Hunted(14)

“Doe-Eyes!” exclaimed Yeva, knees weakening. The dog collided with her leg and ricocheted off, shaking snow from her short fur and beaming at her with a wide, gap-jawed smile, tongue lolling out to one side.

Adrenaline drenched Yeva’s thoughts, narrowing them into one furious torrent. It could have been a boar, a wolf, a bear; she had been paying so little attention. “Go home!” she ordered the dog, her voice cracking.

Doe-Eyes stared at her, tongue going still. She cocked her head in confusion.

“Bad dog!” Yeva shouted, waving the arrow at the creature. “Go back home, now!”

The dog backed up a step and then lay down tentatively in the snow, dropping first her front paws and chin and then her hindquarters. Eyes rolled upward, she gazed desperately at Yeva, tail thumping once in pathetic appeal.

Yeva passed a hand over her face, the rush of fear fading and with it, her anger. She dropped to her knees; recognizing forgiveness, Doe-Eyes leaped up to throw herself at her mistress. Yeva ran a hand down the dog’s spine as a cold nose thrust itself against her neck.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” Yeva whispered, pressing her hand flat against the dog’s body. Doe-Eyes was trembling, but whether from cold or from eagerness and delight, Yeva could not tell. “What possessed you to burst out of the wood like that?”

As if the dog could understand her, Doe-Eyes wriggled from her grasp and went dashing back into the bushes. Yeva could hear her thrashing, and was about to step closer when something small and brown came shooting out of the undergrowth, cutting back across the path Yeva had trampled.

Before she had time to think about it, Yeva had an arrow nocked to her bow and drawn back. When Doe-Eyes flushed out a second rabbit, she let the arrow fly.

The rabbit’s scream sent a thrill of satisfaction down Yeva’s spine. Elation coursed through her as she lowered the bow and slung it over her shoulder. The thrill faded as she approached and saw that the rabbit was still thrashing—not a clean kill. Her aim was not what it used to be, and she’d drawn a sharp, piercing arrow—a deer-hunting arrow. She’d have to relearn her own fletching codes to tell by feel which were the blunter-tipped arrows for small game.

She quickly reached out and wrung the creature’s neck, putting an end to its suffering, then lifted her head. No sign of Doe-Eyes, although she could hear a faint rustle in the distance.

Retrieving her arrow, she wiped it off, staining the snow bright crimson in the dappled afternoon sunlight. She ran a loop of her wire around the rabbit’s hind legs and hung it from her belt. Stew, she thought happily, or roasted on potato mash. It would be the first fresh meat they’d had since moving to the cabin. She began to retrace her trail, humming a marching song her father had given her to sing while she ran to keep time with his steps.

Doe-Eyes caught up to her a few moments later, shivering her delight and licking her chops. The first rabbit had clearly fared no better than its fellow, and Yeva would not have to feed Doe-Eyes scraps of bread and dried meat tonight.

She made her way back home, all thoughts of Solmir banished the second her arrow found its mark.

“Beauty, you didn’t.” Lena held the skinned, cleaned rabbit at arm’s length, although there was an undeniable eagerness in her voice at the prospect of fresh meat. “Father said you were not to go hunting.”

Yeva had stowed her bow once more in her father’s chest outside, and removed any trace of the day’s work. Her snares had turned up empty, but she would check them again at first light tomorrow. “I laid a few traps,” she said. It was not a lie—the traps were laid, after all.

Lena sighed. “And the checking of the traps is what kept you out most of the day?”

Asenka had not risen from her chair by the fire, but had smiled at Yeva when she came. It was like nothing had changed between them, despite the chasm Yeva felt stretched there. She saw that Asenka no longer sat with her skirt covering her feet, but had her twisted leg stretched out to the warmth of the fire.

No need any longer to hide her flaws.

Yeva closed her eyes. “I will go check my snares again,” she blurted, turning to make for the door.

“Yeva,” said Asenka. Her voice was soft, but it was enough to stop Yeva dead in her tracks. “Will you wind my wool for me?”

Yeva wanted nothing less. Except, perhaps, to upset her sister. So she went, sinking down onto the floor at Asenka’s side as Lena began to dismember the rabbit for stew. She picked up the loose skein of wool from the basket at Asenka’s feet and wound loops of the yarn around her hands, holding it so that it would feed easily as Asenka knit.

Asenka began to hum a tune their mother had favored. Yeva remembered it more from her sister, for she had been too young when their mother died for clear memories of her to take root. Yeva sighed and turned her head to the side, laying it against her sister’s knee. She felt the slight movements of Asenka’s body as she wound the wool around a needle, dipped it through the fabric, wound again.

After a time, under the sounds of Lena cooking dinner, Asenka whispered, “If you are happy, Beauty, then so am I.” She bent and pressed her lips to the crown of Yeva’s head.

Yeva said nothing, eyes burning and blurring as she stared resolutely at the uneven floor. If only she were as selfless.

Yeva took to spending her days in the forest, under the tall straight pines in the snow and the silence. Her skill at the bow returned quickly, muscles remembering what the rest of her did not. Her fitness was slower to return, forcing her to stop for rest far more often than she would have liked. She came to know the forest again, finding it as familiar and as comfortable as an old friend.