The coyote circled the campsite in ever tightening spirals. There were three people there; a man, a woman, and a child. The child was out of the box. The big ones, the adults, were still inside talking and clattering, making smells of bacon, milk, and pepper. The coyote discerned each distinct odor over the lingering sulfurous steam.
The child was female, seven summers at most. By size, she was at the upper end of what the coyote could bring down. It could kill the girl because the girl was a child. But that was dumb thinking. The big ones inside would not abandon the girl. Even dead.
It was not so hungry or foolish to actually attack the girl, not so hungry at all. A poacher had shot a moose from his car and the animal had died not far from here. There was meat there for a week at least. Enough to fatten up.
The coyote had been a coyote for so long that it hardly remembered not being a coyote. It did not want to forget its family. It was losing its history, its identity. It wanted to be safe, needed to survive, but it was time to take to a chance.
The coyote watched the girl skip through the morning summer sunlight chanting a song it had heard before but couldn’t remember.
It watched the girl wander out of the camp, collecting pinecones in her arms until they overflowed and she knelt to gather them again.
From the white camper drifted the smell of frying eggs. Camper. Yes. The thing was called a camper. The coyote remembered.
The little girl grew still and peered into the trees.
The coyote froze, letting its fur hide it in the undergrowth. It was tan, tawny, and copper-streaked. The blend made it nearly invisible against the forest background.
“Hello?” said the little girl.
The coyote remained motionless. It watched the girl with glassy, unblinking eyes and waited.
She had auburn hair, not wholly unlike the coyote’s coat. Clean skin. Healthy size and weight. The child shrugged, giggled at something only she knew, and trotted off after more pinecones.
“Celeste,” came a voice from the camper. “Don’t go far. It’s almost breakfast.”
“’Kay,” she called back.
When her back was toward it, the coyote padded closer.The girl turned around.
The coyote was out in the open but froze nonetheless.
“Doggy!” she cried. The coyote held still.
The girl took a tentative step forward. Her attention diverted, the pinecones spilled out over the ground again. The clatter sent the coyote bolting for cover.
“Doggy!” called the girl. “Doggy come back.”
She loped to the bush where the coyote had run, but it was already gone.
It circled the campsite, head low, and watched the girl from a distance.
“Celeste, come on back,” said a woman in the camper.
Shading her eyes with her hands, the girl searched for the coyote, turning all the way around. Finally, she shrugged her shoulders in an exaggerated gesture, a mimic of something she must have seen and hadn’t yet perfected. Then she skipped back to the campsite.
Once out of the trees and in the clearing by the picnic table, she caught sight of the coyote behind an iron barbecue stand. She squatted down and held out her hand as if offering food.
Unmoving, the coyote watched her.
The girl shuffled forward in a squat, her hand outstretched.
Taking in every movement, studying every feature, remembering how it was done, the coyote studied the little girl. It smelled the air, listened for danger, and then took a cautious step toward Celeste.
The girl giggled, and instead of scaring the coyote, the sound cheered it.
The coyote was out of cover, ten feet from the camper. It knew it was in pistol range if a gun was at hand, and there was always a gun at hand.
“Doggy, come here. I won’t hurt you.”
It was not trust that moved the coyote closer to the girl—it did not even remember what that was. It was not hunger or fear, the only motivations that had moved it for over forty years. No, it was something unique and unnatural that stirred it. It was a yearning to take a chance at rejoining a world it had left nearly half a century before, a world that had taken everything from it. It was crazy madness, and the coyote felt every bit of that insanity as it defied its instincts, and crept closer to the squatting girl.
“Nice doggy,” she cooed. “I’m just going to pet you. I’ll be real careful.”
Tense as a spring, its weight shifted for a sudden dash, the coyote stretched its neck and sniffed the girl’s fingers.
The girl shuffled closer.
The coyote twitched where its animal instinct to run wrestled with the ludicrous longing to stay.
The girl touched the coyote’s head and scratched between its ears. Though the coyote held her gaze in its cold unblinking stare, she was not afraid.
“You’re nice,” she said. “You don’t bark or anything.”
The coyote moved closer.
Celeste laughed.
The coyote lifted its muzzle up to her face and sniffed.
Celeste sniffed back. She rubbed her nose against the coyote’s and giggled again.
The coyote inhaled the girl’s breath, tasting her lungs, her heat, her blood.
Celeste threw her arms around the coyote and pulled it toward her in an ardent embrace. The sudden capture surprised the coyote and it yipped.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Celeste said, letting it go. “Sometimes I hug too hard. I know. I’m sorry.”
“Celeste dear, what was that?” called the woman. “Come in now. It’s breakfast.”
Celeste looked over her shoulder to the camper and stood up.
“I’ve got to go now,” she said. “I’ll bring you some bacon after brunch, okay?” She started to go.
The coyote yipped again, and she stopped.
Celeste turned to face the coyote, her hands on her hips in a severe gesture of mimicked impatience.
The coyote sprung on her. It slammed her to the ground and pinned her beneath its spindly legs.
Celeste shrieked.
The coyote bent over her face, showed its teeth, and growled.
The camper fell silent for an instant, then burst into noise—plates clattering, doors flung open.
The coyote lowered its head over Celeste’s face. The girl stared terrified at the animal. For a long moment they regarded each other in the depths of each other’s eyes. Fear and wonder, despair and hope mingling in the potential of the moment.
Then the coyote opened its mouth and shot out its tongue. It licked Celeste from her chin to her forehead in a rough, dry kiss.
Celeste squealed in delight and surprise.
“Celeste!” said a man in panicked voice. “Don’t move, honey.”
The man had a gun. The coyote heard it, smelled it, saw it.
He sidestepped out of the camper and circled the pair on the ground. He was looking for a clear shot. Celeste squirmed out from under the animal. The woman cried, the man raised his gun.
“No, Daddy!” cried Celeste.
“It’ll bite you, sweetie.”
“No, it’s nice.”
Celeste ran to the coyote and threw her arms around its neck. “See?” she said.
The man half-lowered the gun.
The coyote tensed and kept its eyes on the man and the shining steel in his hand. Celeste stroked the animal’s fur. The coyote watched the man.
The man pursed his lips and glanced at his wife.
That was all it could hope for. The coyote bolted. It ran low and fast under the picnic table, across the campsite, and disappeared into the forest. Sprinting for its life, it listened for the gun, expecting to feel the burning bullet in its haunches, but it did not come. The man did not shoot.
Two hours and two circuitous miles later, the coyote approached the dead moose. It could still taste the little girl in its mouth, smell her breath, remember her hair, her laugh, and her eyes.
It rushed at the vultures, snapped at them and snarled until they all fled. Then it ravenously set upon the moose meat. It needed to put on weight. Celeste had been at least forty pounds heavier than the coyote.