The woman crouched down, her wooden leg angled out awkwardly. Peter looked away.
“Don’t move.”
Before he could even register what was happening, the woman slipped the cool blade of her knife inside his sock and with, a quick stroke, slit it open. He pressed his lips together to keep from crying out. His foot was as dark and swollen as an eggplant.
“You walked on this?”
Peter pointed to the branch beside him. “I broke it off. Made a cane.” His finger was shaking. He dropped his hand.
The woman nodded again and then cupped her hands around his heel. “I’m going to move this around,” she warned. “You ready?”
“No! Don’t touch it!”
But the woman began to probe his foot, calling commands. “Move your big toe. Now all of them. And the foot, side to side.” Peter winced at the pain, but he did everything she asked.
“You’re lucky,” she said, setting Peter’s foot down onto his sweatshirt. “A nondisplaced fracture of the fifth metatarsal. That’s a single clean break in the outermost bone of the foot.”
“Lucky? How is a broken bone lucky?”
The woman reared back, slammed her wooden leg down near his hand, and then stabbed her blade into the wood. “Oh, I don’t know . . . let’s see . . . how is only a broken bone lucky . . .”
“Okay, okay, I get it. Sorry.”
She tugged the knife from her leg and pointed it at him. “You’re young. You’ll be in a cast for maybe six weeks, heal just fine.”
“How do you know this stuff? Are you a doctor or something?”
“I was a medic. Another life.” The woman hoisted herself up and looked down at Peter as if she’d just put it together. “A runaway.” She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head at him. “Yes? Are you running away?”
“No! No, I was just out . . . hiking.”
She clapped her hands to her ears and frowned. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you. My lie detector was going off. Try again: Are you running away from home?”
Peter sighed. “Not exactly.”
“Then what, exactly, were you doing last night passing through my land with your extra clothes and your supplies, No-bat Peter?”
“Well, I’m not running away from home, I’m running away to home.”
“Oh, that’s a twist. Continue.”
Peter looked out the window over the workbench. Tall pines pierced a pale morning sky, and a bunch of crows argued noisily in the top branches. If there were a story he could tell that would get him out of this barn and back on the road to Pax, he would tell it. He would disappear into that day, fractured fifth metatarsal and all. But if such a story existed, he couldn’t think what it was. He slumped against the wall. “The war. It’s heading for our town. They’ll take the river. My dad had to go serve. My mom died, so it’s just us. So he brought me—”
“How old is this father of yours?”
“What? He’s thirty-six. Why?”
“Then he didn’t have to do anything. If there’s a draft, it’s for eighteen- to twenty-year-olds. Still kids, easy to brainwash. So if your father went, he volunteered. It was his choice. Let’s start this story off with the truth. That’s the rule around here.”
“Okay, sure. He chose to go. And he brought me to my grandfather’s, and—”
“And you didn’t like it there.”
“That wasn’t it. It was . . . uh, could you put that away?”
The woman looked down and seemed surprised to find the knife in her hand. “Such bad manners, Vola,” she chided herself. “We’ve forgotten how to behave with a guest!” She tossed the knife onto the workbench. “Go on.”
“Okay. I had a fox. I have a fox. We turned him loose. We left him on the side of the road. My dad said we had to, but I should never have done it.”
Since the instant they’d driven away, Peter had been tormented by the things he should have said to his father. They all came rushing out now. “I raised him from a kit. He trusted me. He won’t know how to survive outside. It doesn’t matter that he’s ‘just a fox’—that’s what my father calls him, ‘just a fox’ as if he’s not as good as a dog or something.”
“Yes, yes. You were plenty angry, so you ran.”
“I wasn’t angry. I’m not. It’s that my fox, he depends on me. I’m going to go back and get him.”
“Well, now you’re not. Change of plans.”
“No. I have to get him and take him home.” Peter rolled to his knees, swallowing the gasp of pain that shot from his foot. He grabbed the branch and tried his weight on it for a second, then sank back down, exhausted from just that.
