the light outside fading, incrementally, as if visibility were being shut down by precise mathematical commands. In those few moments the logs on the fire flared, burned, split, fell apart and died down.
Jake returned with the cognac. Before he gave it to her he lit two candles and set them nearby. Then he poured a glass of cognac apiece. She sipped it. He did too, but complained it tasted of nothing. ‘According to the price list we could never afford this. You’re going to have to remember it for me.’
‘What happened to the window, Jake?’
‘Remember it for me.’
‘How can I remember cognac?’
‘Approximate.’
She took a sip. ‘Our first kiss. You were a little drunk.’
He savoured more of the cognac, without taking his eyes from her. ‘I love you, Zoe. Never abandon something so deep.’
‘What?’
‘What’s what?’
‘What you just said to me. Never abandon something so deep.’
‘I said that?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t remember. It’s getting so I can’t remember what I said to you two seconds ago. Look at the fire. I feel like I only put those logs on a few minutes ago and they’ve burned down.’
‘You did.’
‘And look at the candles.’ He nodded at the yellow, flickering flame. The candle was burning fast, so fast it was possible to see the candle shrinking as the molten wax rolled back from the burning wick.
‘What’s happening, Jake?’
‘Time seems to have… Our precious time will… I don’t know, my darling, I can’t even think to the end of a sentence. Isn’t that funny?’
‘I’m very frightened.’
He turned away from her and threw some more logs on the fire. They flared quickly. Twilight had already turned to darkness outside. She lay back on her bed and felt herself dozing. So exhausted was she that she gave in to it.
She was awoken by what she took to be a wolf howling in the mountains. The air was freezing on her cheeks and a stiff breeze lifted her hair. The animal’s howl came again: a sustained ululation travelling clear, mournful, melancholy and yet oddly sweet in the cold night air. She sat up to look out of the window and to her astonishment the window was gone.
Not only was the window gone, but so too had the glass doors. Two complete walls of the hotel had been removed while she slept. She cast about her, trying to make sense of it.
Two walls still sheltered her as before, but only two walls; the fire burned brightly in one of them, the logs sparking merrily, flames flaring and twisting in the grate. But the entire south side of the hotel, along with the eastern wall, had gone, though the roof above her remained. Now she looked out directly onto the slope of the mountain, with its terrifying expanse of gleaming moonlit-white, like the wing or shoulder of a primordial spirit of nature.
Jake was in the act of lighting another candle. He smiled at her. A breeze chased around the sheltered quarter and he held his hand across the flame to stop it from guttering. Even as it guttered she could see the flame was burning down fast—faster than a candle should burn, faster than was sensible.
Another howl came back across the open eastern expanse of snow, within which she could no longer see any shape or form of the village. But in the darkness for a moment she thought she could see the twin red points of the animal’s eyes reflecting back at her; then she saw more tiny red embers. One of the embers flared briefly and died down. Then another. She realised it was not eyes, but the lighted cigarettes of the smoking men. They had moved nearer to the open walls of the hotel. Two of them had dropped to a crouch, their fingers grazing the snow in front of them. One was pointing at the fireplace. The others cast glances at the ceiling.
‘It’s the men!’ she told Jake. ‘They’re just outside.’ ‘Where?’ he said.
‘There! Look at the lights! The tiny lights.’
He looked casually out into the darkness, scanning the wax-like wastes of unforgiving snow. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see them. I’ll go and speak with them.’ But something in his voice betrayed the fact that he couldn’t see them at all, that he was simply humouring her.
‘No!’ she cried in horror. ‘You must never do that. Stay here. Stay.’
‘That’s right. You stay here,’ he said soothingly, his voice oddly tranquil, no more than a murmur. ‘Stay here.’
He got up and walked out of their sheltered corner. This time he didn’t even take the axe. She hauled herself to her feet to watch, almost hyperventilating as Jake walked across the snow towards the men. He seemed no more than a silhouette creeping in the snow. He drew within a few metres of the men before he squatted down on his haunches.
The men began talking and making animated gestures with their hands. She couldn’t hear any of it. Though she strained to catch what they were saying, their talk was obliterated by the wind buffeting at the remaining walls of the hotel. There was also something amiss with the way in which Jake engaged with the men. He was not looking at them. He was not even facing them. He talked, and nodded or shook his head occasionally as if in some kind of negotiation, but it was as if they were in different worlds; and as if he couldn’t see them, nor they him.
This curious negotiation went on for a long time, during which the candles burned down to their stumps and the fire died.
When Jake came back, he looked grave. He didn’t answer any of her questions. He stoked the fire again and banked up the logs.
‘What did the men say?’ she demanded.
‘The important thing,’ he said, pulling the pile of duvets closer around her, ‘is to keep you warm.’
‘Do you know what they want?’
‘Who?’
‘The men! Did they say what they want?’
‘Yes, they did. But it’s hard for me to remember. Very hard.’ He poured her another glass of cognac and refused to answer any more questions until she’d drunk it. Exasperated and exhausted, she gulped it and lay back again. Her weariness outweighed her fear, and she felt herself dozing again.
When she woke this time, the remaining walls and the ceiling of the hotel had been removed, along with the entire hotel lobby. There was still a fire, but it burned merrily on the snow itself, without the surround of the brick chimney or the mantelpiece or even the hearth. Jake was loading logs from a diminished pile onto the fire and they were burning supernaturally quickly.
‘All the candles are gone,’ he said with a sheepish grin, like a man trying to make light of a difficult situation.
She sat up immediately and looked for signs of the men—telltale burning embers in the dark, movement of any kind. There was none. She looked up at the open sky. The stars were locked in a frozen cascade, twinkling in their billion-fold, an army of semi-immortal deities. She gasped, her breath congealing in the icy air.
Then there was that howl again, followed by three crisp barks, and as she looked across the snow she saw a dog running towards them. Jake scrambled to his feet. ‘It’s Sadie!’ he cried. ‘She’s come back!’
The dog bulleted towards Jake and he ran to meet her. Sadie leapt up to greet him, tail thrashing, whimpering, licking his face. They rolled together in the snow. ‘It’s Sadie,’ Jake called to Zoe. ‘Can you believe she came back?’
Zoe watched as the dog’s enthusiasm quietened. Jake sat on the snow as she snuffled in his ear. It almost seemed to Zoe that the two of them were having a conversation. Sadie stretched her neck and pointed her moist snout at the moon as Jake scratched her between the ears. She snuffled in his ear again.
He stopped stroking her and became still.
The dog snuffled in his ear a third time. Jake’s head fell forwards. He became still, his hand placed flat on
