"Come have some Eternal Soup instead," she said, smiling. "And then we'll get a wagon ready."
Threefold return indeed! she thought. Actions most definitely do have consequences.
Not a matter of a celestial scorebook of punishments and rewards, just that everything was connected.
Then another thought struck her: Oh, Goddess-we'll have to plow more!
There, Juniper thought, freezing, the only motion the slow rise and fall of her chest.
You don't see me. You don't smell me. You don't hear me. I bind your eyes, your ears, your nostrils, horned one; in the name of Herne the Wild Hunter, so mote it be.
The mule deer hesitated, then caught Cuchulain's scent-the dog was with Dennis, two hundred yards northeast through the dense bush. The animal turned swiftly away from the smell of predator, head high and ears swiveling. The mottled clothing she wore would fade into the spring woods, and the wind was wrong for him to pick out human scent from the cool decaying-wood and damp-earth smells. Ferns and brush stood between her and it, but for a moment it poised motionless, quivering-alert.
They were up in the mountain forest, a thousand feet above the old Mackenzie land. This area had been clear-cut much more recently than hers, and there was more undergrowth. It was still cold here, the more so on a rainy day- there might be sleet or snow if they went a little further upslope. The deer had already begun to head up towards their summer pastures, though: even without guns, the hunting pressure on their herds in the foothills was much worse than usual.
She exhaled, ignoring the cold drops trickling down her neck, remembering what the book said and practice had reinforced: stroke the trigger gently…
Thunggg!
The short heavy bolt flashed out, and the butt of the crossbow thumped at her shoulder. Her breath held still, as she waited for it to be deflected on some strand of second growth, but instead there was a heavy, meaty whack. She didn't see the strike, but nothing could hide the deer's convulsive leap.
"Dennie!" she cried, springing forward. "I got him!"
Dennis roared in triumph as he heard her voice, and he plunged towards her-she could hear Cuchulain's frenzied barking as he scented blood, and the shaking of branches as the ex-manager of the Hopping Toad pushed his way through the thickets.
Blood splashed last year's stems and the green of the new growth. She ran crouched over, sliding through the undergrowth easily. Juniper had never hunted before the Change, but she'd walked these woods on visits all her life, lived here six months in the twelve for the past decade- and all those years she'd watched the comings and goings of its dwellers, deer and fox and coyote, otter and eagle, rabbit and elk.
She half remembered the lay of the land even here, well off her great-uncle's property; she wasn't altogether bewildered when the deer disappeared in a crashing and snapping. The depth of the ravine that opened beneath her feet still shocked, and she threw herself backward and slapped a hand on a branch slimy with moss to steady herself.
"Dennie!" she called. "Careful! There's a ravine here, and it's hidden!"
"I see it!" he bellowed in return. "Wait a minute, and I'll work around the head!"
She waited, breath slowing. The path of the deer's fall was just visible, and a patch of brown hide where he lay; it was a two-year-old male, she thought, and already nicely plump-the Willamette's climate was mild and there was good grazing in the foothill woods year-round. The bottom of the ravine was full of fallen timber and thick brush; not the distinctive three-leaf mark of poison oak, thank the Goddess and Cernunnos.
A slight sadness passed through her at the thought of the deer's loveliness broken, but she'd been around enough small farmsteads to know firsthand that meat didn't come from a factory wrapped in plastic.
And sure, my stomach is rumbling so loud I can hear it over my panting, she thought. Venison in the Eternal Soup, sweet richness of fat on the tongue… Lord and Lady, did people ever worry about too much fat? Little medallions of tenderloin. Grilled liver. Maybe sausages, with sage and dried onions-there's some of those left, surely? Smoked haunch…
Dennis arrived, with much crackling of brush; he was a city man still, although he was learning-in coordination with the shrinking of his gut, which had gone from embarrassing to merely substantial since the Change. He also had a coil of rope around his shoulder, and his ax slung with its handle through two loops sewn to the back of his jacket.
They made the rope fast to a firmly rooted tree. Cuchu-lain went down the steep slope with four-footed recklessness, but the two humans were more cautious-danger to themselves aside, the clan simply couldn't spare the working time lost in an unnecessary injury. Even Sally Quinn was helping with the poultry and around the house, on a crutch. The tangled mass below was just the sort to hide a branch broken off stabbing-sharp.
The deer was freshly dead, a trickle of red running from nose and mouth.
"You'll get some, fool dog," she scolded, pushing Cuchu-lain aside as he lapped at the flow. "Feet and ears and offal."
Then she spoke more formally, kneeling beside the deer and stroking its muzzle: "Thank you, brother, for your gift of life. And thanks to You, Cernunnos, horn-crowned Lord of the Forest, Master of the Beasts! We take of Your bounty from need, not in wantonness; knowing that the Huntsman will come for us too in our appointed day, for we also are Yours. Take our brother's spirit home to rest in the woods of summer in the land beyond the world, and be reborn through the cauldron of the Goddess, who is Mother-of-All."
Then they ran a cord through its hind feet between tendon and bone, cast a loop of cord over a convenient branch, and hoisted it up, working quickly; she put a basin from Dennis's pack beneath it and cut the throat with two deep diagonal slashes. The carcass had to drain or the meat wouldn't keep, and the blood would go into oatmeal to make a pudding. Privately she thought that tasted awful, but she'd eat her share.
Dennis sharpened the skinning knives while she drew a sign in the air over the basin; then Cuchulain yelped, a sudden squeal of pain. Juniper looked up sharply-there were black bear and cougar in these forests as well. She caught a flash of movement in the thicket twenty yards up the gully from them, a hand holding a rock waving from beneath a pile of brush and dirt.
"That's a man!" Dennis said sharply.
"Yes," Juniper said; the patterns sprang out at her, once she knew to expect camouflaged cloth. "And a hurt one, too!"
They made their way carefully through the tangle. Closer, and she could smell human waste-the man had been trapped here long enough for that, then. She looked up, and saw slick mud and fallen dirt where the treacherous edge had crumbled beneath him. He was under an overhang of the ravine's side, jammed awkwardly up against it, and his leg had been caught between two downed saplings-the springy wood had snapped closed around the flesh again. His lips were swollen…
Dying of thirst, she thought. In this wet wilderness, and not ten feet from running water!
She brought her canteen to his lips. Dennis studied the situation, pursed his mouth, and then swung the ax twice. The man's hips and legs swung down a bit as the tension was released.
"Sorry," he said, coughing, and then sipping again- which showed considerable self-control. "Thanks, mate," he went on to Dennis.
"Don-niah iss anim dyum," Dennis said carefully, then winked at Juniper as he dragged brush away. "But you can call me Dennis."
"That's Donnacadh is anim dom, Dennie; your pronunciation would give a goat glanders," she said, propping the canteen upright and digging in her pack for some hoarded trail mix. "And speaking of which, my fake harp, mas maith leat slochain, cairdeas, agus moladh, eist, feic, agus fan balbh."