Ivy

Huntress

I didn’t know much about hunting, although it was a popular enough sport I knew some things. Blaze orange, RealTree camo, scent blockers, deer blinds, bait piles—Home Depot sold some of that, and I picked up on some conversations in the breakroom. Deer were popular to hunt, either for meat or for trophies. There was all sorts of tech and sometimes I wondered if that had taken some of the sport out of the sport.

Ivy didn’t go for anything fancy, which I should have expected. She had a few rifles and shotguns in her gun safe; the one she picked looked for all the world like an overgrown Red Ryder BB gun. It wasn’t decked down with accessories, either—a simple bolt-action rifle with iron sights, small caliber for small prey.

That wasn’t the extent of our hunting gear. She also outfitted herself with a belt-knife, which strapped around her thigh, and a small wicker basket with a shoulder strap.

I didn’t get a gun, which was probably for the best. All I could have contributed with a rifle was air-holes in leaves. As a result, I got two baskets, and—although she didn’t say it—the duty of pack mule.

As long as we were in her backyard, around the new foundations for her deck or on the path towards her outhouse, we were still in civilization, still in the present. When she stepped into the woods and I followed, it was like going back hundreds or maybe thousands of years. Maybe tens of thousands—countless generations of my ancestors and hers too had made that journey from their homes and into the woods in search of prey, in search of sustenance for their next meal. The weapons had changed; Ivy wasn’t such a traditionalist that she wanted a wooden spear with a knapped point, but she also wasn’t willing to go full modern with a semi-automatic laser-aimed carbon fiber shoulder cannon.

I’d seen a muzzle-loader in her collection of firearms. Was for that when she wanted a challenge?

Who was I kidding? I had an idea when she wanted a challenge she went out into the woods with only her knife and whatever she could catch with that.

All that fancy gear that the sporting goods stores sold, and yet here the two of us were, her as naked as the day she was born, and me only wearing shoes.

Unless she was overconfident, that was all she needed. I thought I knew her well enough by now to know she wasn’t bragging; she was going to do what she said she was going to do.

Maybe fancy gear wasn’t what made a good hunter.

“We want to be as quiet as we can,” Ivy instructed. “Can’t do much about scent, we’ll lose some prey that way. If we find a good spot we might want to hunker down and let them come to us . . . you see any squirrels in the trees that are close, say fifty yards, let me know. Otherwise, stay quiet unless I speak to you first.”

“I can be quiet.”

“Sure you can.” She wrinkled her nose. “There’s quiet, and then there’s woods quiet.” With that, she turned tail and headed into the trees.

I could be quiet, I was sure of it. Not speaking, that was easy enough. Watching where I stepped—avoid branches or things that might rustle underfoot. I’d seen movies, I knew how it was done. And that was a skill that did translate, surely. Simple things to avoid, as long as I kept my head down and didn’t get distracted by the huntress in search of prey.

•••

It turned out some leaves were crunchier than I thought. Pebbles and small rocks could also be noisy. Ivy didn’t shout at me when I made noise; she didn’t have to. I saw her ears twitch, and I could imagine the disapproving frown. Maybe an eye-roll when I stepped into a particularly noisy batch of dry leaves that she’d completely avoided. If I was smart, I’d walk where she walked.

It seemed like my shoes were louder than her hooves, which struck me as odd. Hooves were hard and unyielding, and they were plenty loud in the house and in the home improvement store, yet here in the woods, on dirt and underbrush . . . was it her skill as a huntress that let it move quietly, or was it something else?

I’d given her hooves a casual look and I’d touched them; she’d explained how much dexterity they had, but I hadn’t really paid attention to how they worked when she was just walking—every time I focused on a part of her I made new discoveries, and Ivy had all sorts of interesting anatomy to discover. Fun parts and interesting parts.

How much experience did she have with human partners? I couldn’t have been the first. As much as I wanted to fantasize that I was the one that she chose to show her how much better a human could be than a minotaur bull, I’d touched her dildo and looked at it and knew that I couldn’t measure up in terms of length or girth, not if that was a realistic representation anyway.

A cow farmer or a veterinarian would know, but I didn’t. How accurate was that thing, at least as it related to a real cow cock? If that was even comparable; maybe it was more a point of academic interest.

