No! Had he passed him in the woods once or twice, hiding from the sound of footsteps because he’d thought they might belong to an enemy? The thought was too terrible for Jak to think about.
Instead, he turned toward Pup, who was now lying in the snow, a large spot of blood next to his hurt leg. His heart, which had slowed, began racing again. Jak had to get him home and treat his injury if he could. Jak picked up the boy’s sharp, curved knife, put it in the waistband of his pants, and then went fast to Pup, picking the large animal up and hefting him over his shoulder.
Jak walked back to the dead boy, wiping the tears that were again sliding down his cheeks, trying to come up with words to say over the boy’s body. His baka had said prayers, but he didn’t remember any of the words she’d whispered as she’d held the beads in her hands.
Pup moaned softly and Jak moved him a little, trying to be careful of his injury. “Starlight, star bright,” Jak finally said, the words coming quickly, knowing the rhyme wasn’t a prayer, but having nothing else to offer. “First star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight.” And then he closed his eyes and wished that the boy was now running through fields of flowers under the warm heavenly sunshine. That he was healed, whole, and no longer hungry.
The ground was too frozen for Jak to bury him, so he left the boy’s body where it was. The boy didn’t need it anymore anyway, and the forest did. Other hungry creatures would feed on it and live to see another day.
Like Jak.
Although he could feel that a part of him had died along with the boy left lying dead in the snow.
With Pup over one shoulder, he grabbed the leg of the deer, pulling it along behind them, beginning the journey back home. Anger and hopelessness roared through him. Anger built as he walked through the cold. He raised his face and yelled into the stone-colored sky, tears blinding him again. It was all their fault! The men who took him and the other boy. The men who tried to kill children. The men who turned a little boy into a crazed animal, wishing he was dead.
The men who made me a murderer.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Harper sat on her bed, her feet curled beneath her, staring unseeing at the white wall across from her. The tea she’d brewed had grown cold, and she set the mug down on the bedside table, sighing. She didn’t even like tea. But it always seemed like something that should accompany moments of introspection and deep serenity.
Too bad she hadn’t gotten very far with the former, and failed completely to achieve the latter.
She picked up the remote, clicking on the television and turning it to a news program. The weatherman pointed to a screen as his voice droned on. More snow. More cold. Shocking.
She thought about Lucas out there in the middle of nowhere, snow piled up to the windows of his small cabin as he sat inside alone. Was he lonely? He had to be, didn’t he? He was a human being with absolutely no one in his life. Harper was lonely too, she could admit that. But at least she had friends, and community, books, a cell phone, a television to dispel the silence when she needed the illusion of company.
Was that why he’d taken the magazine? To have something to do on those lonely nights in the middle of the woods? She shivered despite being warm and cozy, curled up in a blanket on her bed. Just the thought of the deep isolation he must feel terrified her.
Because she understood it.
Not on the level he must—how could she? But she couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t suffered loneliness, the sense that she was adrift, always trying desperately to catch hold of something—anything—that would anchor her. Forever attempting unsuccessfully to recapture what had been ripped from her so suddenly and inexplicably. Comfort. Home. Love. Now . . . she’d found the car, would be able to bury her parents, and yet she still felt as empty as ever. As lost as ever. As alone. Because what she’d really been attempting to reclaim would not be found in the places she searched.
Did he share the same feelings of loneliness? He’d been abandoned too. Left to fend for himself in ways she probably couldn’t even fathom.
And forget the loneliness—though that in itself seemed, well, catastrophic—how was he going to survive with no way to hunt since his bow and arrow had been taken by the sheriff? She thought back to the hunting knife he’d had strapped to his thigh, the one he’d told her he was going to use to obtain dinner. She’d been struck dumb at the time, and even now, she was disconcerted. What was he going to do? Pounce on an animal and then cut its throat, skin it, de-bone it and . . . She pulled the blanket tighter around herself, realizing she was grimacing and allowed her muscles to relax. She was no stranger to hunting, but no one she knew wanted to involve themselves in an up-close kill like the one a hunting knife would insist upon.
Come to think of it, what was he going to do now that he had no good hunting weapon, and no contact to the outside world since Isaac Driscoll had been killed? He’d told her he had survived before Driscoll, and he’d survive now. And that might be true. But what if he did need something? What if he became injured or ill? He may have been isolated before but now . . . now he was completely cut off.
What should I do?
Hmm. You could curse God, I guess. That’s usually my best solution. Do it really loudly, and with great outrage.
Does it work?
Not generally. All it does is make me feel really small and useless.
An ant, cursing God from the summit of a blade of grass.
Why did those words sound so familiar? And why did they seem . . . more sophisticated than she’d expect from a man who spoke little and had no access to books?
And yet, he’d been quoting someone. Or . . . something. That was why. A book or a poem. She was sure of it. She knew those words somehow. And right after he’d said them, he’d looked as though he wished he hadn’t. He’d quickly changed the subject.
Harper stood, the blanket dropping to the bed. She grabbed her laptop and sat back down, logging in and opening her Internet browser, typing the words into the search bar. “I knew it,” she muttered, her heart thrumming. It was one of the more obscure quotes from The Count of Monte Cristo.
Her caveman had quoted Alexandre Dumas.
Her caveman? Not exactly. But . . .