Next to them, two older women—they hadn’t started out as a group together, but had crossed paths a handful of times during the morning—looked through a window on the opposite side of the tree-covered box. Without looking away from the window, Maddie reached out and slapped Wyn’s thigh. “Right there, right there.” Whispered urgency filled her voice; she pointed, pressing her finger against the mesh window. “Crawling under that fallen tree. It’s a lynx.” A bounce in her crouch, she squeezed his leg and pulled at him. “Can you see it?” Following the line of Maddie’s finger, Wyn focused in on the furry, compact wild cat. “Yeah.” With black tufts of fur creating tips at the points of its ears, a snowy almost spotted coat, and enormous paws, the lynx pulled its head back from under the tree, a hare in the grip of its jaw. “It found lunch.” A soft whirring series of clicks disturbed the quiet in the blind.
