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The two rabbits hanging from her belt were death-swinging heavy as Lizzie readjusted her father’s hunting rifle over her slim shoulder. She left the cool of the woods and crossed the sunwarm meadow to the cabin, laced boots swishing in the tall spring grass. She could hear the rill-and-rolling gossip-talk of her stepmother, Hannah, and their nearest neighbor, Mrs. Talbott, sitting on the porch shelling peas into chipped enameled bowls, the hypnotic ting ting ting as their nimble fingers worked.
As Lizzie entered the yard, browsing hens scattering from her stride, Hannah called out, “Any luck?”
Unsmiling, Lizzie untied and raised the rabbits like a banner. Hannah whooped. Mrs. Talbott clucked something under her breath, inaudible, but Hannah nudged her quiet. No doubt it was something about Lizzie wearing her father’s trousers, too large for her, legs rolled up out of the way of her boots. She simply hadn’t wanted to dirty the hem of another skirt.
Besides, this was her responsibility, the hunting. Josiah had been clear, gentle eyes solemn as he packed a bag for a week’s business off-island, somewhere called Tacoma. He couldn’t keep the worry out of his voice, because Hannah’s womb was full, and he hated to leave his young daughter and his new wife—pregnant, cumbersome—home alone.
“Hannah and the house are in your hands, Lizzie-girl,” he told her, quiet, like a secret, old woodstove popping in the cold spring night. “Guard them well. I’m counting on you.”
And while Lizzie felt no great love for Hannah—stepmother, interloper!—she would rather die than see a shred of disappointment in Josiah Kemp’s eyes, so she nodded and took the business of guarding Hannah and the home as seriously as she could. All of fifteen, and so very serious.
And of all things, if that meant being gracious with Wilhelmina Talbott—or at least civil—then so be it.
Holding the brace of rabbits in one hand and shouldering the rifle with the other, she climbed the porch steps, gave Mrs. Talbott the most well-mannered smile she could muster.
“Ma’am,” she said.
“Elizabeth,” the woman returned, fingers still shelling peas but busybody mind clearly buzzing like a hive. “Are you keeping well, with your father gone?”
“Well enough, ma’am,” Lizzie replied, setting the rifle just inside the cabin door. “How are your people keeping?”
“Fine, fine.” Mrs. Talbott sighed, then glanced at Hannah. “I still wish you would let me send Harry over here to watch things while Josiah is gone. I hate to think of you girls here, alone. Everyone in town is talking about it, you know. Harry would sleep in the barn and be no trouble at all to you.”
Hannah smiled. “We’re doing very well on our own. Lizzie is keeping us well fed, and she’s a crack-shot with that rifle. I’ve never felt safer.”
Lizzie’s cheeks reddened. She disliked how Hannah took every opportunity to compliment her. It made it harder to hate her with a clear conscience. She had grown up used to living life without a mother, cherishing what little memory she had of the woman who gave her life. She and Josiah had been happy together without anyone else, or so she had thought. Then, two years earlier when Josiah met Hannah in town and started courting her, everything had changed.
“Even so,” Mrs. Talbott said, undaunted, “there’s chat in town that itinerants are wandering the island these days, looking for work, or food. And when they can’t find it, they…they steal. From barns, but sometimes even from houses. At knifepoint. Gunpoint.”
Hannah laughed lightly, setting her bowl of shelled peas down on the porch beside her chair and stretching her back. “Well, if anyone shows up here, they’re welcome to whatever they can get their hands on. Not much wealth to be found here, except maybe the rhubarb pie I made for Josiah’s homecoming tomorrow. But,” she patted her very pregnant belly, good-naturedly, “Heaven knows I won’t be chasing ‘em down to get it back. That’ll be Lizzie’s job.”
Mrs. Talbott set her lips in a firm line, unamused.
“I should go and hang these,” Lizzie said, softly, holding up the rabbits, not meeting her stepmother’s gaze.
Hannah gave her a kind nod, dismissing her.
Lizzie left the porch, walking around the cabin to the cool of the stone-floored shed. Working quickly she hung the new rabbits up against the wall in the dark, their glassy eyes watching her, and checked on the rabbits hanging from a successful hunt a few days earlier, another brace of fine young jacks. Satisfied that they would make a healthy supper for that night, she left the shed, closing the door carefully behind her.
Out past the shed she walked, back into the place where the thicker part of the woods stretched away to the distant lake, invisible but present in the fragrance of the air. At the edge of the trees stood a wide old fir stump at knee-height, thick with moss and climbing ivy, stout as a table, the tree of its body long since used for firewood or building material.
