Read Online The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis - Free Book Online Page A

swipe of a paw and no more Elka. Death put his hand on my shoulder and laughed.

    But I weren’t that easy to kill.
    Afore the trees stopped, I found my way out. I darted off to the left, heard a roar behind me. Bears, for all their power, are big animals and don’t do well with corners. He crashed into a trunk and I heard that wood split like kindling. Took him a few seconds to recover, and that was all I needed.
    Three running strides up a fallen tree leaning ’gainst his neighbor, and a leap of stupid. I caught a branch and swung on it, let go right at the right moment and flew like a hawk to one higher. The bear swiped at the fallen tree, smashed it to splinters. I climbed up on my high branch as the bear stood up. I’d figured eight feet from the rubbing tree but, shit, my numbers always been bad. This boy was closer to twelve.
    I weren’t high enough. He started leaning on the tree, rocking it, trying to knock it down and me with it. He growled and the wood started cracking. He reached up with those blade claws and took a chunk out my branch, near took my foot with it.
    I was screaming, shouting up a storm. Telling that beast to go back to fishing.
    “You don’t want to eat me, bear! I’m all grit and string! Wouldn’t put no fat on you for the sleep.”
    I caught the bear’s eyes, like he’d heard my words. Eyes like black marbles stared up at me. Saw the life of the forest in those eyes. Bear reached up one big paw and rested it, nice and gentle like, on my branch, just a finger-length away from my toes. He huffed and gave some kind of low yowl like he was sad and just wanting someone to play with.
    Then he dropped down, back to all fours. All that rage and fight drained right out of him. He clawed about in the dirt for a bit, like he was waiting for me to change my mind, then wandered off. Either he figured I weren’t worth the fight, he was already plump and glossy, or he understood my words, saw something in me that he didn’t much fancy eating. We’re both children of the forest, after all, almost be rude to take a bite at me.

    I was breathing hard, chest burning, heart thundering. I settled down careful on that branch and got some kind of comfort. Next I opened my eyes it was dark, moon was high and filled that clearing with cool, white light. Near beautiful it was but I knew the beasts that lurked just outside the light, no beauty in them, just teeth, just hunger. Forest was silent but for a few scratching insects. Didn’t hear or see no bears or wolves, but that didn’t mean much, could a’ been one sitting ’neath my tree for all I knew.
    I grabbed my flask but felt it empty afore I brought it to my mouth. I didn’t fill it at the Mussa. That bear got to me first.
    My belly gurgled and ached. No food for days sent pains through me. Never been that long without a good meal. Even on the weeklong hunting trips with Trapper, we could always catch enough to keep us fed. Maybe he shot a few more geese but then, he never did let me go it alone, afraid I’d show him up no doubt. Afraid I’d come back ten geese and a deer richer and he’d be left scratching his head thinking, Shit that girl’s the best damn hunter in BeeCee and she knows ten times what I ever did.
    I’d been eleven days in that forest by myself but I wasn’t even close to living. I was surviving and I weren’t even doing it well. Think I was just a little out of sorts then, see, little bit in shock maybe after discovering the man I called Daddy was…well…Kreagar Hallet. That kind of thing has an effect; it can knock down the smarts, make simple snares and baiting seem like constructing a cathedral out a’ matchsticks. It can knock down other parts of you too. I sat up in that tree and saw everything in my head. All my days with kind Trapper, all my nights with fierce Kreagar, all the hunts and skinning, all the cuts and scrapes he patched up when I was a young’un. All the laughs. All the teachings. What else had he