Rose in a Storm Read Online Free PDF Page A

range.
    Now the smell was becoming clearer. It was the scent of coyote, sharp, musty, mixed with blood, fur, saliva, mud, grass, and brush—all of which flashed through her mind as images when she scented them. From the smell, she could tell the coyote was far off now and deep in the woods.
    But it had come close, right across the road.

THREE
    R OSE KNEW—THOUGH S AM DID NOT—THAT THERE WAS A coyote den across the road in the woods, practically in the shadow of the farmhouse.
    She ran down to the road beside the farmhouse. She never stopped to look for cars or trucks, which only registered when she heard their sound. When they did get her attention, she herded or chased, then tried to run them off.
    Sam was always excited and unhappy when she was near the road, yelling at her to come back, or to stop when she chased after cars and trucks. She did not understand his alarm. Rose was attuned to Sam, and obeyed almost all of his commands instantly, but this was one command she often disregarded. Her instincts overwhelmed her experience, even her judgment.
    It was about midday now, and it began to snow again. Rose sensed the heavy flakes of snow before they landed on her—she could hear them falling, far up in the clouds—and began to settle on the ground. Unlike the light fine snow of the night before, these flakes were thick, wet, and they landed with a softhiss. Rose heard them as quiet thuds, and they fell more rapidly than any she had ever seen. They began to stick to the path, and the wind began to rise, making the flakes swirl. When she had first crossed the road, she could see far down the path, but now, just a minute later, she couldn’t see more than a few hundred yards.
    She was headed down past the meadow, through the driving snow, into the trees.
    R UNNING THROUGH THE WOODS , Rose heard raccoons and cows, and far away the barking of dogs. She also heard the wind whipping through trees, the sounds of the snow falling, the skittering of animals beneath the surface of the ground.
    She heard bugs, worms, bats sighing in trees—rabbits asleep, termites gnawing, plants shrinking and changing. And beyond that—cars, trucks far off, tractors, airplanes. As she ran, she was constantly sifting and sorting the sounds, organizing them, figuring out which were close, which far, what was work, what wasn’t, what mattered, what didn’t. She saw all that she needed to see, little else.
    The forest was a pinwheel to her, spinning sounds and sights and smells, whirling things that stimulated her. They were stories, they brought out memories, excitement, opened the vast and ancient library in her mind.
    When Rose ran through the woods, often early in the morning or late at night, when Sam was asleep or busy, it was a dazzling, exciting world to her. At those times she felt alive, powerful, at peace, the colors, cries, and smells pouring through and into her, absorbing her. Rose remembered, stored, sorted. She could recall any of them in an instant, and togetherthey made the most beautiful and intense pictures, vivid image streams of life.
    Rose did not see only leaves and trees and bushes—although she saw those, too—but also too many other tales to count. She saw bright and dark colors, the glare of the sun and the cool light of the moon, and she heard the sounds of paws and hooves, the flapping of wings, the burrowing of moles and mice and chipmunks and the slithering of frogs and snakes. She heard cries, squeaks, yips, the sounds of birth, death, panic, flight, the sounds of leaves growing, dying, decaying, leaving their mark, sometimes individually, sometimes as an unremarkable mass.
    R OSE WAS SEEKING the coyote, the leader of the coyotes, and she knew that he was seeking her as well. He would have known of her presence the second she crossed into the woods, and he would either be waiting or not.
    An image of their first meeting flashed before Rose. It had happened when she was younger, confident in her work and