Lizzie approached the stump and reached into the leather bag at her side, producing a third rabbit, lifeless, already stiffening. On the stump she reverently placed it, stretching it out so that one eye could see the sky, smoothing down its soft fur with her hand. Lizzie looked up, out into the dark trees. It was a small ritual; she wasn’t even sure how it started. A little secret joy, to leave an offering for the woods after her hunt. A thank you, perhaps. A gift. And by morning, whatever she left was always gone.
She searched the trees, waited with held breath, but nothing moved, nothing stirred. Nothing ever did, but she always looked anyway.
“For you,” she said, softly. “Whoever you are.”
And then she turned and went back to the cabin to start making supper.
*******
Night fell softly outside the windows, late spring learning to wear its summer cloak. Supper was eaten in silence, and the dishes were washed and the cabin tidied in silence, and after it was all done Hannah settled into her knitting and Lizzie took up a book, curling into bed.
The quiet was a habit. What had started shortly after Josiah and Hannah’s modest wedding as a weapon—Lizzie’s childlike desire to punish this woman she saw as an unwelcome replacement for her mother—over time had calloused over and grown normal. Without Josiah’s gentle joy or the occasional presence of Mrs. Talbott visiting to bridge the gap, the cabin had been empty of laughter and talk all week.
The fragrance of the rabbit and pea and new potato stew still lingered in the air, and the old woodstove whined, hissing like a barn cat around a too-wet log, when a tremulous sound from outside caused both women to look up, startled.
It had been a shriek, like a child screaming.
Lizzie knew the sound. It was the agony of a rabbit, a call that chilled the heart. She had perfected her killshot aim purely to avoid ever hearing that sound.
But Hannah still did not know such night-noises. “What was that?” she said.
“Rabbit,” Lizzie replied, shortly. “Something got it. Coyote, probably, or a stray dog.”
She looked back down at her book, but Hannah was clearly disquieted, glancing up at the window, the door. Lizzie was reminded of two years prior, back when Hannah had first married Josiah. She had been a timid thing, hare-quick to panic at loud sounds, at shouting voices. A town-girl, not used to country noises. Flinching, as under a raised hand.
That had changed, but the worry still lingered.
Clearly unable to stand it any longer, Hannah stood heavily from her chair and walked to the window to look out, clutching her knitting needles in her tight fingers.
“I see…something,” she said, after a moment.
Lizzie sighed, climbed out of bed and crossed to the window, if only to humor her stepmother. But when she looked out into the gathering dark, the fenceline skeletal in a bright moon as it stretched away to the woods, she saw it, too.
A shape, passing along the edge of the yard.
A man.
“Who do you suppose that is?” Hannah said, quietly.
Lizzie stared hard, but the gloom made it difficult to make out the man’s features, only that he walked with a slight hitch in his step and carried no lamp.
“Do you suppose,” Hannah said, answering her own question with another, “that it’s one of those itinerants? That Wilhelmina was talking about?”
Lizzie couldn’t be sure. Mrs. Talbott was a hateful old hag, and it was hard to believe anything she said. “I don’t know,” she replied. “We got anything to give him, if it is?”
Hannah cast about, her gaze settling on various parts of the kitchen. “We’ve still got some bread from supper, and butter,” she said. “Or the pie for Josiah’s homecoming. I could always make another, I suppose. There’s tea, but I could make coffee—”
A knock on the door interrupted her nervous murmuring.
“Let me answer it,” Lizzie said, firmly, her father’s words echoing in her mind, and she stepped out in front of Hannah before her stepmother could object. Keenly aware of the hunting rifle’s place beside the threshold, Lizzie opened the cabin door, golden lamplight glow spilling out over the darkening yard and illuminating the figure who stood there.
The man on the doorstep was tall, leaning on one hip, and didn’t look like a wanderer. He seemed well-fed enough, clean-shaven, clothes tidy, if a little dusty from travel. He removed his hat, and Lizzie was aware of Hannah’s sharp intake of breath behind her, but she did not turn around.
“Can I help you, mister?” she said.
But the man just smiled, white teeth dazzle, eyes wide with something like joy, like relief. “Good Lord, but it’s true. Little girl, you can’t help me. But Miss Hannah can.”
