The Find
Through a gap in the barn wall a coyote’s amber eye tracks me. The feral gaze clashes with the smell of old hay and dust, the wild peering into the mundane. Marking the creature’s presence, I prowl across creaking boards to the nearly skeletonized buck and a fresher, though rapidly desiccating, wolf laying in the dusty straw. My gaze lingers on the buck’s antlers a moment, but there is no pull there. The rack I found three nights ago is more impressive, a full four points larger. So instead, I kneel by the wolf carcass.
I’m not certain whether the fetid stench of it enticed the coyote, or if it came to bear witness to my desecration of one of its cousins, but there is comfort in either explanation. I welcome the prospect of a confederate, another circling Scavenger, while at the same time the delicious shame in me embraces the creature’s judgement.
Regardless, it’s nice to have company as I pull open the wolf’s stiff jaws. I wonder if the creature whose remains I hold in my hands crawled into the abandoned barn with its final kill because it sensed the end of its life, just as the call of the next phase of mine drew me to it.
There is a period in one’s life when one becomes a Scavenger. When I felt the urge, I knew my time had come. The need to sniff out that unmistakable scent. The itch in my fingers to wrench and pry. The restlessness in my feet to go, go now, to find. A degrading, slinking chapter to be sure, but it’s foolish to try denying life its phases. One must go through, not around.
I have carved out my place as Scavenger, with Find after Find serving as tribute to my success. But inside I sense there is more. I hunger for it, each Find bringing me closer to the culmination of some as yet unrealized potential.
I examine the double arcs of yellowed teeth before me. They served their previous owner well, still clinging loyally to their sockets.
Yes, the urge says. These will do.
A grin cracks open my face. Seeking camaraderie in the thrill of the Find, I glance up at where the coyote waits. We lock eyes. It shifts, agitated at the challenge in my stare, but does not relent. A spark of familiarity. This was the one that beat me to the fox carcass and ruined the pelt before I could collect it.
I pull my lips back, menacing it with a snarl. Despite my blunt and inadequate teeth, it shrinks back. Equally matched as we might have been at the fox, it senses now that I hover on the cusp of something more.
Holding its gaze, I locate the first of the wolf’s incisors. I flex my fingers against the gristle that still holds the tooth in the socket. The gums that once anchored the creature’s most valuable tools now lie dry and discoloured beneath my fingertips. After an initial resistance to my pull, there’s a delectable yielding and the tooth dislodges. I scrape off the remnants of desiccated flesh that came with it, then revel in its smoothness as I roll the enamel across my fingertips.
More.
I plunder—gripping, prying, pulling—until forty-two hollow sockets yawn back at me. My palms tingle as I roll my spoils between them and I rejoice at the clack, clack, clack they make.
After this moment of triumph, I look to my voyeur. The amber eye still stares, waiting. I can’t imagine that this husk of a body before me would be appetizing, but I’m not one to judge. Perhaps it seeks to pay respects to its fallen brethren. Whatever its reason for lingering, if its Find is in my leftovers, it is welcome to them.
I rise, relinquishing the corpse. The coyote does not move. Like all good Scavengers, it will wait until I am gone, until it can have its own time alone with the Find. Patience is a Scavenger’s greatest tool.
I leave the abandoned barn. My restless feet carry me across fallow fields, beneath the shadow of branches, and through snarling underbrush. In time, I reach the invisible path I have tread dozens of times before. If there is such a thing as home, my feet recognize the feel of returning to it. I quicken my pace over the familiar ground until a rock face comes into view. It’s a matter of only moments before I locate the crack in it that leads deeper in.
I have returned many times before, but today, something has shifted. The anticipation that the urge has honed now presses sharp beneath my breastbone. It is enough, it seems to whisper, this Find fulfilling some final drive. I shiver with the prospect of completion as I squeeze through the opening in the rock and into the hollow space behind. The thick, musty odour of all my previous Finds envelops me, calling to me in a way it never has before.
I scatter my clattering new additions beside a bundle of black feathers and sinew. Then I slowly caress my Finds—tooth, claw, pelt, antler, bone.
Before long, I feel it—a new urge scratches beneath the surface of this temporary satisfaction. On its heels, a burning itch races across my gums. Snatching up a newly acquired fang, I plunge my fingers into my mouth. I pull. My loosening sockets release the dull incisor in a torrent of blood, filling my throat with a sweet, coppery taste. The rest of my pitiful teeth rattle in my jaw as I shove the yellowed wolf’s tooth into the socket already reforming to welcome it.
The itch crawls across my skin, reaching every part of me. A new phase has begun. The time of Scavenger is over. I shut my eyes and grasp blindly for teeth and fur and bone and all of my hard-earned Finds. I will build myself, bit by bit, from Scavenger, finally, into Hunter.
Based in the national capital of Canada, K.M. Greyburn (they/them) is a writer, dog lover, and tea enthusiast. You can find their short fiction featured in the anthology More Fey (forthcoming, Lethe Press). They can be found on Instagram as @K.M.Greyburn.
