Quest for the Beast

by Sarah Holman

  Adara swallowed. She had lots of reasons, but they all suddenly sounded very silly. “I… I didn’t think he should go without me. Besides, Jasper wouldn’t take most of the supplies he needed.”

  “Like what?” Nelson asked, ignoring the laughter and mocking of the other boys.

  Adara wished he would look at something, anything other than her. His unwavering gaze was unnerving her. She squared her shoulders, determined to be like the heroines in the fairy tales and face this challenge with bravery. “I brought a tent, food, bug spray, a fist aid kit, water purification tablets, and things like that.”

  “Adara, I understand the food, but everything else you mentioned is rather silly. This isn’t like an exploration expedition that you are always reading about, this isn’t a quest. This is just a quick trip to get some easy money.”

  Jasper’s loud laugh hurt worse than Adara thought it could. She had known that he hadn’t wanted her along, but she had thought that he would be grateful in time. Instead, he was mocking her more than the other boys.

  The boys high-fived her brother and voiced their agreement with Jasper.

  Adara suddenly felt like crying, but she wouldn’t allow herself to. She had chosen to come along, knowing she wasn’t wanted. She could choose to go back on her own. It wasn’t like they had even left the main trail. She lifted her eyes to meet Nelson’s once again, he was still looking at her, but he said nothing either to mock or support her.

  “Are you going to eat or not?” Jasper asked his mouth full.

  While Adara would have liked to have said she wasn’t hungry and stomped off, she had been walking all day long and was in desperate need of food. She sat next to her brother and took one of the hotdogs and helped Chris get his, as Wolf was ignoring the boy’s cries.

  As soon as she had finished her food, she went to her tent, taking Chris with her, knowing no one else would look after him. She zipped up her tent and pulled out the two books she had brought with her, the Cinderella one she wanted to read again and her Bible. She started to read a Psalm, but quickly decided to read her Cinderella story instead.

  Chris’ soft snoring soon filled the stuffy tent. It wasn’t until the light had completely disappeared for reading that Adara put her book away, and even then, she waited until the boisterous voices around the campfire had ceased before she finally drifted off into a restless sleep.

  Chapter 4

  The next day was even duller than the first. The young men were less talkative as they were tired after not only all the hiking they had done the day before, but also having been bitten all over by misquotes.

  “I’m tired,” Chris said.

  Adara smiled down at him wearily, knowing they wouldn’t make camp for another couple of hours. She took his chubby hand into her own and helped him over the tree root ahead of them.

  “Jasper!” she called ahead.

  Jasper turned to look at her but quickly returned to his friends. Wolf looked back at her and grinned.

  Adara shivered. Wolf’s gazes made her feel very uncomfortable. He had been looking at her with an almost hungry look in his eyes most of the day.

  The whole group turned to go up a hill to their right, and Adara sighed again and held on to Chris’ hand tightly. It seemed the two of them were on their own. The next moment she found herself sliding, pulling Chris with her. It wasn’t far, and she quickly scrambled to her feet. She looked toward Jasper, but he was only laughing and Wolf pointed at her. When they got home, Jasper was going to get an earful from her.

  A hand cupped her elbow from behind and studied her, and helped her over the rough terrain. Adara turned and was shocked to see Nelson helping her. He said nothing though until they had reached the top of the hill.

  “He isn’t going to last much longer on his feet, is he?” Nelson asked, pointing to Chris.

  Adara shook her head, not bothering to add that she had carried him off and on most of the afternoon.

  Nelson knelt down in front of the boy. “Climb on my back now.”

  Chris did as he was told, and Nelson fell into step beside Adara. As the silence stretched on, Adara felt she had to say something.

  “What makes you so interested in catching this criminal?”

  “There is money in it,” he said, but it lacked any enthusiasm that normally accompanied people who were in it for money.

  “But there are plenty of criminals with bounties on their heads, why go after this one?”

  “The Beast? Because it is time that he paid for his crimes,” Nelson said quietly.

  “Would you tell me the story? Jasper didn’t tell me much.”

  Nelson didn’t reply at first, and just as Adara thought he was going to ignore her question, he spoke. “There was this group of four high school kids that were rich and bored. They decided that the best way to have fun was to rob this bank. They went in with guns and got the money; one of the tellers made a wrong move and was shot in the arm. The kids went running home and all but one, the ring leader, was caught.

  “He hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he had been the one to plan the whole thing. However, his father was very politically connected, and no police officer in the area wanted to be the one to barge into his home and arrest his son. So, the son had to stay inside his father’s house and wait until the statute of limitations ran out before he could leave.”

  “That seems like a lonely way to live,” Adara commented, thinking how it also sounded like the beginning of a fairy tale. Some poor rich person imprisoned in a lovely home because of a long-ago crime. “Why are you going after him?”

