Maxwell's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The shed wall shook once more, then went still. Maxwell held the warm hammer against his chest and listened. Something heavy dragged along the outside boards, then moved off into the trees. He waited a long count before he lifted the bar and cracked the door. Cold air came in. The big eye was gone. He knew a glancing swing at that hide would only wake its rage, and he did not know where to strike. He needed to learn the animal before he met it again. He stepped out with the hammer ready. Ten paces from the shed he found something small crouched in the pine needles. It was a pup, no bigger than a cat, marked with the same wrong colors as the thing that had hunted him. Pink swirls ran down its back. One eye was green, the other pink. It grinned at him with a mouth full of small sharp teeth. Maxwell froze. The pup wagged its tail and rolled onto its side. He understood then. The adult had a young one, and the young one had wandered close. He crouched. The pup let him touch its belly. Under the bright fur he felt the ribs, and he counted them the way he had counted ribs on a cadaver in his first year. He pressed along the sternum until the pup yipped and jerked. Soft there, between the third and fourth rib on the left. He pressed the throat and felt the pulse jump under thin skin. Soft there too. He turned the pup over and ran a thumb along the base of the skull, where the spine met the bone. The pup went quiet under his hand, trusting. Soft there. He noted each place the way he used to note them in a notebook, only now he wrote them in his head. He let the pup up. It shook itself and trotted a circle around his boots, tail high. Then it lifted its snout and made a thin howl, high and glad, the sound of a child calling a parent. Maxwell stood fast. Somewhere past the pines, something answered. The answer was low and long and much closer than he wanted. He backed toward the shed with the hammer raised. He had three soft spots now: ribs, throat, the notch at the skull. He had a weapon that hummed in his hand. He did not have time. The pup sat in the needles and watched him go, still grinning, while its mother came through the trees to collect it and to finish what the wall had interrupted.