7

Adelaide collapses onto the kitchen floor, cradling her throbbing calf.

Outside, the wild woman continues to roar, more mountain lion than human after all.

The bite marks are gaping caverns in her calf, and she scours her cabinets for a bottle of peroxide. Adelaide did not send a supply list last season—there was no want, no need, where she was heading—and her supplies have dwindled. She pushes aside half-bottles of vinegar and linseed oil until she discovers a forgotten bottle of bleach. At least it’s something.

Outside, the wild woman screams and Adelaide flinches, spilling bleach across the wood floor. Already the color blanches. Adelaide breathes through the woman’s scream, wills it to end. But it continues, as if the wild woman has inhaled all the oxygen from the forest, collapsing the mighty trees, expelling it in one ferocious trumpet call. Adelaide cannot breathe until it stops. She mustn’t. She won’t. She holds her breath until her lungs are just another heartbeat pushing and throbbing against her ribs.

When the morning dips into silence once more, Adelaide exhales in a frantic rush and looks to the ceiling. Before she can change her mind, she closes her eyes, and splashes bleach across her wounded leg.

Adelaide cries out. She did not expect pain like this, and her scream catches in her throat. Her leg is a cavern of flame, rolling fire, blue and orange, cinder and log. Will the regrets never cease?

And then the morning goes black.

Adelaide wakes to the sound of Henry. She smiles at his garbled cry until the ache in her leg reminds her that there are more pressing matters demanding her attention. The light coming through her window is amber—the sun will be setting soon, and she has already lost so much time.

The skin of her calf is clean and pink, but the holes are black. A crooked little nest of incisors and canines.

The pill bottle mocks her from the window ledge, as if to say: stop complaining, you had your chance.

Adelaide pauses at her door, willing Henry to be quiet as he chortles another call to the waning sun. She hauls her tired body past the garden and jostles her hands as though dread can be flung from the body like river water. Her eyes are trained on the corner of the wattle fence, beyond which the wild woman is surely already aware of her approach.

Grasping the fence for support, Adelaide edges closer to the corner of her garden, craning for another look.

She is there—right there.

The wild woman watches Adelaide emerge from the shadows. Her teeth are long and unclenched, and from her throat a growl rattles forth so low that Adelaide can’t be sure if there is sound at all, or merely vibration.

The children are gone. Where are the children?

Splinters of willow branches lay in heaps across the tree line. Blood pools in a small trench between the fence and the woman.

Adelaide peers through the shadows and detects two shadowy forms shifting behind their mother’s curved spine.

Adelaide wishes she had someone to call, consult. If this were a fallen tree, she would know what tools to retrieve. If this were a broken porch step, she would know how to repair it. But there is no instruction manual for dealing with a feral human.

Adelaide clasps her hands to her face and weeps. She is done. Her reign is finished. She knows nothing; she never did.

Adelaide blinks away her tears long enough to meet the wild woman’s gaze. She expects ferocity, but what she receives is so much more.

Reflected in the woman’s eyes is concern. Adelaide wipes her face dry as the two women of the forest watch each other. Adelaide sees unexpected things in the face of the wild woman: the eyes of a worrywart, furrows of anxiety etched into her forehead, creases sliding down her young face. Laugh lines. Adelaide gasps—this woman knows joy. She did not expect that. Behind the woman’s torso, little fingers inch across her ribs and clasp onto her breast. She shakes herself free and the fingers disappear behind her back once more.

Adelaide raises her hand. “Hello there,” she whispers.

The wild woman recoils, but does not attack, does not growl.

“Adelaide is my name,” she says, patting her chest. “Adelaide.”

The wild woman flexes her fingers but makes no move to raise her arm or speak a word. Behind her, the children begin to chatter. She swats a small backside and the children quiet down, contenting themselves with plucking bugs from their mother’s hair. Each insect receives a cursory examination before being flung into the brush. If Henry and the girls were braver, there would be a squirming feast at their feet right now.

The sorting of insects seems to calm the wild woman. Her shoulders slouch, and despite the steel clutching her ankle, she shows no sign of pain. Her children burrow their carrot fingers through her hair as though she were a lioness. Every few minutes, one of the children lightly touches their forehead to hers. Adelaide knows about butterfly kisses and Eskimo kisses, but now she has learned about wild woman kisses. It feels good to learn something new.

