by Mia Sheridan
Jak’s heart seemed to slow, like it was getting ready to stop. Thump, thump. Maybe it would. And who would care? No one. No one would even know.
He had had enough food to last him through four days of the storm that was still blowing, but no more. He’d run out a week ago.
Jak had tried to catch a fish but couldn’t break through the thick ice even after hammering at it with a sharp rock for hours. He’d waited by the water, hoping a deer would come out for a drink, but the cold grew so painful Pup had started whining, a low sound of hurting that Jak understood even better than his fur-covered friend. He’d had no choice but to go back inside, starving and empty-handed.
“We’ve gotta try again, Pup,” he said, and the animal raised his head, looking at Jak for a minute and then lowering his head again as if to say, no way.
“We have to,” Jak argued. “The longer we stay in here, the weaker we’ll get.” Sometimes Jak wondered if it was a meanness to keep Pup inside with him, wondered if his wolf instincts would get . . . less if he didn’t always have to use them. Pup was supposed to have a pack, a family of wolves who could help each other survive. Instead, Pup only had Jak, but Jak still needed him to help catch food, and mostly . . . mostly, he needed his friendship. Pup was his only friend in the whole world, and he knew he wouldn’t want to live through the war for this long without him. Jak might want to give up, but because of Pup, he never would. Pup had saved his life that awful, terrifying night, and many times since then, and now Jak would keep Pup safe and fed, or die trying.
Jak put on his warmest clothes, animal skins he’d stitched together, and a few items he’d traded with Driscoll for. He would have suffered through the walk to Driscoll’s place if he had something to trade for food, but not only did he not have anything he could give up, but Driscoll had told him that was one item he could not get. There wasn’t a lot of food in town, and even Driscoll had trouble getting enough to feed himself. Jak wondered if the war went on for many more winters and food grew less and less, if townspeople would start coming to hunt animals and gather the other food the forest could give.
Even now, when he thought of the war and the people Driscoll had told him were killing the children, that deep voice repeated in his head: Survival is your only goal.
A small tremble that had nothing to do with the storm raced through Jak as he stepped outside, squinting away from the stinging cold that burned his skin.
He gripped the pocketknife in his fur-wrapped hands, ready and willing to kill any small animal or bird he saw. The forest was still, though—quiet—even the winter birds too cold to sing.
Jak stopped at the top of a small hill, Pup a few steps behind, and saw what looked like a deer lying in the middle of an open area.
Jak’s eyes widened and for a minute he simply stared. Had the animal frozen to death right where it was? But no . . . he could see its blood soaking into the snow. He moved toward it. Had another animal killed it and then left it there uneaten? Why would they when food was so hard to get?
Jak’s stomach panged with hunger and he sped up his steps. He didn’t care why the animal was lying there. He only cared that it was and that it would take away the splitting pains screaming through his stomach.
“Get away from my food,” he heard, and he lowered to a crouch, whirling toward the voice, raising his pocketknife toward the threat. Pup let out a low growl, crouching down as well to attack. It was another boy like him, his blond hair past his shoulders, in a fighting stand, his left arm held out and something shiny in his hand. For a minute Jak was shocked quiet, and then his heart started booming in his chest, pounding in his head. They stared at each other, the other boy’s eyes shiny and . . . crazy, his face twisted into hatred. Violence. He came at Jak, his left leg dragging behind him. There was something wrong with it.
Jak raised his hands quickly, trying to let the boy know he was not a threat. His stomach cramped in pain again. “Did you kill this deer?” he asked, his voice shaky.
“Get away,” the boy barked, moving forward, swiping what Jak could now see was a hunting knife at him.
