She didn’t hold it the way he’d imagined; he’d thought there’d be a metallic sag to her march, the heft of the weapon obvious and uncomfortable in her arms. But in the flesh, in the ending of this afternoon, she appeared unburdened. The shotgun sat high and steady in her grip, and her strides spoke only of pride, concentration and—Ned imagined—vengeance.

~

That evening, after Ned had set his usual traps, he took a detour on his way back to the house. The image of Callie remained in his thoughts, vivid and unshakeable. Under the orange dusk he walked to the chicken coop and stopped at the patch Maggie had been inspecting that morning. On the grassless earth he set a trap, remembering his sister’s words, the look on her face. The twist of fire it had lit in him. He wondered how a hawk would be snared—if the bird would venture a talon first, or if it would thrust its sickle-beak forward, allowing the trap to crash through its tawny neck plumage to snap the hollow bones beneath. He went to sleep hot, sick with excitement and dread.

In the morning he resisted checking the coop trap first; he walked past it, rifle in hand, willing himself to hunt while hunting was optimal. Almost immediately he saw a rabbit grazing by a shallow creek that ran into the river. His bullet fetched it below the eye and flashed into its skull. A clean shot, an unmarred pelt: he thought it a good omen. But through the rest of the dawn he saw no more rabbits to aim at, and when he checked his traps they were all empty. He reset the triggered ones, shuffling them into more favourable positions on the grass. Only as he began walking home did he allow himself to visit the trap by the coop.

At first he thought it had failed. There was no dead bird, no pile of feathers shaken into the dirt. Yet as he got closer, he saw that the trap had been set off, and something else lay stuck in its jaws. Ned slowed. He tried to be silent, failed. A face whipped towards him.

The eyes sat above a long, heavily whiskered snout that ended in a pink nose. Small ears sat on the peak of the skull. The rest of the creature lay flat against the dirt, as if trying to diminish its appearance, although it couldn’t hide the size of its torso, longer and larger than that of a house cat. Its rich brown fur, shining in the dawn, was splashed all over with bright cream-coloured spots. A thick tail, as long as head and body combined, flowed from its hindquarters, carrying more of the spots. Its legs were short, each ending in a clutch of long pink toes and curved claws.