I kicked off the jumble of blankets. An image came to me and shocked me a little. The dream, the nightmare fantasy, was starting
to break up, and though I was losing the pictures, I felt steeped in shame.
I saw a man with blond hair in a denim shirt. He was wearing a smile as bright as the sun. I saw myself turning toward him.
I got up quickly from the mess of covers that was my bed. Why should I feel so ashamed?
I blinked away the unbidden image of Kit Harrison, and walked to the window that faced back into the woods. I threw it open
and breathed deeply. I could almost taste the pines and grass.
A faint morning breeze brushed across my damp skin. I began to feel better. I had started to turn away from the window when
I heard it. A horrifying sound that chilled me to the bone.
T
HE LONG, WAILING SCREECH that I heard coming from the nearby woods was ghastly. It took me only a minute to throw on jeans,
workboots, the same T-shirt I’d worn the day before.
I stopped in the minilab long enough to fill a syringe with ketamine, and I put the anesthetic in my knapsack. Pip was barking
loudly for breakfast, but he would have to wait. I couldn’t take the time.
“I’ll be back,” I shouted as I bolted for the door and burst outside.
The continuing sound of shrill screaming pierced my eardrums. The dew soaked my shoes and I slipped a couple of times but
I kept on running as fast as I could.
I followed the pitiful sound, almost certain that I knew where it was coming from and what had happened.
The woods behind my clinic slope down toward a deep stream, almost a small river. Winter runoff had cut deep gullies into
the woods. In summer the gullies are dry and partially filled with woodland debris. Choice places for predators to hunt for
rodents.
Choice, too, for trappers to set illegal traps.
The high-pitched yipping got louder and then stopped abruptly as the animal panted for breath. When it started up again, the
sound nearly broke my heart.
I made my way across the top of a gully and finally saw the fox. The beautiful, reddish-brown animal was dangling down in
the gorge by one foreleg, scrabbling futilely with the other. It was a terrible, wrenching sight.
I saw what had happened.
A trap had slammed shut on the fox. It tried to pull itself free and had backed up over the edge of the chasm. The leg was
gripped by the teeth and chain of the trap, and the fox’s body banged and scraped against the gully’s wall.
My stomach balled up. This was such needless, gruesome torture. For what? Somebody’s expensive coat in Aspen or Denver? The
female was in agony; she was going mad, and why shouldn’t she?
“Hang on,” I said to the fox, in a low, unthreatening voice. “I’m coming.”
Oh, God, I’m not going to hurt you, little foxie.
The trap chain was double-looped and locked around the tree. I rattled the lock hard, but it wouldn’t release.
“Damn it!”
I thought of trying to haul the fox up by the chain, but she’d bite me. Besides, I had forgotten to take my gloves, and there
was the possibility she might be rabid.
I hurriedly looked for a place to climb down. The gorge wall was lined with loose shale. I found what I thought was a good
safe spot and decided to chance it. No good. The shale gave way and I made the ten-foot descent on my butt.
My noisy approach sent the fox into increased fear and frenzy. She was terrified, snapping her jaws and drooling from the
mouth. I saw that the leg was completely engloved. The trap’s teeth were gripping bare bone.
“It’s okay, girl.”
I stood below the fox and looked for some way to inject her with the ketamine. There was a nearby ledge on a level with my
shoulders, but it was obviously too thin and too narrow. I didn’t trust myself to hang on to it and get the needle into her
leg at the same time.
The fox’s continual high-pitched whine was driving me crazy. Soon she’d go into shock, and very soon after that she’d die.
I knew I couldn’t save her by myself.
K
IT WAS SLUGGING a long, arcing home run high over the famed “Green Monster” wall in Boston’s Fenway Park. His two boys were
watching from seats along the first-base line. Suddenly he was torn from his baseball heroics, the remnants of sleep.
There was a loud, insistent banging at the cabin door. He placed his hand on the rifle he kept under the bed, slid it along
the floorboards.
“Yeah? Who is it?” he called. He pushed himself to a sitting position so that he could see through the window.
He parted the curtain and saw Frannie O’Neill with the serious frown she usually wore for his benefit. She always managed
to look good to him.
What now? What did she want?
