by Rene Denfeld
He watched as she turned and hiked back down towards the store, her pack high on her back in excitement.
After she was gone, B descended down to inspect the area around the black rock. Her tracks stopped, and then ran all over the place. No, he observed. She had moved methodically, in a circle, as if searching for something. She had stopped at every low bush and branch.
B returned to the black rock, trying to figure it out. He sat down on the rock as if he were the woman hunter. He could still smell the coffee she had opened, lingering in the air. He made his eyes her eyes, and looked around.
Then he saw it, as tiny and delicate as the spot on a bird’s wing.
His large hand reached and touched in wonder the tiny piece of thread on the dipping branch. The sense of betrayal that crushed him was severe, shattering his chest. B felt his hand flutter to his heart it hurt so badly. He pulled the string towards him, breaking the tender bud and holding it in his hand, his eyes wide.
All along the girl had been tricking him, deceiving him. Lying to him. She had made him believe she would never leave him, but all this time she had been trying to get away, wanting to escape. Wanting to be found.
His face whipped around, saw the forest differently. It was as if God had shined a light down, illuminating everything: he knew now there would be more threads, hidden through the forest. The spotlight was on him, too. The girl had unmasked him. Not only had she been trying to be found—she was trying to lead others to him, too.
Mr. B felt a ripping pain inside, the loss of love. All the pain he had felt? Nothing compared to this betrayal.
Sitting next to the ticking woodstove that night, unable to sleep, B held the thread in his hand. Every now and then he opened his palm and looked at it. There was dried blood on his knuckles.
Below him, in the cold cellar, the girl lay. He had hurt her. She was lucky he had not killed her.
In the confused muddle of his mind, he tried to figure out what to do.
He could try to find all the threads and remove them. But the woman was the kind of hunter who would return, time and again. Now that she had seen a sign she would not stop until she found the girl.
It wasn’t just the girl. By finding the girl, the woman hunter would find him. She would take him back to wherever she came from—whatever was beyond the forests and the store. There was another world someplace that he knew in his heart would destroy him with knowledge. He did not want to know anymore what kind of creature he had been before The Man found him. He knew he would not survive that. He would rather kill the woman than face that terrible truth.
And the girl? He would never trust her again. He would rather kill her than let her betray him again.
B had been deeply afraid of The Man: The sour breath on his back when he came into the cellar. How every piss, every meal, was supervised with narrow, cold eyes. The Man never let down his guard. One time he had held the metal jaws of a trap open at B’s privates while he wept, showing him what the consequences of betrayal would be.
The Man had kept him in the cellar for a very long time, never letting him see the snow. And even when he took him out, sullenly, he filled his time with kicks and buffets—and the raw, unthinkable horror of night.
He had hated The Man, and feared The Man, and eventually the hate and fear grew too much, and he cried inside to know he had to kill The Man to survive. He was afraid that by killing The Man he himself would die. But that was okay. Death was better than the pain.
He had thought about how to do it for a long time, trying to be brave, vaguely remembering a boy called B who had been loved. He had the faintest memory of a warm person. She made a shape with her mouth that made him curl with delight. No one had made that shape since, though he hungered for it.
He had thought long and hard through his fear, and in the end he had trapped The Man with the one thing that was his weakness: his desire.
It was a summer day, when the ice was rotten over the glaciers. They were out checking the last of the trap lines in the high mountains. B waited until they were on the edge of the forest, a sheltered, dark spot near a rotten ice crevasse. B was as big as The Man now, though he didn’t feel it inside. Inside he felt small.
B had stopped. He did something that made his stomach turn. He turned and smiled at The Man.
The Man’s eyes widened. The boy had never smiled. The summer wind was sweet over the crestfallen snow, but something deeper was here, too.
B waited until The Man was pressed against his back, the goat smell of him over his shoulder, the always-fish breath, the feeling of his two large hands on his hard stomach—and he quickly swung around, a snare in his hands, and before The Man could react B had the metal loop around his neck and was pulling it closed.
The Man had reared back, shocked, flailing and trying to get away.
But B was stronger. He felt the blood rush inside him, his heart crazy with fear, and he choked The Man with the snare until the two of them had fallen on their knees in the wet snow. The Man—suddenly old, smaller, his diseased and old yellow teeth cluttered like forgotten shrapnel in his sad-sack mouth—stared at B, who grew stronger as he watched his keeper shudder and die.
B had smiled. The old man looked up at him, wondering at his smile at the end.
He had dragged the body to the edge of the rotten glacier ice—The Man’s body was surprisingly heavy—and then tumbled it into a soft spot, watching the ice collapse with a sickly give. The body disappeared into the crevasse. With the coming autumn the ice would freeze over solidly again, and the body would be hidden under more snow and ice forever. No one would ever find it.
B had made his way back to the cabin. He hadn’t known what to do. He sat in the chair he had been forbidden. He peered into the cellar where he had been held captive. He touched every single one of the knives, fearfully, and then again. He figured out how to light the lamps, fill and light the stove.
