by Ellen Datlow
She sat for a time on the lumpy ground in the clearing pretending to read, then for another stretch of time on a rock at the edge of the stream that ran past the side of the house, swatting at bugs and watching the falling leaves catch in the current and sail away. She was half asleep in the sagging wicker chair on the cabin porch, feeling the sun pushing down on her eyelids, when the boards thumped hollowly under her. She opened her eyes.
He didn’t speak, just gave an abrupt little nod. Even close, she couldn’t see the pupils in his eyes; they were that dark. Again she had the impression of expression just beneath the surface of his face, like a smile just before it happened. She straightened in the chair, blinking, then ruffled at her hair and smiled at him. His skin was the warm brown of old leaves, the muscles and tendons visible in his throat, around his mouth. The sun picked out strands of gold in his fiery hair.
“Ryan?” she guessed, remembering what Uncle Ridley had said. “Or is it Oakley?”
“Oakley,” he said in his husky, gentle voice. “Oakley Hunter.”
“Everyone’s gone,” she explained, in case he wondered, but he seemed to know; he hadn’t even glanced through the screen door. He sat down on the edge of the porch, his movements quiet, neat, like an animal’s.
“Dawn,” he said softly, and she blinked again. No one had ever said her name that way; it seemed a word she hadn’t heard before. “I stopped by to ask,” he continued, surprising her farther by stringing an entire sentence together, “if you’d like to take a walk with me.”
Her feet still felt yesterday in them, that endless hike, but she stood on them promptly without thinking twice. “Sure.”
He didn’t take her far, but it was far enough that she was lost within five minutes. This time she didn’t care; she rambled contentedly beside him through the wood he knew, listening to him naming grackles and nuthatches, elderberries, yarrow, maples and birch and oak. She told him about the ungainly turkey; he told her the name of the nut she had thrown at it.
“They only fan their tails for courting,” he explained. “Like peacocks.”
“How long have you lived here?” she asked. “I mean, your family. You were born here, weren’t you?”
He nodded. “There have been Hunters in these mountains for forever.”
“Do they ever leave? Or are they all like you?” He turned his dark eyes at her, waiting for the rest of it; she felt the warmth of blood like light under her skin. “I mean—I can’t see you taking off to live in the city.” She paused, laughed a little. “I can’t even see you buying a slice of pizza in the village deli.”
“I’ve eaten pizza,” he said mildly. “There are Hunters scattered all over the world.” He took his eyes from her face then, but she still felt herself in his thoughts. He drew breath, took another step or two before he spoke. “Every year, in autumn, we have a big gathering. A family reunion. They’ve been coming for days, now. It begins tonight, when the full moon rises.”
“I thought that was last night.”
“It seemed that way, didn’t it? But one side lacked a full arc. You had to look carefully.”
“It was beautiful,” she sighed. “That’s all I saw.”
She felt his eyes again, lingering on her face. “Yes.”
“It doesn’t seem possible that there could be that many people back here in the hills. Yesterday we didn’t see anyone for hours, not even a car. Until we saw you.”
“Oh, they’re here,” he said mildly. “Most of them live in a wood or a forest somewhere in the world. They’re used to being quiet. Noise scares the animals and trees; we hate to see them suffer.”
“Noise scares the trees?”
“Sure.” She looked for his secret smile again, the one he kept hidden in his bones, but she missed it. “You can hear them chattering when they’re scared. They get shot, too, along with deer and birds, in hunting season.”
“Anything that moves,” Dawn quoted, remembering what Uncle Ridley had said. It sounded like a fairy tale: the old trees aware and quaking at the hunters’ guns, unable to run, their leaves trembling together, speaking. Oakley had led her into a different wood than yesterday’s wood, she realized suddenly. She was seeing it out of his eyes now, a mysterious, unpredictable place where trees talked, and deer lived peacefully among the Hunters. She smiled, not believing, but willing to believe anything, as though she were Ewan’s age again. Oakley gave her his opaque glance. “What’s funny?”
