Pax, Journey Home: Chapters 11–20

They had grown so much
 that Bristle had to stretch out to accommodate them.

He loped through the fields of the deserted farms, and then entered the forest. He ran silently between the trees on pine-needled deer paths, and even when full darkness fell, broken only by thin starshine, he moved easily.

In those few days, filled with fear and worry but also the exhilaration of new freedom, he had appreciated the valley’s bounty and advantageous location.

“Jade and I are the advance reconnaissance team,” he told Peter.

“People try to give you all kinds of things,” Jade added. “Jewelry, mementos of their families who were lost in the war. We can’t take anything, except for the food.”

“Clean enough that it won’t kill them. We’ve gotten out the toxins. All that’s left now is to reestablish a biome.”

He waited for the pain to clutch his throat, tight as a pair of hands. When it subsided, he said, “I didn’t own him, though, that’s not the right word.”

“I broke my foot. I trekked forty miles, I made camp, I scaled those cliffs, I forded that river, on crutches.”

Flames sizzled along the edges of a blackened oval at the valley’s basin.

Then he took cover in the tree’s boughs, still dense with browning needles, backing in until only his face protruded.

He ignored those, but when he found a clutch of partridge eggs in a hollow that the fire had barely singed, he ate them.

Darting away, he burned a back paw on a smoldering branch.

The low sun’s light fell upon the birches on the far slope like slanting rain: drenching their canopies, flowing down the branches, and dripping from the bright leaves.

He admonished her for her disobedience.

Throughout his chastening, the kit remained obediently still.

The first day, they covered only six miles, but they were six hard miles: scrabbling through greenbrier and clambering up and down swales, fording the river whenever the land got impassable on one side or the other, all carrying their heavy packs.

Samuel looked down in dismay at the river, narrow and deep there, its waters falling angrily over the spilled rocks. "Can’t risk it. We’ll have to backtrack.”

Peter pressed his fingertip to his throat and felt the new hard bulge of his larynx. Last summer, the unpredictability of his changing voice had been embarrassing, but now he liked that his voice sounded tougher.

His daughter was curled between his forelegs. He extricated himself without waking her and crept out to peer down into the valley.

Three times Pax attempted to pick her up by the fur of her neck to carry her across a rough patch, and each time she yowled her indignation, squirming until he let her down.

They angled their way down, both of them sliding on the scree of shale and flint. At the bottom, Pax found a niche in the cliff.

The spot was well protected: if any intruder entered from above, a cascade of sediment would wake them; if any came from the front, the dried stems of the underbrush would rattle.

It used to be teeming with life, a little gem. But the Resistance dumped in a bunch of heavy metals after they blew up the bridge, and now nothing lives in it.

Jade raised her palms, incredulous at the question.

He darted across the dried brush to the pond with his daughter jouncing against his chest.

Peter had drawn sediment duty, and he was slogging along the bank, muddy pant legs chafing his shins, when Jade came up beside him, reached up to unpin her hair, and handed him two clips.

Then she sauntered away to a stand of willows and disappeared into them, waving away mosquitoes.

“They’re endangered,” Jade explained. “We thought if we could catch one we could draw a blood specimen, see how they’re faring. But they’re skittish. We can’t get near.”

“It was nothing. In the spring, wild cherry branches are really pliable.”

He brought her to the pond, and after she’d drunk, Pax urged her to try moving through the water again. She swam listlessly for a while, and then she wanted to be carried back to the nest.

He had yelped, surprised by how hot the marshmallow was, smeared over his snout. And his boy had leaped up, stripped off his shirt and soaked it in the stream, then held the cool cloth over Pax’s muzzle, soothing him and hugging him.

He would have to carry her, and to travel encumbered that way he would need the benefit of light.

Beside him, Samuel stood up and broke Peter’s reverie.

She leaned over her feet and squeezed her toes. “They’re always cold,” she lamented. “And look at these army-issue socks. Give me some real wool!”

He washed up and then spread out a bedroll, choosing a spot on the far side of the fire on a hard, flat stretch of rock covered in lichen.