Lizzie turned around to see that Hannah’s face had gone white, bloodless bone-white like a skull. Lizzie had never seen someone’s body betray them that way before, like Hannah was frozen in place, a woman made of marble.
“George.” Hannah breathed the name, seemingly unable to give it voice.
“Been too long, Hannah Walton,” the man said, stepping forward. “Took me ages to find you, you know. Two whole years. You up and vanished on me. I tracked you all the way here from Spokane. Least you could do is let me in. Talk a spell.”
Hannah didn’t speak. Lizzie could smell her fear, like something sour. An animal smell.
“What do you want, mister?” Lizzie said, trying to keep her voice level.
George replied, “Hannah knows what I want.”
“Please, George,” Hannah said, quietly, “I’m married, now. I’m…I’m pregnant, don’t you see?”
“I see clearly,” George said, but his smile never wavered. “But that don’t bother me none, Hannah. You were promised to me, first. My fiancée. Far as I’m concerned, that means something.”
Fiancée. It occurred to Lizzie for the first time that she knew next to nothing about Hannah’s past. She had never wanted to know. For all she cared, Hannah had emerged fully-formed from deep undergound, sent by the Devil to tear Josiah’s affections in two.
Yet, that fearful, shy girl came from somewhere. Sure, she had blossomed under Josiah’s kindness, slowly loved into a state of peace, of calm. Like a plant, rooted in the right soil for the first time.
But Lizzie had never stopped to wonder what had made her so afraid in the first place. Whether there was something she had been running from.
Flinching, as under a raised hand.
George stepped forward, and on instinct Lizzie narrowed the gap, but found the man’s boot blocking her from closing the door entirely.
“My pa is out back,” Lizzie said, meeting the man’s gaze. “Get going, or I’ll scream.”
But he just smiled that teeth-dazzle smile. “Ain’t no use lying to me, little girl. Your pa ain’t here. I asked around in town. It’s all anyone can talk about, you two all alone.”
“Go on, George,” Hannah said, her voice shaking. “Go on away from here, back to town. You and I can talk tomorrow. I promise.”
But George shook his head. “I can’t do that. Took me too long to find you, Hannah. It’s now or never. I’m taking you home.”
All of a sudden, the door flew back as George shoved it in with the full weight of his frame, and Lizzie—caught off-guard—fell hard onto the wood floor, dazed. Hannah shrieked, some mingling of terror and anger, as George’s heavy footsteps entered the house.
Lizzie scrambled to her feet and lunged for the hunting rifle, but something—likely the man’s fist—caught her against her left temple, and she fell to the floor.
Hannah’s screams surrounded her as her vision blurred, darkened.
*******
The door was wide open, cold breeze nosing its way into the cabin, and Lizzie pushed herself up to her knees, her temple throbbing. Only minutes had passed; she could tell by the candle guttering beside the chair where Hannah had been peacefully knitting only minutes before. The cabin was eerily silent.
I’m counting on you, Lizzie-girl, came her father’s voice. Lizzie felt her cheeks go hot. Hannah wasn’t her mother. Hannah wasn’t her friend. But she didn’t deserve to get dragged off by that bastard, either. Lizzie could never forgive herself if she didn’t run him down.
She climbed to her feet, grabbed the rifle and a lantern, and ran out into the night. Once she was outside, Lizzie paused to listen. The sound of rustling in the bushes and Hannah’s distant cries were coming from the woods behind the cabin, opposite to the road. Either George had gotten turned around in the dark, or he was dragging Hannah in the direction of the lake.
Without hesitation Lizzie ran, lantern held out in front of her to avoid tripping over any hidden branches or stones, rifle over her shoulder. She ran alongside the shed and crossed the back-meadow, passing the old stump.
The offered rabbit no longer lay there. The stump was empty.
She entered the black curtain of the trees, following the sounds of Hannah’s distress. The moon slipped fingers of light down, down, as if searching the brush for something lost, and Lizzie could only hear her own breath in her ears and the sounds of Hannah shrieking for help.
The woods stood unnaturally silent, as if in vigil.
George walked with a limp and Hannah was too pregnant to move fast, so Lizzie caught up with them easily, bursting through the treeline into a clearing not far from the lake. A mist rose through the trees, moon-bright and turning the whole tableau strange, like a theater-play. George was dragging Hannah as well as he could with her fighting against him, the two of them breathing hard. Hannah’s lip was bleeding; at some point, he had struck her.
