Niibin knelt down in the snow, fingers tracing the edge of a track that was deeper, messier, more tentative. She looked on ahead, squinting to see where the creature had gone next, and how fast it had traveled. Ugly stood next to her, bracing herself on a nearby tree, catching her breath after the too-slow trek from the cave.
It had been less than a mile. Her legs shook under her, every breath went down raw, and the place below her ribs where the ball had gone in throbbed in time with her heart. Her stomach had stopped growling days ago. Now it just ached, alongside the other ache, so she couldn’t always tell which was which.
“What is it?” she asked Niibin.
The wind blew past. A cold wind, coming down through the pines with a long hush and sifting snow off the high branches. “Wolves. Hunting.”
Once Ugly knew to look, the tracks were everywhere: out of the trees in a long, loose line, breaking apart and weaving back together. Not one animal. Several, travelling together.
“Hunting what?” asked Ugly, suddenly nervous.
“Whatever it is, I hope they left some for us.” She stood, scanning the horizon, trying to find the best route to take to their next stop. It wasn’t just a matter of efficiency these days—she had to make sure Ugly didn’t get woozy and pass out on the way.
“How’s the hole?” she asked, over her shoulder.
Ugly was draped in furs, as a make-shift coat. She pulled some away to check the state of her belly, and the cold hit her bare skin like a slap. The wound was a puckered knot the size of a thumb-print, shiny and tight, still purple at the edges. She pressed beside it with two fingers and sucked air through her teeth. No blood. “It hurts,” she said. “But it’s holding.”
Niibin had turned to look, despite herself. Her eyes stayed on the wound a moment too long, the way they always did. Then her face smoothed over.
“Good,” said Niibin, and carried on walking.
They continued in silence for a good half-mile. The sun was actually warm for a change—the winter was starting to wane, sending clumps of snow falling off tree branches, onto their heads at random intervals. The first few times it happened, Ugly yelped in surprise. After a while, though, Niibin’s withering glares taught her to keep her mouth shut. Like the wolves, they were hunting. And hunters knew better than to announce their approach.
Niibin went first, always, her moccasins soaked dark and her blanket coat hitched up at the hip where her knife hung. Ugly stepped in her footprints, because it was easier than breaking her own trail.
“There,” said the stranger, nodding off to the left, toward the setting sun. He was walking along next to Ugly, his hands in his pockets, stalking her kindly. Easy and patient, the way you’d walk beside a skittish horse you didn’t want to spook. Niibin, a dozen steps ahead, never once looked back at him. And where Ugly’s feet sank and stumbled, his boots didn’t seem to trouble the snow at all. “That’s a good route right there.”
“Shh,” she whispered. “I’m not going.”
He paid her no mind. “Nice and clear, and there’s a stream peekin’ through the snow you can follow. Bet it leads straight to a river, or a lake or somethin’.”
She could see it, too: a dark thread of open water winding off between the birches. It did look easy. That was the trouble with everything he pointed at.
“I still hurt,” she said.
“Are you sure you hurt?” he asked. “Or are you just afraid to be healed?”
She stopped and glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He wove around a bunch of trees, looking very much like he was avoiding the question. “Credit where credit’s due: she’s got you movin’ again. Best thing for you. Best chance of bouncin’ right back.” He looked west again, squinting. “What d’ya reckon? Leave now, or wait ‘til morning?”
“I told you, I’m not leaving,” said Ugly, a little too loudly, and Niibin stopped, turned on her heel, and glared.
Not at the stranger. At Ugly. Then at the empty patch of snow beside her, and back again.
“He’s back, isn’t he.”
Ugly gave an apologetic smile. “He wants me to go.”
“Then he wants you to die of exposure, because that’s what leaving now will get you. What’s he say to that?”
Ugly turned to the stranger with a grin. “Well?”
He was leaning against a birch a few feet off, arms folded. Niibin followed Ugly’s eyes to the spot and stared hard at it, like she might catch him out.
He shrugged like it really didn’t matter at all. “What d’you expect from someone who hides in a cave? She’s afraid of life.”
“She is not!” said Ugly.
Niibin’s ears perked up: “She is— I am not what?”
Ugly didn’t want to answer. The stranger was goading her on, though, with his charming smile. Daring her to say it. Willing her to take sides she didn’t want to take.
“He…said you’re afraid of life. That’s why you hide in the cave.”
Niibin’s eyes went wide. For a second—just one—she didn’t look angry at all. She looked like someone who’d had that very thought herself, alone, late at night, with no one to argue it out of her. Her hand went to her belt, where the knife hung, and closed on nothing in particular.
