it in the way she kept glancing at me. Worry. Pity. Maybe both.
Late in the afternoon, the clouds turned darker than they’d been all day—low and thick, like they were crouching over the mountains, waiting. The air changed, too. The way it does right before a storm, when even the birds stop singing.
Then Lena pointed.
Off to our right, just past the edge of the tree line, stood the bones of a church—stone walls still upright, but the roof mostly gone. Windows gaping like empty eyes. There was still part of a back room intact, though, and maybe the walls would be enough to keep out some of the wind. It wasn’t much, but it was shelter. And we needed that.
We made for it at a trot.
Halfway there, the sky ripped open. The rain hit hard and fast, cold needles that soaked us through in seconds. Thunder cracked somewhere too close, and we both instinctively ducked. I grabbed Lena’s hand without thinking, and we sprinted the rest of the way together, slipping in mud, our clothes plastered to us like second skins.
We reached the church gasping.
The back room had three full walls and part of a fourth, and it was just enough. We ducked inside, shivering and dripping. I dropped to my knees, breathing hard, letting the pounding rain on the stones drown out everything for a moment.
Lena sat beside me, pushed the wet hair out of her eyes. Her teeth were chattering, but she was already pulling out a piece of dry cloth from her bag to wrap around her shoulders.
“Storm wasn’t playin’,” she muttered.
“No,” I said, squeezing water from my shirt. “It really wasn’t.”
Outside, the wind howled. Inside, we had stone and each other. It would have to do.
I pulled the lighter from my pocket—miraculously still dry—and sparked it to life. The flame danced, reflected in Lena’s eyes. We got a small fire going, not much, but enough to warm us and start drying things out.
Dusk was creeping in. Shadows stretched through the broken windows and along the walls where worshippers once sat in pews long since rotted away. We were alone in the ruins, tucked into a forgotten corner of the world.
It was wet. It was cold. And somehow, it felt safer than most places we’d been.
The fire cracked and hissed in front of us, its warmth slowly pushing back the cold soaked into our bones. We sat close—closer than we ever had before—our shoulders touching, legs brushing now and then. Neither of us moved away. It felt natural, like we’d reached this point not suddenly, but step by step, mile by mile, one shared danger at a time.
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