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Now it is fully dark.
How is that possible? She left the town just a few moments ago, right? Well, no, it’s been more than a few moments. Once she’d realized Yolanda was following a path, she’d focused on piecing together the bits and pieces she’d accumulated in her quest to solve the town’s mystery.
So how long has she been gone?
And when did she stop hearing Yolanda?
It is at that moment that Penny realizes her mother was right. Curiosity is dangerous, and not just when it leads her to listen in on a private conversation. It’s even more dangerous when it leads her into the goddamn Alaskan wilderness, at night, with no flashlight and no weapon sharper than the mechanical pencil in her back pocket.
She takes a deep breath. There’s moonlight, and she can see the path well enough. She just needs to follow it back to town.
She gets about five paces before the moon disappears behind cloud cover. Penny blinks to clear her vision and continues walking, feeling her way, trees close enough to touch on either side, pressing on—
Her foot sinks in snow, and she pulls back. There were no snowy patches along the path. She’d have noticed that. Thereisstill snow here and there, in dark crevices, but she definitely hadn’t stepped in any. Therefore, she is no longer on the path.
She bends and squints at the ground, only to see a half dozen large canine prints in the patch of snow.
Wolves.
She backs up fast and tries to retreat to the path, but she gets turned around and ends up back at the snowy patch. Or is thisanothersnowy patch? Withmorewolf prints?
Deep breaths as she calms her racing heart. She’s fine. She can’t be more than a half mile from town. She just needs to find—
There! She spots a clear path through the undergrowth and sets out on it, walking resolutely back to town. She’s fine, just fine. A bit of an adventure, that’s all.
When her watch says thirty minutes have passed, she starts peering ahead for signs of the town. Then she remembers she’s not going to see any at this hour. There are strict light rules past sundown. You can use a penlight to get from building to building, but indoor lights are only allowed if the blackout blinds are drawn.
She keeps going. Ten minutes pass. Then twenty.
Did she miss the town? No, the path goes straight to it.
Is this definitely the path?
It has to be, doesn’t it?
She looks around. The path does seem narrower than she remembered, with branches poking her as she walks. But it has to be the one. She just isn’t there yet.
Penny takes ten more steps. Then something crackles behind her. She wheels to see a figure stepping onto the path, a dark shadow against the night.
“Thank God,” she says with a small laugh. “I thought I heard something in here, and I was only going to take a peek, and I wandered off the path.”
The figure doesn’t move.
“I went farther than I thought,” she says. “Can I head back with you?”
The figure snorts, and it’s an odd noise, one that has her squinting. The shadow moves, and she catches sight of flicking animal ears ... two feet above her own head.
Penny falls back with a yelp. Her foot catches on a root and twists, and then she’s falling for real, the ground flying up as she crashes onto her back.
I am dead.
That’s all she can think. A grizzly found her, and now she’s dead.
The creature snorts again, and she looks up as the moon peeks out just enough for her to see the animal. It’s not on two legs. It’s on four. Four impossibly long legs, like a giraffe’s. The head looks like a horse’s. Then she catches sight of massive thick antlers.
Moose.
A memory flashes. A magazine photo of a majestic moose grazing in a twilit bog. That’s the one animal she wanted to see up here. A moose. Now she is seeing one, and holy shit, she had no idea how big it would be.