“Nothing,” she said contentedly. “I like your wood. What do you do, all you Hunters, at the family gathering? Have a barbecue?” She winced at the word after she said it; given their love of animals it seemed unlikely.
But he only answered calmly, “Something like that. After the hunt.” She stared at him incredulously; he shrugged a little. “We’re Hunters; we hunt.”
“At night?”
“Under the full moon. It’s a family tradition.”
“I thought you said you hated to see animals suffer.”
“We don’t hunt the animals. It’s mostly symbolic.”
“Oh.”
“Then we have a feast. A big party. We build a fire and eat and drink and dance until the moon goes down.”
She tried to imagine a symbolic hunt. “You mean like a game,” she guessed. “A game of hunting.”
“Yes.” He paused; she saw the words gathering in his face, his eyes, before he spoke. “Sometimes we invite people we know. Or friends. We were thinking of maybe asking your uncle. Because he likes to hunt so much. You could come, too. Not to hunt, just to watch. You could stay for the party, watch the moon set with me. Would you like to come?”
She didn’t answer, just felt the answer floating through her, a bubble of happiness, completely full, unable to contain a particle more of the sweet, golden air. They wandered on, up a slope, down an old, overgrown road into a dark wood, hemlock, he told her, where an underground stream had turned stones and fallen trunks above its path emerald green and velvety with moss.
She could hear water falling softly nearby. They lingered there, while Oakley showed her tiny mushrooms on the moss, ranked like soldiers, with bright scarlet caps.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded her, and she looked at him, let him see the answer in her face.
“Yes,” she said. Her voice sounded small, breathless among the listening trees. “I’d love to come.”
The world exploded around her.
She screamed, not knowing what had happened, not understanding. A crack like lightning had split the air and then a deer leaped in front of her, so close she could smell its scents of musk and sulphur, so close it seemed immense, its hooves the size of open hands, its horns carrying tier upon tier of prongs, some flying banners of fire as though the lightning had struck it, and all of them, every prong, the color of molten gold. She saw its eyes as it passed, so dark she could not see the pupils, only the red flame burning deep in them.
She screamed again.
Then she saw three faces at the edge of the wood, all pallid as mushrooms, all staring at her. Behind her, she heard the great stag as it bounded from the moss onto dead leaves. And then nothing: the wood was silent. The stag left no other sound of its passage.
She heard her father shout her name.
They stumbled toward her, slipping on the moss, Uncle Ridley reaching out to take the rifle from Ewan as he began to run. She couldn’t move for a moment; she couldn’t understand why they were suddenly there, or where Oakley had gone, along with all the fairy magic of the little wood. Then she saw the stag again in her mind, crowned with gold, its huge flanks flowing past her as it leaped, its great hooves shining, and she began to shake.
Ewan reached her first, grabbing her around the waist, and then her father, holding her shoulders, his face drained, haggard.
“Are you all right?” he kept demanding. “Honey, are you all right?”
“I’m sorry,” Ewan kept bellowing. “I’m sorry.”
“We didn’t see
you,” Uncle Ridley gasped. “That buck leaped and there you were behind it—thought my heart was going to jump out of me after it.”
“What are you talking about?” she whispered, pleading, completely bewildered. “What are you saying?”
“How could you get so close to it? How could it have let you come that close? And didn’t you think how dangerous that might be in hunting season?
“It was Oak—” she said, still trembling, feeling a tear as cold as ice slide down her cheek. But how could it have been? Things tumbled in her head, then, bright images like windblown autumn leaves: Oakley under the tree, the deer watching at the edge of the wood, the great, silent gathering of Hunters under the full moon, Hunters who loved animals, who hated to see them suffer, who understood the language of trees. She saw Uncle Ridley among them, on foot with his gun, smiling cheerfully at all the Hunters around him, just another one of them, he would have thought. Until they began to hunt. “It was a Hunter,” she said, shivering like a tree, tears dropping out of her like leaves.