Did she know? Had she checked out a bull just to find out?

Were there cockologists and cuntologists who studied reproductive organs in various animal species? How did they deal with minotaurs? In my limited experience—one—it was the same enough. Not that I was the expert I wanted to be.

Thinking too much about her pussy was a good way to wind up crashing into a tree, so I focused back on her hooves. From behind, they were hard to see; the feathering on her legs largely obscured them, but I could see as she stepped on a root that the two sides would flex in relation to each other. Not as much movement as a human foot got, since there were only two parts, but it was more than other hooved creatures had.

Feet flexed, too, that was one advantage of being a primate. Were they better than hooves?

What if shoes hadn’t been invented? I tried to imagine following the trail barefoot, how it would feel to me. The soft parts might not be so bad, but all the roots and other obstacles in the trail would be a real test.

In time, I supposed that I’d learn where it was okay to step and where it wasn’t, and I’d also learn what hurt my feet and what didn’t. Maybe I’d wind up as quiet as she was. The movies made it look easy, but every single leaf or twig was an opportunity for noise, and a smart squirrel would be paying attention to that, would dash back into his tree to hide lest he be found by a predator, by a minotaur with a gun.

And a clumsy city boy with baskets.

•••

Cliched though it was, as we made our way through the woods, time lost meaning. We’d been following a vague path for any amount of time, and might continue to do so forever. While I intellectually knew that we’d be back at the cabin by nightfall—or at least hoped that was the case; Ivy might have an unfounded expectation of human night vision—I wasn’t wearing a watch and she wasn’t either.

Time was a human construct anyway.

I’d at least grown used to the pace and started to learn to be less clumsy about where my feet fell, and I’d also started to wonder just how far out prime hunting ground was, when Ivy suddenly stopped by a thicket bursting with raspberries. “We ought to pick some, if you like raspberries.”

“We can talk now?”

Ivy nodded. “Best that we do, just in case there’s a bear snuffling around in search of food.”

“A . . . bear?”

“Could be, I’ve seen them. If there is one and he hears us, he’ll want to avoid us. If he doesn’t, we might surprise him and he might want to fight and I doubt I could take a bear.”

I leaned down and started picking berries, half-expecting a bear snout to poke through the underbrush. Surely she was joking; bears didn’t live this far south, did they? “If it comes to that, you can run faster than I can, right?”

She paused from berry-picking to eye me up and down. “Probably.”

“Then you haven’t got a thing to worry about.”

“You’re right.” Ivy grinned. “I would come back to avenge you, with a bigger gun.”

“I appreciate that.” I grabbed some more raspberries off the bush and then jerked my arm back—I hadn’t been paying the thorns as much attention as I should have.

“We should only take as many as we’re going to eat. Leave the rest for the animals. Humans are really wasteful with food.”

“You have no idea. Look in the dumpster behind a grocery store, sometime.”

“Why don’t they just give away the food they can’t sell? If it’s not spoiled?”

“A lot of people ask that question, and I don’t have an answer.” My basket was about a third of the way full. “That enough, do you think?”

“Yeah, whatever we don’t eat for dessert we can eat for breakfast tomorrow. Or lunch.” She plucked one last raspberry off the vine and popped it in her mouth. “Can you be quieter as we continue?”

I crossed my arms. “Look, in the woods, you’re in your element. You should try going into a china shop sometime, see what happens.”

“Don’t think I haven’t heard that joke before.”

My face instantly started burning. “I’m sorry, it was funnier in my head. I didn’t mean to imply that you were clumsy.”

“Made it all the way through your store without knocking anything down, although there was this one dude there a couple weeks ago, I wanted to knock him down. Started saying the most offensive shit you could imagine, couldn’t even follow what he was going on about. Wish he’d had the balls to follow me outside. I’d even let him have the first couple punches so I wouldn't feel bad for what happened next.”

“I—”

I didn’t even get to finish my thought before she whipped the rifle off her shoulder and for a heart-stopping instant I thought she was actually going to shoot me for making a joke in poor taste, but she spun away a quarter turn, tracking something above. I didn’t need her to tell me that now was a good time to stop talking and stand perfectly still and I hardly even flinched as the gun barked. Even through the ringing in my ears, I heard something plummet through branches and drop on the ground.

