Lily Brightbloom's Arc

Chapter 6 of 8

The willow sapling had put out three new leaves by dawn. Lily was drawing salve from its bark when she heard the scream. It came from the outer roots, past the blackthorn line. A rabbit's cry, cut short. She dropped the jar and ran. She found the rabbit at the edge of the grove, a wire loop tight around its hind leg. The wire ran to a bent sapling staked in the dirt. Human work. Lily pried the loop open with her fingers and the rabbit bolted, dragging blood. She counted the stake. She counted the wire. She followed the trail with her eyes and saw a second glint further out, and a third past that. By midmorning she had found six snares and freed nothing but a squirrel too slow to run. The grove's wounded were coming toward her, and the trapper had strung a fence of wire between them and the hollow. She could not watch every root alone. She went for Hazel first. The squirrel was three ridges over, packing her satchel for a run of her own. Lily did not know her well. A forager, sharp-eyed, no wasted words. "Snares," Lily said. "Six so far. I need eyes above the ground." Hazel adjusted her glasses. "How many acres." "All of the outer roots." "One day. Then I go." "One day is enough." On the way back Lily cut through the bent-grass clearing where the doe stood. Daisy had not moved from that patch in days. Her fawn's shape was still pressed into the grass. "There are snares in the wood," Lily said. "If your fawn came this way—" "Show me." Daisy walked behind her without another word. Hazel took the canopy. She ran the pine limbs and called down numbers. "Two by the split root. One under the fern. One tied to the birch." Daisy walked the ground. Her ears turned at every creak of wire. She found three Hazel could not see, buried under leaf-fall. By dusk they had eleven snares piled at Lily's feet. The wire was stiff and cold. Lily followed the last trail back to its source and found the trapper's hut at the edge of the pines, roof caved, sign faded to the word RANGER. The door hung open. Inside, fresh boot prints in the dust. A coil of wire on the table. A ledger. He was not gone. He was working out of a post everyone had forgotten. Lily carried the eleven snares to the hollow tree by the spring, opened its small iron door, and locked the wire inside. Out of the woods. Out of his hands. Daisy stood at the clearing's edge. "He'll set more tomorrow." "I know." Hazel dropped from the pine. "Then you need more than me." She shouldered her satchel and left. Daisy did not.