Lion

The lion found them on the way down out of the high country, drawn by the meat, and for two days and a night it was the whole of the world.

She knew it was there before she ever saw it, the way she knew most things, by the small wrongnesses in the country. The birds went quiet in a stand of timber they were passing and stayed quiet too long. A track crossed the road in the frost, round, wide as her spread hand, no claw marks in it because a cat sheathes its claws to walk, and fresh, so fresh the frost had not yet crept back into it. And there was a feeling, which she did not trust and did not dismiss either, because Papa had taught her that the feeling of being watched was an old true animal thing and worth more than most of what people believed with their reasons, the feeling of eyes on the back of her neck out of the black timber that stood empty every time she turned.