Huntress

I am the guardian of the mountain that declares itself over an ocean of trees, as well as the menagerie of creatures that call it home. There are icy streams for beavers. Tall oaks for squirrels and birds. Ledges for eagles, and hawks. Deep caves, bears and wolves, vibrant overgrowth, ferrets and badgers, bounding clearings layered with purple and red flowers, firm pines, and robust cliffs that overlook each majestic face of my uncompromising mountain. Undisturbed by the cluster of civilization, it is a living, breathing sanctuary. Protecting it is my duty.

            Sometimes hunters find my mountain. They pour feed onto the ground, and sit in my trees, dropping metal cans reeking of alcohol in the overgrowth, waiting for game to sniff the salty trail and follow it to them. Their hooves dance around, but they slowly move towards the pile of feed. Sniffing the savory pile, they look around in any direction, but find no predators lurking. The hunter aims at the heart of the eating animal, and destroys the peace of my mountain with a blast of buckshot. He whoops and hollers. Picks up the head by the antlers, his gun resting beside him, grinning though his camouflage, his buddy takes the photo. The air fills with gun smoke before they  leave. The spent shells, beer cans sucked dry, fast food bags crumpled up are left behind. The paper bag infects the dirt with its chemicals. The cans never decay. The shells always reek of smoking powder. My animals find them, and know to be afraid of the smell of saltpeter.

            Marfa is my favorite wolf. Her charcoal colored coat is graying, but time only makes her a better huntress. Now that she’s grown, she waits on ledges, in rain, snow, blistering heat, and waits for the woods to change. The patient metronome of the mountain tells her everything she needs to know. A talent she’s always had, perfected. On her watchtower, she waits. From the ledge, she could survey the entire mountain side. The sounds are constant, wind, chirping, branches swaying, but when a twig snaps, or a rock stumbles she knows where to go, what to do. Bolting away towards the sound, Marfa catches the scent of elk. She cuts around the trees, runs through the bushes, leaps over holes, the scent becoming stronger. The elk hasn’t moved yet. When she sees it, she waits in the lips of the clearing, hidden, watching her meal sip from a stream. She braces her hind legs, sticks her nose to the ground, drooling, she darts from the brush. The elk jumps, whipping its head from the stream, and bolts away. It’s legs pump, hooves boring holes into my dirt. The flowers bend as the creature flies past them, but nothing can out run Marfa. She closes in, heart exploding like a jackhammer. Her teeth find its fur, and she clings to the elk. It rolls and tumbles with her on its back, her claws ripping through its fur, her teeth sinking into its neck. She bleeds, wheezes as her breath tries to catch back up. The elk dies, and she leans in it to eat it. One bite she takes, ripping ribbons from its legs, but she isn’t alone. There’s low grumble from the overgrowth, then out from it strides a bear the size of a boulder. Black lips. One eye. Marfa stops eating, locks eyes. Scars run down her face and snout. One ear is missing. Her fangs are hungry, strings of white saliva drip from her lips. The bear stands on hind legs, and roars at her.  She doesn’t twitch.

           She never went for the easy meal. Marfa even when small loved challenges. She’d chase boars though bushes, goats up ridges, deer across ponds. Animals twice her size, she’d tirelessly pursue, by herself. Once she had them on the ground, she rips them to pieces, playing with them before eating what she wanted and leaving the rest for scavengers. Other wolves would give her trouble. Seeing her speed, they’d chase her. Seeing her vigilance, they tried to sneak up on her. Seeing her ferocity, they tried to fight her. But Marfa never lost a fight to other predators. My mountain knew this.

            Marfa sees the bear rise on its hind legs, imposing like a furry castle. Snarling, it roars again, but she growls back. Unflinching, the scars dancing on the muscles of her face, patches of missing fur closed, hind legs wound up. The bear knows who she is. Every predator does. They all know of the wolf that works damn hard for her meal. It doesn’t fear Marfa, but turns its tail to look for its own meal, leaving her alone.

            She hunts for herself, but I was touched to find her carrying a badger from the other side of the mountain to the mouth of a cave, where she drops the dead animal and watches four little pups to come out to eat it. She leaves, coming back with another. Leaves, returns with more for them to eat. Once a week, she eats for herself, spending the rest of her time chasing down prey. When they can’t eat anymore, she watches the pups play, blood and bits of animal peppering their faces. She nips at their ankles, chases them, playfully snarling. When a gun blast tears apart the silence, they all stop. Marfa bites at them until they hide in the cave. She stands guard at the opening, watching, waiting…

            The smell of saltpeter, the expulsion of gun fire used to frighten her. Now, she is used to the sound. She finds creatures lying dead in the overgrowth, holes in their hearts, hooves cut off, antlers severed. Puddles of blood, red trails leading to tracks that smell of rubber. Her stomach weeps in pain. She goes on, ears twitching, cringing at the random burst of rife, and the subsequent scent of smoke. Along the way, as I watch her, she finds dead bears. Dead wolves. Sniffs them, and looks to the sky. I wonder if see knows I watch. Maybe she’s asking herself why I do nothing.

  The moose, the deer, the big animals run and hide. She can only find rabbits, squirrels, the like. Going into the woods, bringing back to the pups what she can scavenge, then leaving again, until they’ve had enough. She only eats once a week. She coughs after a long run, her joints ache.

            A hunter equipped with a bolt action Remington, three inch scope that ranges nine hundred meters, loaded with cartages of .220 swift, drove his truck to my mountain with a specific game in mind. He made his knife from ivory. His coat made from wolf’s fur. He heard of the diversity, the numerous game. He marches through the trees and overgrowth. Broken twigs, and crunched leaves he follows. Plucks of black hair stuck to a tree he kneels at, listens to the woods, chooses his path by the angle at which the hair was applied. He hurried at her trail.

