About three feet in length, and more than a foot tall, Marty the Fisher had short, brown fur and small, round eyes almost blank of emotion. His legs were stubby but powerful. With his sharp claws he could climb trees and leap about branches as nimbly as a squirrel. On the ground he was just as agile.
The only thing Marty feared was humans. With reason. Human hunters, attracted by the fisher’s glossy brown fur, had all but exterminated his family. Marty was the only one left, a fact that filled him with enormous rage. Even so, he kept to a stern, self-imposed rule: never, ever tangle with humans. They were far too dangerous.
Though he killed birds—even ate their eggs—what Marty liked to hunt were other four-legged creatures, like mice, rats, rabbits, and squirrels.
Marty chose his victims with care, stalking them silently and patiently, wanting to be certain he could overwhelm them with the savagery of a single attack.
Once he chose his prey, Marty pursued it for however long it took to bring the creature down. It could be hours. It could be days. Or weeks. The most patient of hunters, Marty loved nothing more than to devise clever strategies to fool his victims, luring them into places where he could surprise them and they would be defenseless. Those whom he assaulted barely had time to know what hit them.
To further insure his success Marty traveled alone, keeping to trees, rocks, and leaves, where his dark fur blended in. Such tactics made him almost invisible. Indeed, Marty was rarely seen—until it was too late.
Though he never bragged about it, never gloated, rarely even smiled—in fact, had almost nothing to do with any other creature—Marty’s solitary tactics almost always worked.
Hardly a wonder that Marty gained the reputation for being the most patient hunter in all of Dimwood Forest. Indeed, he rather liked to consider himself Death on four paws.
And of all the forest and woodland animals Marty hunted, it was porcupines he enjoyed hunting the most. It was not that porcupines had injured Marty in any way. They did not insult him. They did not compete for food or space. No, it was their vanity that infuriated Marty the Fisher. Porcupines believed that no one could interfere with their lives, that they could do whatever they wished. How dare any creature think itself immune from Marty’s anger?
What’s more, Marty had found a way to successfully attack porcupines. By careful observation, he had discovered that porcupines had no quills on their bellies. The belly was the porcupine’s most vulnerable spot. If Marty picked his moment with care, moved with complete surprise, a porcupine could be successfully attacked from below.
Thus it was that whenever Marty came upon a porcupine, he liked nothing better than to hunt it down and kill it.
Hardly a wonder that when Marty the Fisher looked down from his perch in the old oak tree and saw old Ereth lumbering along beneath him, he became very excited.
“Ahhh,” he whispered to himself. “It’s Ereth! If ever there was a self-centered porcupine, he’s the worst. Look at the way he’s waddling along! Not a worry in the world. Acting as if he could live forever. Well, I’ll teach him a thing or two!”
From that moment, Marty the Fisher began to stalk Ereth.
CHAPTER 4
In Pursuit of Salt
THE DAY GREW COLDER. Not that Ereth cared. He rushed on, completely absorbed in the anticipated pleasures of salt. At times, his desire was so great he began to salivate, producing great drools of spit, which he sucked up noisily.
So focused were his thoughts on salt that he failed to notice when it began to snow. Coming with a breathless, hurried hush, the snow’s silence was intense, swallowing every sound like a sponge absorbing water. Within moments, the entire forest became utterly still.
The snow was an inch deep before Ereth even realized it was there. Suddenly he could not see his own paws. Surprised, he gazed up. For just a moment Ereth imagined that it wasn’t snow falling, but salt, and his heart leaped with joy. Then a particularly large flake of snow landed on his nose and made him sneeze. That brought him to his senses.
“Stupid snow,” he complained. “You would think it would have the decency to wait until I got to where I was going before it started.”
Though Ereth knew the snow would make traveling harder, not for a moment did he consider returning home. “What do I care?” he told himself. “It’s my birthday. Who needs noisy mice? The salt will taste even better when I get there.”
With an angry shake of his head—as if that could get rid of the snow—Ereth pushed on.
Leaping silently from tree branch to tree branch, Marty the Fisher followed.
The snow tumbled from the sky like confetti from a barrel. It sleeved tree branches in white. It hid rocks and stumps. It covered the land until its surface became round and soft, melding into one continuous undulating form. It was as if an enormous eraser were rubbing out the world, leaving nothing but one vast sheet of blank, white paper. Only Ereth, like a solitary, dark dot, moved across it.
Becoming weary, Ereth paused and looked back over his shoulder at the trail he was making. To his surprise it did not extend very far. Like a ghost, he left no tracks. The thought startled him. Then he realized it was only that the snow had covered his paw prints.
Shifting his gaze forward, the porcupine tried to calculate how far he would have to go before he reached the cabin. A good way. Sighing with frustration, he told himself yet again that the salt would make his efforts worthwhile.
He went on.
The snow became so deep, it was increasingly difficult to keep his chin above the surface. “Elephant elbows,” Ereth swore, beginning to falter for the first time. He glanced back. For just a second he thought something was following him.
