Mated to My Hunter

ice. I knew that sound the way a farmer knows hail. It meant the freeze was shifting, opening seams out past the poi

hat foo

rd in the cold. It was a plain pine box, nothing fancy, the kind the undertaker up at Coldwater Landing turned out four at a time. No name on t

tag said. Consigned to the Coun

from my brother's old route held true, a sealed tin of letters some clerk in the capital would pay handsomely to get back. None of it was worth a man's life. Al

secondhand from a man in Duluth who had gone into the shipping business and was glad to be rid of anything that smelled of the water. She leaked a little at the seams when

t bite, and walked it back hand over hand. The ferry slid forward. My brea

n he was uneasy. He was pacing now. The ice is thin past the point, I told him. We've crossed thinner. He did not answer me in words. He never did. He only pushed at my senses

somethi

ifting, and the ice groaned, and I turned my head

artb

, the way it got when I worked. This one was fast, a bird

ad watched him set the last nail and wipe his hands on his apron. There had been nothing alive in

ff the dark line of pines, and it carried a smel

ell of a chain or a blade. Under it, faint but clear, was something

the coffin

e tarp was frozen stiff and I had to work my fingers under the edge to get a grip. I peeled it back. The

ear to

heard breathing, short and careful, the breathin

d the nails gave one by one with a sound like small bones snapping. The lid lifted. Cold air rushed into the box, and with it came the full

woman inside

n the moonlight. Her hair was long and wavy and the color of a copper kettle, and it spilled across the straw and caught what little light the

raight nose. Two deep dimples that showed eve

een on that lake, and I had seen the northern

y shifted with a long, grinding sigh, and the boat rocke

man who put me i

oke like someone who had been rehearsing the word

he man who's suppose

Iron

Iron

er face had changed. It was not fear. I had seen fear on the ice befor

the north shore and let me out at the first landing. Do that,

t between us in the cold

t have. Silver. Real silver, the kind that burns a wolf's skin, the kind that slows the healing and makes the blood run th

a wolf,"

ust as I can smell the pack on you. Northshore, by the pine and the w

the way a clerk

he advantage

ragged across the straw. "The Council sent me to this shore to find a man smuggling silver ore under a false manifest. I found him. I was making my report at

shed at my coat. Out on the lake, far off, the ice gave another long gro

ou to say t

es narrowed.

clerk, and a fine. They don't send a woman in a silver chain. So either you're lying about who you are, or the Cou

uld see the calculation move behind her eyes the way the

ouncil, and I was sent to this shore to execute a smuggler. Not to a

quiet around us. I could he

e going to d

eone decided to bury me alive in the cargo I was sent to inspect

er skin, and the skin around them was pale and cold. "The key is i

mall and iron, and it was cold enough to bite my fingers. I unlocked the chain and pulled it free, and she made a sound that was almost a gasp a

you," s

ttom of the boat. It clinked against the wood. "You said you were

to kill you is not the man who is sitting in this box. I am cold, I am tired, and someone in my

and the cold water. It carried her scent, close now, cedar and clean skin and apples, and

coffin. Her hand was on the str

ch for me. The cold between us had a sha

rned toward the north shore,

s coming,"

out from the pine line and across the ice, and then another howl answering it from

the coffin, or they had found the scent of the w

he first time since I opened

next time. I will be buried in a hole, and your name will be on the charg

with its lid hanging open, and the woman with the copper hair ri

came aga

ed up