The lights dimmed. A child screamed. Wiggle your toes, the magician ordered, flourishing his magic wand, and she did; her disembodied toes wiggled in glittery high-heeled pumps. The audience squealed with delight. The hunter watched her pink, fine-boned face, her hanging hair, her outstretched throat. Her eyes caught the spotlight. Was she looking at him? Did she see his face pressed against the window, the wind slashing at his neck, the groceries—onions, a sack of flour—tumbled to the ground around his feet?
She was beautiful to him in a way that nothing else had ever been beautiful. Snow blew down his collar and drifted around his boots. After some time the magician rejoined the severed box halves, unfastened the buckles, and fluttered his wand, and she was whole again. She climbed out of the box and curtsied in her glittering dress.
She smiled as if it were the Resurrection itself. Then the storm brought down a pine tree in front of the courthouse, and the power winked out, streetlight by streetlight.
Before she could move, before the ushers could begin escorting the crowd out with flashlights, the hunter was slinking into the hall, making for the stage, calling for her. He was thirty years old, twice her age. She smiled at him, leaned over from the dais in the red glow of the emergency exit lights, and shook her head. In his pickup he trailed the magician's van through the blizzard to her next show, a library fundraiser in Butte.
The next night he followed her to Missoula. He rushed to the stage after each performance. She said yes in Bozeman. Her name was plain, Mary Roberts. They had rhubarb pie in a hotel restaurant.
You hold your legs against your chest and wiggle the dummy feet with a string. She laughed. Follow a girl from town to town to tell her her magic isn't real? I'm that way with magic. I dream about it. Even when I'm not asleep. He looked into his plate, thrilled. He searched for something he might say. They ate. Her voice was quiet and serious. I'm not going to get sawed in half by Tony Vespucci all my life. But the next winter Vespucci brought her back to Great Falls and sawed her in half in the same plywood coffin.
And the winter after that. Both times, after the performance, the hunter took her to the Bitterroot Diner, where he watched her eat two pieces of pie. The watching was his favorite part: a hitch in her throat as she swallowed, the way the spoon slid cleanly out from her lips, the way her hair fell over her ear.
Then she was eighteen, and after pie she let him drive her to his cabin, forty miles from Great Falls, up the Missouri and then east into the Smith River valley. She brought only a small vinyl purse. The truck skidded and sheered as he steered it over the unploughed roads, fishtailing in the deep snow, but she didn't seem afraid or worried about where he might be taking her, about the possibility that the truck might sink in a drift, that she might freeze to death in her pea coat and glittery magician's-assistant dress.
Her breath plumed out in front of her. It was twenty degrees below zero. Soon the roads would be snowed over, impassable until spring. At his one-room cabin, with furs and old rifles on the walls, he unbolted the door to the crawl space and showed her his winter hoard: a hundred smoked trout, plucked pheasants and venison quarters hanging frozen from hooks.
She scanned his books over the fireplace—a monograph on grouse habits, a series of journals on upland game birds, a thick tome titled simply Bear. She wasn't bad on snowshoes, a little clumsy. They went creaking over wind-scalloped snow in the nearly unbearable cold.
The bear denned every winter in the same hollow cedar, the top of which had been shorn off by a storm. Black, three-fingered, and huge, in the starlight it resembled a skeletal hand thrust up from the ground, a ghoulish visitor scrabbling its way out of the underworld.
They knelt. Above them the stars were knife points, hard and white. The breath that carried his words crystallized and blew away. They listened, face-to-face, their ears over woodpecker holes in the trunk.
She heard it after a minute, tuning her ears in to something like a drowsy sigh, a long exhalation of slumber. Her eyes widened. A full minute passed. She heard it again. Grizzlies are light hibernators. Sometimes all you do is step on twigs outside their dens and they're up. He began to dig at the snow.
She stood back, her mouth open, eyes wide. Bent at the waist, the hunter bailed the snow back through his legs. He dug down three feet and then encountered a smooth, icy crust covering a large hole in the base of the tree.
Gently he dislodged plates of ice and lifted them aside. From the hole the smell of bear came to her, like wet dog, like wild mushrooms. The hunter removed some leaves. Beneath was a shaggy flank, a patch of brown fur. His forelegs must be up here somewhere. She put one hand on his shoulder and knelt in the snow beside the den. Her eyes were wide and unblinking. Her jaw hung open.