One thing was for sure, I was never going to even consider a thought of her being clumsy; drawing, aiming, and shooting had been as smooth as a ballet.

“Just improved the gene pool for squirrels. By Buchis, he was dumb. He was even downwind of us, he should have known better.”

“I want you to know that I just about shit myself there. I thought you were going to shoot me.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because I’m an idiot who said something I shouldn’t have?”

Ivy shrugged. “I’ve got other ways to punish you for that.”

“Do any of them involve that dildo?”

“They might. You’ll have to wait and find out. Maybe I’ll forget by the time we get back to the cabin. Especially if you find that squirrel before I do.”

That might have been more of a threat than she’d intended—I’d seen Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and knew full well what a dildo that size could do to a man.

I certainly wasn’t going to ask her if she knew of any pig farms.

•••

I didn’t find it before she did, but I came close. Given that I was handicapped by my inexperience and hadn’t even seen where it had fallen, I thought I’d done reasonably well; I was only one bush away from the carcass when she found it.

The squirrel might not have been smart, but it had provided one bit of comedy at the end of its life; it had landed in a burdock bush that was just bristling with burrs.

Ivy wasn’t willing to let her prize go. She reached in, but it was just out of arm’s length.

“Well.” She looked over at me. “You any good at gutting a squirrel?”

“Nope.” I had longer arms and maybe I could have grabbed it—I was moving towards the bush when she stepped into the plant and fetched the squirrel out, holding it by its tail.

“Got an idea that blood isn’t really something you’re comfortable with.”

“Seeing it won’t make me faint, if that’s what you’re asking. But I’m not overly interested in how the sausage is made.”

Ivy nodded. “Fair enough. You can distract yourself with de-burring while I clean the squirrel.”

•••

I’d picked burrs off my clothes a time or two and foolishly thought it would be the same to get them out of her fur.

In hindsight, burrs were designed to stick to fur, and to stick well. The first one I plucked off her leg came off easily enough, lulling me into a false sense of security. The second got more stuck as I tugged at it, sinking even deeper into her coat.

I didn’t want to do anything drastic while she had a knife in her hand, so I contemplated my next move until she set the knife down. Unfortunately, that meant I saw as she stuck her fingers under the skin and started pulling it off the flesh.

I focused back on the burr, which clearly needed to come out the way it had gone in. I was smarter than a plant, and after one more false start, managed to get it loose.

Burrs stuck to animals and people so they’d get carried somewhere else and not compete with the mother plant . . . I got my revenge by tossing the burr back in the bush it had come from, like a jobless college student returning home.

She’d worked the skin off the back half of the squirrel by the time I moved to the next burr, this one well up her thigh. One leg, then the other, back then front, that was the best approach. I’d learned from the last, and examined where it was sticking before attempting removal. Twist it up, towards her butt, and it came out, move on to the next one.

By the time I’d gotten to her other leg, she’d beheaded the squirrel. This one went quicker, and I nearly moved around front before I remembered her tail, which had also picked up a few burrs at the end.

Her tail.

The words were easy enough to think but the very concept set gears grinding in my mind. It was there, it was a thing that she had, and it flitted ind and out of my awareness—depending on where I was focused.

Plenty of her wasn’t human, even if I only focused on things above the waist. Ears and horns, those had warranted some close scrutiny, but her tail hadn’t, not yet.

I’d thought about it, wondered about it, considered how I’d approach it, and now here it was, whether I was ready or not.

Surely she could pull the burrs out of her own tail if she wanted to, but then she could have pulled the burrs from everywhere else, too. I wasn’t needed, and was this a punishment for being a bad hunter or a reward for being a better hunter than I could have been?

Did it matter?

Most of her tail was rope-like, covered in short fur and as I grasped it in my hands I could feel the bones inside, just barely covered in flesh. I could feel her heartbeat, pulsing down—it was faint, but unmistakable.

Midway, a burr, it hadn’t managed to grab on all that well. A pinch, and then it was gone; I fed her tail through my hands like a rope even if it was nothing like a rope, and then I was at the tufts of hair at the end, coarser and thicker than anything else.

