Finn Ashford's Arc

Chapter 5 of 12

By dusk Finn knew the tent was wrong. Its pale canvas showed through the deadfall like a tooth. He crawled out with his dagger and started cutting. He wove pine boughs into a frame around the tent, then layered ferns and brown leaves over the weave. By the time he stepped back to check it, the shelter looked like a hump of brush stuck to the rock. He could walk past it at ten paces and miss it. That was the first problem solved. The second one was louder. His pack held two days of jerky and a heel of bread. Cold burned through his coat already. He needed food and he needed fur, and he needed both before the next hard freeze. He climbed down to the pool at the base of the falls while gray light still held. Small fish hung in the shallows where the spray broke the ice. Their scales caught what light was left and threw back streaks of red and green. He pinned three against a flat stone with his blade and strung them through the gills on a length of cord. Dinner, easy. He kept two whole and gutted the third on the bank. He knew what came to fish guts at dusk. He built a snare from rope and a bent sapling and baited it with the cut fish. He set a second loop ten feet on. Then he crouched behind a boulder and waited. The white otters came within the hour, low and quick along the wet stones. The first snare took one clean. The second took another when it doubled back for the bait. He killed them with the dagger and worked fast. Two thick pelts, enough meat for a week. He bundled the carcasses in the cord and started the climb back to camp. The light was gone before he reached the shelter. Real dark, not dusk. He squatted at the mouth of the brush shelter with the otters across his knees and saw the trap. Raw meat in this cold would keep one night, maybe two, then turn. He had no salt. He had no smoker. Without fire he would lose half the food he had just killed himself to get. With fire he would lose the shelter. Smoke at night would climb above the falls like a flag. The tower watcher would see it. The woman would see it. Anything hunting these woods would see it. Finn cleared a ring of stones inside the deadfall hollow, low and tight against the rock wall. He shaved kindling thin. He struck flint and fed the flame slow, building it small enough to cook over and no larger. The light bounced off the wet stone behind him. He spitted the meat and watched the dark beyond the ring. He had bought a week of food and warmth. He had sold his hiding place to do it. Whoever found him first would decide what that trade was worth.