Werewolf's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Werewolf found the third snare before breakfast, and the rabbit inside it was still alive. He pried the wire loose with hands that shook from anger, not cold. Blood matted the fur at its hind leg. He wrapped the rabbit in his coat and started back toward the rescue center at a run. The two-story building sat behind a curtain of vines, its outdoor pens patched together over years of salvage. He had built it board by board to shelter every wounded animal in these wilds. That was the whole point of his life here. But someone had strung a trap line straight through his stretch of forest, and the woods were faster at maiming than he was at healing. Inside, two fox cubs tumbled in the straw of the nursery pen, biting each other's ears. He had pulled them from a collapsed den last week. Their mother had not been so lucky. He set the rabbit on the exam table, splinted the leg, and counted his cages. Nine occupied. Four new since the snares appeared. He was losing. He needed the trapper. He needed the trap line pulled up by nightfall, and he could not walk every mile of wood alone before more animals bled out. He went to the old cartographer's shack at the edge of the village. Owen Fitch answered the door with ink on his thumbs and a leather map case buckled shut across his chest. Werewolf had spoken to him twice, both times about bird routes. "I need to know where a trap line runs," Werewolf said. "North wood. Since last week." Owen chewed his beard. "I know the line. I sold the map that laid it." He said it flat, like a man admitting a debt. "Fellow paid in coin. Didn't say what for. I should've asked." "Walk it with me." Owen took his stick from the door. "I can walk it blindfolded." They worked until dusk. Owen named each turn before they reached it. Werewolf sprung every snare with the butt of a hatchet and coiled the wire into a sack. They found twenty-two traps. Two held foxes, dead. One held nothing but a chewed-off paw. By the last trap, the sack was heavy enough to bruise Werewolf's shoulder. At the edge of the wood, Owen unbuckled his map case for the first time Werewolf had ever seen. He pulled out a folded sheet, tore it in half, and handed the torn half to Werewolf. "The buyer's name is on the back. He'll come looking for his line tomorrow. He paid for a season." Werewolf took the paper. The trap line was gone. The trapper was not. And now the trapper had a name, an address, and a reason to come to the rescue center himself.