Finally he had sat next to the stove. Night was falling; it was dark. He was hungry. He found the pot and put chunks of animal into it. He added water, like he had seen The Man do when making stew. Only now he could eat as much as he wanted.
His mouth kept making a shape he couldn’t see.
When the stew was done he ate the food. He sat for a time, and then, following the steps he had seen, he stirred the embers of the stove, blew out the lamp, and stood for a long while, looking at the cellar. And then, for the first time in his new life, he had crawled alone into the waiting bed.
Later, B had found the store. It had taken him a long time to approach it. He studied it, from a distance, watching other trappers enter, carrying their furs. That was when he realized he could trade his own furs, and get his own special dinner—the same one The Man had used to eat and smile at when he was a little boy, his stomach a tight, hard ball of hunger while he wept.
He remembered the way his legs felt when he walked out of the trees to the store at last. He remembered the sight of his adult hand on the worn black latch. He remembered shelves that seemed much smaller than a place he remembered from a forgotten time ago. The figure in the frosted windows was tall and wide. In the shadows of his mind a little boy ran around a corner and disappeared.
The man at the counter was someone he had never seen before, and without knowing it, he let out a sigh of relief.
Sitting by the cooling stove, B looked down again at the tiny pink thread, curled in his dirt-creased palm. Part of him had to admire it. The girl, with this one tiny thread, had trapped him.
The sun was going to come up soon. The woman hunter would return.
He would set a trap for her. He would trap the woman hunter just like he caught the red fox and dusky-mouthed wolf. Just like he had trapped The Man.
For the animals he used blood and remains to bring them, unwittingly, to the trap. What would he use for the woman?
He would use knowledge of her weakness.
But what was her weakness? What was the lure of her desire?
A
smile broke across his grizzled face.
17
Mr. B had come down the night before, his face contorting with rage. Opening his hand, he showed her:
One pink thread.
The snow girl knew then—she knew what it was to feel she might die.
Pushing her against the shelf, Mr. B hit her again and again with his fists, unaware he was mewling with fury. He was like the animals they caught that were still alive in the traps. They bit at you, knowing they were going to die. They didn’t want to bite you, but they would, and there was no stopping them. She whimpered, covering her face with her hands, curling into a ball like the smallest of animals while the blows rained down.
Panting, he finally stopped. He stood above her, magnificent in his fury, bigger than he had ever been.
She hadn’t wanted to disobey her creator. He had rolled her from the snow, brought her to life from cold. But a part of her had hungered for a life she could only imagine, even if it killed her.
It wasn’t her love that would kill her. It was his.
Do you know fear? Snow girl did.
The inside of fear, snow girl knew, was like the inside of a wet animal pelt. The fresh hide was ribboned with white, glossy with fat, the feel of muscle not far away—the pot where it bubbles. That exposed, stretched skin.
That is how fear feels. When you have been gutted from the inside out and lost everyone and you are trying to replace your insides. When someone could just come and place their hand there, feeling your wetness, and you hope the hand is safe.
That is what fear feels like.
Before dawn the snow girl heard the trapdoor open. A square of familiar light, the gray before dawn, and Mr. B came down again. She shrunk against the mud wall, preparing to cover herself against more blows.
Instead Mr. B held her down. He pulled off her shoes and pulled down her pants, exposing thin white legs. He took off all her clothes until she was naked except for the once yellow panties, now a shred of gray. He pulled them off, roughly.
Her face was pleading, terrified.
He looked at her naked body with the pity that comes after contempt.
He left, holding the scrap of her underwear. She saw an image in her mind: the cold offal bucket filled with the rind of intestines, the cold jelly of blood.
After he was gone the snow girl put the rest of her clothes back on. Trembling, she rose and put her hand on the walls, felt the words and shapes there. The pictures she had drawn and the maps of where she was. She lay down inside the MOM shape. Then she got up and again felt the words she had carved. She could feel them with her fingertips, read them with her mind.
Madison, she had written. Please come save me now.
But that girl was not coming. Snow girl understood that it was up to her.
Turning abruptly, she went to the corner where she had buried the metal spoon and quickly dug it up.
She stood on the shelf, holding the spoon.
She could reach the underside of the floor slats now—if she stretched. She carefully inserted the metal spoon handle around the edge of the lock latch and, working steadily, began to wiggle it back and forth.
Before the sun rose, Naomi was in the motel lobby. The diner waitress, coming out of the adjoining door, stopped, her mouth open, ready to tell her the breakfast specials. But Naomi was already running outside to the battered green Skookum ranger truck, where Ranger Dave waited behind the wheel.
“I only know how to find it from the store,” Naomi explained as they drove up the winding black road. “But I made some marks on my map to help us.”
Naomi had briefed him on what she had found: threads, she said, tied in the forest. Ranger Dave was thunderstruck. Part of him wanted to deny it, but he knew. They could only have come from Madison. No other girls in pink roamed the forests.
“It’s her,” Naomi said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find her,” he offered, feeling bad.