For a moment, I wondered about minotauress beauty standards—was a coarse tail tuft good or bad? Could it be conditioned? And that opened a whole Pandora’s box of other thoughts, not the least of which was whether she’d be considered attractive as minotaurs went.

I wasn’t a minotaur, so it was nothing more than an intellectual exercise. Sure, I could ask, and maybe she’d tell me . . . or maybe she’d gore me and leave me for dead out here in the woods.

Attractive or not, her tail-tuft was a burr magnet, containing three in a space which could be grasped in one hand. One had just caught her and was removed easily enough; the other two had gotten a chance to burrow in and get tangled, making them more of a challenge.

Added with the fact that her tail was highly mobile and clearly didn’t like being restrained. There was no doubt in my mind if I touched or squeezed somewhere I shouldn’t I’d know right away.

Were there de-burring combs?

How much fur-grooming did minotauresses do anyway?

I dug my fingers in, feeling around the edge of the burr, not unlike a bomb squad technician carefully defusing an IED. The more I touched it, the more it dug in, and I had to work at it to get it free, finally chucking it into the undergrowth before moving on to the second. That one was almost at the tip, seemingly defying logic with its apparently tenuous grasp, but once I got my hands on it, I found out just how well it was holding on.

Working it down the hair was the way to go, and it finally released its grasp and was gone, and I held her tail for a moment longer, wondering at the feel, before I finally released it.

•••

I was still working on de-burring when she finished cleaning the squirrel, when she dumped the good meat in her basket and left the rest on the rock she’d used to clean it, a gift for some scavenger who came along with a taste for organ meat or at least a free meal.

There was something almost primal, maybe a species-memory of picking parasites off a partner. Not the sexiest of thoughts, but it was at least satisfying as I got the last one on her thigh and then brushed my hand between her legs while groping for the last.

“Might as well ignore the rest, I’ll pick up a few more anyway.” She stood up, and the ones on her lower legs were ground in, well and truly stuck. “You can get them later.”

I nodded. “Quiet time again?”

“Can’t expect the next squirrel to be as dumb as this one was.”

•••

Going through the woods was one thing. I was getting decent at it; I could go dozens of steps before I saw her ears twitch. Crossing water was unexpected, and I was so focused on following her that I took one step in before I stopped. It was already too late for that shoe; I could already feel the water gushing in as I pulled my foot back and set it on dryer ground.

I did manage to remember that I was supposed to be silent, and contemplated the obstacle as she forged ahead, only stopping when she didn’t hear me floundering along behind her.

De-burring might have gotten me back in her good graces, and I wasn’t willing to risk it by speaking. I pointed to my shoes instead, lifting the one that was soaked and dripping.

Ivy frowned, and I was struck with an epiphany: this difficulty had never occurred to her. Which meant that she’d never taken anyone out hunting with her before; I was her first in that regard.

Or, a moment later, I realized that maybe she had, but they were better-prepared for a trek through the woods than I was.

What I did next might influence everything, an everything that was beyond my imagination, a future I could not know. She’d understand if I took my shoes off or if I refused to wade through a swamp, surely she would.

Anybody would.

Civilization was dry shoes.

No sane person would get their shoes wet because they would take hours or days to dry, to say nothing of the unpleasant feeling of wet socks and cold feet, this was a bridge too far, this was—

It felt like I was at a gateway as I took a tentative step forward, my foot squelching into the mud. I’d thought that my shoe was already soaked but it turned out it could still take on water. I wasn’t meant for this, I wasn’t prepared for this, but I realized that I’d already jumped in the rabbit hole when I quit my job in favor of her and maybe instead of having second thoughts I might as well find out just how deep it went. Wet feet were a minimal price to pay.

•••

As we got deeper into the woods, the trail got . . . less.

Back when I was in Boy Scouts, I’d done my share of hikes at camps and national forests, always on trails that were made for people. Some of them were well-groomed and easy; others were rougher. Bare dirt instead of gravel, for example.

These weren’t trails made for humans, nor were they human-made trails. We were following actual game trails as we got deeper into the woods. Deer, I figured—my tracking abilities were almost non-existent. I knew that deer had cloven hooves, but then so did Ivy.

