Lane Talbot

He stood the bike and removed his helmet. He should have taken his vest off earlier. It was a mistake to show it to the police, even if one of them already knew he was on his way. He drew it off his shoulders and rolled it into a saddlebag beside disassembled pistol components hidden in a travel toolkit.

Later, he and I sat ahorse, alone, watching a family of falcons swoop down upon a family of field mice and he said to me or to himself or to both of us, very quietly, very severely, “We’re cursed.”

“But who put the knife in my hand? Who put the knife in my hand, Marta? Who told me to kill him?”

All the watchful eyes seemed crazed and half-sunk in shadows—like a city of refugees, survivors that had claimed some fossilized river town. The city that had once looked totally abandoned, now actually seemed full of secret people.

“Please. You have to find us.” The car was half-buried in the snowbluff, the engine run out to broke, and a circle of wild men stood out there in the darkness, just beyond the reach of the headlights.

“Dump his body and get in the driver’s seat. We have to go right now, lady.”

“You know those headlines you sometimes read? ‘Prize-winning Scholar Found Wandering in Traffic’. Do you ever wonder how that happens? This is how that happens.”

The old man wrestles like an Olympian. Every knuckle, elbow and dig of his chin is spring-loaded and tough tough tough. He’s a mean sumbitch.

Treesplitter sees that his sons neither hear nor understand him, so he waves his whipping torch and they all spread out to search the ice caves.

Ben stood and wielded the shards like gruesome and ancient knives.