Maximus Jones's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Maximus Jones had chased the beast for nine days, and he still did not know where it lived. He wanted proof. Not a story, not a footprint washed out by rain, but a living creature dragged back from Tartary's forbidden region. That proof would end the mocking. It would also end him, if he kept guessing. Three trails had cost him three freezing nights. His maps showed nothing. His pack showed less. He was down to hard bread and a compass that spun in these hills like a scared bird. His wolf pressed against his leg and growled at the trees. Maximus rested a hand on the animal's grey neck. "I know," he said. "We're lost." The wolf had followed him into every dead end without complaint. That loyalty was the only thing he had left to waste, and he refused to waste it on another wrong direction. Smoke saved him. Thin and grey, it rose past a ridge of towering redwoods and drooping willows, two kinds of trees tangled together like old friends. Maximus climbed toward it. He found an old man at a small fire, wrapped in fringed hide, a feathered headdress bright against the grey woods. A carved cane leaned by his knee. The wolf stopped growling and sat. "You hunt the thing that walks like a man," the old man said. He did not look up. "I have watched you circle it for three days." Maximus knelt at the fire. "Chief Hawk Eye?" He had heard the name in the last village. They said the old chief knew the forest's monsters better than the forest knew itself. "Then you know where it went." "I know where it does not want to be found." Hawk Eye poked the coals. "Boys chase it and freeze. Their mothers thank me for the bones I bring home." "I'm not a boy," Maximus said. "And I'm not leaving without it." The chief studied him a long moment. He seemed to weigh the wolf, the ruined maps, the cracked lips. Then he drew a shape in the ash with one finger. A creek. A split rock. A ruined cabin swallowed by strange growth. "The half-man sleeps near the empty house," Hawk Eye said. "Follow the water down, past the split stone. You will smell the plants before you see the walls. Everything grows wrong there. Even ghosts." He looked up. "Men go to that cabin. They do not come out the same." Maximus stared at the ash map until he had it by heart. For nine days he had walked blind. Now he had a direction, a landmark, a name for the place. He stood and pulled his pack tight. The wolf rose with him, ears forward. "Thank you," Maximus said. Hawk Eye did not smile. "Do not thank me yet. You wanted to stop wandering." He nodded toward the dark trees below. "Now you know exactly where to die."