Nothing Gold Can Stay

And then there was the blood.

It wasn’t all hers.

The bear had come out of nowhere, rising up out of the dense thicket of alders like a colossus, spreading his arms wide, claws extended, roaring out his rage and fear at her trespass. He’d been eating a snowshoe hare. He swiped at her with one taloned paw and sent her tumbling head over heels, until she crashed into the trunk of a birch tree. She was dizzy and disoriented, too stu

The bear growled and snarled and tore up a couple of alders. She heard him, but could not be stirred to move.

After a while his grumblings faded into the distance.

She’d been lying there waiting for him to come over and finish her off. She was even glad her flight was over. No one would ever know now what had happened to her, but she was too tired and too cold and too hungry to care.

When the bear left, it took her a while to believe it. Why hadn’t he finished off his kill? Had the smell of human startled and surprised him so violently that he was actually afraid of her; weak, starving, freezing, defenseless Rebecca Hanover? So afraid that he’d run off and left his meal behind?

She raised her head. The rabbit was still there, its body torn almost in two, red flesh gleaming between stained brown fur only begi

Her stomach growled.

Raw meat was harder to chew than cooked.

If you’re going to be lost in the Bush, Rebecca, she thought now, be lost in the early summer. Chances of finding food are better then, if you’re too squeamish to shoot anything. Mark had said that with a smile when they’d first-no, no, don’t think about Mark, or Mark’s smile, or the way he-

The wind roared overhead and there was a loud crash. She went totally still, not blinking, not breathing, straining to hear over the wind and the moan of the trees. It could have been a branch falling. That was it, a branch, breaking off and falling to the ground. She willed herself to relax, and discovered that her hands had thawed enough to feel the pushki blisters on her right arm. The thorns stung, too, the thorns she’d picked up when she stumbled into a patch of devil’s club. Tiny thorns, on the stems and the undersides of the leaves, so little she hadn’t noticed them, so little she could barely see them after they were embedded in her skin, so little they ought not to hurt as much as they did.

She burrowed down again, in search of some particle of warmth left over from the morning sun.

She should have taken her gun down to the creek that morning. What morning was that, exactly? There had been no clocks at the little cabin in the canyon, and no calendar. Days had passed, but maybe weeks. She didn’t know anymore.

One thing she did know. The man who had killed her husband and kidnapped and raped her repeatedly was still after her. Her escape had been an affront to his pride, and if she had any doubt of his determination to keep her forever, it had been banished by the sight of those wooden markers.

All Elaines. He had called her Elaine. All those Elaines. Twelve. My god, twelve of them. Twelve women before her. Had he kidnapped them all? Raped them all? Buried them all? Fashioned markers for them all? Why had no one noticed? Why had no one cared? There were mothers there, she was sure of it, daughters, nieces, aunts. Why had no one come looking for them? Where were their fathers, their mothers, their sisters and brothers? Where were their friends? Where were the police, and the state troopers, and the FBI? Where wasAmerica’s Most Wanted? Where wasCops? Where was60 goddamnMinutes?

She knew one more thing. Wounded, cold, hungry, huddled beneath a few branches and leaves, hundreds of miles from help, her own death one degree in temperature away, she knew she was luckier than anyone buried beneath those perfect wooden markers at the head of that perfect little canyon, a quick walk from the front door of that perfect little house.

Something rumbled in the pit of her belly. At first she thought it was a reaction to the rabbit. It took a moment to recognize it as anger, an emotion she had last felt aimed at Mark. She shied away from the memory at first, but it was such a tiny presence, barely a spark. She wrapped her arms around her middle and curled around it, creating a protective shield. The spark caught and grew, warming her.

If he doesn’t catch me.

If I don’t starve to death.

If I don’t die of exposure.

If I make it out of here.

If all those things, it will be because of you, Elaine.

The words ran through her mind again and again and at some point the “if” changed, faded, disappeared.

I won’t let him catch me.

I won’t starve to death.

I won’t die of exposure.

I will make it out of here.

I will beat him, Elaine.

I will beat him for you.

Here it was in the middle of the first fall storm, and his Elaine was right out in the middle of it. She wasn’t strong enough to brave the wind and the rain, and if his weather sense was not mistaken-and it hardly ever was-it would snow before morning. He bent his head against the storm and plodded patiently on.

She had to have water, and it had to be ru