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He might let me into the plane and fly me to Raph and Daniel and tell them I saw.
I can’t move. I want to, but I can’t. I roll onto my back and squeeze my eyes shut and ball up my fists until the engines start.
Until the plane rises.
Until the sound fades.
Until I am alone again, in silence, the air gone brittle with frost.
THE FOX IS DEAD.
I find it ripped apart not far from my camp. My things have been mouthed at, torn up, scattered around. There’s blood everywhere, smudging my clothes and staining the ground.
Some of the blood is the fox’s. All of it? I don’t know.
I cover the blood with dirt. Clean what I can. I carry the fox’s carcass back into the clearing and lay it over a log. “I’m sorry,” I tell it. I pet its fur. Even ripped, it’s soft.
I should skin it. Use its meat and its fur. But for now I sit next to the log, feeling that much more alone.
I start to cry. I hate myself for it. It’s stupid. Waste of energy, waste of water. But I cry because the fox at least was something I see every few days. I even gave it a name. I knew I shouldn’t have, so I didn’t write it down, but in my head I’ve always called him George.
Because George was an asshole, and so was the fox.
“I’m sorry,” I tell the fox again. I knuckle away my tears and take in a gulping breath. I should have gone out to that man. I should have risked it. That was my chance at rescue, and I lost it.
Bo trots out of the woods. I let out a shuddering breath, more relieved than I realized. “Hey, boy. Where have you been?” I ask him. I put out a hand. He ignores me, goes stiff-legged to sniff the fox instead.
He doesn’t look hurt. He also doesn’t look like he expected to find a fox here. He whuffs and growls, then spins to face the trees, ears pricked.
I push myself to my feet, suddenly uneasy.
If Bo didn’t kill the fox, what did?
I walk back to where I found the carcass. There are paw prints all over in the mud. The fox’s are easy to pick out, but when Bo trots past, leaving a perfect imprint, I realize that the bigger prints aren’t all his.
There’s a third set. Canine. Bigger than Bo, and Bo’s got to be a hundred pounds. “Somebody you know, Bo?” I ask. He growls, staring off into the trees.
I shiver. Rolly I’m not worried about, but I can easily imagine the jaws that tore the fox apart tearing into my flesh, too.
I keep the hatchet on me, and I take the fox well away from camp to butcher it. I shouldn’t be cooking at camp, I decide. The food was what kept bringing the fox in, and there are clearly more dangerous things out here that I don’t want nosing around my camp.
By the time I’m done working I have meat and I have a raggedy fox skin. It’s still bloody, still stuck with bits of meat and fat, but I think I can scrape those off, and there’s a good section that’s still whole.
Fox fur mittens. I could use some of those.
Maybe I’ll live longer because of whatever killed the fox. Or maybe it’ll come back and kill me.
I split the meat with Bo. He’s insistent, and I don’t have any way to save it. Besides, I already had the fish today, and this won’t last more than a day or two.
I lick grease off my fingers, watching the fire bank low. I have food. I will live another day. But to live longer, I can’t keep doing whatever pops into my mind. I’m going to end up like the fox if I don’t play this smart.
I need more firewood, for one thing. I’ve been hiking back and forth and fishing and hunting, and I’ve gotten behind on the dull work of chopping and gathering and splitting.
I know I need to get ahead of the firewood. I need giant piles of it, because some days will be too cold and too dark to go out during the winter. Or I might get sick or hurt and need to hole up for a few days. I do a little math in the dirt, guesswork and experience adding up to a number that’s ten times as much as I’ve been managing.
It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard to gather wood, but I’m slow and fire is greedy. Especially since I’m stuck gathering deadfall and branches, mostly—I can’t bring down trees on my own with just the hatchet. Not that I didn’t try—I made a handle for the ax, but I couldn’t attach it securely. The first time I used it, the handle slipped and the weight was wrong and I swung it weirdly and if my leg hadn’t buckled, I think I would have chopped right into it.
So I need wood, but wood isn’t enough.