He stepped into his jeans, zipped his fly, buttoned up. More impatient banging on the door.
Where was a clean shirt? To hell with a shirt.
“I’m coming.”
He opened the door, but before he could ask what crime he’d committed Frannie started to speak a blue streak of fast, barely
intelligible words.
“I need your help,” she said. “Please. I
really
need you to help, Mr. Harrison.”
Mr. Harrison? “Sure. No problem. Shoes,” he said, and ducked inside to grab his sneaks.
He followed her, bare-chested, as she sprinted ahead of him to a rocky gorge a few hundred yards back into the woods. He could
hardly keep up with her. She could really move on those long legs of hers.
Mr. Harrison was it now?
“What the—” He stopped in midsentence.
It took him only a second or two to recognize what it was that was hanging from nasty metal jaws and jangling chains.
“Oh, Jesus, Frannie.”
The fox was a sickening sight, and he finally understood why she hated hunters so much, why she had been so mad at him since
he arrived—with a gun.
The poor animal’s reddish-brown coat was soaked and spattered with fresh blood. The fur and flesh on its foreleg had been
stripped forward from elbow to paw by the teeth of the leghold trap. Its breath was coming hard. Its intermittent barking
was hoarse and weak.
“I can’t reach her,” Frannie panted. She was out of breath. “I tried it by myself. No use.”
She looked as if she were going to break down, and Kit felt choked up with the same emotion. What had happened to the young
fox was cruel and heartbreaking, and it made him angry, too. How could anybody do this to an animal?
“What do you want me to do? How can I help?”
She held a syringe clasped tightly in her hand. “I have to get this into her leg.”
“Okay. I got you.”
Kit skittered down the steep, muddy slope. He surveyed the gorge from top to bottom. Then he climbed back up.
He squatted above the fox that was suspended about three feet below the edge. He measured and weighed the animal with his
eyes. Then he quickly scanned the underbrush for a fallen branch.
“This could work,” he called to Frannie.
It was about three feet long and only a couple of inches in diameter.
She looked perplexed. “What are you doing? What could work?”
It was easier to demonstrate than to explain. Kit lowered himself until his face and shoulders were hanging over the lip of
the gully.
“Please be careful,” he heard her say.
He brought the stick close to the fox’s mouth. She was spraying foam with every exhaled breath and her eyes were dulling over.
Kit wondered if she could even see him.
He touched the wood to the fox’s lips.
She snapped wildly, clamped her teeth hard around the branch, tried to break it in two.
Would the damn branch hold? Kit slowly, slowly, eased the fox up, up… and finally over the edge of the embankment.
“Stick her, now,” he gasped.
Frannie was right there. She jabbed the needle into the animal’s hind leg. Pushed the plunger. The fox kicked, then collapsed
as the drug took effect.
Kit caught the animal as it dropped like a furry, stuffed animal into his arms.
“Well done,” said Frannie. “God, we did it.”
She took the fox from him and gently laid it down on the ground. Kit yanked open the trap’s trigger mechanism and Frannie
carefully released the animal’s leg.
“Very well done. Wow. Thank you. Thank you. You’re a great paramedic partner.”
“You’re welcome. It was nice working with you. What a team. Glad we could help Foxie Lady.”
And wonder of wonders—Frannie O’Neill finally gave him a smile.
It was almost worth the wait.
Y
AHOO, MOUNTAIN DEW!”
Max was flying again. She couldn’t resist the fluffy clouds, the high-pitched whistle of the wind, the perfect, deep blue
skies over the Rockies.
Who could?
She drifted calmly, effortlessly, as she surveyed a lake below, the wooded slopes of surrounding ridges.
The slate-black surface of the lake drew her closer. She could see thermal inversions rising off the water. Her teacher, her
friend, Mrs. Beattie, had told her about wind currents, and how hot and cold affected flight. Max still retained all the information;
that was one of her gifts.
Her wingspan cast an elongated shadow on the dark treetops below. Max watched the shadow, raced with it. She reached out,
then ahead, then back, as if she were rowing. She flew faster and faster over the curved rim of the earth.
Mrs. Beattie,
she thought.
The School, her old home.