They weren’t listening to her; they were talking all at once, Ewan still shouting into her sweater, until she raised her voice finally, feeling on firmer ground now, though she could still feel the other wood, the otherworld, just beneath her feet. “I’m okay,” she managed to make them hear. “I’m okay. Just tell me,” she added in sudden fear, “which one of you shot at the deer?”
“It was standing there so quietly,” Uncle Ridley explained. “Young buck, didn’t hear us coming. Gave us a perfect shot at it. I couldn’t take it; I’ve got my limit for the season. We all had it in our sights, but we let Ewan take the shot. Figured he’d miss, but your dad was ready to fire after that. So Ewan shot and missed and the deer jumped and we saw you.”
Her father dropped his face in one hand, shook his head. “I came within an inch of shooting you. Your mother is going to kill me.”
“So no one—so you won’t go hunting again. Not this season. Uncle Ridley?”
“Not this season,” he answered. “And not until I stop seeing you standing there behind anything I take aim at.”
“Then it will be all right, I think,” she said shakily, peeling Ewan’s arms from around her. “Then I think you’ll all be safe. Ewan. Stop crying. You didn’t hurt me. You didn’t even hurt—You didn’t hurt anything.” He raised his red, contorted, snail-tracked face. You rescued us, she thought, and took his hand, holding it tightly, as though she might lose her way again if she let go, and who knew in what ageless realm of gold and fire, of terror and beauty she might have found herself, among that gathering under the full moon?
Some day, she promised the invisible Hunter, I will come back and find out.
Still holding her brother’s hand, she led them out of the wood.
Patricia A. Mckillip was born in Salem, Oregon, and grew up both in this country and overseas in England and Germany, since her father was in the Air Force. She was educated at San Jose State University in California, where she received a master’s degree in English literature. Having sold three young adult novels by the time she graduated, she was able to make a career as a novelist, which she has done since then. One of those novels, a fantasy called The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, won the first World Fantasy Award in 1975.
She has written science fiction and fantasy for adults and young adults, as well as a couple of contemporary novels. Her best-known works include The Riddle-Master Trilogy, of which Harpist in the Wind was nominated for a Hugo; Something Rich and Strange (winner of the Mythopoeic Award), Winter Rose (a Nebula Award Finalist), Ombria in Shadow (winner of the Mythopoeic and World Fantasy awards), and The Changeling Sea. Her most recent novel is Alphabet of Thorn. She has also written a number of short stories, both science fiction and fantasy.
She lives in Oregon with her husband, David Lunde.
Author’s Note:
When I lived in the Catskills, I was surrounded by woods, so I am glad to have had a chance to write about places I’d come across in my walks, and various animals I’d seen. No one can ignore deer-hunting season around there. People come up wearing camouflage and orange vests and drive away with dead deer roped to the hoods of their trucks. There are always tales of stray shots barely missing houses or hikers. I wondered what Herne, the ancient guardian of the forest, would make of all this. The idea of the hunters themselves being hunted grew with the story. The red-haired Hunter was based on a young local man whom I met one day in the woods walking with his gun and his dog. He stopped to talk about being surrounded by coyotes once, at twilight, when he was walking alone; they walked with him, as though they recognized him and were keeping an eye on him, for a long time before they faded back into the trees.
Charlie’s Away
Midori Snyder
Upstairs, lying on his bed on Saturday morning, Charlie heard the mail push through the slot in the door and then fall with a heavy thunk on the wooden floors. He listened for the shuffle of his mothers slippers as she went to the door, then her exhaled breath as she bent and scooped up the fallen mail. He imagined her standing in the hallway, a pencil tucked behind her ear, the crossword puzzle under her elbow, scanning the envelopes through her cheap dime-store reading glasses that made her hazel eyes huge and watery.
Charlie knew it would be there. He knew by the sound of the mail as it hit the floor; the weight of the envelope with the letter of acceptance, registration materials, and dorm room assignments. Any moment now, she would call his name. He held his breath and watched the play of shadowy branches on his ceiling cast by the oaks swaying in the spring breeze outside his window.
