After they’d eaten, Meloux said, “When you told me last night about the voice from the woods, I thought maybe it was a manidoo. ” He was speaking of the spirits that, in his unique understanding, filled the world around him. “But it was not a manidoo who came knocking last night with that arrow. I have been out already this morning, looking.”
“Did you find tracks?”
“None that these old eyes could see.”
Through Meloux’s windows, Cork observed that the clouds seemed to be hanging lower and lower, and he knew that very soon they could deliver icy rain or more sleet or even snow, so that whatever tracks there might be would be obscured. “I’ll have a look myself.”
“Mind if I come?” Rainy asked.
“Go,” Meloux said to her before Cork had a chance to respond. “From me, you learn to heal. From Corcoran O’Connor, you learn to hunt.”
“I don’t intend to shoot anyone, Uncle Henry,” Rainy told him.
“Not today, perhaps,” the old man said with an enigmatic smile. He waved them out. “I will clean the dishes.”
Cork and Rainy pulled on their coats and stepped outside. The wind was up again, and the air was damp and held a sharp chill. The temperature, Cork figured, was just above freezing. This kind of weather was harder on him than the most bitter winter blows. The damp wind seemed to push right through his outerwear and drove spikes of wet cold into all the bones of his body. He flipped his coat collar up and drew on his gloves and snugged his cap more firmly on his head. Though she zipped her own coat up to the neck, Rainy seemed less bothered by the weather.
“Where do we begin?” she asked.
Cork said, “The door of your cabin faces west. That’s where the arrow came from. Let’s head that way and see what we find.”
He made a long arc in front of the cabin five yards out, moved another five yards distant and walked another arc in the opposite direction. In this way, he moved farther and farther from the cabin, studying the meadow for signs. All he found was evidence of Meloux’s attempt at tracking. There’d been no hard freeze yet that season, and last night’s sleet had mostly melted, so the ground was clear and soft. He knew that if there had been anything, even Meloux, with his bad eyes, would have found it.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Rainy asked. “Footprints?”
“Not just a print, although that would be helpful. The meadow grass is long and dead, so if someone had walked here there’d be stalks bent or broken. If someone knew what they were doing and didn’t want to leave a trail, they wouldn’t have come into the meadow.”
“Why are you looking here then?”
“Eliminating possibilities.”
Rainy pointed to the west. Fifty yards distant stood a tall rock outcropping in a roughly semicircular shape. Beyond it lay the fire ring where Meloux often conducted ceremonies of one kind or another. “If I were going to shoot an arrow from someplace that wouldn’t leave a trace, I’d shoot from those rocks.”
Cork said, “That would be my first choice, too.”
“Then why aren’t we looking there?”
He stopped and turned to her. She wore a gray wool cap that she’d knitted herself. Her black hair was done in a long braid that disappeared beneath the back collar of her coat, but loose wisps fluttered about her face in the wind, dancing restlessly across the tawny skin of her cheeks. Her eyes were the color of cherrywood, and were intense with her desire to understand and to learn. In that moment, out of all context of his purpose that morning, Cork was struck by how beautiful she was to him. He cupped her face in his gloved hands and kissed her and felt how soft her lips were against his own and, despite all the cold that drove against them, how warm they were.
She seemed caught by surprise. “What was that for?”
“Appreciation,” he said.
She smiled. “I like being appreciated. But what for?”
“Just being here,” he said. “I like being with you. I like not being alone in this.”
She reached up and touched his cheek. “I love you, Cork O’Connor. I’m happy being the one who makes you not alone.”
Cork felt another kind of kiss against his face, the wet kiss of snow. He looked up and saw flakes beginning to fall.
“Okay,” he said, returning of necessity to their task, “the rocks would be my choice for shooting the arrow, but it’s an incredibly difficult shot. First of all, it’s more than fifty yards away. The odds of hitting the door from that distance aren’t great. And when you factor in the dark…” He shook his head.
“Night-vision goggles?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or a nightscope of some kind mounted on the bow. They have them. But think about the wind. It’s stiff this morning, but it was even stronger last night. It would take a phenomenal bow hunter to pull off that shot. Even Jubal Little, who was the best I ever saw, would have been hard-pressed.”
Rainy looked up at the slant of snowflakes the wind was shoving out of the sky. “We should take a look pretty quick, shouldn’t we?”
There was a path from Meloux’s cabin to the rocks, and they followed it. As they walked, Cork studied the ground, which was worn bare from the passage of countless feet, but he saw nothing of interest. The path cut through the rocks, and as soon as they were on the other side, Cork and Rainy were hit by the smell of char. Black ash lay deep inside the stone circle of the fire ring, and around the circle sat sections of wood cut for sitting. It was an area that had a sacred feel to Cork. He’d seen great healing occur there. But it was also a place that, on more than one occasion, had been the scene of violent death. Meloux consecrated and reconsecrated the ground, and Cork had come to accept that it reflected the way of life as Kitchimanidoo had created it, of dark side by side with light, of peace cheek and jowl with conflict.
Almost immediately he found something.
“Here,” he said, pointing to the rock outcropping on the east side.
Rainy looked where he’d indicated but shook her head. “I don’t see anything.”
Cork ran his index finger along a faint line of dirt across the slope of a rock. “A boot left this. My guess would be as someone climbed to the top for a shot at your door.”
Cork ascended the outcropping, looking for another sign.
“Anything?” Rainy called from below.
“No.” He came back down.
“How can you be sure it was left last night?”
He took off his glove and touched the line of dirt. “Still damp,” he said. He turned. “There’s going to be evidence of that boot somewhere on the ground.”
Rainy said, “I see all kinds of tracks here.”
“Old tracks,” Cork said.
Beyond the fire ring, a dozen yards to the west, lay the shore of Iron Lake, which was lined with aspens whose branches had gone bare with the season. The lake surface was choppy in the wind, and the low clouds seemed to breathe gray into the water. Cork walked to where fallen aspen leaves covered the lakeshore.
“Here,” he said and knelt. “Do you see?”
Rainy stood beside him and looked at the short stalk of wild oat that he indicated. “It’s broken,” she said.
“Broken in one place, yes, but creased in two others,” Cork pointed out. “The stalk broke under the weight of the boot, which forced it down. Then the boot pressed it into the ground and created these two creases on either side of the sole. The distance between the two creases gives us an indication of the width of the boot. It’s good sized. Makes me think it’s a man.”
“How do you know that’s not an old track?”
“Damp dirt on the stalk, just like on the rock over there.” Then Cork nodded toward the lake. “And you can see faintly where his boots have pressed into those fallen aspen leaves.”
Rainy said, “He came from the lake.”