And then her face hardened with anger. “Hide in a cave, do I? Is that what we’re doing? All this time I thought we were surviving against the odds. But good to know. Thanks for telling me.”
She stormed back the way they came, nearly pushing Ugly over as she went.
That was the end of hunting for the day.
Ten berries. Dried and bitter, and they made Ugly’s tongue go numb. But it was all they had, so it was what she ate.
The berries came out of a little birchbark box that had been full to the lid when Ugly first woke up here. Now Niibin had to tip it to the firelight to count.
“A singer,” said Niibin, chewing her own berries for as long as she could, to make them last.
“Hmm?” asked Ugly, though she’d heard just fine.
“You were a singer. That’s what you were. Not world-famous or anything, but you had a following.”
Ugly shrugged at that. Seemed like a good life. “What did I sing?”
“Opera,” said Niibin. “German opera. You dabbled in Italian, but it wasn’t your style. You were on a tour of the Canadas, which is why you’re out here.”
That earned a raised eyebrow and a bemused smirk. “Are there a lot of opera houses in the forest?”
“Maybe there are,” said Niibin.
“Could we go there instead? I bet they have better food.”
Niibin laughed at that. It came out of her as a startled bark that she clapped a hand over too late, shoulders shaking. It was the first time she’d laughed in a long time. When she sat up again, the tight line between her brows was gone. She eased up a little, sitting more casually, one knee drawn up under her chin. “Your understudy, Mademoiselle Pinette Delacroix—”
“That sounds made up.”
“All the best names are made up, Ugly.”
A grin. “Point taken.”
“Anyway, Mademoiselle Delacroix was desperately jealous of your talent. Every time you sang, she’d get a little bit smaller by comparison. She knew she would never achieve the fame she had dreamed of all her life, so she took action.”
Ugly finished her berries and sat forward, intrigued about what her past had in store for her. “She shot me?”
Niibin nodded. “She took you on a ride out into the forest, where she claimed the acoustics were divine, and as you were warming up to practice your solo, she took a pistol from her reticule, aimed it at your heart, and—”
“But she shot my belly,” said Ugly, pointing to the spot and wincing at the effort.
“She aimed at your heart, but at the moment she pulled the trigger, she heard your voice echoing through the forest, and it so overwhelmed her that her hand slipped, and the bullet went astray, and now you are alive to reclaim your title once more.”
Ugly nodded appreciatively. “I could live with that.”
“So: the moment of truth. Reveal yourself. Sing me a song that swells the heart!”
Ugly cleared her throat, digging deep into memories she didn’t have, pulling at a tune she somehow knew, but couldn’t say why. She took a long, slow breath, and then began to sing—
“Alright, that’s fine, never mind,” said Niibin, plugging her ears. “It was just a theory. No need to keep going. Please stop. Please. Stop. Please.”
The trap was broken. Again. Whether it was because its intended victim had thrashed too violently to stay captured, or simply because some bigger animal had walked over it without realizing. Whatever the cause, the thing had failed miserably. The snare line hung limp and frayed in the snow. Niibin considered, for a moment, trying to salvage the wood, but instead dropped the whole thing at her feet. And kicked it.
“Didn’t work?” asked Ugly, coming up the slope with far more energy than even a week earlier.
“Something will work eventually,” said Niibin, in a way that seemed more like a prayer than a statement. “We should build a replacement. Don’t forget to—” Her eyes opened wide and she held out a hand to stop Ugly from moving. “Stay!”
Ugly did as she was told, as Niibin hurried over, skidding onto her knees in the snow. She leaned forward, touching the edge of a set of tracks. Smaller than before, and livelier. Heading east.
“Rabbits,” she whispered. “Recent, too. You have your knife?”
The blade caught the light as Ugly pulled it from her pocket. She nodded sternly.
Niibin motioned to follow the tracks. They both moved quickly but quietly, crouched low, just far enough from the rabbit trail to see it. Niibin held her own knife at the ready, eyes scanning the white horizon for some sign of movement—any sign of movement. A chance at a victory, for a change.
Then: movement. Subtle, but there. Just over a small hill. They saw the unmistakable movement of fur, peeking over the snowy rise. Ugly switched her knife to the other hand, and obeyed as Niibin told her to spread out further, ready to cut it off if it tried to run. Trapping a rabbit with a knife in a wide-open forest would be a miracle in and of itself, but they were both so hungry now, miracles seemed like well-reasoned plans.
