Snow In Winter 4

(There will be some sort of bridging between the last chapter and this part, but I wanted to get this down........)




“I used to be a hunter,” the centaur said reflectively, shortening his stride to match Annie’s as they paced along the trail. “Not like in the old pictures you see, with the longbows or recurves; I had the latest compound model, the best you could buy, laser sights, the works. I tried to be a conscientious hunter – never made a shot unless I had a clear view of the target, made sure I didn’t leave any animals wounded, used the meat, the hide….I didn’t let anything go to waste. Obeyed the rules.”

“You have rules here?” said Annie in surprise.

“Oh, it wasn’t here” he said “it was----“ he gestured in the direction they had come from. “It was there – that world, your world. I was, well, all human then. Anyway,” he shook his head and wiped a hand over his face, “one autumn day - like every autumn day – I was hunting, of course, only this day I saw something I’d never seen before. A white buck – beautiful. He must have been, I don’t know, twelve or fourteen points at least. He was huge. I had to have him. We were up on some bluffs a little way south of here. I followed him but he stayed just inside the line of trees along the ridge , like he knew I was there. He seemed to drift from cover to cover, like he wasn’t quite real.”

He sighed and continued. “But he WAS real. I could see his hoofprints in the dirt beneath the trees where the wind had swept away the leaves; he stopped to rub his antlers on a tree and when I passed it the strips of bark that had peeled off were fluttering in the breeze. I could smell his scent.

“You ever hunt?” he asked abruptly. Annie shook her head.

“Then you can’t really imagine it, what it’s like when you’re stalking something like this. I don’t even know if I can describe what it feels like – but the sensation is visceral, primal. Your senses are sucking up every stimulus as fast as they can and sending them all pounding into your brain at once – you feel the slightest changes in the terrain under your feet, you hear every leaf that you brush in passing, the light is so intense you find yourself squinting, probably because adrenaline is dilating your pupils, you smell and taste the cold air , the sap of the trees, the odor of the buck. When everything’s right it seems like you stop existing in a clumsy human body and instead are nothing more than a whisper on the wind. It’s a feeling every hunter knows once in a while; some, if they’re lucky, more frequently than others. It’s a rush like nothing else you can imagine, and you want it every time you go out.”

“So THAT’S what it is,” Annie murmured, and then glanced up. He was looking at her intently, willing her to understand. “Most hunters I know, they don’t talk about it that much. They just speak about how much they love being outdoors and enjoying nature. But that’s what they’re trying to say, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “ Yes. Anyway, I kept following this buck, hoping for a clear shot, and finally I got one, or so I thought. Maybe I was too eager; I just knew I couldn’t lose him. He stopped beneath the trees at the edge of a gulley, you know, where runoff has washed out the land between the bluffs. He looked like he was going to jump, but then he turned and stared at me. I know he saw me – his ears flicked back and forth and then his head turned in my direction and he flicked his tongue out, trying to find my scent. I was in camo, of course, and didn’t move a hair, didn’t even breathe, but I’ll swear he KNEW I was there. Then he turned his head back toward the gulley and I could see that he was gathering himself to jump, so I drew back my bow and took the shot. It caught him in the air and I was filled with this indescribable excitement - and then I realized as I saw him fall that he was going to go all the way to the bottom of the valley. He crumpled in the air and disappeared from my view, but I charged off after him, bouncing down the slope with the roots tearing at my clothes and gravel grinding into my hands as I went down.” He looked down at his palms as if the cuts and abrasions were still fresh and bleeding.

“Did you find him?” Annie asked as he paused.

“Oh yes, he was there." A shiver passed across the horse hide of the centaur's body, rippling the glossy coat. "He had come to a stop on a little sandbar at the edge of the stream, and I saw then that he wasn’t dead yet. His legs were moving slightly, as though he was still running, and his eyes, well, the one I could see that wasn’t ground into the sand – “ he grimaced - “was flickering back and forth. My shot was clean – the arrow was in his heart, I could see the shaft quivering with each beat, slower and slower until it finally stopped all together and the light left the eye. And then I saw he wasn’t white any longer – the hide had gotten spoiled in the fall, dirty and grass-stained, yellowed where he had lost his urine, and of course stained in blood.” He looked at her and shook his head, and his tail swished in the winter air. “He wasn’t white anymore,” he repeated, as if that explained it all.