Juniper's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

Juniper found the hunter's camp on the third evening, tucked under a leaning rock face where the wind broke clean. The shelter was lashed branches and patched hide, the seams stitched with sinew, the roof weighted with stones against weather. A small fire smoked in front of it. The hunter sat on a log skinning a hare, and he looked up at her without surprise. He said he had heard her coming since the last creek. She told him plainly what she needed. A ride south to the court. A week of his time, maybe more, to swear that he had walked her valley and seen her work it across seasons. Without his word, the clerks would take the land and the creatures in it. He listened, set down the hare, and shook his head. He said he was tired. He said he had a season's pelts to run before the snow, and her trouble was not his trouble. He went back to the hare. She sat across the fire and opened her pack. She took out the amber amulet she had carried for years, a juniper berry set in resin on a leather cord. She laid it on the log between them. He looked at it, then at her, and said it was a fine thing and worth nothing to him. He had no one to give it to. She did not pick it back up. She watched him eat, and she watched his hands, and she watched the small worn book set on a stone by his bedroll. The cover was hide. Pressed flowers stuck out from the pages. It was not a hunter's ledger. She had seen ledgers. This was something a man kept for himself. She asked if he would walk somewhere with her before he said no a second time. Half a day east, no more. He chewed and asked what was there. She said a place she thought he should see. He looked at the journal on the stone, then at her, and said he would give her the morning. They left at first light. She led him along a ridge and down into a hollow she had found her first summer in the range. A round stone building stood there, half sunk in moss, its arched chambers open to the air. Old nests lay inside the cradles. Eggshell fragments still rested in the straw, pale and dry. He stopped at the threshold and did not go in. He stood a long time. Then he asked who had done it. She said she did not know. She said she was trying to build a place where the next ones would not end this way. He walked back to the camp without speaking. He broke down the shelter, rolled the hide, and tied his pack. He told her the horses were picketed below the spring. He said he would ride with her in the morning. He did not take the amulet.