Jak jumped back, missing the blade. Pup snarled, moving forward. “Pup, no,” he said loudly, not knowing if Pup would listen or not. He needed to do something. And fast. “Whoa. Wait, wait. Listen to me, we can share it. We’re both hungry and there’s enough for two. More than enough.” He thought about offering his cabin, the blanket, somewhere to dry off and get warm, but he didn’t know who this boy was—he might be on the enemy’s side—and he wasn’t sure it was safe to offer him anything at all. He looked crazy, and Jak wasn’t sure his words were being heard.
But either way, he was not going to let him take all the meat on the ground between them. He could die if he did that. Pup could die too.
“We’ll split it,” Jak said again, louder, trying to make eye contact. But the boy’s eyes stayed on the meat, a look so hurting in his gaze that Jak felt it all the way to his own aching belly. “I’ll help you skin it and carve up the meat. Doing all that is long, hard work. I’ll do most of it,” he offered. “We can join together.” He searched for the right words, words to make the boy hear him, agree, but the boy looked uncaring about what he was saying. “What’s your name?” he asked, trying from a different side. “I’m Jak, I—"
The boy moved forward again very quickly, swiping the knife and Jak leaned back, the blade just missing him. Pup jumped forward and the boy let out a growl of his own, swinging the blade through the air, back, forth, back, forth. One of his swings caught Pup on the leg and Pup squealed in pain, blood spurting onto the white ground as he limped back, still growling, but not moving toward the still-swinging boy again.
“Stay back, Pup!” Jak yelled, holding his own pocketknife toward the boy, trying one more time to talk him out of what he was doing. “I know you’re hungry. I’m hungry too. I’m not trying to take your meat. I just want to split it. We can both eat. We can work together—”
The boy let out a screaming war cry and threw himself at Jak, and red-hot pain sliced down Jak’s cheek. Jak cried out, jumping back again and bringing his hand to his stinging face. His fur-glove-covered hand came away matted and dark with blood. Anger and fear mixed inside Jak as he gave up the idea of talking instead of fighting. This boy had left him no choice but to defend his own life. The next swipe might be across his throat. The boy in front of him was fighting to kill.
The two of them circled each other, their breaths coming out in small white clouds of air. They were close enough now that any knife swipe could be deadly. Something hot spiked through Jak, his heart like thunder in his ears. Maybe if I can knock the knife away from him, I can—
The other boy attacked, his body hitting Jak with a loud oof, and they both went down to the ground, the crunching sound of the snow top breaking below them. They each yelled and then they were rolling, grunting, as Pup growled and yapped in the background, faraway, or so it seemed like to Jak. He could only hear his own pounding heart and the sharp gasps of breath as the two fought to hold on, fought to be the first to use his weapon.
They rolled again and Pup’s growly bark got closer, the smell of him strong in Jak’s nose. “Stay back!” he yelled at Pup, rolling again, juggling with his knife, trying with everything he had to rip the other boy’s knife away from him. But his short call to Pup had given the boy the upper hand and he went back and swung down, catching Jak on the arm with his blade before Jak could roll away.
Jak yelped from burning pain and terror, throwing his body forward and stabbing his knife into the boy. Directly into his heart.
Everything stopped. The boy froze in his movement, his eyes widening and then dropping. Blood fell from the side of his mouth, dripping down his chin and onto the ripped-up, too-small coat he wore.
Jak grabbed the boy. What did I do? He can’t die. Not with a single stab. No! The boy’s eyes met his, the crazy fog in them clearing away. Their gazes locked together, breath mixing, though the boy’s breaths were getting w
eaker, further from each other. Jak’s heart sputtered when—for a lightning flash—the other boy looked . . . happy. He smiled before his body sagged, and both of them fell to the snow.
Jak sobbed, scooting out from under the dead boy, the boy’s body dropping to the ground. Jak pulled himself to his feet, shaky, standing over the body, shock making the world seem too bright, unreal. A dream. A nightmare. He’d killed a person. He felt something warm on his cheeks and realized he was crying. He brushed at the wetness before the tears mixed with blood could freeze.