“Now? You still think this? How far away did you leave him?”
“Two hundred miles. Maybe more,” Peter admitted.
Vola snorted. “You wouldn’t make it two miles now. You’d be nothing but bear bait out there—that is if you didn’t die of hypothermia the first night. You won’t be able to move enough to keep warm.”
She leaned back against the workbench, winding a scarf around a finger, and Peter could tell she was trying to figure something out. She didn’t look as crazy now, just deep in thought. And maybe worried. Then she seemed to come to a decision.
“Someone is bound to come looking for you. I can’t have that. I need you gone. But I can’t send you out like this—I have enough on my conscience. I will bind that foot and give you something for the pain, something that’s legal to give a child, and then—”
“I’m not a child. I’m almost thirteen.”
Vola shrugged. “And then you will leave. There’s a garage not far down the highway. Call this grandfather of yours, have him come get you.”
“I’m not going back. I’m going to get my fox.”
“Not like this you’re not. You cannot bear weight on that broken foot until the bone heals—six weeks at least. Maybe you try again then.”
“Six weeks? No, that would be too late. My fox—”
“Remember, boy, I know a little something about traveling on one leg. To get around before that bone heals, you’d have to learn to carry yourself from your shoulders and your arms. You’d have to become strong in new ways. Almost impossible for an adult, never mind a child—”
“I’m not a child!”
Vola swept up a silencing hand. “So you will go back now and have that broken bone set. But first I will bind it for you and fix you something better than that branch to walk with.” Vola pushed herself off the workbench and left the barn.
Peter watched her disappear down a pine-framed path, rolling with a limp so deep that it looked painful. Then he crawled across the floor and stuffed his belongings back into his pack. He pulled himself up to the workbench. The effort made him dizzy, and he had to white-knuckle the wood until his head cleared. His foot throbbed fiercely when he was upright, and by testing it slightly he knew he wasn’t going to be able to walk on it. Vola would bind it, though. He’d be able to walk on it then. He had to.
He hoisted himself onto the bench to wait.
He hadn’t been able to see much of the barn the night before, even with the flashlight. Now he took it in. The floor was swept bare, with bags of seed and fertilizer stacked neatly by the door. The place smelled of clean hay and wood, and not of animals, although he could hear chickens nearby.
The workbench took up a whole gable wall of the barn. It was lined with small tools and pieces of wood. Opposite, dark against the bright rectangle of the doorway beside it, draped burlap covered a bunch of things mounted on the wall.
Another convulsion of shivers shook him, this time not from cold. The covered mounds were shaped like human heads. Any number of perfectly harmless things could be hanging on a barn wall, but what they really looked like were human heads.
His throat went dry and his heart began to kick hard. He’d been stupid and careless. Probably the crazy woman was going to let him go—why wouldn’t she let him go?—but maybe she wasn’t. He found the knife she’d left and wrapp
ed his palm around its smooth grip. Vola had the upper hand in whatever was going to happen between them, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t defend himself. He slid the blade into his pocket just as she appeared in the doorway.
“Drink this.” She handed Peter a mug and set a bowl beside him. Peter sniffed at the mug.
“Cider. There’s a measure of willow bark in it, so drink it all.”
“Willow bark?”
“Aspirin in the wild.”
Peter put the mug down. He wasn’t going to drink a crazy woman’s brew.
“Suit yourself.” Vola took up the bowl, began stirring the green paste inside with her finger.
“What’s that?”
“Poultice. With arnica for the bruising and comfrey for the broken bone.” She gestured for him to prop his foot on the bench.
The poultice felt cool and soothing as she eased it over the hot, tight skin. She untied a bandanna from her overall strap and wrapped it around his foot, binding it with a second scarf so that it felt secure. Then she straightened up, wiping her hands on her overalls. “How tall are you?”
“Five foot three. Why?”
