Page 20 of Grimdark Magazine Issue 48

The father carved that in a line under the rabbit’s feet, then circled the boy’s mother’s name over and over, until the boy thought that piece of the bark was going to come off like a plaque.

The next time the boy woke, he was already sitting up.

“What?” the father said.

The boy nodded the direction he was facing.

The father watched the boy’s eyes, then nodded, got his stick.

This time he didn’t come back for nearly a day. The boy, afraid, climbed up into the tree, then higher, as high as he could, until the wind could reach him.

His father reached up with his stick, tapped him awake.

Like a football in the crook of his arm was the rabbit. It was bloody and wonderful, already cut open.

“You ate the guts,” the boy said, his mouth full.

His father reached into the rabbit, came out with a long sliver of meat. The muscle that runs along the spine, maybe.

The boy ate and ate and when he was done, he placed the rabbit skin in the same spot he’d placed the last one. The coat was just the same—white underneath, brown at the tips.

“It’ll come back,” he told his father.

His father rubbed the side of his face. His hand was crusted with blood.

The next day there were no walkie-talkies crackling through the woods, no four-wheelers or snowmobiles churning through the snow. And the rabbit skin was gone.

“Hungry?” the boy’s father said, smiling, leaning on his stick just to stand, and the boy smiled with him.

Four hours later, his father came back with the rabbit again. He was wet to the hips this time.

“The creek?” the boy said.

“It’s a good sign,” the father said back.

Again, the father had fingered the guts into his mouth on the way back, left most of the stringy meat for the boy.

“Slaney,” the father said, watching the boy eat.

The boy closed his eyes to swallow.

Because of his frozen pants—the creek—the father had to sit with his legs straight out. “A good sign,” the boy said after the father was asleep.

The next morning his father pulled another dead branch down, so he had two poles now, like a skier.

The boy watched him walk off into the bright snow, feeling ahead of himself with the poles. It made him look like a ragged, four-legged animal, one made more of legend than of skin and bone. The boy palmed some snow into his mouth and held it there until it melted.

This time his father was only gone thirty minutes. He’d had to cross the creek again. Slaney was cradled against his body.

“He was just standing there,” the father said, pouring the meat out for the boy. “Like he was waiting for me.”

“He knows we need him,” the boy said.

One thing he no longer had to do was dab the blood off the meat before eating it. Another was swallow before chewing.

That night his father staggered out into the snow and threw up, then fell down into it. The boy pretended not to see, held his eyes closed when his father came back.

The following morning he told his father not to go out again, not today.