Bab 8: Chapter 8: The Hunt
The group didn’t move on that afternoon. They didn’t discuss that decision. No one decreed it. A blanket of uncomfortable silence seemed to fall over the whole party, and once that blanket settled, their injuries and aching muscles rejected the idea of donning their heavy packs and hiking on.
Without a word, Cormac and Trevor set up the men’s tent while Maeve and Brynn set up the women’s. Vesta started a small fire, and Garan rested against a tree, glaring angrily at the wolf who only watched Brynn. The evening passed in much the same way, with the tasks of camp divided and completed in silence.
At the end of the night, Brynn wrapped a thin cloth tight against her throbbing wrist. She ignored it throughout the day, unwilling for the others to see such a silly weakness, but now she held it gingerly.
Once again, she found herself alone at the fire with Vesta. There wasn’t a long conversation this time. Vesta didn’t regale more stories of Brynn’s mysterious grandmother, and instead of sitting in quiet companionship, they sat instead in mutual seething. When Brynn finally stood, ready to turn in for the night, Vesta broke the silence for just a moment.
“It’s a damn shame we haven’t any meat to bring back with us. When Trevor’s stupid plans make no difference, the people will still need to fill their bellies.”
Brynn nodded. She agreed, but she wasn’t sure why Vesta was saying it now.
“With a predator like that prowling about,” Vesta went on, nodding at the cart where the wolf still lay, “it’s no wonder there was no game near camp. But it does make me wonder if someone,” she gave Brynn a pointed look, “were to travel even a few hours back, might they have more success now that the wolf’s been taken away?”
Brynn nodded again, yet still said nothing. She only stared as Vesta stood, poured a canteen out over the smoldering fire, and walked to the tent entrance. There she turned and spoke once more.
“I’m waking Cormac for his watch shift in a few minutes, but I’m on watch in the morning,” she said. “In case you were wondering.” And then she went to bed.
Brynn stayed out another few moments contemplating what Vesta had really meant before turning in for another fitful night’s sleep.
The following morning, well before sunrise, Brynn crept over to Maeve and quietly nudged her friend’s shoulder.
“Maeve,” she whispered, “wake up.”
Maeve bolted upright, tense and gasping, as she reached for the dagger she kept by her sleeping roll.
“What’s happened?” she demanded. “Another wolf? A bear?”
“Shh, no,” Brynn said, trying to make her voice as soothing as possible. “No danger. You’re okay.”
“What’s going on?”
“I have an idea. Do you want to come with me?” Brynn knew what Maeve’s answer would be without waiting for the words, and she smiled at her closest friend.
A short while later, the girls exited the tent, silent as a pair of foxes. Vesta, as promised, was on watch. She leaned against a nearby tree, dagger on her lap and bow and quiver resting next to her.
“Morning,” she nodded quietly. She’d fashioned a small torch in the crook and hole of a tree nearby, and the faint light danced around her as she stood. “I have to take a piss. I’m quite tired, so I’ll take my time. You girls don’t let your womanly sympathies get the best of you while I’m gone.” She winked and walked off into the dark.
The two girls quickly gathered supplies. Maeve bundled together a small amount of food and two canteens that they’d need to fill at a spring on the way. Brynn gathered their bows and made sure both quivers were full. All the while, she could feel those black sapphire eyes on her. She heard the wolf shifting in place with a small groaning of wood, and she grimaced at the thought of those barbs cutting into its skin.
She hadn’t meant to look. She meant to leave their small camp without a single glance in the wolf’s direction, knowing the effect it had on her. But she looked all the same. She couldn’t help it.
It watched her, deep pools of blue gone black in the dark. That pull from deep inside tugged again, reeling, dragging her forward. Her feet were not her own as they crossed the small space. As she reached the cart, she stretched her arm ahead of her as she’d done before. The wolf lowered its head the little it could in the confined space. Closer she crept, her fingertips hovering just outside the bars of the crate.
As before, a hand grabbed her other arm at the last moment and spun her around.
“Are you insane?” Maeve hissed. “If you get your hand ripped off, how do you expect to pull any meat this morning? Your bloody stump will alert all the game in the area by smell alone, if not another predator.”
With the spell broken again, Brynn sighed and clasped Maeve’s hands.
“Always there to pull me back, aren’t you?” she said.
“That’s what friends do, isn’t it?” Maeve replied with a shrug. “What’s happening to you, Brynn?”
“I truly don’t know,” Brynn whispered, blinking back tears.
They traveled quickly and quietly through the forest, back in the direction they’d come from. The two of them, unburdened by heavy packs or wolves or wounded men made excellent time. Within three hours they were many miles north of their fellows, and they marveled at the sounds of the forest. Birds chirped and squirrels skittered in the trees overhead.