  “Because it is time he paid for his crimes.” The vehemence in Nelson’s tone surprised her. Before she could ask him another question, Wolf called to him and he joined the main group, leaving her to her thoughts.

  When it finally came time to stop for the night, Nelson placed Adara in charge of the cooking; handing her a couple of cans of beans from his pack.

  Adara, starving from their long day hiking, took the beans and some from her own pack. She had a small onion and a can of beef chunks also and mixed it all together in the pot she had brought along. The food was quickly devoured by all, Adara made sure that Chris ate everything on his plate before tucking him into her tent.

  Though she tried to go to sleep, she felt wide awake, thinking of what kind of house this rich young prisoner must live in. The moon rose bright and full, and Adara left the tent and walked a short distance into the woods. She took a deep breath of the cool night air and looked out across the landscape. There was a creek sparkling in the moonlight below where they were camped. All in all, a perfect place for one of her fairy tale books to take place. She leaned against a tree, feeling as if it was a perfect moment.

  “A pretty night, isn’t it?”

  Adara glanced over, thinking Jasper had come to tease her or tell her to go home. Instead, Wolf stood nearby, his gaze wandering from her face.

  Swallowing, Adara moved away from the tree. “Goodnight,” she said, trying to be polite, trying to not show how scared she was of him. She started to move back toward her tent, but Wolf caught hold of her arm and jerked her to him.

  Adara breathed hard, her face merely inches from Wolf’s. He grinned, looking every inch like the animal that his nickname had been taken from.

  “Why waste a pretty night like this on things like sleep?” he asked.

  “Because we are both exhausted,” Adara said and tried to pull away, but Wolf’s grip tightened.

  He chuckled. “I think you and I should be able to have a good time despite that.”

  Adara tried to pull away and scream, but Wolf pulled her close and covered her mouth with his hand. She started praying in her heart, and tried to scream. She flailed and fought against his grip. Suddenly, his body was jerked away from her, and she fell to the ground. She cried in pain as something sharp stuck into her arm.

  “What is your problem?” Wolf cried out.

  “Me? You are the one with the problem!” It w
as Nelson’s voice that answered.

  Adara turned on her side to see the two of them scuffling, backlit against the moonlight. One went down, and she couldn’t tell which. She scrambled to her feet.

  “You get out of here,” Nelson, the standing figure, commanded. “I don’t need people like you to help catch this criminal.”

  “You’re crazy! I was just trying to have fun, and you will need all the help you can get to catch the Beast.”

  “I don’t need one beast to catch another,” Nelson insisted. “If I find you in our camp in the morning, or anywhere near Adara again, I will tie you to a tree and leave you, got it?”

  Wolf made a growling noise but then scampered away. As soon as he was out of sight, Nelson turned to Adara.

  “Are you hurt?”

  Adara nodded, unable to speak.

  Nelson took her by the elbow and led her toward the camp fire. He threw a couple of small logs onto the fire before sitting down next to her. He held out his hand.

  Slowly, Adara placed her wrist into his hand and turned her arm so he could see the gash. A rock had obviously torn the flesh open when she had fallen to the ground. While it hurt some, her heart was still racing from the experience with Wolf too much to notice anything as minor as torn and bleeding flesh. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to be bleeding much.

  “I am sorry. I couldn’t catch you and deal with that…” he lifted his eyes to meet hers instead of finishing his sentence.

  “It’s okay, I have a first aid kit in my pack.”

  “You sit here, I will get it.” Nelson left and returned a few minutes later with the kit. Silently, he worked to clean out the wound and then bandaged it with the gauze.

  “Have you thought of going into medicine?” Adara finally asked, once he was almost finished and her pulse had slowed.

  He shrugged. “I really haven’t thought much about what I want to do with my life.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “I guess nobody cared what I did, so I didn’t care either.”

  “Then what made you want to go on this quest to hunt down this criminal?”

  Nelson stared into the fire and let her bandaged hand drop. “Because his crimes have gone too long unpunished. He hurt people, and it is time he paid for that. He is a beast.”

  “Maybe he is sorry for what he has done.”

  “What does that matter?” Nelson lifted his eyes to meet hers once again.

  “Because God is always willing to give us second chances, and maybe others would be willing to give him a second chance as well. After all, it was so many years ago. There are lots of stories and verses in the Bible about that.” She tried to think of some, but her mind drew a blank.

  Nelson stared into the fire for a few more moments before getting up and returning to his bedroll.

  Adara made her way to the tent, wondering if she should have said more. Why hadn’t she been able to think of the verses she had spent time memorizing as a child, or the stories of second chances?

  Wherever your treasure is, there you heart will be also.

  The phrase repeated itself as Adara drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 5

  “Where is Wolf?” Philip asked the next morning as they all sat around, eating some dried fruit Nelson had passed around.

  “Left,” Nelson said.

  “What? Why did he do that?” Jasper said, glancing toward his sister and Chris. “Oh, great, and he even left the retarded kid with us.”