A few more steps, and then—
—it was a fox. Not a rabbit, a fox. Rust-red against the snow, one black foot lifted mid-step. It saw them both, one then the other, and lowered its head as it made its plans. It knew it was being hunted, and it did not much care for it. Before either of them could take another step, it turned and dashed into the distance, feet barely touching the ground until it was well out of sight.
Ugly sighed and trudged over to the spot where it had been, where Niibin was already kneeling down, checking the tracks. There was only one set of footprints leading up there—the rabbit’s. That fact was clearly bothering Niibin as much as it confused Ugly.
“Fox prints,” muttered Niibin. “They’re fox prints. Rabbits are different, I suppose.”
“You suppose?” asked Ugly. “You don’t know?”
Niibin gave her a look that said of course I know! but when she spoke, she sounded decidedly less convincing. “They’re just very similar, is all. The snow is melting, too, which doesn’t help. The illustrations only show fresh snow, so—”
“Wait, what illustrations? What do you mean?”
A long, awkward pause followed. Niibin stayed on her knees, staring down at the prints like they’d betrayed her personally. The tips of her ears had gone red, and not from the cold. “The tracking book. Its illustrations aren’t always the easiest to follow, and—” She saw Ugly’s expression and sighed. “What? What do you want?”
“You’re not a hunter?”
“Anyone who hunts is a hunter.”
“But I thought you knew what you were doing. You found the wolf tracks, and we’ve been setting all these traps, and—”
Ugly heard herself, and stopped. All those traps. All those mornings finding them empty, or broken. She’d put it down to bad luck. It had never once occurred to her that the person keeping her alive was working it out as she went.
Her stomach turned over, and it wasn’t the hunger this time.
“Any skill takes practice, Ugly. Nobody is an expert at anything on the first try. What matters is the basic knowledge that you build upon to become an expert. I’ve read at least five books on how to survive in the wild, so if anything, I’m overqualified for this ordeal.”
She didn’t seem convinced, herself.
Ugly tried to find the nicest possible way to ask her next question: “Have you…ever actually caught an animal before?”
Niibin glared at her for a moment. A good long moment. Long enough for Ugly to understand what the answer was—and what it meant, out here, with the berries running low and the snow going soft and the wolves still somewhere off in the trees.
And that was the end of hunting for the day.
Five berries. And not nice ones, either. Shrivelled and half-hollow, the dregs from the bottom of the box, with bits of bark stuck to them. Eating them took effort, but the alternative was a slow fading away, which neither of them could bear.
“A princess,” said Niibin, trying her best to make her share last.
“Hmm?” asked Ugly, though she knew the routine well, by now.
“You were a princess. From a kingdom far to the east.”
“How far?”
“Past Montreal.”
Ugly nodded. “That’s far.”
“Yes, and as the princess of this far-away land, you were actually hated by just about everyone in the kingdom. Rich, poor, young and old…everyone detested you.”
“That seems harsh.”
“Well, to be fair, you did deserve it. See, you only ever cared about yourself. When good things happened, it was because of you. When bad things happened, they happened to you. You were pretty insufferable. People were plotting a coup and everything.”
Ugly pointed to her belly, which was thankfully hurting so much less, it could be used as a punchline without it seeming cruel. “So that’s why…?”
“No, no, the coup never happened. Because, you see, you met a valiant prince who swept you off your feet and made you realize the most important thing in the world wasn’t you, it was—”
“Him?”
“Close. Love.”
“Was I redeemed?”
Niibin’s expression darkened. Melodramatically. “Yes, but then things took a tragic turn. The prince, you see, felt a passion so strong, it overwhelmed him. His happiness turned to despair, until finally he realized he could never live a life that matched his expectations.”
“Oh dear. That sounds serious.”
“It was, Ugly. It was. So the two of you went out into the forest—”
“This forest? From the far-away kingdom?”
“Vacation home. Hush. So you two went out into the forest, having made a suicide pact, except that after your prince killed himself—”
Ugly put a hand to her heart in mock sadness.
“—you put the gun to your head and pulled the trigger. And somehow hit your gut instead. Because apparently suicide was too complicated for you.”
Ugly grinned. “Maybe I only read about it in a book.”
“Oh!” shouted Niibin, and swatted Ugly in the head with a bunched-up blanket.
Tracks in the snow. Niibin crouched down, running her finger along the edge, until Ugly swatted her hand and she took it away. Ugly was crouched there, too, studying carefully. “If you disturb it, how can you tell what it is?” she asked. “Look with your eyes.”
