Hunted(16)

Yeva heard one of her sisters, she could not tell which, stifle a gasp behind her. There was madness in her father’s face, and Yeva fought for control of her voice. “Let us just live here,” she begged. “Leave the Beast to the forest. We will hunt for food and sell pelts when the snow leaves in spring, and we will be happy. This is a fine home.” She wanted to tell him of Solmir’s offer, but the words stuck in her throat.

Her father only shook his head and moved to leave, calling Pelei to his side.

Yeva darted around him, putting her body between him and the door. “Daddy,” she whispered. “Please.”

“Step aside,” he ordered, the harshness of his face nothing like the smiling one she knew best. Pelei’s tail was tucked firmly between his legs, his head low as he watched.

“No.”

Her father barely gave her time to react, brushing her aside with an easy sweep of his arm. His physical strength had more than returned—but the wildness of his gaze frightened Yeva far more than the effortless way he knocked her to the ground. Pelei tried to lick her face, but her father gave a piercing whistle and the dog dragged himself away, slinking with his belly low to the ground in unhappiness.

Lena rushed forward to help her up, but by the time Yeva struggled to her feet again, their father was gone.





BEAST


We should not have let him see us.

He is mad with memory now, crashing through the forest loudly enough to frighten away the slowest and most dim-witted of creatures. He leans on his dog, who nudges him upright in the snow when he stumbles. We watch from some distance behind him as he forces his way through the forest. There is no beast in him left, no predator—there is only man. A madman.

He is useless now. When he was young he saw us and lived to dream about us. He could see the edges of the other world, the one that binds us. But now age has turned him, and we cannot use him for our purpose. We want to howl our rage and frustration, want to tear him limb from limb for making us hope, even the tiniest flicker, after all these long years. We want to destroy every part of him.

We follow him on silent paws.





FOUR


A COLD DREAD SETTLED in Yeva’s belly after her father left. Her sisters looked to her when it came to their father, for she knew him better than anyone. Yeva could not afford to let them see how frightened she was, or else they too would live with the same heavy tension at every moment, the feeling of the ax overhead, of waiting for it to fall. And so when she was at home, she smiled and asked her sisters about the inconsequential events of the day, and saved her fears and worry for the hunt.

Yeva saw his face as she moved through the forest, the distant gaze that had looked right past her, the negligent sweep of his arm as he shoved her from the doorway. She feared for whether he would come home—and she feared for what he might be when he did.

Despite her dread, the hours she spent in the wood were like light in the darkness. There was no Asenka, with her broken heart, no Lena to scold Yeva about muddying the floors. The weight of pretending all was well, that everything was normal and as it should be—it fell away. She knew she should be with her sisters, should be grateful they were all well and together and safe. Running to the quiet of the forest was selfish. But that shard of guilt, that tiny flicker of shame, fell silent when she stepped outside each sharp-frosted morning.

She felt herself growing stronger each day, moving more quickly, more quietly. Her breath no longer puffed loudly in the air when she paused, and the soles of her feet no longer ached when she returned home in the evenings. Albe and her sisters ate rabbit, fox, brush-hen, and deer. They cured the hides, and Asenka put her skill with the needle, learned from the leech, to work on leather instead of wounded flesh. She fashioned Yeva trousers, and the freedom they offered made her faster still.

Yeva was forced to leave Doe-Eyes at home more and more often as winter took hold of the forest. She kept her own trails clear, walking them each day there was new snow to tamp them down, but elsewhere in the forest the snow deepened. If the slim dog, bred for far warmer climates, tried to wade shoulder-high all day long, she’d risk frostbite or worse.

Yeva was striding down one of her trails one afternoon on her way back to the cabin, a trio of rabbits hanging from her belt, when the hairs on the back of her neck lifted in warning. She kept moving, but her senses went on alert, one hand shifting toward her bow. Her father’s words came back to her as if he were standing at her elbow.

There is something out there, he’d said. Something cunning.

Then, the words had sounded like madness. But here, in the silence of the forest, with her instincts speaking far more loudly than her good sense, his warnings were fresh in her mind. Here it seemed possible that every tale he’d told her as a child could be true.

Yeva disguised her movements by striding faster, letting the bow slip down off her shoulder and swatting at it as though it inconvenienced her. She always carried an arrow free of the quiver, in order to shoot quickly should a rabbit dart in front of her. Now, her fingers wrapped around it.

Behind her and to her right came a dull thud as a clump of snow slid from a pine bough. The image flashed in her mind of a shadow behind the tree she’d just passed, its thick branches weighted heavy with snow. Four steps behind her, maybe five.

Her right hand tightened around the bow’s grip as she stepped over the snow-covered shape of a branch along her path. Two steps farther, and the branch cracked behind her.