Above her shoulder a star separated itself from a galaxy and melted through the sky. Her voice sounded loud and out of place in that wood, under the naked cedars. She removed the mitten from her other hand with her teeth and reached down.
He pulled at her again but lost his footing and fell back, clutching an empty mitten. As he watched, horrified, she turned and placed both hands, spread-fingered, in the thick shag of the bear's chest. Then she lowered her face, as if drinking from the snowy hollow, and pressed her lips to the bear's chest.
Her entire head was inside the tree. She felt the soft silver tips of fur brush her cheeks. Against her nose one huge rib flexed slightly. She heard the lungs fill and then empty.
She heard blood slug through veins. Her voice echoed up through the tree and poured from the shorn ends of its hollowed branches. The hunter took his knife from his coat.
Dredging his flanks across river pebbles. Get into his arms. I'd grab him by the ears and kiss him on the eyes. The hunter watched the fire, the flames cutting and sawing, each log a burning bridge. Three years he had waited for this. Three years he had dreamed this girl by his fire. But somehow it had ended up different from what he had imagined.
He had thought it would be like a hunt—like waiting hours beside a wallow with his rifle barrel on his pack to see the huge antlered head of a bull elk loom up against the sky, to hear the whole herd behind him inhale and then scatter down the hill. If you had your opening you shot and walked the animal down and that was it. But this felt different. It was exactly as if he were still three years younger, stopped outside the Central Christian Church and driven against a low window by the wind or some other, greater force.
Bruce Maples stood beside him, jabbing the ice in his drink with his straw. The hunter was watching the thin, stricken man, President O'Brien, as he stood in the corner of the reception room. Every few minutes a couple of guests made their way to him and took O'Brien's hands in their own.
Sometimes the people who track them will come to a snag and the prints will disappear. As if the entire pack just leaped into a tree and vanished. Eventually they'll find the tracks again, thirty or forty feet away. People used to think it was magic—flying wolves. But all they did was jump. One great coordinated leap. Maples was looking around the room. She stayed. The first time they made love, she shouted so loudly that coyotes climbed onto the roof and howled down the chimney. He rolled off her, sweating.
The coyotes coughed and chuckled all night, like children chattering in the yard, and he had nightmares. Had he dreamed that? He couldn't remember. Maybe he talked in his sleep. In December it never got warmer than fifteen below. The river froze—something he'd never seen. On Christmas Eve he drove all the way to Helena to buy her figure skates.
In the morning they wrapped themselves head-to-toe in furs and went out to skate the river. She held him by the hips and they glided through the blue dawn, skating up the frozen coils and shoals, beneath the leafless alders and cottonwoods, only the bare tips of creek willows showing above the snow.
Ahead of them vast white stretches of river faded into darkness. In a wind-polished bend they came upon a dead heron, frozen by its ankles into the ice. It had tried to hack itself out, hammering with its beak first at the ice entombing its feet and then at its own thin and scaly legs. When it finally died, it died upright, wings folded back, beak parted in some final, desperate cry, legs like twin reeds rooted in the ice. She fell to her knees beside the bird.
In its eye she saw her face flatly reflected. You'll freeze too. She slipped off her mitten and closed the heron's beak in her fist.
Almost immediately her eyes rolled back in her head. Her hand turned white and then blue in the wind. Finally she stood. That night she lay stiff and would not sleep.
It was good that we buried it, but tomorrow something will find it and dig it out. She turned to him. Her eyes were wide. He remembered how they had looked when she put her hands on the bear. I saw where she went when she died. She was on the shore of a lake with other herons, a hundred others, all facing the same direction, and they were wading among stones.
It was dawn, and they watched the sun come up over the trees on the other side of the lake. I saw it as clearly as if I were there.
He rolled onto his back and watched shadows shift across the ceiling. He resolved to make sure she went out every day. It was something he'd long believed: go out every day in winter, or your mind will slip. Every winter the paper was full of stories about ranchers' wives, snowed in and crazed with cabin fever, who had dispatched their husbands with cleavers or awls.
Winter threw itself at the cabin. He took her out every day. He showed her a thousand ladybugs hibernating in an orange ball hung in a riverbank hollow; a pair of dormant frogs buried in frozen mud, their blood crystallized until spring. He pried a globe of honeybees from its hive, slow-buzzing, stunned from the sudden exposure, tightly packed around the queen, each bee shimmying for warmth.
