Out of the Wilderness by Deb Vanasse

Author:Deb Vanasse [Vanasse, Deb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781940320007
Publisher: Running Fox Books via Indie Author Project
Published: 2013-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

10

Ever since Josh could remember, he’d thought of January as the longest month of the year. It was especially so at Willow Creek. For the few hours of daybreak, the sun hung distant and low, casting a hazy light stripped of warmth. Then each brief day stretched into an interminable night of unbroken darkness and quiet.

Temperatures dipped to thirty, then forty below, so even a brief trip to the outhouse made Josh’s face sting with cold. Other than the squeak of dry snow beneath his boots, the woods resounded in utter silence, as every other creature stayed burrowed against the elements.

Josh stoked the woodstove each hour or so during the cold spell, fighting back the frigid air that seeped through the planks of the floor and into the cabin. A thick layer of frost crawled up the panes of the windows, and the cabin seemed to shrink, its walls bearing down upon them. They went to bed edgy and tense and woke feeling the same after countless hours of fitful sleep.

“I hope Nathan’s doing all right in this cold,” Josh’s father worried. “We’d better go check on him.”

“You can if you want,” Josh snapped. “I’m not going out in this weather. He can take care of himself.”

His father stared out the window at the drifted snow. “Just so he doesn’t go and do something foolish, hiding out again where we can’t find him.”

“Now you’re sounding just like him.”

His dad turned, glaring. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Josh shrugged and looked away. He felt his lips twitch with the words. Crazy. You’re talking crazy, like Nathan. He bit his lower lip, holding back the thoughts that clamored for voice.

“There’s nothing wrong with Nathan,” his dad challenged.

“I didn’t say there was.” Josh forced his words to sound calm and reasoned. “I only said you sounded just like him, making big deals out of nothing. Even Nathan wouldn’t go off for no reason in this kind of weather.”

His dad looked as if he were about to respond, then turned back toward the window.

“And wherever Nathan went before, it worked out fine,” Josh reminded him. Nathan had returned happy from his time alone, his eyes bright with the excitement of whatever adventure he had enjoyed, though he would respond to none of his father’s prodding about where he’d been.

Josh had the odd feeling that Shannon, of all people, knew about Nathan’s hideout. The day after their trapping expedition, she had made a remark about following tracks on her own. But when Josh had pressed her for details about what kinds of tracks and where they had led, she refused to say any more about it. He would have chalked her silence up to her longing to protect an animal from his traps if it hadn’t been for the comments she’d made about the lynx. On the day the Donaldsons were to leave, Pete had been retelling the encounter for Josh’s father when Shannon added, “Nathan says some species of lynx are endangered.”

Both Josh and his father had shot her a look.

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