Vola didn’t answer. She rummaged through a stack of lumber, brought several long, narrow pieces over to a pair of sawhorses, and began sawing them into paired lengths. The cut wood smelled fresh and clean. As she nailed short boards across the tops of two longer ones, Peter understood. Crutches. She was making him a pair of crutches. The knife he’d stolen grew heavier across his thigh.
In a few minutes, Vola had angle braced the top boards and screwed on hand rests. She measured the crutches against him, then sawed an inch off the bottom of each.
Then she rolled out an old tire from the corner of the barn. She went to her workbench. She scanned its length. Peter’s cheeks burned as she turned to him.
“Did you take my knife?” Her voice had turned dangerous, like something that could burst into flame and peel the roof off the barn.
Peter felt dizzy and his heart began to thud again. He pulled the knife out and handed it to her.
“Why?”
Peter swallowed hard. His words were gone.
“Why?”
“Because . . . Okay, because I was afraid you might kill me.”
“Kill you?” She eyed him hard. “What? Because I live out in the woods, that makes me a murderer?”
Peter raised a shoulder toward the wall of bladed tools.
“My tools? I have twenty acres of trees to care for. And I’m a wood-carver. You thought they were weapons?”
Peter looked away, ashamed.
“Look at me, boy.”
He turned back.
“Maybe you are not wrong,” she said, locking his gaze. “Maybe you see something. Maybe I am”—she raised her hands slowly, pinched her fingers together in front of Peter’s face, then suddenly flicked them open—“boom! Dangerous, like that . . . no warning!”
Peter flinched. “No, I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
Vola shot a palm at him and spun away. She cut four strips of rubber from the tire, then wrapped them around the crutch tops and grips and secured them with twine in silence. She held the crutches out.
Peter placed one under each arm and eased himself to the floor. It was an immediate comfort to be upright and balanced, with his injured foot safely tucked up.
“Take your weight on your palms. Lift yourself; don’t hang. Plant the crutches, then swing through.”
Peter began to thank her, but Vola cut him off again. “At the end of my road is the highway. Head left, and in a quarter of a mile you’ll come to a gas station. You figure it out from there.” She helped him into his backpack and then turned away, picked up a block of wood, and began to shave off slices as if he were no longer in the barn.
Peter tried a step toward the door. He wobbled a little, but not much.
“That was a hop,” Vola said without looking up. “I said swing through. Now, get out of here.”
For a moment Peter didn’t move. He didn’t know where he was headed, only that it sure wasn’t back to his grandfather’s. Vola turned and leaned toward him, pinched her fingers together, and shot them out at him again. “Go. While you’re still safe.”
Approaching the meadow from the forest above, Gray stopped suddenly, nose in the air. Again. He lifted his muzzle to test the scent more carefully. Stronger.
Pax, already hesitant, tensed.
Gray hurried to the edge of the trees. A loner is challenging me. He wants this territory, but his display is for the young vixen’s benefit—she will choose a mate this winter.
Pax followed and took in the scene below him. Four foxes dotted the meadow. Bristle and Runt stood together, their black-tipped ears pricked forward warily toward the other two, who faced each other on a ledge of rock, halfway down. One of these was a vixen, darker than Bristle and big-bellied with kits. The other was a large male with rough, tawny fur. His hackles were up and his left ear was split.
Gray barked to announce his presence. The challenger spun off the ledge, an arc of blood spraying from his ear, and bolted down the meadow.
Gray picked his way down the hillside, Pax following. As Gray passed Bristle and Runt, his very presence seemed to calm them, as if he were an unseen hand stroking their backs. As soon as he passed, Runt danced his excitement at seeing Pax, but Bristle curled a lip and hissed.
Pax hurried after Gray. When Gray climbed to the ledge beside his mate, Pax dropped to its base and sat, respectful. Gray’s mate greeted him with affection. Then she shared news. The wind this morning was from the west. It brought the scent of fire. We must move soon. She looked out at Pax. The outsider smells of humans.
