Chapters (14)
Whereas his two sisters were naturally shy and drew back at the least sign of danger, his urge to explore led him into more problems than his mother could countenance. By February she had chased him away. This was before she had mated again; her cub was still too young to manage by himself, and for all she knew, he might have perished before he had lost the scent of his old family.
He had not.
He had wandered south and seen many things. Fewer than sixteen hours ago, he had brought down a one-year-old roe deer in Nordmarka, beside the hill that bore his generic name. There was plenty of wild game in the forest here, and he intended to settle down. The urge to mate had started to trouble him, but something deep inside told him that must wait for another couple of months yet. The world was still too dark.
He hadn’t come across any bitches yet anyway.
That could wait.
Pedestrians were the only things that bothered him about his newly established territory. Even deep within the forest, where the tracks were narrowest, the paths criss-crossed the terrain and human beings used them constantly. Down here, beside the biggest track of them all, he had never ventured. He stood between the spruce trunks, a safe distance from the road, where he saw a car drive past. The engine noise made him draw back, but not far. He was a courageous lynx, and when it grew quiet, almost completely silent, he dared to move out again.
He spotted prey in the stream.
A human, he realized when he caught the scent on the light breeze from the west. No more of those noisy machines came along, and after a few minutes he padded quietly down to the stream bed, exactly where it disappeared into a concrete pipe beneath the road that bisected Maridalen lengthwise.
It smelled dead. The blood, however, still tasted fresh when the lynx lapped it up, just below the dead man’s hard skull. The carcase was lying on its stomach, with its face in the water. The scent of blood burned his nostrils, but most of all the rank smell of human being.
The lynx was still replete after the prey he had felled and eaten before daybreak. Besides, he preferred to kill his own meat.
Carcases were emergency rations.
He slurped down even more blood. Lingered for a few seconds in front of the dead human’s feet as he sniffed inquisitively at the peculiar sticks attached to each of them. The lynx snatched at one of these, but it was stuck fast and didn’t taste good. When a little wheel began to spin, even the most courageous of lynxes was startled.
The rain was still pouring down, swelling the stream.
The lynx withdrew into the forest at the top of the road.
He disappeared into the moss between the wet trees and never looked back.