Clara took shelter under an old weeping willow and listened to the plink-plink-plink of the rain striking the river. The long green branches of the willow swept the grass like a woman’s tresses, the hair of some Medusa whipping in the wind. With her back against the trunk she had a vision of her mother for the first time, a woman stepping through the beaded curtain of the branches to stand before her in a summery dress the color of emeralds, her chestnut hair flowing past her shoulders. Her eyes were green, green like the tree, the grass, the rainlight. Her smile was so sweet and sad it made Clara’s breath catch in her throat. She seemed to beckon Clara toward the river’s slippery bank, where water licked at the shore.
Then in the distance Clara heard the screen door slap shut and her father calling and calling her name, and she turned in his direction, and when she looked back again the woman was gone, the branches waving where she had stepped through, and she felt so downlow and lonesome in that instant that she pulled up her knees to her chest and wept and that was how her father came to find her. He wasn’t mad. “This is a pleasant spot,” he said, and he sat with her awhile on the damp lawn, passing her his handkerchief.
Clara did not tell him about her mother’s ghost, because she knew he would dismiss it. Instead she snuggled close to him. “Tell me about the wolf boy,” she said, “the one Copper rescued from the prairie fire.”
“Do you mean the loup garou he later became?”
“The werewolf,” she translated with a delicious shiver. Now that she had grown older, the stories had darkened. This story he told during the daylight hours only. “Yes, that one.”
“But as you know, to tell his story, I must speak of another one. Of the trapper and his daughter.”
THIS HAPPENED IN THE springtime, a starvation season on the prairies when the winter stores were exhausted and the ground too cold for planting. In this time there was a girl who lived with her father in a valley shadowed by a lone mountain. Every year the girl’s father left her to go trapping north of the Purgatory River, and every year he was gone longer and returned with fewer and fewer furs to trade at the post.
One year he had been gone for only a few days when late at night she heard someone banging at the door. “Come quickly, girl,” he cried out in a querulous voice. In the dark she fumbled with the latch. When the door opened he rushed inside, slammed it shut, and bolted it tight. He leaned the half-stock prairie rifle he always carried with him against a log cabin wall and then further blockaded the door with a log chair.
“Papa?” the girl said in confusion, still half asleep. He had not been due back from his trapping expedition for another three days. “What’s happening?”
Even in the darkness of the room she could see a horror story written on his face. Claw marks gashed open either cheek, one eye puffed pink and swollen, and strings of dried blood matted his beard.
“Shush, girl,” he said, holding a finger to his lips when she gasped at the sight of him. “It’s coming.”
Before she could ask what, an eerie wailing erupted from the woods. The girl went to the window, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. In the moonlight she saw a shadowy streak out near the oak savanna. Her father snatched up his rifle and checked the priming. Deep in the woods an animal reared up on two legs. The girl beheld shaggy hair around its face, a lean, muscled torso, and long, curling claws. It stood unsteadily as a bear might stand, sniffing the air. Two large eyes caught and held her in a lambent gaze. Even from this distance she saw something flash in those eyes, a glint of recognition.
“Get away from the window,” her father said. He eased up the glass from the casement and balanced his rifle on the ledge so that it poked out into the night. The creature wailed once more before the trapper answered with his gun. A cloud of smoke filled the cabin, and when it cleared the moonlit glade where the thing had stood lay empty. The trapper bit off a fresh cap and poured it in the half stock, cursing as he