Lily Brightbloom's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

Hank's warning sat with Lily through the night. One mouse could not cover eight lines, and the trapper would widen his ring by dawn. She needed something that could run the whole perimeter ahead of the wounded and steer them off the wire before a whistle would even reach them. At first light she went down to the woodcutter's yard below the ridge. Grace Timberwood was splitting kindling by the shed, an axe in one hand and a braid over her shoulder. A brown and white hound sat at her boot, ears up, watching Lily land on the woodpile. "You're the fairy from the grove," Grace said. She did not stop splitting. "Father said you had a mouse problem." "I have a wire problem. The trapper doubled his line. I need something faster than a mouse." Grace set the axe down and looked at the hound. "She works sick trees with me. She'll work snares." "I can't pay." "I didn't ask." Grace pulled a pair of moss-covered boots from under the shed bench and handed them up. "Father's. He walked the ridge in these when the dying started. Trapper won't hear you coming." Lily took them. They were heavy in her hands but soft on the seam. They went up together. Grace walked the outer roots with the hound off leash, giving low commands, one word each. Lily flew ahead in the moss boots strapped to her back and marked every snare she could find with a bent twig. The hound learned the twigs in under an hour. She ran the line at a trot, nose down, and when she caught wire scent she sat and would not move until Grace came up to disarm it with a stone tied to a cord. The stone tripped the loop from six feet back. The wire snapped shut on air. By midday they had cleared four snares and turned three limping animals north onto the safe seam. A fox with a torn ear. A vole. A doe with a cut flank that watched the hound and did not run, because the hound sat down and looked away until the doe passed. Grace came back to the spring with pitch on her sleeve. "She'll run it again at dusk. And at dawn." "Every day?" "Until he stops." Grace wiped her hands. "He won't stop." Lily looked at the hound drinking from the spring. The mouse whistled once from the outer roots, a clean note, no warning in it. The ring was covered. Then Grace said the rest. "Father saw him this morning. He wasn't setting snares. He was cutting a path toward the spring. He knows something's here. He's coming to find it." Lily held the moss boots against her chest. The wounded would reach the hollow now. But the trapper would reach it too, and soon.