Bristle and Runt edged closer, ears cocked toward Gray’s response. He is returning to the humans he lived with in the south. I will travel with him to search for a suitable place to move. He and I will rest, then leave tonight.
Behind him, Bristle growled again and Pax felt the urge to run. His boy—he wanted only to find his boy. But instinct told him that he needed rest and food first. He signaled his agreement, and then Gray and his mate glided silently into the green meadow.
Runt bounded over and tumbled into Pax. He dropped the toy soldier from his cheek, inviting Pax to play. Bristle jumped between them and swatted the toy away. Humans. Remember the danger.
Runt retrieved the toy and displayed it between his teeth, defiant.
Pax sensed that Runt was now in more trouble than before, and that he was the cause. He’d felt that way often with his boy and the father, and one of his strategies had been to disappear if that would protect his boy from the man’s anger. He backed away, but Bristle was not satisfied.
Stay away from the human-stinker, she warned her brother. Remember the danger.
Pax took a step closer. My humans are not dangerous.
Runt seemed alarmed by this, as if Pax had issued a challenge. He darted uphill toward his den entrance, but his sister was quicker. She blocked him, and when he tried to slink away in another direction, she restrained him with a heavy paw until he stilled in defeat.
All humans are dangerous. . . .
Pax’s fur ruffled in a shiver at the scene Bristle conjured then: wind, cold and howling and heavy with the threat of snow. Pax recognized that wind—the story she was about to relate would end with blood on the snow and cold steel jaws.
Bristle bared her fangs at Pax and then began.
At the jog in the wall where he’d seen the deer, Peter stopped.
There was blood already—he’d stumbled and ripped open the tender web of skin at the base of his thumb on a jagged splinter—and buckets of sweat. His arms trembled from the strain of lifting his weight for only these few minutes, his palms already raw on the rubber grips, and the throbbing in his right foot menaced like thunder, but none of that was what was wrong. It wasn’t even the prospect of returning to his grandfather’s grim house.
He was going in the wrong direction.
He wheeled around. He s
tabbed the ground and swung over it, stabbed and swung, until he planted himself in the doorway of Vola’s barn again. He drew himself up tall. “No.”
Vola’s head snapped up. She shot him a warning scowl, but on her face Peter read a flash of something else: fear.
“I’m not going back,” he said, more firmly. “Whether you help me or not, I’m going to get my fox.”
“Help you?”
Peter moved to the bench and hoisted himself up. “Teach me. What you said about moving from my arms, about getting strong. You learned how to get around on one leg—teach me. You were a medic. Set my bone. Please. I’ll do whatever you tell me to.” He picked up the cider and drank it down to show his trust. “Then I’ll leave. But even if you won’t help me, I’m going to get him.”
Vola put her hands on her hips and lowered her head to eye him. “A tamed fox, set loose in the wild? You know he might be dead, don’t you?”
“I know. And it would be my fault. If he’s dead, I need to bring him home and bury him. Either way, I’m going to go back to find my fox and bring him home.”
Vola studied Peter as if she were seeing him for the first time. “So which is it? You going back for your home or for your pet?”
“They’re the same thing,” Peter said, the answer sudden and sure, although a surprise to him.
“And you’re going to do this no matter who tries to stop you? Because it’s the right thing for you, at your core?” Vola made a fist and thumped her chest. “Your core. Is that true?”
Peter waited before answering, because this woman—maybe crazy, maybe not—had asked it as if the fate of the world depended on it. But the answer was the same as it would have been if he’d blurted it out. The answer would have been the same if he’d waited a lifetime to think it over. He thumped his own chest and felt the muscle of his heart leap. “Yes. In fact, there’s nothing else I know at my core.”
The woman nodded. “Well, you’re twelve. That’s old enough to know your own self, I expect. I’m not about to go messing with that. So all right.”
“You’ll help me?”
“I’ll help you.” Vola extended her hand to shake. “On three conditions . . .”
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