5

Adelaide lifts the corrugated metal lid from the cube of her storage bin and drops it to the ground. The chickens scatter in a flurry of startled squawks. She locates the chain snaking out from a cluttered corner where just beneath an old muddied tarp sits the steel trap, glinting and ready.

Adelaide wrestles a rake from the shed, lifting it high above her head. Henry peers at her from the corner of the wattle fence.

“It’s okay, Henry. We’re gonna catch us a monster tonight, what do you say?”

Henry cocks his head, but otherwise remains silent.

“I thought you’d say that. No, no, you stay back. I’ll handle it.”

The rake swings before her as Zelda and Moffit join the discussion.

“Don’t think about it. You’ll be asleep anyway, locked up tight. You won’t see a thing.”

Adelaide enters the garden and uses the tines of the rake to scrape dried feces from a post. The girls investigate but find nothing of interest.

“Don’t look at me that way. I’ve tried everything else.”

Adelaide leans upon the rake, admiring the patterns of morning light advancing up the path.

She clears the melon bed—or what used to be the melon bed, now just an empty mound—of a hardened lump of excrement.

Despite the chill, a bead of sweat rolls down Adelaide’s jaw.

She drags the rake along a corner bed, choked with weeds, and a pop of green foliage tangles in the tines. “Oh Henry! Look at this!”

The rooster toddles closer, balancing on his legs like fragile twigs.

Adelaide burrows her fingers within the soil, unearthing a small, firm potato. She gasps.

“I just assumed . . . but I was wrong! How wonderful to be wrong.”

Adelaide tunnels into the dirt again, and once she has dug the entire plant from the ground, she finds herself with six small, perfect potatoes. Plenty for one old woman. At last, a blessing.

Adelaide tucks the spuds into her skirt pockets for later and marches to the shed to retrieve the steel trap. This is the right choice. And the universe has granted its approval as well, authenticated in potatoes.

This is it. What it’s all come down to.

Adelaide versus beast.

The trap is heavier than Adelaide remembers, and she struggles to lift it from the shed. When she finally heaves the contraption to the ground, Adelaide collapses beside it, tumbling into a plume of dirt. The chickens scatter as she lurches toward the garden, dragging the trap behind her.

By the time Adelaide has poled the trap, set it, and camouflaged it with weeds, the sky has already darkened to a muted pumpkin orange. Adelaide massages her lower back, her fingers, each knuckle a sharp little acorn within her flesh. The metal teeth of the trap have scratched both her shins, and soil is caked in the wounds.

Adelaide walks to the river to rinse the abrasions, but the water is too high, and the current too strong, to fully submerge. She leans against the largest rocks, splashing water across her shins. The wind is bitter, and it nips at her skin, tousling her long gray hair from its bun.

Adelaide stares into the darkening sky, a spattering of stars already visible.

She smells it before she sees it. Fire.

In the distance, billows of white smoke reach high into the evening sky, their fingers twisting and coiling in the wind as they extend up, up, up. The smell is of ash and greenery. Crops. Thin flashlight beams arc across distant trees, and the shouts of men dissipate into the air before she can assess their words. Adelaide never likes to see smoke. It is a reminder that she is not alone in these woods.

Adelaide resists the urge to flee the riverside.

She is fine, she tells herself. Fine. She takes a moment to smooth her clothes and brush the water from her legs as vultures circle in perilous halos above her, twisting and dipping through the sky.

A branch snaps and crashes to the forest floor on the other side of the river. Adelaide flinches, and grasps her chest. She’s being foolish. But even still, she wants to go back to the cabin.

Now.

Adelaide runs along the worn path through the trees, collapses through her front door, and jams the bolt into place.

Despite the warmth of the cabin, her bedsheets are cold, and she shivers beneath them, thin and tired, listening to the calls of owls. On evenings like this, one can hear for miles.

Hounds bay in the distance, the sound growing faint, loud, and then faint once more. The dogs move quickly through the forest, hunting, seeking.

Adelaide stares at the marks on her ceiling, the stains like reishi mushrooms clustered and flourishing in the death of a fallen tree.

