Alder Ashveil's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Alder Ashveil had watched the wolf for six nights, and on the seventh he understood he had nothing to give it. The animal came at dusk, always from the same stand of pines behind his cottage. It stopped at the edge of the firelight, lowered its head, and studied him. Its winter coat was black with a green cast, like wet moss on slate. Alder wanted that wolf at his hearth more than he wanted the spring thaw. He was a trapper who had lost his dogs to fever last autumn, and he lived alone in a timber cottage at the grove's edge, and a man alone in Silkworm Grove did not last long without something on four legs beside him. He checked his stores that night by the light of the fire. Half a sack of oats. A crock of lard. Three onions going soft. The smokehouse was empty because he had traded the last of the venison for nails and lamp oil. He had planned the taming badly. He had thought presence would be enough, that if he sat still by the flames long enough the wolf would come closer on its own. Six nights had taught him it would not. A wolf needed a reason to cross the line of the fire, and an empty hand was not a reason. Reaching for it now would only push it back into the trees for good. He sat on the stone lip of the hearth and thought it through. He had one snare still set on the north slope, meant for hare. If it had caught, he could bleed the hare and leave it halfway between the pines and the fire. Not from his hand. From the ground, where the wolf could take it without deciding to trust him. He pulled on his boots before he could argue with the plan. The walk was an hour each way in snow, and the wolf would come at dusk whether he was ready or not. The snare had held. A winter hare, still warm under the crust. Alder carried it back at a run and reached the cottage as the light thinned to blue. He cut the hare's throat over the packed snow ten paces from the fire, let the blood pool, and stepped back to the doorway. He did not sit by the flames tonight. He watched from the threshold with the door half shut. The wolf came earlier than usual. It smelled the blood before it saw him. It crossed the tree line, stopped, looked at the doorway, and then walked to the hare and ate. When it finished, it did not run. It lay down in the trampled snow, ten paces from his fire, and watched the cottage. Alder shut the door slowly. He had bought a second night. Now he had to keep buying them, and the north slope had only one snare.