He stared at the boy, his eyes moving over his ripped clothes, down to his twisted leg, and blackened foot, bare now that the handmade shoe had come off during their battle. Jak closed his eyes for a second, his heart squeezing.
I would have shared with you, he whispered brokenly inside himself.
Jak stared at the boy’s face, which no longer looked crazy, death making him look younger. And with a jolt, he recognized him. He was the blond boy who had gone over the cliff with him that night. He’d been living out here all this time too.
And whatever he’d gone through, it had driven him out of his mind.
No! Had he passed him in the woods once or twice, hiding from the sound of footsteps because he’d thought they might belong to an enemy? The thought was too terrible for Jak to think about.
Instead, he turned toward Pup, who was now lying in the snow, a large spot of blood next to his hurt leg. His heart, which had slowed, began racing again. Jak had to get him home and treat his injury if he could. Jak picked up the boy’s sharp, curved knife, put it in the waistband of his pants, and then went fast to Pup, picking the large animal up and hefting him over his shoulder.
Jak walked back to the dead boy, wiping the tears that were again sliding down his cheeks, trying to come up with words to say over the boy’s body. His baka had said prayers, but he didn’t remember any of the words she’d whispered as she’d held the beads in her hands.
Pup moaned softly and Jak moved him a little, trying to be careful of his injury. “Starlight, star bright,” Jak finally said, the words coming quickly, knowing the rhyme wasn’t a prayer, but having nothing else to offer. “First star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight.” And then he closed his eyes and wished that the boy was now running through fields of flowers under the warm heavenly sunshine. That he was healed, whole, and no longer hungry.
The ground was too frozen for Jak to bury him, so he left the boy’s body where it was. The boy didn’t need it anymore anyway, and the forest did. Other hungry creatures would feed on it and live to see another day.
Like Jak.
Although he could feel that a part of him had died along with the boy left lying dead in the snow.
With Pup over one shoulder, he grabbed the leg of the deer, pulling it along behind them, beginning the journey back home. Anger and hopelessness roared through him. Anger built as he walked through the cold. He raised his face and yelled into the stone-colored sky, tears blinding him again. It was all their fault! The men who took him and the other boy. The men who tried to kill children. The men who turned a little boy into a crazed animal, wishing he was dead.
The men who made me a murderer.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Harper sat on her bed, her feet curled beneath her, staring unseeing at the white wall across from her. The tea she’d brewed had grown cold, and she set the mug down on the bedside table, sighing. She didn’t even like tea. But it always seemed like something that should accompany moments of introspection and deep serenity.
Too bad she hadn’t gotten very far with the former, and failed completely to achieve the latter.
She picked up the remote, clicking on the television and turning it to a news program. The weatherman pointed to a screen as his voice droned on. More snow. More cold. Shocking.
She thought about Lucas out there in the middle of nowhere, snow piled up to the windows of his small cabin as he sat inside alone. Was he lonely? He had to be, didn’t he? He was a human being with absolutely no one in his life. Harper was lonely too, she could admit that. But at least she had friends, and community, books, a cell phone, a television to dispel the silence when she needed the illusion of company.
Was that why he’d taken the magazine? To have something to do on those lonely nights in the middle of the woods? She shivered despite being warm and cozy, curled up in a blanket on her bed. Just the thought of the deep isolation he must feel terrified her.
Because she understood it.
Not on the level he must—how could she? But she couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t suffered loneliness, the sense that she was adrift, always trying desperately to catch hold of something—anything—that would anchor her. Forever attempting unsuccessfully to recapture what had been ripped from her so suddenly and inexplicably. Comfort. Home. Love. Now . . . she’d found the car, would be able to bury her parents, and yet she still felt as empty as ever. As lost as ever. As alone. Because what she’d really been attempting to reclaim would not be found in the places she searched.
Did he share the same feelings of loneliness? He’d been abandoned too. Left to fend for himself in ways she probably couldn’t even fathom.