She could remember it vividly, only mostly she didn’t want to. She couldn’t help remembering, though—especially the worst
things, and there were so many of them to choose from.
Early one morning, Mrs. Beattie had come to the small dormitory where she and Matthew slept. Mrs. Beattie had been their teacher
for three years. Before Mrs. Beattie, there had been nannies, and other tutors; but they had changed all the time. None of
them had showed very much love or caring. It wasn’t allowed at the School. Just science, work, discipline, testing, testing,
testing.
“Max… Matthew,” Mrs. Beattie had whispered. Max was awake instantly, even before her teacher was at her bedside.
“We’re awake,” Matthew squawked. “We heard you coming.”
“Of course you did, dear. Now listen to me. Don’t speak until I’ve finished.”
It was something bad
—Max could tell it was. Neither she nor Matthew said a word.
“Sometimes bad things happen to good people,” Mrs. Beattie whispered. Besides being a teacher, she was a doctor. She administered
exams, especially the ones to test intelligence—Stanford-Binet, WPPSI-R, WISC III, the Beery Tests, Act III, all the rest.
“They’re going to put us to sleep, kill us, right? We’ve been expecting it.” Matthew couldn’t keep quiet for too long.
“No, dear. You’re both very special. You’re miracle children. You don’t have to worry. But darlings, little Adam was put to
sleep last night. I’m so sorry to have to tell you.”
“Oh, no, not Adam! Not Adam!” Matthew moaned.
He and Max hugged Mrs. Beattie tightly and they couldn’t stop weeping, couldn’t stop shivering. Adam was only a little baby.
He had the most beautiful blue eyes, and he was so smart.
“I have to leave now, dear. I didn’t want you to hear this from Mr. Thomas. I love you, Max. Love you, Matthew.” She hugged
them close to her. “Don’t think badly of me.”
Soon after that, Mrs. Beattie was gone, too. One day, she just never came back to the School. They never saw or heard from
her again. Max was sure she had been put to sleep.
Max suddenly realized that she was flying too fast and without looking where she was going. The memory of the School had upset
her.
She changed direction and went into a steep climb toward the sun. Its brilliance shattered her vision, a blizzard of multicolored
shades. Blinded, Max kept climbing, drawing in air that grew cooler and thinner in her lungs.
Finally, when she couldn’t stand it for a second more, she looped the loop. Then she went into a nosedive.
She fell straight toward the shimmering blue water of the lake.
Her wings felt glued to her sides. The air roared in her ears. Her lungs burned. She hit the water at a perfect angle.
Splashdown!
Unbelievable!
God, how she loved to fly.
H
ARDING THOMAS stopped for coffee and a sugar hit at the Quik Stop in Bear Bluff. “Coffee, black as my heart,” he said to the
counter clerk.
That was when he overheard the big-eyed, red-headed kids babbling to their mother near the freezer full of Ben & Jerry’s ice
cream.
Thomas wasn’t really listening to the kids as he was handed his coffee, not until he heard, “She was like a big, beautiful
bird, Mommy. Like a Power Ranger, ’cept she was a real girl.”
Harding Thomas jerked to full attention when he heard that little mouthful of news. He almost dropped his coffee. Spilled
some steaming java on his hiking boots.
The kids’ mother was wandering toward the checkout counter, mesmerized by the latest issue of
People
magazine. Her floppy thongs slapped the worn-out tan-and-brown linoleum floor. She was about thirty-five, fat folds rolling
over the top of baggy Champion shorts. The kids were cute, though, and they sure were animated.
Thomas snatched a Snickers off a snack rack on the counter. He walked toward the checkout line, too. He stood behind the mother
and her kids.
Mama had apparently communicated to the kids to shut up in the public place. Good advice, but a little too late.
“I overheard your kids. A flying girl from outer space,” he said with a pleasant chuckle and smile. “Just like you read about
in that crazy rag, the
Star.
” He hooked his thumb toward one of the tabloid newspapers displayed near the counter.
“We
did
see a flying girl,” the boy insisted, blew his promise immediately. “Didn’t we, Elizabeth?”
His sister shot him a warning look, but the boy didn’t care. Thomas looked skeptical, which was no problem. He was hoping
to draw them out some more, and he was unusually good with kids.