Erik never tossed in his sleep, nor did he ever cry out. They had been married for years before Magda had taught herself to wake up when he went rigid beside her, trapped in the hells of his past, silent and still because not to be both had once meant he would be punished. After a few years more, she had learned how to navigate it. Always he wanted to be woken, not to be left there alone; sometimes he wanted reassurances from her, or to make love; at other times he wanted to be left alone, to go into the kitchen, turning on every light as he went, to make some hot drink and hold it in his hands for a good long while. Once it had cooled, he would drink it in one long swallow, and then dress for work. If it was too early for that, he would go out to his little workshop behind the house and work on the latest chair or bookcase; if it was a weekend, he would do the same thing, except he would stay there until Magda called him inside for lunch.
In the last six months, he had never once done any of that. He did not do it now, when she shook his shoulder and said, "Erik. Erik. You must wake up," until finally his eyes opened.
"Magda," he said, his voice low and dark and thick with grief. Then his gaze focused on her face and he said, "Magda?"
"Yes," she said. Before he could ask, as he had several other times, she said, "I am not Raven. I am real."
Then, as he had done every other time, he said, "Nina."
Magda did not try to stop him as he threw off the covers and rushed into the other room. She could not be so cruel, even if he did disrupt their daughter's sleep yet again. Instead, she slipped out of the bed as well and followed, through the halls of a house that still did not quite feel like home to her.
By the time she caught up to him, Erik was kneeling by the bed in Nina's room. His shoulders shook, but shook quietly; perhaps he would not wake her, the way he had a few other times.
"We're here," Magda said, laying her hand on his shoulder. "It is all right."
After a few more minutes, he followed her back to their room. His face was wet, his eyes reddened, but she thought from looking at him that he had now remembered.
"It is all right," she said. She led him back toward their bed and was not in the least surprised when he reached for her, as he had every other night this had happened, multiple nights a week ever since he had come home from work in the middle of the day and said that they must go. She drew him closer, as she always did, and they made love, the way they always did, and for all his gentleness he was as desperate as he'd been for their first time, when he hadn't been touched in ten years.
Afterward, he lay his head on her chest and wept, as he always did, while she ran her fingers through his hair, down the back of his neck until he calmed.
The weeping had frightened her, on that other night, what was for both of them the first night, if in different ways. He had wept until she had thought perhaps he was dying, until she had been near to hysterical when she'd demanded he tell her what was wrong.
She could never have imagined the story he told her then. If he had not told her another, similar story when they had first met, she might have thought he was losing his mind. As it was, she listened, and learned that it would be three weeks until one of Erik's coworker betrayed him; three weeks until a terrible confrontation in the woods that would leave herself and Nina dead, and lead indirectly to the deaths of many others. At some point, her hands had grown very cold. She had listened to Erik speak as if from across a great chasm, and he had not been the only one who was terribly afraid.
He had admitted everything he had done, the way he'd admitted who he was the day they'd met; he'd looked at her the same way as he'd looked at her that first time, as if he expected her to turn away from him. She had berated him even more harshly than he had that first time—how could he think such a thing of her, now that they were married, now that they had a daughter they'd made together, raised together? She had spoken more sharply than she should have, but it had been that or show him the fear. It was all right to be afraid together, in a marriage; but always one partner would fear more than the other, and the one who was not so afraid was the one who needed to be the stronger.
'Three years is a long time,' was all he'd had to say, when she'd snapped at him. 'Three years without you was longer than ten years with no one.'
Then he had wept again, and then finally he had slept, safe in her arms. And the next day, they had gone, quietly and quickly, every step of the plan that had been in place since he had first decided that he would stay with her. They had not gone to New York (though Erik said he had more or less promised Charles to help in the work they had gone back to do in the first place), but to Chile, very far away from anyone who would have seen his face regularly for years, who might be able to connect it to a photograph from a decade ago. Here, Erik had grown a mustache, a beard. Here, Nina had made new friends, stranger and more colorful than ever before. Here, they'd waited for the day when the false god would come for him, and when that day had come Erik had slipped out in the night, only to return, sheepish, a week later, to say that Charles and his team must have succeeded without him. The dream he'd had that night had been worse than any other, and he'd been inconsolable until nearly dawn.
Since then, things had been better. Nightmares every other night had gone down to once in a good week, twice in a bad one. Now, Magda ran her fingers through Erik's hair until she thought he might have fallen asleep.
He had not fallen asleep, but when she had begun to nod off for herself, he woke her again by saying, "Was that a snake in Nina's room?"
"I think it is a python."
"It's huge! What is she doing making friends with snakes?"
"Or it may be an anaconda. It does not matter. Either way, she has named it Kaa," she said. "If you do not like it, it is your own fault for reading her that book."
"It could swallow her whole," Erik grumbled, but there was no real fear there. If there had been, Magda would have known it. If there had been, there would no longer be a living serpent within the walls of their new home.
Once, Erik had feared for Nina when some of her friends came. They both had, until it had become clear that no creature would ever harm their daughter, no matter how dangerous it might be to anyone else.
Perhaps someday, the other fear would be gone as well. Magda hoped it would be soon.