I’d never seen a deer up close that wasn’t in motion, so I didn’t have a good size reference for them. They were smaller than horses, I knew that, and I suspected that the hood of my car was low enough that if I hit one, it might slide up the hood and go through the windshield—a theory that hadn’t yet been tested.

They weren’t as tall or as wide as humans, or else they didn’t care about things brushing against them as they made their trail. Most of the time, that didn’t matter, but every now and then we’d get to overhanging branches that the deer could have just walked under, while of course we couldn’t.

It was also an interesting object lesson in how horns could be a detriment. I knew that bucks had antlers, and I hadn’t really considered how they might get in the way as they were making their way through the woods. Not until I’d seen Ivy cock her head a time or two as she squeezed through a tight spot.

Laughing at her if she got stuck wouldn’t be wise, even though it was tempting when she did snag her horns on a branch. Was it thicker or stronger than she’d expected? Or did she misjudge how far her horns stuck up?

Not that I had any room to talk; I’d caught a branch or two.

Sometimes there would be vines across the trail, and some of them were more anchored than they seemed. A couple of times, Ivy got caught on one and had to tug it loose.

I had the advantage following her; she was breaking the trail for me. I wasn’t the clumsy one who was constantly crashing into trees and vines.

No—I was thinking about it wrong. Breaking the trail was more work; the fact that there were overhanging branches and plants crowding in had nothing to do with her abilities, and gave me an advantage as she pushed something aside or gave me warning by ducking under a low branch.

It wasn’t fair to call her clumsy; that’s just how the woods were. And being off a traveled trail—traveled by bipeds, anyway—gave me a different perspective of the woods. There were places where enough plants crowded together that I honestly couldn’t see where the trail went next, especially since the deer or whatever had made it hadn’t walked in a straight line.

Why would it?

Roots and downed trees were constant obstacles, some of them obscured by undergrowth. I’d tripped twice before I learned to pay attention to how she was stepping; if she went high over something I watched for it.

She’d also slow down and point when there was a thorny plant across the path. I’d seen the raspberry bush and knew to avoid that, but that wasn’t the only thing that grew in the woods and had thorns.

I even found out that some of the trees did when I went to push aside a branch that was in my way. She’d ducked under it, and I’d been too dumb to wonder why.

Silence was important for hunting, and so I didn’t shout out in pain when the tree got me, nor when I picked out the few thorns that had stuck in my palm and forearm. I glanced down at my legs—they’d been hit a time or two as well, and I just hadn’t noticed.

That was also when I really started to reflect on the importance of wearing proper clothes when out in the woods. Good sturdy hiking boots, long pants to protect the legs, even a long-sleeved shirt to protect the arms. A wide-brimmed hat, too, to keep the sun off.

My shoes were good for Home Depot and the Home Depot parking lot. My shoes were suitable for cart-wrangling duties. My shoes were not made for traipsing through the woods. And the rest of my outfit . . . deer trails were not nudist friendly.

Ivy, at least, had some protection for her legs. Surely the fur would keep things away from her skin. And her hooves were solid, better suited to the forest floor than my shoes or God forbid my bare feet.

•••

There was something primal about the hunt, something deep down in my brain that either had been awakened or had always been there and just come to the fore. The idea that our meal tonight would be whatever we could catch and kill . . . that had been something that I had learned from books and natural history museums, the concept of a group of cavemen taking their spears to stalk prey, and while that brought to mind the idea of mammoth hunts, now that I was out her it was obvious that they would have taken whatever food they could find. Hunting and gathering—we had a supply of raspberries we’d gathered, and the squirrel we’d hunted.

She’d hunted . . .I was a liability in more ways than one. I knew fuck all about hunting, I was as subtle as a bull in a china shop in the woods . . . I’d made the joke and the longer we were out here the more I realized that I was the bull in the china shop, blundering into things that she avoided. I’d knocked some leaves and seeds loose as I passed and that was all that I’d done because plants were smart enough to flex when they were crashed into, unlike the endcaps at Home Depot. If I was being honest, I was probably scaring away prey more than I was helping to find. Ivy would have done better to leave me behind at her cabin; if I hadn’t been with her there was every chance that her basket would already be full of squirrels and berries.

Then again, whatever noise I made didn’t scare off the berries, so I had that going for me.

