Bena shook her head. Despite the unmoving wall of her features, there was tension in her gaze.
“It’s abandoned. Looks like the old man who used to live here has been gone for some time, but there have been others.”
Westie slid off her saddle and tied Henry to the closest tree. Bena dismounted behind her. She was just as short as Isabelle, but Westie never thought of her that way. Bena was strong and sturdy, which made her seem bigger than she really was.
“I counted six different sets of horse tracks, and manure piles still warm nearby. It could be outlaws,” Bena said.
“Let’s make it quick then,” Westie said as she pushed through the dilapidated door of the cabin, which hung on by a desiccated leather hinge. Birds erupted from nests hidden in the rafters, bouncing around the room until they found escape through the holes in the roof. Westie walked into the middle of the room. Dust glittered in shafts of dingy light.
It was there, in the middle of the room, that the cannibals had invited her family to sup with them.
Westie remembered how delighted she’d been to see the family. The fire shed a yolky glow across their faces, giving their features the soft lines of dreams. There was a female toddler with a tangle of golden curls, a woman her mother’s age or maybe a bit younger, and a teenage boy. He had a greasy complexion and a deep voice that cracked when he spoke.
The woman smiled at Westie. She wore a tattered light-blue dress exactly like one a woman from the caravan wore. She had a long hooked nose and a bony face, and she wore her dark hair pulled back so tight that it made her brown eyes slant.
The man’s face was covered in hair. He looked strong. He was double her father’s weight, and nearly double his height as well. He didn’t give their names, nor did her father offer theirs.
“Come share our meal,” the woman had said. The sharp angles of her face didn’t match her friendly voice. “I’ve made plenty of stew. You must be famished.”
Westie’s mouth watered. The food smelled like home, like hugs and laughter and all the good things that came before the voyage west. It had been days since their last meal, which had been horse grain.
“The hunting must be good,” her father had said.
The bearded man seemed put off by small talk. Shadows from the firelight danced behind him. “The mountain provides,” he grumbled.
They sat on the floor in the middle of the main room, and Westie watched the woman deliver heaping ladles of stew into her wood bowl.
Her first bite was a taste of heaven. The tang of wild onions popped on her tongue, the potatoes were soft and gritty with the skins still attached, and pine nuts gave the stew a sweet crunch. There was plenty of meat. Some of the chunks were tough and stringy and others were mushy like liver or duck. She guessed it to be bear, or horse. It had an odd gamy flavor, fungal like a mushroom past its prime. She ate it anyway. Even Tripp ate some, the pink blush coming back into his cheeks.
Westie pushed the memory away and focused on the present. The cabin no longer held the scent of food. Instead it smelled musty and old. Her gaze shifted. There, in front of the fireplace, was where her family had died. That same familiar fear from her nightmares twisted her stomach.
Tins and jars of moldy food had been left behind by either the old man or those who’d sought shelter in the cabin since his departure. Westie kicked at a heap of rusted tins, looking for anything that might lead her in the right direction. She headed toward the only bedroom. When she stepped across the threshold, her boot fell through a plank of rotting wood.
Pain shot through her calf. She cried out as the jagged edges of broken boards ripped through her pant leg, dragging down her flesh. Bena and Alistair rushed to her side.
“Are you hurt?” Alistair asked. He took her by the arm, his lids peeled back around wide, frightened eyes.
Westie clung to the floorboards to hold her weight. She moved her foot around, feeling cold, empty space beneath. “I don’t think so. Just stuck.”
Bena grabbed her other arm and they pulled. Westie closed her eyes and crushed her teeth together as exposed pegs cut into her skin. Blood trickled from several spots on her leg, but they were just flesh wounds, not even deep enough for stitching.
She looked back at the hole where she’d fallen and saw a small speck of white through the gloom and spiderwebs. “There’s something in there,” she said.
Reaching into the dark hole, she moved her hand around. The earth below the floorboards was damp, and she tried not to think about spiders and other things with fangs whose homes she might’ve been destroying. Her fingers swept across something coarse, and she had to fight the urge to pull away. She grabbed the thing and pulled it from its hiding spot.
It was a scarf.
Twelve
All three of them stared down at the wisp of fabric in Westie’s trembling hand.
“This was my momma’s.”