Page 9 of Animal Tamer
“You okay?”
I jump. Rowe is right behind me, and I didn't hear him move. For a man his size, he walks like a panther.
“Fine,” I say breathlessly.
He lifts an eyebrow. “You sure?”
“Yep.”
Rowe narrows his eyes at me, and his gaze feels like a physical touch. I look at his boots instead.
“This way,” he says and turns.
I follow.
It’s getting late, the carnival is being swallowed up by the darkening sky, and somewhere a generator coughs to life. A man with floppy black hair is sitting cross-legged on the steps of a trailer flipping a knife end over end. He looks up as we pass, and a slow grin spreads over his face.
“Doc,” he calls, eyeing me from the top of my ponytail to the tips of my boots.
“Cole,” Rowe says. Not a greeting, but a warning.
The knife thrower holds up both hands, knife still spinning between two fingers. “I'm watching.”
“Don't.”
Rowe keeps walking. I keep up.
“They're like this,” he says under his breath, like an apology.
“Like what?”
“Bored.”
A surprised chuckle tries to claw its way out of my throat, but Istifle it.
The elephant's enclosure isn't what I pictured. Heck, I don't know what I pictured. Maybe a concrete pad. Chain link. Some sad swaying back-and-forth thing I'd have to write up later with my heart aching.
Instead, it's a portable corral with deep straw bedding, a sand wallow in one corner, a water trough the size of a small bathtub, and an actual enrichment puzzle hanging from a beam—a knotted tarp with bits of fruit stuffed into the folds.
The animal lifts its head when Rowe approaches. It makes a low, rumbling sound, then its trunk lifts and curls over the top of the railing, finding Rowe's chest without looking, like he's done it a thousand times.
“Hey, old man,” Rowe murmurs. “Wren, meet Rome.”
Rome's trunk runs up Rowe's sternum, hovers at his throat, then drops to rest in his open palm.
I forget to breathe for a second. Because it's not a trick. There's no command, no cue. The elephant just wanted to know where his person's pulse was, and now he knows.
Rowe scratches behind a leathery ear. “Rome, this is Wren.”
The trunk turns toward me.
It comes slowly, snuffling, taking my measure. I hold very still because I've read enough about elephants to know that the worst thing I could do is reach out first. The damp nostril hovers an inch from my collarbone. Then it brushes my shoulder, my elbow, the back of my wrist, and stops at my hand with a puff of warm air across my knuckles.
A laugh escapes me, and I clap my other hand over my mouth.
“Hi,” I whisper through my fingers.
Thetrunk taps my palm once and withdraws.
