The Hiker

You wake up with your phone on your chest and the screen still unlocked to her texts.

You don't remember falling asleep. You remember the conversation going later than either of you meant it to. You remember the light by the creek going out at some point and a cabin light coming on further up the hill. Whatever you said to her, and whatever she said back, it ended with two words you're fairly sure you'll be thinking about all day.

Sleep, ranger.

Somebody is knocking on your door.

"Breakfast," Brann says through it. "She says eat."

The Hall in daylight is a different place. The long table is crowded with people eating eggs and arguing about hay prices. Kids run under it. A gray-muzzled old dog sleeps in front of the hearth. Every single person stops chewing when you walk in, and then very carefully starts again.

Ulrika is at the head of the table with a mug of coffee and a stack of papers. Her shoulder is bandaged under a clean flannel shirt. Her braid has been redone, tight. In daylight she's even harder to look at directly: the gray eyes, the hard mouth, the face that belongs on a coin. A woman passing behind her with a coffee pot nearly misses your cup because she's watching Ulrika instead of pouring.

"Sit," Ulrika says. "Eat."

You sit. You eat. She pushes a plate of bacon toward you without looking up from her papers.

"I have a shift at nine," you say.

That gets her to look up.

"I'm a ranger," you say. "It's my job. If I'm staying in this valley, I'm staying in it. You said I could work."

"I said you could live your life."

"This is my life."

She looks at you for a long moment over the rim of her mug. Down the table, Thyra stops pretending to read her phone.

"Brann goes with you, Ethan," Ulrika says.

"Brann has a job."

"Brann is a farrier. Horses can wait a day." She sets the mug down. "That's not an order. You can say no. If you say no, I'll follow you myself, and I'm much more noticeable."

Across the table, Brann snorts into his eggs.

"Fine," you say. "Brann."

"Good." She goes back to her papers. Then, without looking up: "Your hand?"

"Fine."

"You said that about my shoulder last night. I didn't believe you either."

Ama Boudreau is already at the station when you pull in, with her boots on the dispatch desk and a thermos of chicory coffee she has shipped from Lafayette by the case.

"There he is," she says. "Morning, Ethan. The man who left his truck at the end of the road and had it driven home by a mountain."

Brann, behind you, ducks under the door frame.

"Ama, this is Brann. Brann, Ama."

"Ma'am," Brann says.

Ama takes her boots off the desk. Ama sits up. Ama looks at Brann the way you look at an unexpected moose: with deep interest and some caution.

"Well, hey," she says.

"He's a friend," you say. "He's going to ride along today."

"Uh huh." Her eyes go to the stitches in your hand. "And what happened there?"

"Fell on the gravel at the ford."

"The wolf call?"

"Yeah."

"Find anything?"

You think about the gray wolf in the air, and the woman in the river, and the word witness going through the water like a dropped plate. You think about my life answers for his silence. And you discover that it is very easy to lie when somebody's life depends on it.

"Coyotes," you say. "Big ones."

Ama looks at you a second too long. Then she shrugs. "Zelie wants the Larch Creek trail checked for the blowdown before the weekend. Take your mountain."

The Larch Creek trail climbs through a stand of western larch that's gone the color of struck matches. Brann walks behind you without a sound, which is unnerving in a man that size. Twice you stop to cut deadfall. Twice he lifts the log before you've finished the cut, like it's kindling.

"Can I ask you something?" you say on the second one.

"You can ask."

"Why did she do it? Really."

Brann stacks the log on the side of the trail and dusts off his hands. He takes long enough to answer that you think he won't.

"Ulrika doesn't tell people why," he says finally. "She just does the thing and lets you work it out." He looks at you. "Ask her yourself. She'll answer you. I think."

At the top of the switchbacks there's a woman sitting on a boulder eating an apple.

She's wearing hiking boots that have never hiked and a red fleece that cost too much. Black hair down to her waist. A dancer's build. When she turns, her eyes are a startling green, and she smiles at you with her whole face, the kind of smile that has gotten her out of a lot of speeding tickets.

You know those eyes. You saw them at the edge of the river last night, on a black she-wolf who looked at you a long time before she followed Tormod into the trees.

Behind you, Brann goes very still.

"Hi there, ranger," she says. "I'm lost."

"No, you're not," says Brann.

"I'm a little lost." She hops off the boulder and walks right up to you, ignoring Brann completely, and looks you over from boots to face like she's pricing you. "So you're the one. Huh. I can see it."

"See what?"

"Why she'd risk it." She takes a bite of the apple. "Runa Greyfell. My father's the one who tried to eat you. Sorry about that. He's dramatic."

"You're on Oakhart land," Brann says.

"I'm on Forest Service land, technically, and this nice ranger is going to tell me so." She tips her head at you. "Aren't you, Ethan?"

You don't like that she knows your name. You don't like how much you don't mind her saying it.

"Technically it's Forest Service land," you admit.

"See?" She steps closer. Close enough you can smell her: cold air and something green. Her voice drops. "Can I give you some free advice? Since I'm lost and you're helping me?"

"I'm not helping you."

"Ask Ulrika why she really stepped in front of my father's teeth." The green eyes hold yours. "Because it wasn't kindness, ranger. She's never been kind in her life. She saw something. Ask her what."

Then she smiles again, tosses the apple core into the brush, and walks off down the trail the way you came, light and quick, without once looking back.

Brann watches her go with his jaw set.

"Is she right?" you ask.

He doesn't answer.

Your phone rings at the station at six, while you're filling out the blowdown report. Brann's phone rings at the same moment. You look at each other across the office.

Brann answers his first. He listens. His face doesn't change, which you are learning is how Oakhart faces get when things are bad.

"That was Ulrika," he says when he hangs up. "A Greyfell messenger just walked into the ford under a white cloth."

"What did they want?"

"You." Brann puts his phone in his pocket. "Their elders want to see the human at the ford tomorrow at sundown. Under truce. And she can't say no."