Juggling Fire by Joanne Bell Page B

my memory like an abscessed tooth until I get busy just to distract myself from the pain.
    Brooks snatches, growling, at his flank. His wound is still festering. Wolves must die of such infections all the time.
    “Daddy,” I whisper, just to hear a voice. “I learned how to juggle.”
    The sick part is that I can hear him answer after all these years. His breath brushes against my ears. His grin grows crooked before my eyes.
    “What for?” asks my dad.
    I stumble into my pack and start out again while the sun slides down toward another mountaintop. There’s no trail anymore; we’ve walked beyond it. Sometimes I follow game trails along the river. Always, they end in a tangle of fallen brush. At least there’ll be leftover food at our old cabin, and salt to soak Brooks’s cut. At least there’ll be a warm, clean spot for him to sleep beside the stove.
    I watch for blazes on the trees. There are always trees now. The tundra is windswept and beautiful and vast behind us. The gusts have blown from the north. Snow clouds sail across the sky.
    I’m on my way again, Brooks limping by my side.

10

In the Forest
    As we descend through the forest, the walking becomes slower as the undergrowth thickens, and at times white spruce trees laden with boughs lie crashed across our path.
    Brooks can plod for a few hours at a time but I always need to lift him over obstacles. When I hold him in my arms against my chest, I feel a surge of tenderness.
    I see no bear scat or tracks, but once I notice a rotting log that has been clawed apart by something massive. I can’t tell how long ago it happened. Brooks’s wound crusts and is torn open by a jutting branch so that blood bubbles and beads along its length.
    In the late afternoon I stretch out on some moss and sleep, my pack as my pillow. Brooks curls up, sheltered in the crook of my arm. When I wake, there is fresh blood like berry stains on the earth. I turn him gently in the slanting sunshine and notice pus seething beneath the surface.
    “You need to lie still, Brooks. And get more salt water on that cut.”
    Brooks whimpers. Holding his nose in one hand, I kiss it.
    The cabin is only a few miles away. I stir juice crystals into hot water and sip a while, trying to calm myself. I give Brooks most of my watery porridge and set out.
    Brooks moves like a marionette jerked slowly by its strings. He still doesn’t put any weight on the leg beneath his wound.
    “We’re not stopping until we’re home.” He needs to lie still until he’s healed. Brooks whines, pausing every few minutes to snatch with his mouth at his wound as we walk. I listen for the sound of branches cracking above the surge of water as I continue the tale.
    The princess freed herself from the dungeon but lost the prince in the confusion of the escape. In the light of day, she noticed a smear of blood across her shoulder where the prince had brushed against her. Unable to find him, she searched for the dragon whose cave blocked the entrance to the lake from which all true stories flow. She found the dragon’s prints followed by a trough where his tail had dragged behind. The prince’s footprints were almost obscured by those of the dragon. It was hard to track either one clearly because the ground where the dragon had passed was bare and scorched.
    And so the princess set out to slay the dragon. Fearful that the prince would not survive, she led her exhausted horse deeper and deeper into the heart of the forest. In a tangled thicket, the dragon lurked in a cave that burrowed far beneath the earth.
    Along its corridors the dragon had hoarded not only its treasures, but also the bones of those who had come upon the dragon’s lair.
    The moon had risen and the forest was bathed in its blue glow. Still the princess jumped at every cracking branch, and no birds sang.
    I snap Brooks onto his leash so he keeps up with me and continue hunting for a game trail in the tangled willows along the bank. From beside me, I