And forget the loneliness—though that in itself seemed, well, catastrophic—how was he going to survive with no way to hunt since his bow and arrow had been taken by the sheriff? She thought back to the hunting knife he’d had strapped to his thigh, the one he’d told her he was going to use to obtain dinner. She’d been struck dumb at the time, and even now, she was disconcerted. What was he going to do? Pounce on an animal and then cut its throat, skin it, de-bone it and . . . She pulled the blanket tighter around herself, realizing she was grimacing and allowed her muscles to relax. She was no stranger to hunting, but no one she knew wanted to involve themselves in an up-close kill like the one a hunting knife would insist upon.
Come to think of it, what was he going to do now that he had no good hunting weapon, and no contact to the outside world since Isaac Driscoll had been killed? He’d told her he had survived before Driscoll, and he’d survive now. And that might be true. But what if he did need something? What if he became injured or ill? He may have been isolated before but now . . . now he was completely cut off.
What should I do?
Hmm. You could curse God, I guess. That’s usually my best solution. Do it really loudly, and with great outrage.
Does it work?
Not generally. All it does is make me feel really small and useless.
An ant, cursing God from the summit of a blade of grass.
Why did those words sound so familiar? And why did they seem . . . more sophisticated than she’d expect from a man who spoke little and had no access to books?
And yet, he’d been quoting someone. Or . . . something. That was why. A book or a poem. She was sure of it. She knew those words somehow. And right after he’d said them, he’d looked as though he wished he hadn’t. He’d quickly changed the subject.
Harper stood, the blanket dropping to the bed. She grabbed her laptop and sat back down, logging in and opening her Internet browser, typing the words into the search bar. “I knew it,” she muttered, her heart thrumming. It was one of the more obscure quotes from The Count of Monte Cristo.
Her caveman had quoted Alexandre Dumas.
Her caveman? Not exactly. But . . .
The caveman had quoted Alexandre Dumas.
She stared at the computer for a moment before closing her eyes. The vague picture of her mother flitted through her mind. Harper was sitting on a bench with her father and her mother was walking toward them, smiling. Her father said something that made her mother laugh, and she put the turquoise backpack down next to where they sat and kissed him before taking Harper into her arms and asking what they’d brought for lunch.
That turquoise backpack. She’d used it to carry her class notes. Her father had laughingly told her it made her look like one of the high school girls
instead of a teacher. An English teacher, who always included her favorite novel as required class reading: The Count of Monte Cristo.
A distant ringing broke through her trance and she sat upright, her head turning toward the sound. Her cell phone. She stood, feeling somewhat off balance, and hurried to her purse where she’d left it hanging by the door. When she answered, she was slightly breathless.
“Harper, hi. It’s Mark Gallagher.”
“Oh, hi,” she said, walking back to her bed and sitting. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. Listen, I’m hoping you can help me with something else.” She heard a noise in the background that sounded like paper rustling and the phone shifting on Agent Gallagher’s ear.
“Yeah, of course. Did you find anything out about those books and the Missoula library?”
“I’m actually going there shortly. I was looking through the entries in Driscoll’s journal and some don’t make a lot of sense to me.”
“How so?”
“Well, for instance, this one: This morning I spotted the white-tailed deer eating raw fish at the river. Seems he is a natural survivor in that he will eat what is necessary to live, whether distasteful or no.”
Harper frowned. “A deer eating fish?”
“That’s what I’m confused about. I did a simple Google search, and I couldn’t find anything that said deer eat fish.”
“No, they’re herbivores,” she said, as confused as Agent Gallagher.
“What about in extreme cases like . . . famine or an extra-long winter, something of that nature?”
Harper chewed at her lip for a moment. “An animal will eat anything if it’s starving, but how in the world would a deer catch a fish?”
“Maybe it was already dead, lying on the river bank?”
“That’d have to be the case I guess.”
“So, if a deer were starving and it found a dead fish on the riverbank, it might eat it.”