August Ansel - Shadow Road

Forty-seven. Forty-eight.

Separated from Handy in the gulch, counting up, counting on a reunion. Russell and his crew in the street, bringing blood and fire.

“Wait.” She grabbed Renna’s arm, fingers digging in.

A sound split the afternoon. It was a small sound in the grand scheme of things, but bright and declamatory. In a world ostensibly finished with firearms decades ago, the echoing crack of gunfire was unmistakable.

A spray of bark erupted from a tree near Curran’s left shoulder at the same time his tired brain comprehended the report of a rifle. He went down on his belly hard enough to knock his wind loose, and for a few painful seconds he struggled to catch his breath. Another shot rang in the clearing, this one tearing high and wild through the branches overhead. Dead leaves rained down around him. Heart pounding like a jackhammer, he dared to raise his head just enough to get a glimpse of the cabin. Two things simultaneously made his blood go cold: the soulless eye of a gun barrel balanced on the open sill of the narrow window beside the cabin’s front door, and Talus, pelting from the shed, running straight into the line of fire.

Renna ducked instinctively when the gun went off, losing hold of Talus’s collar. She threw herself at the dog, grabbing desperately at her neck, legs, tail. But Talus was gone. Before Arie could register it, Renna had scrambled up and run after.

“No!” Arie cried, but they were already gone. A second shot split the afternoon silence. Arie pressed herself to the wall, daring a look, dreading what she might see. Talus stood in the center of the yard, staring at the front of the cabin. Renna skidded onto her knees and flung her arms around the dog’s neck. Talus barely seemed to notice. She barked once and raised her head to scent the air, not taking her eyes off the cabin’s front porch.

“Don’t shoot us.” Curran, calling from the trees. “It’s okay. We’re not here to hurt you.”

Talus whined, a puppyish sound. To Arie’s amazement, the dog went down on her haunches by Renna, tail wagging in the dirt of the yard. She gave Renna’s cheek a distracted lick and began to pant, glancing back and forth between the cabin and the trees.

“We need…” Renna said, voice audibly shaking. She kept her head lowered, forehead almost touching Talus’s shoulder. “We just need shelter.”

Arie turned from the window and sighed. There was only one thing for it now; two women, one unarmed and one elderly, might do the trick. She stepped out of the shed, hands held out, and followed the stone-lined path into the clearing.

“I’m sorry we frightened you,” she called, looking directly at the cabin. With tiny movements of her fingers, she tried to gesture at Handy and Curran— stay back . The barrel of the gun still rested on the open window, looking like the worst sort of black catastrophe. When she reached Renna and Talus, she lowered her hands. One palm she laid on Renna’s shoulder. Renna reached up and laced her cold fingers through Arie’s. With her other hand, Arie scratched the dog’s broad head.

“There are four of us,” she said. “Don’t be afraid.”

Talus jumped to her feet and did a little half-dance, ears pricked forward, still staring at the cabin. With a faint creak of hinges, the door opened. Renna’s fingers went rigid.

A boy stepped out of the shadows of the porch overhang. Arie had been so certain the shooter was a woman it took her a moment to register what she saw. He appeared to be ten or eleven and tall for his age. Blond hair fell past his shoulders, and he had the rifle raised, socked into his right shoulder.

“No need to point that,” said Arie. “We don’t mean you any kind of mischief.”

The boy kept the gun raised, but looked them over carefully. There was a steady sense about him, an almost unnatural calm and curiosity.

“I know there’s two more in the trees,” he said. “Over there—” He nodded in Curran’s direction, the place he’d aimed his shots. “And back that way,” he said, pointing behind the cabin to where Handy had headed. “I saw a man yesterday, out in my papa’s tool shed. Is he with you?”

“Yes,” Arie said. “Just the four of us, and no harm to you.”

He said nothing, only watched her with steady blue eyes.

“We sojourn, child. Wet travelers, we are, and cold to the bone.” She raised both hands and laid them over her heart. “Pilgrim,” she said, “will you give us rest?”

He lowered the rifle then, just slightly, and shifted his gaze to Talus. “Is that your dog?”

“This is Talus,” said Renna, stroking the dog’s thick, burr-raddled coat.

“Does she bite?”

“Not you,” said Arie. It was plain from Talus’s posture that she wasn’t the least afraid of the kid. “It looks to me as though she’d like to make your acquaintance. What do you reckon?”

The boy lowered the rifle and tucked its smooth wood stock under one arm. He reached out to Talus, and it was all the invitation she needed. Slipping out of Renna’s grasp, Talus trotted across the clearing. She sniffed his proffered hand, gave it a cursory lick, and allowed the boy to stroke her head. In her accustomed show of solidarity, she leaned into his legs and looked fixedly at the trees where Curran was still concealed.

The boy looked that direction, too, then at Renna and Arie. “Do you promise?” he said. He didn’t say specifically what promise he meant and didn’t need to. Arie’s heart broke for him—in that childish question was a weary freight of days and nights, the burden of loneliness and fear borne alone.

“Cross our hearts,” she said.

BY THE TIME IT WAS FULL DARK, they were sitting around the fire together. This was no raw and ragged make-do affair that served to foul their clothes and fill their lungs, nothing like the tiny cook fires Arie had occasionally dared to build in her former attic retreat. The fireplace inside Kory’s cabin was a marvel, huge blocks of sandstone fitted together with such precision that no mortar was required. The mantle was an oak slab, at least a foot thick and two deep, its oiled finish blackened in the center where the heat had scorched it over time.

Arie sat in a worn leather armchair. Kory had insisted she take it, and once she’d sunk into its smooth contours—gods, had anything ever felt so heavenly?—he had laid a blanket over her lap with sweet, unconscious courtesy, deftly tucking the thick plaid around her legs. She smoothed her hand over the dark greens and blues as they appeared and disappeared in the flickering light.

Renna curled in an enormous rocking chair next to Arie, bolstered by pillows, her feet tucked beneath her. Handy and Curran sprawled on a fat sofa, virtually sunken into either end of its faded chintz depths. All three of them stared at the fire, speechless for the better part of an hour. They had the damp, chastened look of wild children who’ve been wrangled and tamed with good food and a wealth of hot water. Arie smiled, looking around at them. Gob-smacked is what they were—exactly how she felt, too—a sensation so surreal they may as well have fallen into some other dimension.

Kory was in the midst of them, stretched full-length on the rug with Talus. Boy and dog basked in the heat of the fire. Talus lay on her side, sated, legs extended, allowing Kory to brush her meticulously from nose to tail with a wood-handled hairbrush—his own, for all Arie could guess. True love, for sure , she thought.

With a final run of his palm down Talus’s now-gleaming coat, Kory set the brush aside and nestled crosswise, using her rounded belly as a pillow. The dog fetched a deep sigh that raised and lowered Kory’s blond head like a boat on a tidal swell, making him smile. “I can hear her dinner in there,” he said.