Naomi, looking out the truck window at the trees running past, saw a vision of herself as a little girl again, riding in a truck next to the sheriff taking her to safety. Each and every time this was the pleasure.
“That’s okay,” she said. “None of us find them all the time.”
Naomi told him about Hallsetter, accused of molesting boys a lifetime before. He would be dead by now—and yet, she said, it could not be coincidence that he had bought that claim.
“Do you think someone else is camping on that claim?” he asked, shifting gears as they climbed the black road.
She told him about the trapper buying extra food in the store.
She could feel the ball of yarn under her hands, how the case was coming together now and making sense.
They parked in the store lot and hiked out. Behind them Earl Strikes came out onto his porch, watching. He went back into his store, shaking with his own excitement. He pulled the camp phone closer—just in case.
Working steadily against the latch, her arms aching from being held overhead, the snow girl thought about her creator. He would probably smell the woman, from afar. He would watch the birds light out of the trees she passed under, and track her movement.
One of the screws popped free, and snow girl watched it fall, like a tarnished star, to the mud floor.
Her eyes determined, she applied herself with more force with the spoon handle, ignoring the pain in her arms.
You made me, she thought. You rolled me from snow and made me strong, and now I will be brave and cunning—just like you.
In his pack, Ranger Dave had everything he needed. The flares, a quick tent for a storm, freeze-dried food pressed into bricks that blossomed in melted snow water.
It was funny, he mused as they hiked quickly into the cold forest—when he was younger he had dreamed of being a ranger in someplace like Arizona, such as in the Tonto National Forest. As a college student he had loved the deserts: the stunted pine, the rugged inhospitality of a place of searing heat and deep night colds—the way the stars sparkled in the evenings. There was a sense of openness about the red deserts that these cold, closed-off mountains could never have. But this was where he had gotten a job. And after Sarah came, the forests didn’t feel as closed. He had met Sarah one spring as she came through, hiking. Sarah, he reflected, had really loved it here. She was the one who taught him to see the beauty of these glacial forests.
He snuck a glance at Naomi. She was all business. Her face pointed forward with something beyond determination. It was like religious transportation, he thought: This was her heaven. Right now she was walking on water.
“Here,” Naomi breathed, stopping short of the black rock.
Ranger Dave looked around. He hadn’t been in this part of the forest, but that was nothing new. He could spend the rest of his life exploring and not get close to knowing most of these primeval woods.
Naomi looked for the first thread, tied above the black rock. She could not find it. But the next one was there, on a cedar sapling.
Tied on a low branch was a single bright pink thread.
Ranger Dave touched the thread, a miracle on his face. It was true. It was as if the girl was leading them by the hand, deeper into the forest.
Another screw loosened, and the bottom of the hinge suddenly separated from the wood with a metal whine.
Soon, snow girl thought, applying the spoon handle with more force.
Her face, bruised in the filtered light, was serene. She smiled a little to herself and, unaware, began quietly humming a song.
The world was alive and it was playing her music.
At first it took time to find the threads. The path skirted large boulders and deep tree wells, and passed brambles and fallen logs. After a bit they no longer had to look as hard: the natural trail exposed itself.
Naomi knew they would find the end soon. She could feel it. The cabin would not be too far from the store—at most a day’s hike.
Ranger Dave took the lead, and Naomi let him, a little amused, but too caught up in
the search to care. He did know these forests better—
“What’s that?” he asked.
Naomi had only a moment to take it in. There was a scrap of fabric lying on the snow ahead of them. Her eyes quickly absorbed everything around her: The grove of black trees nearby, perfect for hiding someone. The bushes. She could see the clothing was a pair of underwear.
The panties of a little girl, worn into tatters, half buried in the snow.
“My God,” Ranger Dave said, and moved forward.
In a flash Naomi remembered an empty box on a post office shelf, a smiling face, the nasty curse left from someone who had led her down a false trail, only to disappear. There was no reason for those panties to be out here like that. No reason except if someone had planted them. No reason unless they were a—
“Dave, stop!” she commanded, but it was too late. He was reaching for the scrap of cloth and with a scream his wrist was buried in the snow, and Naomi felt rather than heard the snap. It went right to her bones.
All the color ran from his face, and he looked up at her, shock collapsing his features. He jerked his bloody arm out of the snow. The ancient sharp-toothed trap had snapped his wrist, pinching the skin closed to less than a narrow inch around the bone. Blood had begun to pour around the rusted teeth, and Naomi knew if the shock didn’t kill the ranger, the loss of blood soon would.
Despite the shock, Ranger Dave was reaching for his belt with his other hand, trying to unthread it from his belt loops, knowing he had to make a tourniquet. Naomi moved, quickly, to help him. She began pulling his belt from the loops, yanking it hard, pulling it out.
From behind the black trees a man suddenly rose, a blood-clotted metal bar in his hand. She recognized him immediately: it was the trapper from the store. His grizzled face looked from her to the ranger. She could see he had not expected Ranger Dave. He had set the trap for her, and brought the metal bar to finish the job. And now he would.
