Alice's Arc

Chapter 12 of 20

Friday morning Alice took Biscuit back to the ridge for a clean drag through the pines. He worked well for the first ten minutes, then his ears went flat and he sat down hard. Alice stopped and waited. She scanned the trees. Thirty yards uphill, behind a leaning cedar, something tall shifted its weight and a branch bent under a hand the size of a dinner plate. She had seen the sign for three days now: broken huckleberry at shoulder height she did not have, a print in the mud twice the length of her boot, a smell like wet bark and sweat on the wind. Biscuit did not growl. He watched the cedar and pressed his shoulder against her knee. Whatever stood there had been shadowing their runs, and it had come closer each morning. Alice set her stick in the dirt with the light turned low and sat down beside Biscuit. She waited. After a long minute the thing stepped out. It was tall and covered in dark hair, and it moved slowly, the way the trapper had taught her friends to move at the park. It stopped ten feet off and lowered itself to a crouch so its head was below hers. Then a second shape came down the slope behind it, and Alice understood the visitor had brought a friend. This one was not tall or hairy. She was the color of green leaves and yellow boots, with a crown of foliage for hair and bark along her arms. She said, "He's been asking for weeks. I translate." Alice kept her hand on Biscuit's shoulder. "Asking what." "To meet the dog. Just meet him. He won't touch." Rose crouched too, so all four of them were low. "He watches you train. He wants to learn." Alice looked at Biscuit. His ears were still flat, but he was not shaking. She thought about the ranger, and the phone, and the trapper's rule about hands and faces. Then she thought about who else knew this ridge better than any map. She said, "He can watch from thirty feet. Not closer. Not today." Rose spoke a low string of sound to the tall one, who nodded once and sat where he was. Alice stood, tapped her stick, and started a fresh drag along the pine line. Biscuit rose on his own and put his nose to the ground. The visitor watched from his cedar and did not move. When Alice finished the run she looked back and Rose was still there, waiting, as if she had a question of her own to ask. Alice walked over. The training ground had just grown two students, and one of them, she suspected, had nowhere else to stand.