Adelaide decides she will stay quiet by the little family and see if they might come to accept her presence. If that were to happen, she could loosen the trap, pry the jaws from the woman’s ankle. It would be painful. Torturous, even. But Adelaide would not be harmed if she were understood to be a friend.

With a plan in place, Adelaide goes silent. The stones settle between her hips, and she fusses with her dress until most of it is tucked beneath, forming a thin cushion between her skin and the rocks.

And she waits.

Just before sunset, when only the palest bands of pink and violet light the sky, the wild woman closes her eyes. Adelaide plucks grass and flicks one strand after another, trying to keep her mind occupied, awake, ready.

Two pairs of eyes peer out from behind their sleeping mother’s shoulder, and the children giggle as they watch a piece of grass flutter through the air. It seems they want to play.

Adelaide flicks another strand, sending it higher this time, arcing over the wild woman. The children drop to their hands and knees, and chase it through the brush. Their giggles grow louder, and Adelaide must be drunk on the fumes of bleach-burnt flesh, because now she is giggling, too.

The children begin to move slower, their knees tracing lines on the ground as they circle each other.

Adelaide has spent so much time playing with the children that she has nearly forgotten what must be done. She looks to the wild woman collapsed in the bloodstained dirt beneath her. It could be days before she accepts Adelaide’s help, and neither of them have days to spare. With the wild woman asleep, Adelaide needs a new plan. A good one, and fast.

One of the children crawls over its mother’s good leg and collapses into her chest, poking a finger through her matted hair. The wild woman strokes the child’s head but does not fully wake.

Adelaide yawns, inhaling the moist air that tastes like soil and steel. And a little like blood.

When the other child stands, Adelaide sees that this one is a little boy. He follows his sister into the cradle of his mother’s arms and falls fast asleep, a dirty thumb in his mouth.

And just like that, Adelaide is once again alone.

Adelaide watches the sleeping family from her kitchen window. Hers was a quiet retreat, and they did not wake. She’d wanted to stay. She’d wanted to curl up next to them and keep them safe until morning. Until she came up with a plan. A real plan. But she also needed a moment to think.

The wild family, a heap of feet, bowed heads, and tangled arms, doesn’t appear cold, though even inside the cabin, Adelaide shivers. She imagines there is a warmth much heartier than a thick blanket or a roaring fire. And she imagines that must be lovely.

Just below her view of the children sits the little amber bottle of pills, a mountain of white disks inside. She opens the lid, sticks her nose into the opening and inhales. She smells the pills like a woman on a diet might whiff a chocolate cake. The scent is medicinal, which she expects, but beneath that base note, she detects others. Cream. Metal. A hint of oil. A top note of egg. Adelaide is a certified Suicide Sommelier as she swirls the pills in the bottle, watching them crest and fall over one another. They are waiting for her, and she knows it. She wants to give herself over to them, and she will—she tells herself this every day—but today is still not the day. Adelaide shoves the cap back onto the bottle and slams it against the porcelain sink, over and over. She throws the bottle across the cabin, and it lands in the corner of the living room.

Adelaide knows what she must do, and she pulls a pad and pen from a drawer.

She taps the pen, staring at those crisp, blue lines embedded across the page, mocking her hesitance, her fear. Once she writes it, it is done. Final. But she must stop convincing herself that she can control her own life. That belief is as mythological as her mountain lion.

And so she starts with basics.

Adelaide appraises her list. A little less than was requested last time. But there are still some additional supplies Adelaide will need, and she isn’t sure if they require context. She decides that she is required to give no such explanations, and she continues.

Adelaide searches her mind for anything else she might need. But her years of dealing with children feels like another life, and one she was only barely a part of.

She signs her name, Adelaide, before scratching it out. She takes a breath and signs “Mom.” Below that she writes, in less formal handwriting, “I love you.”

She hesitates before writing one more line—one last frivolous line—but once it is on the paper, in ink, Adelaide nods her approval.

“I know you are very busy with your own life, but if you are so inclined to bring a little something extra, please let it be a bottle of wine.”