“Charlie! Charlie, come down here! You got something in the mail,” she shouted up the stairs.
“What is it?” he called back, wanting to prolong this moment alone in his room. This moment before the future arriving in a fat envelope announced itself. He lay still, legs stretched out along the bed, sneakered feet crossed at the ankles and his fingers laced together behind his head.
“Charlie, you awake?” his father called. “Your mothers got something for you.”
“Just a sec,” Charlie answered. The wind outside gusted through the trees and the shadows danced fitfully across the white ceiling. He watched the windswept pattern of charcoal-colored leaves shimmy against the wall. Then reluctantly, with slow deliberate movements, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and left the quiet of his bedroom.
At the top of the stairs he glanced down into the expectant faces of his parents waiting in the hallway. His mother held up a fat brown envelope in her hand like a newly caught fish. Her reading glasses hung around her neck, the pencil resting on her ear. She was smiling, her cheeks flushed. His father stood solidly behind her, hands jammed into his pockets, nervously jingling the spare change.
“Go on then, open it,” his mother said as she thrust the envelope into his hands.
Slowly, Charlie opened the envelope. He tried to smile, to feign the same happiness that was radiating in his parents’ faces. “Cool,” he murmured, rifling through the documents the university had sent him. “Great. I’m in.” He refolded the pages with glossy pictures of dorm rooms and campus life, the letter that congratulated him on being one of the lucky ones and stuffed them all back into the envelope. He handed it to his mother, uncertain what to say next.
“We’re very proud of you, son,” his father said.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t you want to look it over some more?” his mother asked. “I think we need to fill out some of the housing and financial aid forms right away.”
“Later,” Charlie said evasively, “I’ll look at them later. I told Nina I’d meet her almost twenty minutes ago. She’ll be pissed if I don’t show up soon. Besides,” he added seeing the disappointment in his mother’s eyes, “I want to tell her the good news.”
“All right.” His mother relented and smiled. She touched his arm, and he could feel her hesitate between hugging him or letting him go. “Later, then,” she said withdrawing her hand.
“It’s great news, Charlie,” his father repeated.
“Yeah. Really great,” Charlie said. He kissed his mother quickly, the scent of coffee and graphite on her cheek and turned to leave. “Gotta go.” He grabbed the door and jerked it open forcefully. He could feel the panic bubbling in his chest, a chilly hand constricting his throat even as he stepped out into the fresh air. Any minute they would ask him what was wrong. Any minute they would get angry, hurt, because he couldn’t tell them, couldn’t explain the numbness that overwhelmed him when he thought about leaving for college in the fall.
He walked down the street, his gaze following the tree line of the oak woods that fell away behind his house. It was strange to have such a piece of wild wood left in the city, but it had been the reason his parents had bought the rambling old house, which had needed work, lots of it, when they moved in. The roof leaked and the gutters were clogged with leaves, seedlings, and old sparrow nests. The pipes banged, hissed, and coughed up rusty water every time someone tried to take a bath. Worn gray and orange splotched linoleum had covered the hardwood floors, which slanted enough in the hallways that Charlie had set his marbles rolling on their own races. But a glance outside made one forget all the problems with the house.
From practically every window, one could see the ancient and stately oaks, the broad-lobed leaves spreading a canopy of green over the yard. Among the dark trunks and leather-brown leaves were the occasional maples, their red foliage blazing in the fall. Small stands of birch waved delicate leaves of silvery green in the summer that turned to butterfly yellow in the cool autumn air. One gnarled oak in particular had been Charlies refuge. The trunk swelled with rounded burls and the bark was shaggy with a blue-gray beard of lichen and feathery patches of staghorn moss. Wedge-shaped mushrooms, fluted like ears, spiraled around the base. One branch, seared black by lightning, had partially split away from the trunk and lay against the ground. Charlie used the fallen limb as a step to climb higher into the upper reaches of the ancient tree and disappear for a while from the world below.