She wasn’t like a ghost in the woods, or at least not how I imagined that would be described. I’d heard her make noise as a branch slapped against her or she pushed something aside, but now that I was thinking about it, none of it sounded unnatural There were no sharp cracks of breaking wood or loud rustles of leaves; nothing was louder than what a wind gust might cause.

When it came time to eat, if I got half of the berries and none of the squirrel, I couldn’t complain. Maybe I could protest that I might have gotten something if I’d had a gun, too, but she wouldn’t believe that. I didn’t believe that. The only chance I would have at shooting a squirrel would be if it jumped on the gun, thinking it was a branch, and then looked down the barrel. And then only if I also pulled the trigger in blind panic.

Ivy held up her hand and I froze in place. Her eyes were locked on a distant tree, and she kept her focus as she unslung her rifle and brought it to bear on the distant target, something I hadn’t even seen.

And then I did see it; a fat squirrel hopping along a branch. Ivy took a careful step forward, tracking it with her gun, waiting for a good shot.

•••

Somewhere on the internet, there were surely pictures of nude women with guns. Some of them might have actually had an idea how to use a gun, some of them might have been avid target shooters or hunters.

Heck, Playboy sometimes did photoshoots of Olympic athletes.

All of them would have been in a nice open spot, all of them would have been wearing makeup and posed just so. None of them would have a light film of sweat, or a speckling of grass seed sticking to their arms and bare torso. None of them would have a broken-off branch stuck in their hair.

None of them would have had the intense focus that Ivy did: for the moment, her world was nothing more than the squirrel as seen across her iron sights and the gentle caress of the trigger when the time was right.

The squirrel moved along the branch, she let out a breath, and the gun roared.

I watched it drop off the branch, and then I was breaking a trail to where it had fallen. This time I was going to find it—I might be a useless hunter but I could be a retriever.

Squirrels were small and the forest was vast. Had she even hit it? Did she graze it, enough to knock it off the branch, and then it scampered off? The tree branch was seared in my mind, and it would have gone straight down, or nearly so . . .

A leaf with some blood on it, then another—it had fallen here. I pushed the foliage aside until I found it. The bullet had nearly taken off its head, but the body was still twitching.

Did it matter how I picked it up? Would I ruin it if I picked it up wrong? I grabbed the tail, hoping that was safe, and held it up proudly. I’d accomplished what a well-trained dog could do in twice the time, and yet I was still proud of myself for it.

•••

I didn’t notice right away that the plants had changed, but I did notice that the soil was more mooshy underfoot, and then we were in a section of tall plants that crowded in on either side. I didn’t know what they were, but they liked the wet soil.

And it kept getting wetter, to the point that it started soaking through my shoes again, to the point that I realized that her hoofprints had standing water in them, and when I looked back, so did my shoeprints.

Given the lack of trees, and the fact that the bamboo-like plants we were pushing through were several feet taller than I was and effectively cut our vision to nothing, I figured that we wouldn’t spook any prey if I spoke.

“Where are we going?”

Ivy stopped and turned to face me. “It gets a bit marshy and swampy here, but on the other side it firms up again.”

“It gets worse?”

“It’s been raining, the water’s up . . . we’ll be wading for some of it. You don’t mind, do you?”

To my surprise, I didn’t. My shoes and socks were already wet, so there was nothing to be lost there. More to the point, there was the thrill of the hunt, which had awakened something deep inside me, and there was being with Ivy when she was fully in her element.

I didn’t know how to put it into words; it was something that my brain was still struggling with the implications of. I’d left my job with the promise of an adventure and now I was having that adventure and I needed to know how it turned out, I needed to take that journey with her. Maybe the other side was filled with fat squirrels on trees just waiting to be shot or maybe the other side was more of the same, but I couldn’t be satisfied if I didn’t know.

That wasn’t it, that wasn’t all of it, but that was all my mind could wrestle with. It was still coming to terms with the idea that I could be deep in the woods up north where nobody knew I was, without any of my clothes, with a minotauress who had a gun and a sign by her front gate that said ‘Fuck around and find out.’

Did I have to impress her? I doubted it; there was little I could do in this situation that would impress her. Not back down, not fuck up too much.

Did I have to impress me?

Maybe.