The dogs don’t stop hunting until the first rays of dawn break over the mountain ridge. Adelaide knows this because she has not slept.

The ticking clock is the only noise in the cabin this morning. Like a friend with a secret, it whispers, pst-pst-pst.

If Adelaide didn’t know better, she might call out a greeting, as if someone were hiding in the shadows. She senses it in the air—the feeling of being seen. Noticed. Adelaide smiles. She can still recall what it was like to have someone waiting for her in the morning. It’s a thought she hasn’t entertained in many years. Not since her daughter left. That stage of Adelaide’s life has passed, and there are no second chances. But as she walks to the kitchen, she throws a glance over her shoulder, just in case.

The potatoes are lined up on the counter. She squeezes one, testing the firmness, but this is mere distraction. Adelaide faces the window above the sink, but it’s fogged with condensation, and she cannot see into the garden.

She leans over the counter to wipe it away. Pauses. Her fingers hover before the window as little droplets cascade down, painting strokes of visibility. She takes a deep breath to still her heart and places her hand on the glass. No going back now.

Adelaide swipes away the haze, straining to see down the path and into the garden that once had a gate.

The trap is empty.

Adelaide scowls at the barren trap still cloaked in weeds and glistening with moisture.

The forest is quite a sight this time of year—a kaleidoscope of colors glittering from every damp surface. But by her feet, as if by brutal betrayal of nature itself, the glint of a stainless steel tooth.

“Out of here, all of you.”

The chickens scatter in all directions and spill into the yard.

“Not safe,” she says to the chickens, pointing to the place where the trap is hidden. “Not today,” she says mostly to herself.

Adelaide had hoped to take her final walk down to the river this morning with a pocket full of pills and the promise of eternal rest. But now it seems that eternal rest will have to wait one more day. Just one more day. She’s delayed long enough. If the thief eludes capture once more, Henry will have to protect the girls on his own.

Adelaide replaces the branches at the garden entrance to deter the chickens, and walks back to her home. She can practically smell the potatoes from here.

The kindling in the fireplace ignites, and warmth pours into the small cabin. A few roasted potatoes sound like a fine feast this morning. The one thing the garden thief hasn’t devoured. Her one small victory.

Adelaide hums as she scrubs the soil from the bounty. She doesn’t remember many songs from her youth, but she carries the melody of a song created on the spot as she plucks a potato from the counter and carves away petite bits of roots and eyes.

Such a beautiful morning. If she were to handpick a single day to be her last, it would be a day exactly like this. Warm and cold. Light and dark. Wet and dry. Adelaide laughs and slices another cleansed potato into chunks. A glorious day to be alive.

The blade skips across Adelaide’s finger and she flinches, her breath caught behind her teeth. Nothing serious, but she should be more mindful. She is reaching for the final potato when she hears the trap slam shut.

The metal teeth clang together, and the beast unleashes a howl unlike any she’s ever heard, before falling silent.

Adelaide doesn’t want to go outside. She doesn’t want to look out the window. The blade trembles in her fist and she places it on the cutting board.

The sound startles her as it rings through the trees once more—a horror of a scream, an anomaly of a scream. As if it is right outside her window. This is not a cat in her garden. Nor a coyote. And a bear, no matter how frightened, would never make a sound like that.

The beast begins to wail.

She wills it to die. Begs it to die. Adelaide grinds her fists into her ears, but it does not stanch the sound. It is everywhere—in the walls, on the floor, within her flesh. She fumbles through the kitchen drawer and rustles through the utensils, casting spatulas and whisks to the floor.

The wailing ceases. An entire forest grown quiet.

Perhaps she won’t need the cleaver after all.

But then she sees it, tangled in a hoop of plastic measuring cups. She snatches it into her fist and thrusts it toward the window as though the threat alone may suffice.

Adelaide spots movement in her garden. The beast is dragging the chain toward the fence—it’s trying to escape! The steel chain grates against the wattle fence. And then the screaming resumes—a barbarity of a scream, an abomination of a scream.

She regrets everything.