When he placed the globe in her hands, she fainted, her eyes rolled back. Lying there, she saw all their dreams at once, the winter reveries of scores of worker bees, each one fiercely vivid: bright trails through thorns to a clutch of wild roses, honey tidily brimming a hundred combs.
With each day she learned more about what she could do. She felt a foreign and keen sensitivity bubbling in her blood, as if a seed planted long ago were just now sprouting.
The larger the animal, the more powerfully it could shake her. The recently dead were virtual mines of visions, casting them off with a slow-fading strength as if cutting a long series of tethers one by one. She pulled off her mittens and touched everything she could: bats, salamanders, a cardinal chick tumbled from its nest, still warm. Ten hibernating garter snakes coiled beneath a rock, eyelids sealed, tongues stilled. Each time she touched a frozen insect, a slumbering amphibian, anything just dead, her eyes rolled back and its visions, its heaven, went shivering through her body.
Their first winter passed like that. When he looked out the cabin window, he saw wolf tracks crossing the river, owls hunting from the trees, six feet of snow like a quilt ready to be thrown off. She saw burrowed dreamers nestled under roots against the long twilight, their dreams rippling into the sky like auroras. With love still lodged in his heart like a splinter, he married her in the first muds of spring.
Bruce Maples gasped when the hunter's wife finally arrived. She moved through the door like a show horse, demure in the way she kept her eyes down, but assured in her step; she brought each tapered heel down and struck it against the granite. The hunter had not seen his wife for twenty years, and she had changed—become refined, less wild, and somehow, to the hunter, worse for it.
Her face had wrinkled around the eyes, and she moved as if avoiding contact with anything near her, as if the hall table or the closet door might suddenly lunge forward to snatch at her lapels. She wore no jewelry, no wedding ring, only a plain black suit, double-breasted. She found her nametag on the table and pinned it to her lapel. Everyone in the reception room looked at her and then looked away. The hunter realized that she, not President O'Brien, was the guest of honor.
In a sense they were courting her. This was their way, the chancellor's way—a silent bartender, tuxedoed coat girls, big icy drinks. Give her pie, the hunter thought. Rhubarb pie. Show her a sleeping grizzly. They sat for dinner at a narrow and very long table, fifteen or so high-backed chairs down each side and one at each end. The hunter was seated several places away from his wife. She looked over at him finally, a look of recognition, of warmth, and then looked away again.
He must have seemed old to her—he must always have seemed old to her. She did not look at him again. The kitchen staff, in starched whites, brought onion soup, scampi, poached salmon. Around the hunter guests spoke in half whispers about people he did not know.
He kept his eyes on the windows and the blowing snow beyond. The river thawed and drove huge saucers of ice toward the Missouri. The hunter felt that old stirring, that quickening in his soul, and would rise in the wide pink dawns, grab his fly rod, and hurry down to the river.
Already trout were rising through the chill brown water to take the first insects of spring. Soon the telephone in the cabin was ringing with calls from clients, and his guiding season was on.
In April an occasional client wanted a mountain lion or a trip with dogs for birds, but late spring and summer were for trout. He was out every morning before dawn, driving with a thermos of coffee to pick up a lawyer, a widower, a politician with a penchant for wild cutthroat.
He came home stinking of fish guts and woke her with eager stories—native trout leaping fifteen-foot cataracts, a stubborn rainbow wedged under a snag. By June she was bored and lonely.
She wandered through the forest, but never very far. The summer woods were dense and busy, not like the quiet graveyard feel of winter. Nothing slept for very long; everything was emerging from cocoons, winging about, buzzing, multiplying, having litters, gaining weight.
Bear cubs splashed in the river. Chicks screamed for worms. She longed for the stillness of winter, the long slumber, the bare sky, the bone-on-bone sound of bull elk knocking their antlers against trees.
In September the big-game hunters came. Each client wanted something different: elk, antelope, a bull moose, a doe. She must leave the Valley and explore the world and share her gift. He stays behind to tend to his hunting and dreaming of wolves.
Labels: anthony doerr , fantasy , forest , husband , ice , magical , seer , thaw , wife , woods. Unknown July 19, at AM. Marlena April 17, at AM. Newer Post Older Post Home. Nearly feel his winters. And the transformation of his wife and his own. I enjoyed this short story. Although I feel it was a story written to showcase winter.
Not otherworldly matters. Apr 20, Jamison rated it really liked it. One of those stories that a leave a thousand loose ends that you're going to think about lying in bed alone at night. Dec 08, R rated it it was amazing. Seriously strange and surreal short story, but I love Doerr's descriptions and ability to pull you into whatever setting he writes about.
