Read The Waterstone for Free Online Page B

caught, just for an instant, a glint of beady eyes.
    “Deermouse,” Nobono murmured. He barely moved his lips.
    Moving slowly, the Hunter reached behind his back, slipped an arrow from his quiver, and nocked it to the string of his bow. In one silent, fluid motion, he drew the bowstring back, took aim, and let fly. There was a whispered rush of air and a sharp cry. Tad winced.
    Nobono stood up, nocking a second arrow. “Be wary yet. Deermice are dangerous, wounded,” he said. “Behind me now.”
    He moved forward, soundlessly, and Tad followed. No matter how carefully he set his feet, they still made tiny crackling sounds. He wondered how Nobono did it.
    The deermouse was dying. It lay on its side, Nobono’s arrow buried deep in its chest. Its muzzle was dark with blood. As Tad watched, it twitched once, convulsively, and went limp. Its bright eyes glazed over and turned dull. Tad felt sick. Nobono reached down and gripped the haft of the arrow, then pulled it sharply out of the deermouse’s flesh. He bent to clean the stone point on a withered blade of grass.
    “Never leave your arrows,” he said. “A good arrow”— he reached back to pat his quiver affectionately —“a good arrow, he is a friend. Faithful like your greeny frogs, eh?”
    His teeth flashed at Tad, bright in the dimness. Then he pulled a knife from the leather sheath at his belt, knelt, and with a sharp downward slash cut off the deermouse’s front paw. Blood dripped sluggishly onto the dead leaves.
    Tad gasped.
    “It is the way of the Hunters,” Nobono said. He was scooping a shallow hole in the dusty forest floor. “It is the Honor of the Hunt. To prepare the weapons, to stalk, to take blood. And then, always a part of the kill to Great Rona. To show our gratitude.”
    He placed the bloody paw in the hole, covered it with earth, and tamped it down. Reverently, he drew a circle around the spot with the point of his knife, muttering soft words under his breath.
    Then he sprang to his feet, flashing his white grin again at the gaping Tad.
    “Now we skin the kill and prepare the meat.”
    In the following quarter hour, as he struggled to help Nobono, Tad became convinced that he could never be a Hunter. Nobono, with quick skillful cuts, skinned the mouse, sliced the meat of its haunches into slabs, and directed Tad to stack them on a fallen birch leaf.
    “We drag the meat home, eh? Easier than carrying it,” he explained. “Though this mouse, he has not much meat on his bones. It is the Dry. The eating is poor.”
    His arms were red to the elbows. Tad felt sicker than ever. It must have showed in his face, because Nobono paused in his cutting and slicing and sat back on his heels.
    “You do not like the Hunt, eh?”
    Tad felt guilty and awkward. He averted his eyes from the stripped remains of the mouse carcass.
    “It’s just different,” he said haltingly. “It’s not . . . I’m just not used to it, I guess.”
    “To eat is to kill,” Nobono said. “To survive is to spill blood, little Fisher. It is the way of the world. The fox kills the squirrel; the hawk kills the sparrow; the owl kills the mouse. Even you, you hunt your watery fish.”
    “But . . .” Tad stopped, confused. It wasn’t the same, he wanted to say. Fish were different. Not warm and furry like the deermouse. What Fishers did was
different.
More natural.
    Nobono bundled the mouse pelt into a tight roll and fastened a loop of twisted ropegrass to the stem of the meat-loaded leaf.
    “You see how you like the kill when it is roasted, eh?” He seized the ropegrass loop in both hands and jerked his chin back over his shoulder. “That way toward camp, little Fisher. You’ll feel better for some supper. And me, my stomach is beating against my backbone.”
    Roasted deermouse, Tad had to admit, was awfully good. They sat in a circle around the campfire, passing wooden plates and bowls from hand to hand. The Hunters ate with their fingers, piling slices of meat and