“Stop!” Lizzie shouted, dropping the lantern and arming the rifle, hands shaking. She hoped to God that George would stop on his own, that she wouldn’t have to shoot; she wasn’t sure she could hit him without harming Hannah, especially in the dark.
But he didn’t. He gripped Hannah tightly, panting, eyes wide. “Go home, little girl. This don’t concern you anymore.”
“You leave her alone,” Lizzie said, “or I’ll kill you.”
He laughed, those damn white-dazzle teeth.
Bastard.
Praying that her aim was true, Lizzie dipped the rifle wide and fired, the shot hitting George in his far shoulder, away from Hannah. He dropped his grip on her arm with a roar of pain and Hannah scrambled away from him.
But the man—wounded and enraged—barreled toward Lizzie like an angered bear. Unstoppable. Crazed.
She couldn’t reload. Not fast enough. Not here.
George was upon her, grabbing the rifle out of her hands and raising it to strike her, blood dripping through the shoulder of his canvas coat, eyes wild with rage.
But then a scream—high and horrible and unnatural, like a child’s scream—shivered over their heads, cutting the night into halves, and George paused to look over his good shoulder. What he saw there made him lower the rifle in shock, dropping it ineffectually in the moss by his feet.
Lizzie looked, too, and couldn’t be sure what she was seeing.
A shadow had risen in the mist between the three of them and the lake, a creature whose borders and boundaries were unclear. A large thing, like a grizzly on hind legs, a glint of eyes and a shine of teeth, a smell of thick fur, but nothing more, nothing more. A suggestion of antlers? A pair of long ears? Who could say!
It blotted out the moonlight, drank the beams like blood. And then it spoke, its voice soft and deep and whistle-sweet like an old woman and a lifetime of pipe tobacco, turning its indistinct eyes upon Lizzie.
“You,” the creature said. “You, I know. I watch you at your hunting. Always two little rabbits to go home, and one you leave out on the table-stump for me, for me. The third little rabbit for me.”
Lizzie swallowed hard, her mouth dry, aware that George was trying to inch backwards, away from the creature’s looming form. Hannah was weeping soundlessly, tears running down her cheeks.
The woods were still, watchful, waiting.
But the creature continued, turning its great head, raising a strange paw to point between them all in turn. Lizzie, Hannah, George.
“And here before me, we have three little rabbits. One, two, three. Two to go home…”
Here the creature flicked a look at Lizzie. Was that a wink? A smile? Before it said:
“…and one for me.”
With a shrilling like a ghostly war-cry the shadow guttered, fluttered, fell forward upon George. The man’s screams were swallowed up by the sounds of crunching and munching and something heavy slipping back through the underbrush to the lake.
A tumult, a chaos, a splash, and then quiet.
Within minutes, the creature—and George—were gone.
*******
As though satisfied, the woods had come alive again with their usual nocturnal sounds, a chorus of frog-songs and cricket-music filling the dark space between land and sky.
Within the little cabin, Hannah and Lizzie sat at the kitchen table, nursing their cuts and scrapes and bruises. For the first time since their meeting, the silence between them was not full of resentment and loneliness, but full of questions. And the seedling of something else. If not affection, perhaps respect.
Lizzie had so much that she wanted to know. About Hannah, about her life, about her pain. Not simply a stepmother, not an interloper at all, she was clearly a woman full of stories, and Lizzie’s youthful curiosity was broken open to let the light in.
But how? How to ask, when she had spent so long stubbornly refusing to?
In the end, it was not the asking that began the healing.
Hannah stood from the kitchen table and took up the rhubarb pie, the one she had made for Josiah’s homecoming. She smiled at Lizzie, and tipped her head toward the door. An invitation.
Together, they walked out of the cabin, past the shed, crossing the back-meadow to the table-stump, bathed in confident moonlight.
Hannah set the pie on the stump, an offering, then took Lizzie’s hand, squeezed.
“I can always make another one,” she said.
And they stood for a while like that, breathing together, staring out into the woods and searching the trees for movement. Josiah would be back tomorrow, but this moment was for them alone. A little secret joy, shared. A thank you, perhaps. A beginning.
Nothing moved, nothing stirred. But it was good, still, to look.
“For you,” Lizzie whispered into the uncertain dark. “Whoever you are.”
END
This was better than a movie. I loved the characterization, the language, the mouthfeel (to borrow a phrase), the monster, all of it. Can't say I feel sorry for George. That was...beautifully poetic.
Herne lives on Ferris island. I wondered where he had gotten to once England stopped believing in him.
The hunter always protects his own.