Near the Bone by Christina Henry
CHAPTER ONE
There was a dead fox in her path.
At first Mattie only saw it as a streak of scarlet across the fresh snowfall. Her initial thought was that some predator had gotten a rabbit from the traps she’d come to check.
Then she saw the orange fur matted with blood, and the place where something sharp had torn through the fox’s middle. Viscera were strewn over the snow, the scent fresh and strong despite the cold air.
There weren’t many creatures that would eat a fox—a bear would, of course, a bear would eat anything. Maybe a mountain lion, sometimes an eagle, but almost no creature would take the trouble of killing an animal and then not bother to eat it at all. None, as a matter of fact, except people, but there were no people at the top of the mountain except for Mattie and William.
Mattie crouched down to get a better look at the animal, but she didn’t see any prints or claw marks that would give her a clue. She stood again, brushing the snow off her heavy wool skirt, and paused for a moment, irresolute.
Perhaps she ought to go back and tell William about the fox straightaway. Then she decided she ought not to until she checked the traps. That was why he’d sent her down to the creek in the first place, and if she didn’t do as she was told then she would pay for it.
Mattie stepped around the fox and paused again. There was a strange track in the snow beside the fox’s body. She couldn’t quite make sense of it.
The track seemed to be from a bear, but if it was a bear then the animal was much larger than any bear Mattie had ever seen—maybe twice as big as the biggest grizzly in the area. The print appeared to be a rear paw—she could make out the curve of the heel and the five toe pads. But the claw marks at the front were much longer and deeper than usual. The size of the print made her think it must be the biggest bear in existence.
Mattie glanced around the path, checking for more prints. The path she followed wasn’t a man-made one but a deer trail. The trail was flanked by the trunks of tall mountain pines and the remains of scrub from the summer. She found another print—another rear paw, and some distance away from the first. That was strange, too. It was like the bear was up walking on its hind legs like a person. They might do this for a few moments, especially to intimidate another creature, but not as a general practice.
Mattie shook her head. This wasn’t anything she should worry about. She could practically hear William’s voice saying, “Get a move on, girl. It isn’t any of your concern. You’re always curious when there’s no cause to be.”
Yes, she should check the traps before William had to come down and find out what was taking her so long.
Mattie continued on, kicking up some of the powdery snow with her boots as she went. It wasn’t proper winter yet—summer was barely over, in fact—but they’d already had several days of snowfall and unusually cold days. William worried that they might not have enough food set by if the winter was especially harsh. There wouldn’t be very many animals about. They’d all be snug in their dens.
That made Mattie wonder—what was a grizzly doing, leaving fresh meat behind like that? This time of the year most of them were getting ready to bed down for the winter. Those bears still active wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to put on a little extra winter fat. If the grizzly wanted to save the kill for later it would have cached the fox—though it was hardly worth caching what amounted to a mouthful.
She had to stop worrying on it. William was waiting.
They had three snares set apart in the brush by the creek. All three were full, which meant rabbit stew with carrots and potato. William would be pleased.
Mattie put the rabbits in her canvas sack, carefully reset the snares and started back to the cabin. A few flakes of snow drifted down as she walked and she stuck her tongue out to catch one—
(holding hands with Heather with our heads tipped toward the sky, catching as many snowflakes as we can, our eyelashes coated white)
No. She was not to think of that, either. That was only a dream. William had told her many times that it was all something she’d made up in her head and he didn’t want to hear about that nonsense.
She shouldn’t dwell on the dream or the strange bear print or the dead fox. She should hurry home with the rabbits, because her husband waited for her. He expected her to be a good wife.
When she reached the dead fox again on the way back, Mattie carefully stepped around the corpse and the prints in the snow. William might want to come and see them later, but she wasn’t going to trouble herself about it anymore. She wasn’t going to think of how strange it was, because William told her what to think and she was sure he wouldn’t like her thinking on this.
William was outside the cabin chopping wood when Mattie hurried into the clearing.
The clearing was large enough to accommodate their two-room cabin, a storehouse for meat, an outhouse and a small garden in the summer. William had cleared away extra trees so that there was fifteen or so feet of open ground in front of the cabin before the forest. He said this was so nobody could sneak up to their home without him knowing.
Her husband was a tall, powerfully built man—more than a foot taller than Mattie, with broad shoulders and large hands and feet. His hair was dark, streaked with gray, but his eyes were bluer than ice on a frozen creek bed. William’s back was to her but he immediately turned as if he’d sensed her presence when she stepped into the clearing, the heavy wood axe in his left hand.