Marsh nodded, and Colleen tapped on her tablet. The cabin door swung shut of its own volition, causing Elle to jump.
“Sorry,” Marsh said, “I should have warned you. We hold our meetings in private. A bit of old timer paranoia.”
“Cloaking activated,” Colleen said.
“Thank you, everyone, for dropping your work to make time for this emergency session. I’ll try to keep it brief. I know some of you need to get back to finishing up the corn harvest. I call this meeting to order. Let the record show that all five council members are present and are joined by village member Court and the visitor Elle.”
Marsh asked Court to recount the events of the day. Council members interrupted a few times to ask clarifying questions. When he got to the doctor’s discovery, Marsh took over.
“Whatever’s embedded in the bone, we don’t have the tools required to extract it safely. I want to cut out the surrounding bone and take it to Alma. I have contacts there who should be able to tell us what it is.”
Elle winced at the mention of cutting out the bone.
A small, bald council member reacted first. “That sounds like a significant risk. And an unnecessary one. Taking some unknown tech from the body of a scientist killed by a Qyntarak and walking into Alma with it? Half that town is collaborators and the other half is criminals. We should dump the body deep in the woods and let the coywolves drag it away.”
Elle squeezed her hand into a fist.
Colleen said, “Paul’s right. It’s a tremendous risk. What could possibly justify that?”
“Clint Donovan and I were students together, we worked together, and we were friends. When I left to come here, we vowed that if either of us were ever in inescapable danger, we would be there for each other. It’s no coincidence that he showed up on the old road. He was looking for me.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he told Elle that they needed to find the rabbit and the tour guide. Like most of you, I’m old enough to be from a time and place when people had family names. My family name is Lapin. That means rabbit in French.”
CHAPTER 4: MARSH
Vaidehi handed Marsh a wire necklace threaded through tooth and bone fragments.
“Best I could do under the circumstances. This one is the fragment with our mystery object in it.” She touched a piece of bone between a chunk of antler and a bear claw.
“You’re convinced that people will believe we wear things like this?”
“They think we’re unhinged savages. They’d believe it if you walked into town wearing a bear mask with a coywolf fur around your shoulders.”
“So you’d walk into town with me wearing this if I asked?”
“In a heartbeat.”
They both knew Marsh couldn’t call that bluff. The village had at least a dozen people old enough for the trip but young enough for the ruse of an old man and his grandchild bringing pelts to town for trading. Not only was Vaidehi too old to be convincing, she was the most educated person in the village after Marsh. They’d need her while he was away.
“I think I’ll wear it under my shirt, just to be safe.”
“I’ll try not to be insulted.”
She pushed him out the door with a warning. “Take care of Walker. That boy shows a lot of potential.”
“I know. That’s why I’m taking him. You watch out for Elle. Maybe keep a tranquilizer in your pocket as a precaution. I’m still not sure what to make of her.”
CHAPTER 5: COURT
Elle slapped another blood-engorged insect, leaving a smear of red on her forearm.
“What are these things?”
“Mosquitoes,” Court said. “I told you to wear long sleeves.”
“They’re awful.”
“This is nothing. I’ve seen them so thick you couldn’t breathe without sucking one in.”
“How can you stand to live like this?”
“It’s the way things are. You just deal with it. And wear long sleeves when you go out. There’s a spray that keeps them from biting but it’s not easy to get and it makes hunting harder because the animals can smell you coming. There’s some kind of system at the village that Marsh rigged up a long time ago to keep them away so at least we only have to deal with them when we go out. That was before I was born. It must’ve been awful here back then.”
“Have you lived here your whole life?”
Court weighed possible replies in his head, unsure of how forthcoming he wanted to be. Elle had opened up a little bit in the three days that Marsh and Walker had been away, but she’d shared almost nothing about the life she’d left behind. He was no more interested in exposing his emotional wounds to a stranger than she was.
Have I lived here my whole life? Not exactly...
What he said was, “Pretty much.”
“Well, don’t take this the wrong way but I think the animals can smell you coming even without that special spray.”
“Hey, now, we can’t all be fancy city girls.”
“I’m not a city girl.”
“No? Then where are you from?”
She turned her head away from him and let her hands run through the leaves of a cluster of small trees as she passed them.
“You shouldn’t do that. Good way to pick up a tick.”
“A tick?”
“A type of bug. Some of them carry disease. You don’t want Lyme disease, trust me.”
“It’s so different out here. You worry about things I’ve never heard of.”
“Different from what? You’ve got a pretty good view of my life but I don’t know anything about yours. You’re not a city girl, so what are you?”
“Something between a patient and a prisoner.”
Court was trying to think of what to say next to get her to share more when they found a brown rabbit trapped in a snare.
Elle went to her knees and reached out to touch its fur. The animal’s grasp on life was tenuous.
“The poor thing.” She turned to look at Court, her eyes wide. “Can you save it?”
“Save it? That’s dinner.” He let his pack fall from his shoulders and pulled a knife from his belt. “I snared it on purpose.”
“How can you eat such an innocent little animal? It’s just trying to survive out here.”
“No different than the rest of us.”
She didn’t move out of his way.
He frowned and waited for several long seconds but she stayed on the ground with the rabbit.
“It’s suffering. It’s cruel to leave it like that. If you make some room, I’ll put it out of its misery.”
Elle nodded and gave him space. She turned away as he worked. The neck crunched as he broke it. He was fast tying the rabbit to the outside of his pack and resetting the snare.
“Done,” he said and continued walking.
He heard her slapping at mosquitoes behind him as she followed at a distance. The silence felt different than the quiet times when he walked through the woods with Walker. Even the birds seemed to have grown silent. It made him feel heavy.
By the time Court checked the final snare—all empty save for the one rabbit—the silence had grown too uncomfortable for him. “I should have warned you what checking the snares meant.”
“Yes, you should have.”
“But you know that all the meat you eat comes from animals, right?”
“We didn’t eat meat where I lived.”
Didn’t eat meat?
The idea of surviving without meat made no sense to him. They couldn’t survive the long winters without hunting.
“What did you eat then?”
“Food.”
“Food?” He stopped and turned to face her. “Meat is food.”
“Meat is not food.”
“You’re insane.”