Adelaide folds her supply list and licks a stamp, pressing it into a yellowing envelope. She then adds another, in case postage has increased since her last stamp order, and slips out her door, past the garden and the sleeping family beyond, and treks up her gravel driveway toward the mountain road. It will be dark soon, and she must hurry.

She stares at her mailbox, an old rusty thing that no longer has a clasp. The lid hangs open like a ravenous mouth, and her hands shake as she stuffs the envelope down its dark throat. She raises the flag for the kind man who tends to his neighbors’ correspondence, and walks away before she thinks better of it.

Adelaide removes the shovel from the storage shed, and takes a moment to catch her breath before hauling it toward the garden.

The children are by the tree line, a few feet away from their mother, stretching and turning into each other for warmth. The wild woman lies on her side, her bloodied limb protruding from the grip of metal teeth.

Adelaide creeps closer, mindful to avoid stepping on any branches that may signal her approach.

A quick jab and a twist, and the wild woman will be free. That’s all it will take. And then she will help the woman stand and lead her to the cabin. She will tend to the mother’s wounds, help care for the children . . .

Adelaide pauses in the clearing.

But what happens then? How will she coax them into the house? How will she build trust with this feral woman? How will she care for the woman’s injury if she doesn’t have even a simple bottle of peroxide?

Adelaide is unprepared for this onslaught of self-doubt, as one final question darts into her mind: What if the wild woman kills her?

It is certainly a possibility, and one she hadn’t considered. Not since she mistakenly thought she was dealing with a mountain lion. Yes, this dirty naked woman right here at her feet could kill her.

Adelaide has not yet built a rapport with the wild woman, but neither can she waste any more precious time. She spots an opening in the jaws of the trap. This is where she will drive the shovel—right there, just below her ankle bone, where no additional harm will come to the woman. She will do it.

Right now.

Now.

NOW.

The wild woman opens her eyes and Adelaide cannot move. She is frozen, watching the woman part her lips, baring those orange teeth, canines and incisors as rusted as the mailbox flag.

Adelaide was wrong. This is not a woman she can trust to live in her home. This is, indeed, the mountain lion that destroyed her crops, desecrated her property, and terrorized her home.

In the shortest of moments, the wild woman has once again become the beast.

Adelaide mourns the quick reflexes of her youth, and she chances a glimpse at the children. Their hair is a mud slick of tangles, soil, and leaves. A toe twitches, a tongue lolls. They continue to dream, unaware of the events unfolding just above them.

The wild woman hunches her shoulders, the tendons in her neck stiffening. Her elbows bend and she crouches low to the ground, growling, spitting. But she does not move. Not yet.

There is electricity between the two women. Watching, evaluating, planning.

From the other side of her house, a chortle in the air. The chickens. Adelaide wills them back to sleep. To stay put. Silent. Away. Everything.

This was a mistake. A series of tragic and misguided mistakes. She is in over her head. Drowning. Lost on her own land. The river calls to her, the sound like an angel. Adelaide, the river whispers. Lay it down. Lay it all down and come home.

Henry trills into the night, and the wild woman turns toward the sound.

Before Adelaide can think—before she can stumble over another failed plan—she sprints toward the children.

Adelaide hurls the shovel over her shoulder as the wild woman launches from her position, heels drilling into the mud, fists like curled talons aimed at Adelaide. The chain links clack together, the chord ringing through the air like a battle cry. Adelaide barely hears it, barely sees anything through the tunnel of her sight. Her nightgown clutches at her ankles, tugs at her shins.

A clang rings through the night as the chain reaches its length, and the wild woman’s scream splits Adelaide’s head in two.

The children jolt awake, their faces contorting into puzzles of fright, as she rushes toward them. But surprise has given Adelaide the advantage. She throws her weight against the children, and scoops them up, like fat little chickens, one bare bottom in the crook of each elbow.

They cry out to their mother, reaching over Adelaide’s shoulders, barking mutilated sounds and stunted syllables into the sky. Their arms tangle in her hair as they thrust their open palms toward their mother.

Adelaide does the only thing that makes sense in such a senseless situation. She runs. Back to her cabin. Back to warmth and safety, where every corner of every room is practical and predictable.