            Marfa went weeks without eating. Food became scarce. She went into my mountain, searching deeper and deeper each time to find a single squirrel. She moves slower. Her frame is skinnier. Her body is weaker, but still she searches for food.

           The hunter found a ledge that overlooks the land below the mountain. It began to snow. He waits in the bush, rifle pointing at where he found the wolf prints. Not just a one set of tracks, but multiple patters flattening the patch of dirt- toe nails smashed into it, he knew this is where he wanted to be. The bolt was pulled back, a bullet waited in the chamber to be let loose, to cut through the air.

            Marfa had been hunting for hours, but could find nothing. Snow fall lightly dusted the mountain. She wanted to play with her pups in the cold drifts, but couldn’t return without food for them. She had one choice left. Her watchtower. Where she could survey the entire mountain side, and hear everything.

            The hunter drooled as the biggest charcoal colored wolf he had ever seen slipped from the trees and casually strode to its patch of dirt. It stood, like a king looking over his land, its back legs trembling. The crosshairs intersected at the nape of the creature’s neck, with careful, deliberate adjustment the needle pinned the creature’s cranium.

            Marfa listened to the wind, to the whispers of the woods, to the ancient wisdom of the mountain, but nothing stirred. Not even a crunch of snow. She smelled the sweetness of pines and urine, the honey of decay, the savor of blood, the coat of snow, the musk of wolf fur… A click disturbed the mountain. Marfa swung her head to the sound…

            Bam. The hunter exhaled in excitement, watching the head fling back, pieces of skull and brain showering the snow. Its body twitched into the air, killing the hunter’s happiness when the body landed on the edge. He jumped up trying to catch it, but his kill slid down the ledge onto the snowy rocks below. To his pleasure however, it had left a few teeth behind. He plucked them from the snow, put them in his pocket…

            I can’t send bolts of lightning. I’m not god. I am merely a wanderer of the mountain, not a mystical hand that can flick away what’s unwanted. I can’t cure an illness, I can only provide the medicine. What use it finds it out of my control. That’s the beauty of nature.  It regulates itself, a ravenous killer, merciless, brutal, indefatigable. I don’t touch it not because I don’t have the power but because I respect nature too much to interfere.

            The eyeless bear found Marfa’s dead body, broken, and faceless. He sniffed it, and released a long forlorn roar that echoed through the mountain side. Other bears came, dozens, keeping their heads down, mournfully growling, crying. Other wolves came behind them, howling at the milky sky. Next came beavers, elk, moose, deer, beavers, squirrels, opossums, rats, rabbits, mice, cats, their children, and relatives, not attacking, not hunting, but crying into the dying daylight. The nexus of noise brought birds from their trees. Eagles swooped from the sky. Snakes slid from the leaves. For a night they all became united with the mountain, and mourned. I watched, standing naked in the snow. All night long these creatures only gathered more and more, asking the night- asking nature –asking me to do something. To bring justice. A bullet shell rested at my toe. It was warm. I could hear the pups mourning in their cave, stomach’s rumbling. There’s no bringing back the dead. But there was something I could do for her children.

            Three hunters built a fort, and stayed perched up in it, the feed on the ground below them, their shot guns pointing out the windows around their clubhouse. It reeked of beer and Tabaco. The mountain was quiet. Nothing appeared.

            “Slow day… ain’t a god damn thing bitin’… maybe we head back to cabin, try again later…”

            “Go on, git out faeggit. Can’t wait a damn second. Nothin’ goin show up with yer yappin’.”

            There was no talking. The snow dusted the ground, blades of life greenly protruded the cover, wind carrying the white powder and dropping where it pleased. One hunter sipped his beer. BAM- the silence was interrupted as a round lodged into their fort.

            “Shit! Who fired that?!” the hunter demanded.

            Nothing responded.

            Another shot went off, going through the window and hitting the floor between one hunter’s feet. They hit the deck, rolling beneath the windows, holding their weapons in confusion. More shots rung, striking the wooden walls. Splinters showered them, smell of saltpeter filled the air.

            “Jim, I’m takin’ a look.” One hunter said, staying close to the wall, he rose enough to get a peek, before slipping down again.

            “Who’s out there?”

            “No one. I see deer, but no one wit’ a gun.”

            “Call the police”- another barrage of bullets struck the fort and floor boards.

            “We gotta start shootin back.”

            “We’ll fire, you call the cops.”

            Two of the hunters stuck their guns over the walls and fired, but more fire only kept coming- more and more. Bullets struck their guns. The hunter fumbling with his cellphone found there was no reception on my mountain that night. The trio panicked, threw their guns out, and left, hands in the air. What came out of the woods to claim them backhanded them with amazement. Their jaws dropped. Divisions of forest creatures, deer, and bears, guns in their arms, pointed at the men’s chests, revealed themselves from the canopy of trees. The animals approached, snarling, spitting, pushing until the men walked backwards. One man turned to run but found another division of animals behind him.

            The pups cuddled together in the cold. Hungry. Alone. Something though they heard. Four little wolf pups left their cave at the strange sound of marching- before the cave was the population of the mountain, and at their feet, three hunters with hands on their heads. The one eyed bear took one hunter by the collar and lifted him up. He screamed and begged, until dropped before the cave, the same way Marfa would. The pup’s recognized it, and pounced on the hunter. His screams ripped through the night, his blood spilled and melted the snow. A necklace of wolf teeth dropped from his body. The other two watched, coldness flowering in their empty stomachs, urine warming their legs. Fast food and beer brewing in their gullets.