  Adara wrapped a hand protectively around Chris. “Jasper, watch what you say. He isn’t deaf. He is a sweet boy who hasn’t complained at all about this trip.”

  “Who asked you?” Jasper snarled.

  “Hey, your sister has taken care of the kid for us and made you dinner last night, doesn’t that earn her some respect?” Nelson asked.

  “I didn’t want her along in the first place. The only reason she came along is because she was afraid to be alone and thought this sounded like one of her fairy stories.”

  Adara stood. “It’s not true.”

  “Yes, you did,” Jasper snapped. “All you ever do is keep your head in the stupid stories these days. You don’t care about anything other than your fairy tales. You keep talking about this trip as a quest. Are you expecting to find a castle with a prince at the end of this trip?”

  Adara felt she could hold her temper in no longer. “I wasn’t the foolish one. You are the one that wanted to follow a complete stranger into the woods for the promise of a reward. You ought to be glad I came. I brought the supplies that none of you thought to, including enough food to actually last another day.”

  “You never want to do what I want to because your head is always stuck in one of your books.”

  Adara wanted to shout something hurtful back, but his arrow had pierced her heart. Was it true? Had she become so obsessed with her books that she hadn’t been there for her brother? Had her treasure become the fairy stories instead of God and the people he had placed in her life? She thought over the week they had been alone at their house and remembered how she had enjoyed the time to read, and had ignored Jasper.

  “Jasper, I’m sorry…”

  “Don’t! Just don’t! Just leave me alone and keep your retarded friend out of my way.” Jasper got up and headed toward the creek, Philip following close behind. Nelson lingered with her for a moment before following them.

  “What have I done, Lord?” Adara asked. “I think my heart is in the wrong place.”

  The day of traveling passed in a blur. Adara thought over how she had treated her brother. While he was being unkind to her at the moment, she realized that she had ignored him and let her fairy tales carry her away into her own world. She thought of the long neglected Bible at the bottom of her pack.

  When they stopped for the midday meal, she took a piece of jerky and went away from the group and read a psalm her father had used to read to her when she had done something wrong.

  Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

  After reading the Psalm Adara slipped to her knees. “God, I have sinned. I have neglected you and the people you have placed in my life. I promise that if it takes sacrificing all the fairy tales I own, I will place you and my family back to being the most important things in my life.”

  She rejoined the group as they started off again, but said nothing. Jasper and Philp were talking about what they were going to do with the money they would get from capturing the criminal the next day. Nelson once again was carrying Chris, but not joining the others in their talk of money.

  When they set up camp for the night, she went numbly though the tasks of setting up her tent and making the food, dumping the last two cans of beans into the pot and opening a can of peaches to go with it.

  As soon as she had put Chris to bed she took her Bible off into a spot not far from the tent and read by the fading light.

  “Your brother was a bit rough on you,” Nelson’s voice penetrated the quiet of the evening.

  Adara looked up and sighed. “Maybe, but I have wronged him. I have shut him out of my life using books, and that was wrong. I am not sure even when I started doing it or why. Stories always make it sound like there is a good reason for everything, but I can’t think of a single thing that would truly make a good excuse. We have never been rich, and books and movies were easier to come by than any other form of entertainment. But why did I let those things come between me and my only brother?”

  Nelson sat
down near her and stared out across the golden landscape. “You cannot change the past.”

  “I know, but I want to make it right.”

  He turned to her. “Do you really think that you can make it right? Aren’t we all held prisoner somewhat by the past?”

  “I guess we are, unless we let God free us from our sin. He washes us whiter than snow. He frees us from the guilt of our past.”

  “But what of the consequences? Does He get you out of those?”

  Adara turned toward him and realized that he was sincere in wanting to know. “Our deeds can be a prison, but Christ can set us free. We may continue to bear the scars of consequences from our deeds, but once we have accepted that Jesus died to pay the price for our sins, rose from the dead, and is now master of our lives, sin cannot keep us as prisoners. Because if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.”

  “If only it were that simple,” Nelson said softly, as if he were talking to himself.

  “What keeps it from being that simple for you? Following Christ is not easy, but it is a very simple message.”

  “Hurting an innocent person and never being punished for it must be harder to forgive. There must be more.”

  Adara cocked her head. “What do you think you have done that God cannot forgive?”

  Nelson blinked rapidly, as if he just suddenly realized he was not alone. “We both better get some sleep. We have to face the Beast tomorrow.”

  Adara stood and silently prayed for the right words. “Nelson, we have both come face to face with an ugly part of ourselves. We both have to have the courage to allow Christ to transform us. If not, we will remain in our prisons.”

  Nelson remained sitting and stared out, not answering her.

  With a heavy heart Adara returned to her tent. Tomorrow they would reach their destination. Tomorrow, their quest would be over.

  Chapter 6