Still Working on My Novel

January 2026 Short Story of the Month

A master ranger is caught in an unexpectedly sophisticated woodland trap while on patrol, and must figure out a way to free herself before her would be captors return.

****

Leeann grabbed her  long bow and warmest leather coat before leaving the lodge. Before she shut the door, she paused and looked back.

It was still early morning. Her family was asleep in their rooms. She was supposed to wake her brother to hunt with her, but he’d stayed out late drinking with friends again. Leeann let him sleep. She sighed. She would hunt alone — again. It was becoming a trend.

Outside, the morning air was crisp. The sun wasn’t fully up yet. The light was just starting to peek through the trees. The village wasn’t awake yet either. The only others usually awake at this hour were the bakers.

As Leeann walked towards the forest, she took a deep breath. She could almost smell the bakery. The faintest hint of yeast and flour filled her nostrils. She could use some warm bread, but she didn’t have time. She needed to get a big kill today.

The forest hadn’t been providing like it normally did. In the last few months, they’d had to travel further and further from where they normally hunted. It didn’t make sense. The forest seemed well balanced. They hadn’t had any strange seasons or traumatic weather events. Something was wrong though. There was less and less game.

Leeann and her family usually caught enough to provide for their family and to sell to others. They’d had to make choices — keep the meat or sell it to buy other needs.

They needed to find out who or what was causing the shortage, but that would take away from their time spent hunting. They didn’t have time to do both.

Leeann was thinking about everything going on with the village, trying to track something to hunt, and how much she wished she’d stopped for bread. She was walking quietly and listening to the sounds of the forest waking up.

She stood still. She heard bugs making their strange noises, a few owls were making last second calls before turning in for the day, and some squirrels jumping from branch to branch. She didn’t hear anything larger. She didn’t see the signs that anything substantial had been there recently. She sighed. It was going to be a long, long day.

She went further and further into the trees. She still recognized her surroundings, but the signs weren’t there. Hours passed. When she finally paused to assess her situation, she didn’t know precisely where she was.

Her stomach was growling. Her own hunger was distracting her from what she needed to accomplish that day.

She didn’t want to turn back empty handed. It was happening too often lately. She ignored her hunger, as best as she could, and kept going.

The woods were still too quiet and too unfamiliar. She finally stumbled upon signs of deer. There was scat on the ground and some tracks. As she searched around, she found a place where the leaves were nibbled on some shrubs.

Finally, there were signs of something. She slowed down and took a deep breath. She scanned over every piece of dirt, every fallen leaf, and every out of place twig. She followed the trail.

Her breath quickened. She was on the right path. She took another deep breath. All she smelled was the forest — earthy and fresh, nothing else.

She kept following the signs. She walked into a clearing hoping to spot something else that indicated where the creature was heading.

****

Leeann opened her eyes and was instantly in pain. Everything hurt but especially her head. She tried to move her hands to her face to assess the damage, but her arms weren’t responding the way she wanted them to. She tried to sit up, but shifting her weight caused pain to shot to her head again. She lay back and stopped moving.

She looked up without moving her head or body. She was in a deep pit of some kind. The last thing she remembered was walking into that clearing following animal tracks.

She’d walked right into a trap. This trap was big though. Too big for deer. Rule of thumb was to make the pit large enough to prevent your prey from jumping or climbing out too easily. This pit was meant for really big game.

Leeann took another deep breath. Something didn’t make sense though. She’d been harmed because she fell into the pit, but she wasn’t dying. She was just hurt. Usually a pit like this would have something in it to further hurt the prey — spikes or something sharp that impaled the creature as it fell into the trap. It was just a giant hole, which meant whoever was hunting, was trying to capture live prey. Why? And what would they want to capture this large and alive?

Leeann’s mind was racing, and the one thing she knew for sure was that she needed to get out of the hole before whoever set this trap came back.

She needed to get up. She needed to do more than just look around. She needed to do something. If this were her trap, she would check it twice a day. Someone would be back before night to check. What would happen when they returned?

She didn’t want to find out. Closing her eyes, she took several deep breathes and calmed her nerves as best as she could.

She moved slowly. First, she got herself into a sitting position. She had to stop and close her eyes again to keep herself from throwing up or falling back down. She must have hit her head harder than she thought.

She pulled her feet towards her body. She looked up again and realized the light was fading. She needed to get out before night and before someone returned.

It was now or never.

She tried to get to her feet. She took it one breath at a time. First she got one foot under her, and then after talking herself into it, she attempted to stand. She was not steady. She stumbled a bit and used her hands to keep herself from falling by leaning towards a wall.

The walls were dirt that was smooth. She searched around. There weren’t any noticeable stones or roots. Whoever dug this hole had done a good job of clearing it. It was straight up and down. Smooth on all surfaces. And, it was too deep to jump out of. Leeann had some rope on her, but she didn’t spy anything near the opening that she could lasso.

She had some tools on her person. Tying a knife to her rope, she made a made shift grappling line. She tried to throw it. It didn’t even make it half way up. The knife came flying back down at her, but luckily she dodged it at the last second.

This wasn’t going to be easy. She needed to do better. She sat down and leaned against the wall, resting her head back and looking up.

She felt defeated already.