The Wild

Page 18

Even now, as he wandered along a trail that seemed to have been laid out just for him, the trees aligned on either side like the entryway to a grand estate, he shivered at the memory of the slaughter in camp that night. The screams of the men echoed in his head, and he could not erase the sight of the Wendigo, half invisible in the moonlight and the dark, snatching them up and pulling them apart to get at their insides.

If he could have considered it just an animal, that would have been easier. But he had seen it close up, had watched it mirror his own image and step through the shadows, and nothing of mere flesh and blood could have done that. No, the Wendigo was something more. It was a cursed thing, a legend, born of some hideous magic.

A shiver went through Jack and he paused. The breeze still felt warm, but he looked around the woods to find that somehow his trail had led him into deep shadow, where the canopy of the trees grew thick overhead. He glanced about until he saw a splash of bright sunlight and set off toward it, conscious of the general direction of the cabin.

For nearly ten minutes he pushed other thoughts from his head and just walked. His boots snapped twigs, and sometimes the ground was soft underfoot, though there had been no rain since he had first woken in Lesya’s cabin. A stand of white birches gleamed in the sun, many of the trees stripped of leaves despite the time of year. They were not dead trees, but they did not flourish the way most of the forest did, and they had none of the vibrancy of the few apple and pear trees in the garden behind Lesya’s home.

Jack wondered if she could save them. Only a fool would have denied the influence she had on things around her, the way the flowers and plants flourished. Even Jack had thrived in her care, returning to vigorous health, though he believed his own recovery had much more to do with her cooking than with whatever magic could keep the wood of her cabin alive.

“Get her out of your head,” he said aloud.

The wind through the leaves seemed to answer back.

Accepting magic had not come easily, especially to someone who still bore an emotional burden from the spiritualism his mother indulged in. The things she had claimed to believe had brought death and the dead near to him and his home, and they had frightened and confused him. He remembered a gas lamp, and his mother’s chanting voice as she called upon her own spirit guide and invited other, darker things to visit them in their kitchen.

One rainy evening, the lamp lay in bright shards on the kitchen floor. The roses on its shade had been as vivid in color as the flowers in Lesya’s garden. Jack had not touched the lamp, yet it had moved, and his mother had blamed him. She had punished him.

Cursed him.

Spiritualism filled him with contempt. He hated the theatrics that went along with it, and the arrogance of those who claimed to practice it. Magic seemed only a hair’s breadth from the kind of spiritual chicanery his mother had indulged in, defrauding widows and distraught daughters of their money, and so he had always dismissed it with the same casual disdain.

Until now.

Since he had first learned of the wide world as a small boy, he had yearned to explore its mysteries, to visit exotic ports and secret chambers, to dare its oceans and peaks. Now he had been forced to accept the existence of an even wider world. There were forces at work around him that had nothing to do with science but might equally be a part of nature. For he could not think of Lesya’s witchery as anything but natural. She certainly considered it as such, did not even seem to understand the word magic.

With a smile, he sat down amid the dying birch trees and leaned against the trunk of the sturdiest. Opening the book, he delved into Dumas’s Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. Though this sort of melodrama did not usually appeal to him, Jack had read the book in English several years before. He thought he remembered enough of the story that he’d be able to decipher this text, even with the little French he knew.

The attempt failed miserably. Though he concentrated, scanning pages for words he recognized and trying to translate the sentences around them from context and memory, it soon became evident that today would not be the day he taught himself French.

After twenty minutes or so of this fruitless labor, he lost patience entirely and rose. The sun had reached its apex, and Jack relished the warmth. The nights were still cold, and he would never wish to be in the Yukon during winter again. But he did not mind the spring.

Book in hand, he glanced once in the direction he had come and immediately decided to forge onward. If the book would not provide distraction, then he would have to explore beyond its pages. Perhaps he would come to the outer edge of the forest and be able to get some bearing on his position. Surely they could not be more than five miles or so from the river camp where he had panned for gold with his fellow captives?

The thought brought Merritt to mind, sullying Jack’s mood.

Many shades grimmer, he set off to what he gauged to be east. Things moved in the undergrowth and in the branches overhead, animals darting to and fro to escape his path. But as he walked, the journey became more difficult. Exposed roots and stones jutted from the uneven ground and the trees grew closer together, so that he found himself ducking beneath branches, scratching himself many times, and tripping more than once.

He managed not to fall, but the forest had grown so thick that it seemed nearly impassable. Realizing that it would be illogical to continue—especially since he took the density of the woods as an indication that he had been walking deeper into the forest instead of toward its edges—Jack shifted direction. Yet fewer than ten minutes later, he ran into a similar obstruction. The way had been clearer, paths easily made among the trees, but soon he found himself in the thick of the forest again.

Once more he shivered, but this time a creeping suspicion accompanied the chill that ran through him. He glanced around but saw only the shade thrown by branches and the dappling of golden light where the sun shone through.

He had come into the forest alone, but now he had company, and now that he had become aware of it, Jack could not understand how he had missed it before. Of late he had thought little of the wolf. It had aided him when he was in peril, and these days with Lesya had presented only heart-quickening joy and contentment. Yet he had wondered what had become of his spirit guide, the animal that had breathed new life into him when he lay dying in the winter snow, and had given him a rapport with the wild that he would never otherwise have found. Why had he not seen it? If he closed his eyes at night, sometimes he thought he could hear the lonesome howl of a wolf far, far off. But then the fire would lull him to sleep, or Lesya would brush her lips against his in a soft kiss, and the wolf would be forgotten.

This, though, was not the wolf. Nor was it the Wendigo. But Jack knew it. He had felt the presence before, in the woods that day when Lesya had kissed him for the first time. He had sensed the intensity of its attention upon him—its menace—and the small hairs on the back of his neck had bristled. He had understood with utter clarity that it did not want him there.

He peered into shadows, searched the trees for the source of the threat, but saw nothing. Frustrated, he turned north and walked until the woods thinned, picking up his pace, tapping the book against his thigh. He still felt its attention upon him, the weight of its displeasure, but he would not be frightened off by something he could not see.