What I don’t know is whether she’s been here before. Whether maybe she’s to blame for those footprints we found at the King of Trees. The blind, too. How close she has come to the cabin, whether she’ll be back. And, most troubling of all, whether she saw us. Whether she took our picture. Because if she has been snooping around and it’s a habit of hers, if she’s out there roaming around with a camera, of all things, it changes everything for me and Finch. Everything. Our whole world now in a more tenuous state than it already was.
And the question is, what am I gonna do about it.
Because somehow I can’t shake the feeling that us crossing paths with that girl—it’s trouble.
SIXTEEN
The day after Finch and me see the girl in the woods, we make another attempt at a deer and head out in the opposite direction of the valley, west. The snow will be coming soon, and I want meat hanging before it does. We’re lucky, that morning: the two of us creeping up over a ridge, coming upon a six-point bedded down in some broom sedge. Almost didn’t see him but then the white of his antlers jumped out to me, forty yards ahead. Easy shot.
We sit down, our backs against a thick black oak. Give the buck time to run and wear himself out and die.
Finch pulls an apple from my backpack. “Can I track him myself?” she asks.
“You can try.”
She smiles, sinks her teeth into the apple, winces. “My tooth.”
I lean close and take a look: the baby tooth, twisted to the side and hanging. “Want me to give it a yank?”
She makes her bear face. “No.”
After twenty minutes, we stand and head to the spot where the buck had been lying, the grass matted down. A smattering of blood.
“Here,” Finch says, pointing to a patch of blood smeared on some cheatgrass. She steps forward, her eyes searching the forest floor. “And here.” More blood, drops on a lichen-covered rock. Such focus. She bends, squinting. Circles back. Sometimes the blood trail stops. She stands up straight, looks around, momentarily stumped. “I don’t need your help,” she says, waving me off.
I linger behind.
She catches sight of something and dashes forward ten yards. “Found it.” A large swipe of blood on some grass. Tuft of brown hair. She reaches out, presses her finger to the blood. Looks some more.
“There!” Triumphant, she points: twenty yards ahead, the deer. She darts off.
“Don’t get too close.” It could still be alive, and if so, frantic. Any creature on its deathbed will fight for those final moments. I’ve learned that the hard way.
“It’s dead,” Finch says. “I see its tongue hanging out.”
I nudge it gently with my boot, just to be sure.
Finch and me gut the deer in the woods. She kneels down, leans in. “Can I do it?”
I hand her the knife, point. “Slide along here. Good.”
“How old do you think she was?”
“What? Who?”
She stops cutting, looks at me and rolls her eyes. “The girl we saw yesterday. Who else?”
“Oh.” Of course she would obsess over this. First time we ever run into someone in the woods and it’s a girl. A young woman. Whatever she is. “Sugar, I really don’t know. I can’t say I got a good look at her, to tell you the truth.” I point to the bladder. “Careful here. Go along this way. You don’t want to cut this. You’ll have a real mess on your hands.”
“Do you think she’s a nature photographer? Or an artist?”
“Hard to tell.” I reach out and guide her hand as she cuts.
“I know, but we can guess. Or imagine.” She stops working and looks at me. “We can make something up. I like thinking about her.”
Whether to allow this, whether to engage or shut it down altogether. “All right, fine.”
She turns the knife and hands it to me. “I’ll go first. I think she is a princess who has run away. She has always wanted to explore the land beyond the kingdom gates, and finally, at the annual winter festival, she sees her chance to steal away, and she does.”
Should I be reading into this? A girl who wants to explore beyond her kingdom. I look at Finch. She grins and the wind tugs hair from behind her ear and blows it across her face.
“I think she was probably out in the woods taking pictures and accidentally wandered off national forest land and ended up in the valley.” This is what I hope. But, given our recent findings in the woods, I’m not convinced it’s true.
She sighs. “I sure would like to see her again.”