Nov 20, Kerri Beckman rated it liked it. I had mixed feelings about this short story. I really liked the descriptions and how detailed the setting was. You were practically shivering, too! I adored his Montana winter and the way he moves back and forth between the present and the past. I'm usually picky about how people do that, but Doerr was marvelous.
However, I didn't love the age difference and how indifferent the husband seemed at times to his wife's emotional needs, rather than just the physical. I also could have used more focus o I had mixed feelings about this short story. I also could have used more focus on the otherworldly, almost supernatural feel to the story. I liked it and I wanted more, but there were plenty of things I didn't love about it.
I did like the ending quite a bit though. So perhaps it ended where it needed to. There was just so much in there. No spoilers here though. You need to read it for yourself. Oct 14, Kirsty rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites , quickie. Very magical and descriptive short story. Definitely not what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised.
Left me wanting more. I could read a short novel about these characters and the story they have to tell. The only thing I didn't particularly care for was the age difference between the hunter and his wife..
He meets her when she is just fifteen year old. He is thirty and clearly intends on having a sexual relationship with her at some point at least he waits for her to be 18, yay for Very magical and descriptive short story. He is thirty and clearly intends on having a sexual relationship with her at some point at least he waits for her to be 18, yay for him I guess??
If you are able to just ignore that, this story is great. View 2 comments. Dec 05, Mary Adeson rated it really liked it Shelves: short-story-advent-calendar. The Hunter hunts his prey from town to town for 3 years until she becomes his wife. During five years of marriage the Hunter desperately tries to under his mystical wife; 20 years later she still is an awe to him.
I actually feel as though I've just snapped out of a daydream. That they could run there, fierce and unfettered, was surely enough. View 1 comment. Dec 19, Flo R rated it really liked it. Something about the writing seemed to take me back in time. Je ne sais quoi. I loved all the descriptions of the visions, and how a huge chunk of the story focuses on the local flora and fauna along with the characters.
The story was simple with no particular beginning or ending. Though everything in between was absolutely lovely. Sep 27, chvang rated it really liked it Shelves: short-story , fiction. There isn't much plot, it's about a man meeting up with his wife after 20 years, with flashbacks to their courting and first few years of marriage.
He's a very practical man, who doesn't believe in magic. She's half his age and a former musician's assistant, who discovers she has psychic powers. It's an interesting piece; mostly I liked the scenes of the Montana wilderness during the harsh winters--as a Californian, I prefer my harsh winters from the coziness of my armchair, hot chocolate next t There isn't much plot, it's about a man meeting up with his wife after 20 years, with flashbacks to their courting and first few years of marriage.
It's an interesting piece; mostly I liked the scenes of the Montana wilderness during the harsh winters--as a Californian, I prefer my harsh winters from the coziness of my armchair, hot chocolate next to me. Jun 19, Saborni rated it it was amazing.
It's beautiful. I can't find another word to describe it. Apr 13, Sucharita Biswas rated it it was amazing. If you want to read something exceptional. May 25, Nupur Jindal rated it really liked it Shelves: short-stories.
Jan 11, Joanne Adams rated it it was amazing. This story is about the hunter, his wife, and the visions that she has after something dies. She has visions to assist the loved ones left behind. The writing is beautiful. Jan 06, Kristi Morris rated it liked it. On Sundays I like to have a routine. I like to get up, have a nice big breakfast, get the family off to church, go out for brunch and come home where I curl up on the couch in the sun like a cat with my latest book find in hand.
I like to have a routine. Oh wait, I think that is actually called a pipe dream. What can I say? We eat a big breakfast most days, church less often than I would like, and we are on a diet which make On Sundays I like to have a routine.
We eat a big breakfast most days, church less often than I would like, and we are on a diet which makes brunch sad. I do make time to get in a short story on the weekend.
Mostly a paragraph here and there in-between naps, meals and my daughter riding my back like a horse. Not having been to Montana, I believe most areas are remote wilderness, probably mostly not true.
He becomes captivated by her and they begin a courtship over short sporadic visits that eventually leads to her leaving her traveling act, to marry him and live alone with her in harsh and brutal wild he calls home. I will leave that part for you to find out. The descriptive are fantastic and the story is mystical and captivating with an ending that warms the heart and reminds you that there are some things that just have to be seen to believe.
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