A Trail Without Tracks

The silt at the bottom of the watercourse held every track except the one I wanted.

A deer had crossed before dawn. Two mice had worked along the bank. A crow had landed near a shallow pool and left narrow marks like writing in the mud. I found no heel, paw, hoof, or claw belonging to the careful traveler from the western trail.

On the far bank, I found the groove again.

It passed beneath a curtain of fern and entered a hollow where the trees grew close enough to keep out most of the noon light. I knew the place. In spring it filled with white flowers. In autumn, deer slept there when the wind came down from the ridge.

That day it held nothing but silence.

I waited beneath an ash tree and let my eyes grow used to the shade. Nothing moved. No bowstring tightened. No branch shifted beneath hidden weight. At last a single leaf spun down through the hollow and landed without being noticed by anything but me.

The groove crossed the ferns and ended at a decaying stump.

Fresh wood dust lay between its roots.

I lowered my bow and cleared the loose leaves. The soil beneath had been lifted in a neat rectangle and pressed back into place. Whoever had done it knew how to hide disturbed ground, but had worked too recently for the damp color to match.

I dug with the edge of an arrowhead until I reached a shallow cavity. It was empty.

No treasure. No bones. No forgotten letter tied in ribbon. Only the shape of something that had been there and was not there now.

That interested me more than a full box would have.

Caught in a split of bark was a short strand of black cord. It was coarse, tightly twisted, and cut cleanly at one end. The ground around it was wet, but the cord was dry.

I wrapped it around two claws and placed it in my pouch.

A branch snapped beyond the hollow.

I moved before the echo faded, circling behind the stump and up the slope. A deer burst from the brush farther west and bounded away, white tail flashing once between the trunks. It had been startled by something. Perhaps by me.

Perhaps not.

At the top of the slope, three cuts marked the far side of a young alder. Sap gathered in them so freshly that one drop slid down the bark while I watched.

The marks were not pointing deeper into the unknown woods.

They lay on the side of the tree facing east, toward the trails that would eventually carry me home.

For the first time that morning, I stopped wondering what I might find.

I began wondering what had found me.