Nodding, I gather the garbage and my medical kit quickly and stuff it all into the backpack before sliding my arms through the straps. I stand for the first time since finding the fox, test the stability of my legs, then offer him a hand up.
His palm is rough against mine, gripping firmly enough to use me for support while he gets his footing. “Thank you,” he says, loosening his hold on my hand, then shaking it. “I’m Max, by the way, and I will forever be in your debt, Lilah.”
My eyes open wider when he addresses me by name. “You know my name. You understood me while you were a fox?”
“Every word, yes.”
“That makes sense, given how calmly you accepted my approach. Though none of this should make sense,” I say, shaking my head at the impossibility of it all. Positioning myself at his side, I wrap my arm around his lower back. “Try putting your arm around my shoulders and leaning in; see if this’ll work for us to get you home.”
After following my directions, we take our first tentative step together. Then another. And another. They’re not speedy steps, but solid enough that we continue onward. Upward. For exactly how long, I don’t know without checking my phone, though my aching muscles are sure it’s been hours.
“What brought you to the mountain today?” he asks between labored breaths that indicate all this movement is painful and exhausting. As it would be for anyone in his circumstances.
“Let’s rest a few minutes and I’ll tell you my story.” I stop near a thick-trunked tree with rough bark but no visible sticky sap. Once he’s securely propped against it, I remove my backpack and dig through for a bottle of water and a protein bar, both of which I hand off. “These might help your energy level a bit. I should’ve given you those before we got moving.”
“Thank you.” He cracks the water and downs half the bottle in one shot, then rips into the bar and bites off half, swallowing it down after minimal chewing. “I haven’t had anything since the night before last.”
“That’s when you were injured?”
Nodding, he pops the remainder of the bar into his mouth, then chases it with the rest of the water. “Thank you,” he says when I take the garbage and tuck it into my backpack. “And yes. I was running in fox form, beyond the boundary, on my way home. Probably caught a bullet from someone firing a hunting rifle to scare wildlife from a campsite. Wrong place, wrong time.”
Everything about Max’s story makes me shiver. I haven’t ventured from my camp after dark, but still, a stray bullet fired into the woods could come from anywhere, go anywhere. It just as easily could have been me alone and dying on the ground. Nobody would have found me in time because I only gave my parents vague information about where I was going on this post-divorce trip.
When they eventually got worried that I hadn’t checked in, it’s not as if they could drive out here and look for me. They moved to my dad’s hometown in Spain after my wedding. Even if they informed the local authorities, the park rangers would only discover a clean, vacant campsite because I decided it wasn’t “wild” enough for my “find myself again” purposes. I didn’t even stop there. Just wandered deeper into the woods until I found a clearing just large enough for my single tent and tiny camp stove.
Just thinking about all the ways this trip could have gone very,verywrong makes me realize how unhinged I was after getting out of my marriage. No twenty-seven-year-old woman should be camping alone in the mountains of British Columbia.
Shaking off those thoughts, I focus my attention on my patient. “Let me know when you feel up to carrying on.”
“Ready as I’m going to be.” He pushes off from the tree when I step to his side, exhaling through the obvious pain of simply changing position. “Take my mind off the searing pain by telling me your story,” he says as we resume our careful upward momentum.
“Damn. Thought I might’ve gotten out of that.” The comment gets a chuckle out of him, as I hoped it might. “Okay, short version. I got married in college. He’s a massive asshole. In the years I was with him, I became a doormat. My divorce was finalized less than a week ago, and I decided to kick-start my new independence and fresh start in life with a solo camping trip here. Luckily for you, I’m a better veterinary technician than I am big-life-decision maker.”
“Since your decision saved my life, I’m inclined to think it was a good one.”
“True. I am glad I was here to do that,” I say, turning my head to smile at him.
He returns the gesture, though his expression remains primarily serious. “Where I’m from, it’s widely accepted that fate has a hand in bringing people to…this area.”
I snort a laugh. “Fate must have busy hands because this is a booming tourist destination year-round.”
“I wasn’t talking about the town at the bottom of the mountain or its local attractions. When I said specific area, I meant the town where I live,” he says, pointing in the direction we’re heading—upward. “Which you will not find on any map.”
Swallowing takes effort, and not because I’m winded from climbing or from the changing altitude. Fear could be causing the sudden tightness and weird tingly sensation skittering through me. Itshouldbe fear because I have no idea what I’m heading toward. But it’s not fear. It’s…something else. Something I can’t pin down or label.
“It’s not much farther to the boundary,” he says, his calm voice cutting through my unsettled thoughts.
“Boundary as in, your property line? Will someone be there to take over for me? Miraculous as it is that you’re walking right now, I don’t think you’ll make it far if you have to put your full weight on that leg.” Focusing on my responsibilities as a care provider doesn’t calm my nerves the way it usually does.
Max’s silence makes the growing anxiety worse.
For too many seconds, only the sounds of our breathing and nature fill the air.
“I can help you all the way home if you need me to,” I say, hoping it’ll prompt a response from my patient.
He doesn’t accept my offer. Doesn’t speak a single word. Doesn’t look at me.
“Max, I’m so far from my camp, I’m not sure how I’ll find my way back, and I’m blindly trusting a strange man who’s alsoa fox, which I’m still not sure is actually possible, even though I saw it with my own eyes. My body has a weird buzzy sensationthat I’m sure is my nervous system kicking into fight-or-flight mode, and if I don’t get some solid information, flight might win, even though I don’t want to be an asshole and leave you here to drag yourself the rest of the way home.”
