Page 128 of Moonless

Her trail bends downhill and I pick up to an easy run, with my bitten arm held in against my side. I don’t need to run hard yet.

Her marks lead straight into the stream.

I step down beside them and cross. It’s shallow here, barely over my ankles, and there’s gravel on the far side that’d be easy for her to climb. She’ll have gone for that. I get out there and look for her marks.

The grass above the gravel’s standing straight. I bend closer, breathing through my nose.

Her scent’s here, faint along the water, but there’s nothing leading up the bank. The mud between the stones hasn’t been stepped on.

I look downstream, then up.

She’s walked in it. I want you to catch me.

I go along the bank, checking the gaps between the bushes. There’s room to get out below a leaning tree, but the only tracks in the soft ground under it are a bird’s.

Hitto.

I come back upstream past where I crossed and keep going.

She hid under a bank the last time. I look beneath this one, where roots hang into the water, and find wet stone. Farther up, a low branch brushes my brow. I lift it with the back of my hand and work underneath.

She still hasn’t come out on this side.

I stand there with my hand on the branch. She’s had her head start, and now she’s had all the time I’ve spent walking up and down this bank. I’m grinning anyway.

She’ll be pleased with herself.

I want to hear her tell me about it from my lap, with my hands up under that shirt.

Past the next bend her scent gets stronger, and it’s coming from the other bank, the side she went in from. I stop and look across the water.

There’s a flat stone at the edge, wet over the top, and above it her heel’s slid in the mud under a root. There’s another mark higher up with the grass pressed into it.

There you are.

I cross back, setting my feet between the slick stones. The climb pulls at my thigh, and I haul myself up by the root to keep the weight off it. Her scent’s on the bark under my palm.

That’s her way out.

Wet marks lead away between the trees. I follow them uphill until she’s stopped dripping, then go by her scent around a low outcrop.

She’s left a good trail coming out of the water, and I stretch my legs where the ground levels off. She’s had to climb this too, in wet foot wraps.

Her trail curves behind a stand of young pines. I push through the outer branches and stop.

There’s the white stone, caught between the lifted roots.

The fallen pine. The same one she squeezed around on her way down to the water, and I’ve come up to it from the other side.

She’s walked me in a circle.

I look along the trunk, and my own footmarks lead around the root end toward the stream. A smaller mark cuts across the edge of one, still wet.

I laugh once, standing there with a branch against my chest.

She’s come back over my tracks. She did that while I was a long way down at the water with my nose under the far bank, and her scent was already all over this path.

I let the branch go and crouch beside the prints. The bite pulls hard enough that I brace on my right leg. She’s stepped right on my heel print, and her next one points back down toward the stream.