30 Day Image Prompt Contest - CLOSED

The Hunter:

The tracks laid out in front of him were fresh, maybe an hour or two old. They were still wet from the rain, but the temperature in the forest had already reached the level of suffocating. The trees grew close enough together that what sunlight reached below the branches would be trapped. He was damp with sweat and had already taken off his shirt as it was clinging to him uncomfortably and he needed to be able to move fast if they were attacked by a predator. He wished that he could take off more, but there was a lady present. Well, make that a female. He was still civilized enough to treat her like a lady, even if she was wearing men’s clothing and had cut her hair to be as short as any other boy’s in the village. She called it sensible. He called it improper. 

She was bent over now, touching the tracks. Placing a palm in the muck, her small hand was nearly swallowed by the sheer size of the indentation in the earth. She glanced up at him through short bangs that still managed to get into her strange golden eyes. The villagers had told him that this odd girl would lead him to the monster that he sought, if the stories did not deter him from such a foolish venture.  Now that he had paid for her guidance and lost himself in the woods with her, he wasn’t so certain that he should have laughed at their fear. They had thought him mad to infer from their stories that the creature was merely a large tiger, made even more massive by good breeding and its healthy supply of village livestock. They thought it some god-creature in cat form, claiming that it had a conscious, and were leaving it alone out of respect. The last story told, the girl’s story, had been different from the rest, as her father had indeed gone hunting, taking her three brothers with him—not one of them had returned.  

“Put your hand here Professor Greene. Tell me what you notice.” Her voice was rough, but soft in volume and he had to bend forward to hear her.

She pointed at the tracks and indicated that he should do as she had done.
With some hesitation, he bent down on one knee next to her, his personal space diminishing immensely as they bumped shoulders. Her shirt stuck to the perspiration on his arm as he tried to pull away. How could she stand the long sleeves? She sat back a bit from him then, realizing that she must have been too close, he supposed, but they said nothing to each other as he carefully stuck his hand in the print that she had stuck her own in. He easily covered her mark, but his was still half the size of the monster’s paw.

“Well?”

“It’s warm.” He looked up in time to see what he thought was an amused smirk sneak across her face before it slid back off. The creature had been there very recently. Or was still there, just a bit beyond where they were standing. 

“We are getting closer to the monster’s cave.” He didn’t miss the way she used the word monster, as if the word were a bad taste in her mouth. Given her history with the creature it was an odd reaction.

They walked on a bit further, following the trail, but when it simply disappeared in the middle of the path, she kept right on going. He would have stopped, but she was moving faster, as if she would have broken into a run if she thought it safe. They traveled several more yards before a sound that made his heart skip a beat ripped through the more neutral sound of birds and bugs and creeping things. With the intrusion of the monster’s voice, for surely that was the most unnatural of yowls he’d ever heard, the forest went silent. Everything but him seemed to be holding its breath. All he could hear was the sound of the blood pumping through his body. He jumped as a hand touched his arm and he scowled at his guide. She merely kept her muddy hand on him as she pointed at something off the beaten path that earlier travelers had cut for them. When he seemed unable to move, she tried to pull him forward with her, gently, and then more urgently. 

“Come!”

In the trees behind them he heard the snap of twigs and realized why they were going off the path. It would cover them so that they were at least not offering themselves up on a silver platter. He tried to pull his gun from its sheath, but she moved her hand over it and shook her head.

“There are other monsters here than the one you seek. All we may do now is hide and hope that it passes us by.”

He allowed her to lead him off the trail then and they made their way over upraised tree roots and low hanging branches that pulled at them as they passed, as if they were trying to hold them in place. For a while it seemed like she wasn’t headed anywhere particular, and then they were walking towards what looked to be a massive black rock sitting out of place in the trees. She ran forward and seemed to go around the other side but when he  reached it, he saw that she couldn’t have as the land suddenly dropped off. It was as if she had disappeared, but as he walked back around to the front, he realized that there was a crack in the rock big enough to step through. It was a tight squeeze for his tall muscled frame, but she had slipped through as if she were a spirit of the wood. The further in he went, the darker it got, until he could no longer do anything but feel his way forward. At one point he had to stop and she had reached out a hand to lead him forward. When they finally stopped moving, she guided him to a sitting position. It was then that he noticed her eyes were glowing like lanterns in the dark. It was the only thing that he could see. 

“Do not be afraid of me hunter. If I meant you harm I would have abandoned you when the tracks ended. Your monster was there in the trees and it let us pass. It was hiding from something much worse than a man with a gun. The thing you heard is not of this world and I am sorry that I brought you here.”

He didn’t say anything because he didn’t trust himself to speak. She might not forgive his rudeness and certainly would not let him get off a shot. With proof of the unnatural staring him in the face, it was harder to deny what he had spent his whole adult life disproving. The hand on his arm seemed clammy, as if she too were afraid. They sat silently for what seemed like hours, their shoulders touching but neither of them pulling away. It was a bit cooler inside the rock, but he still found himself drifting off with his head on her shoulder. 
When the hunter began to snore the young tracker slipped out from underneath him and gently laid him on his side. She stood up then and moved back to the crevice in the rock as quickly and quietly as she could, slipping out into a world too bright for her eyes. She waited until her night vision cleared before trekking forward. It would do no good to run into another monster as soon as she had  abandoned another.  


I'm not sure where I came up with this, but I think I might use it for my April Nano story.