Had it been the wolf prowling around them that had quieted the forest so? Or had it been them? The unlikely humans with stomping feet and a jolting cart that had sent the animals away. No matter, Brynn thought she could easily bag a few squirrels even if they found nothing larger in these woods.
“Can I ask you a question,” Maeve asked during their trek.
Brynn sighed and her chest tightened. She didn’t even have the answers to her own questions.
“Yes,” she said with some hesitation.
“Why haven’t you agreed to marry Garan?”
“Really?” Brynn asked, raising an eyebrow. “After everything that’s happened, that’s what you want to know?”
“Well,” Maeve shrugged. “Yeah.”
They paused for a couple of sips from their canteens, and Brynn used this time to think about her answer.
“The truth is,” she started as they began walking again, “I don’t know why. Garan is capable and strong, handsome and educated. He’d make a fine husband on all accounts, much finer than I envisioned for myself. But …”
“But what?” Maeve urged.
“But sometimes when I look at him…when I envision our life together…I can’t help but see a crate. Like the one that dammed wolf is in. He’s arrogant, but truth be told he has more right to his self-confidence than most. He is lustful, but so are most men…most people, really, when you get right down to it. I guess something just doesn’t feel quite…right.”
“He’s not good enough for you?” There was amusement in Maeve’s words, and maybe a touch of accusation as well.
“It’s not that, at all. As I said, he’s a much stronger match than I ever hoped for. But I also never hoped for one at all. If given a real choice, I’m not sure I’d ever choose to be married. To settle into a cozy, mundane life cooking meals, cleaning floors, and popping out babies. I just feel like there’s something more…” Brynn paused a moment before adding, “for me.”
Maeve frowned at her answer but didn’t ask any more questions. She nodded, and they went on hiking in silence.
Despite the condescension from the men in their party, Maeve and Brynn were natural hunters. They may not have been permitted to travel far from the village boundaries, but they were still some of the most consistently successful hunters of Ingram. They never received recognition for it, of course, being young girls whose only ambition could be marriage and homemaking, despite this silly hobby of their youth.
They fell into a familiar pattern, despite the landscape being so different from their traditional hunting grounds. After some time, they nodded to each other. Maeve found a tree with branches low enough to climb. She scurried up and found a decent perch with a good view. Brynn found a rocky formation nearby and slipped her body into the space between two boulders.
They melted into the environment, keeping still as trunk and stone, and waited. It should have been an impossible task to find real game here when there had been so few signs. But Brynn felt in her heart that they were in the right place. She felt like a part of this forest. And so far from the emotional and physical turmoil of camp, she felt more at home among these trees than she had ever felt before. She steadied her breathing, keeping time with the gently swaying trees.
With senses she didn’t know before, she felt a gentle pulsing from the earth. The sun warmed her skin despite the frigid air, and a breeze tunneled through her small crevice, shocking her skin. She felt so alert. So alive.
Brynn could sense it even before Maeve signaled. She could feel it coming. When the doe stepped out from between the trees, Brynn started to say a quick thanks to the Gods of her village. She hesitated, though, as visions of the moon danced in her mind, and she sent her thanks upward to that round paleness still visible in the light blue sky. All else fell away. Thoughts of wolves and men, marriage and freedom. Even the pain in her wrist. All that existed was this forest. That doe.
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It took them quite a bit longer to return to camp than it had to leave, but Brynn and Maeve found their group by early evening. With blood on their hands and faces, they carried the carcass together. Brynn held the front legs, and Maeve carried the hind.
Vesta laid eyes on them first, and a smirk crossed her face as she nodded her welcome.
Cormac and Trevor saw them next, both frowning. Cormac shook his head in disapproval.
Garan, sprawled on the ground by the fire, laid eyes on them last. His face transformed from concerned to a mixture of awe and amusement.
“You cost us a day,” Cormac said.
“We bagged a doe,” Brynn replied simply.
“You defied orders,” he growled.
“We weren’t given orders not to go hunting this morning,” Maeve interjected, her voice high.
“It’s understood that no one leaves camp without permission. It’s not safe. Have we not proven that already?” Cormac gestured to the cart and its cargo.
“I won’t apologize for doing what we came here to do,” Brynn said, chin high. She turned away from Cormac, ending the conversation. Bending over the carcass, Brynn took out her dagger and sliced a chunk of meat from the doe’s belly.
She marched purposefully over to the cart, and without giving herself time to think about her actions, she tossed the meat into the crate next to the wolf’s head. It gave a soft, sighing sound that Brynn took for thanks, and she paused long enough to look into its eyes for five full seconds.
‘Evil doesn’t have eyes like that,’ she thought. Evil couldn’t plant seeds of warmth in her belly. Couldn’t draw her to it like a moth to a flame.
‘Unless,’ she thought, ‘maybe I’m evil, too.’
Somehow, comfort settled in her chest then. Not from the thought of being evil, but from the idea that she and the wolf were somehow the same. Connected.
Hadiah
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