Niibin muttered something under her breath, but did as she was told. They both looked down at the tracks for a moment, as a warmer breeze blew past. It wasn’t quite spring yet, but it was definitely not the winter it had been. The snow had gone grainy and grey, and the air smelled of wet bark and thawing earth.
“What do you think?” asked Ugly.
Niibin frowned. “To be honest, I have no idea what made these. I’m hoping it’s delicious. Please let it be delicious.”
Ugly smiled, and helped Niibin stand. They were both worse for wear, but somehow, over the course of the last weeks, had learned to depend on each other to get through their troubles. When Ugly had a dizzy spell, Niibin caught her and set her down. When Niibin’s hunger got the better of her, Ugly found some leaves or berries to keep her energy up.
They had both gone thin. Ugly could feel her own hip bones when she lay down at night, and Niibin’s wrists poked out of her sleeves like kindling.
But without a proper meal, none of that would matter soon. They’d been pouring everything they had into building better traps, stronger traps, more traps…hoping that somehow, one of them might finally do its job.
They trudged onward through the snow, holding onto each other for support as they slid down slopes and crept over logs. If wolves found them now, the only thing that would save them would be the lack of meat on their bones. And they both knew that wouldn’t really save them at all. They were at the mercy of fate, and thus far fate was not in a merciful mood.
By the time they got to their destination, the sun was low in the sky, and the forest was getting dark.
Ugly’s heart sank. The trap was broken. It had caught an animal, but the thing had broken out, cutting itself in the process. There was a trail of blood leading off, over the rise. They followed it, quietly and carefully, until they saw what had happened next: some other predator had intercepted it, killed it properly, and left little bits of fur and flesh in the snow.
The snow all around was churned up and trampled, and the prints were big ones. Neither of them said what they thought had made them.
Niibin muttered unhappily again and shoved the fleshy bits into her bag. Better than nothing, but only just barely.
Ugly was staring off into the distance, with the setting sun at her back. “Maybe we should go,” she said, swaying slightly.
“Go?” asked Niibin, cleaning the blood off her hands with some snow. “Go where?”
Ugly pointed at…nothing specifically. “Maybe they have food.”
Niibin stood next to her, leaning her head against her shoulder, and squinted at the spot where Ugly was pointing. “Who, exactly?”
“Whoever’s out there.”
The fleshy bits didn’t weigh much in the bag, and both their stomachs rumbled and roared.
Niibin went still against her shoulder. She wasn’t looking at the trees anymore. She was looking at Ugly’s belly, where the ball had gone in. Someone out there had done that, and walked away.
“They do have food, Ugly,” sighed Niibin. “But we can’t afford what it would cost.”
“But—”
Niibin’s fingers closed around her arm, hard enough that Ugly felt it through the furs. Then they softened.
She tugged at Ugly’s arm to lead her back home. “Come on. Let’s see if I remember any recipes.”
No berries, but a soup. Snowmelt in the dented copper kettle, the scraps picked clean of fur, a knuckle of bone, and a handful of dry leaves Niibin swore were good for flavour. It boiled until Ugly’s mouth ached from watering, and a thin skin of fat came up on top, gold in the firelight. It smelled like bliss, and tasted like tears. They each had a cupful, then another, until the pot was empty and their hunger was quieted just a little. They lay back against the wall of the cave, side-by-side, feeling their energy levels ebb and flow as their bodies made sense of what it was digesting. They knew it wouldn’t last, but they were intent on enjoying it in the moment.
The fire had burned down to coals. From the back of the cave, Thunderbum let out a long, rattling breath, and slept on.
“A researcher,” said Niibin, watching Ugly out of the corner of her eye.
“Hmm?”
“You were a researcher.”
Ugly frowned. “What did I research?”
“The trappers of New France. You travelled far and wide, riding with the best hunters in the world, learning everything they knew. Every trick, every bit of brilliance, you knew it all. You were the world’s foremost expert on surviving in the wild.”
Ugly lolled her head to the side and smiled. “That would come in handy right about now.”
“Yes, yes it would. Alas, when they heard you were going to publish, they were livid at the betrayal. They chased after you, catching you before you could make it to the city, and they shot you.”
“I thought they were the best in the world,” Ugly said, sleepily, as her eyes drifted closed.
“They were,” said Niibin. “They wanted you to suffer. To live, and to suffer, knowing that everything went wrong because you were too proud to be quiet.”
She heard it as she said it. Her voice had gone quieter on the last of it, not for effect, and for a moment she sat very still, looking at the coals. It was only a story. They were all only stories.
“Hmm,” said Ugly, two breaths from sleep.
Niibin rested her head against Ugly’s, and waited for the dawn.