Stark rubs her beak on the rock beside her. A calm settles over me as I watch her feak. She’s content to clean her beak, and her mood is contagious somehow. I’m stuck in a rock cavern without water or food. I’m injured, and the sun is going down. But Stark is keeping the worst of my fears away.
Her head tucks in under her wing, and I nod. “Good idea.”
I reach back and pull my hood on, trying to conserve my heat. As I settle closer to Stark, I pull the strings to tighten my hood. My arm throbs.
It’s going to be a long night.
This hole—this prison—is noisy. It rattles and shakes like bones. The darkness settles over us, and I hear scuttling and scraping, hooting and shrieking. Some insect taps heartily on the rock behind me. The night is not silent.
“Don’t worry, Stark. We’re okay.” I don’t know what I’d do if I were down here alone in the thick dark.
Something with many legs scuttles across my bare hand. I muffle a shriek and shake my hand. I slap and scoot and shuffle until I feel I will go insane if I don’t stop wondering if there are more things crawling across my body.
The cold twines around me and seeps into my bones. I shiver, curl into a ball, and wrap my arms tighter around myself. There’s no way I can sleep, I know. Not while I’m next to a skeleton. There’s nothing to do but wait it out. At least I’m sheltered from the winds down here. Morning will come eventually, and the sun will warm up the rock.
Sun. I try to remember what that feels like.
I startle awake with the violence of my shivering. My lips are peeling. My thirst is a gnawing, desperate thing inside me. I remember the survival lessons Dad gave us and how a body can survive for days without food, but not without water. I have three days before my body shuts down. I’ll start hallucinating. My brain will drive me mad just before I die. I’m starting to figure out what must’ve happened to the dead guy a few feet away.
Or girl. I wonder who this was. How did she get here? When? How old was she? Was she an adult, or a kid like me? I don’t wonder enough to go inspect how large the bones are. I would do anything to be far, far from here. How could I have been so careless? What’s going to happen to me?
I lie curled on my side next to Stark. Soon a dim light creeps along the walls of the crevice. I lift my head and notice I can see my pack again.
“We made it through the night!”
Stark stirs, lifts her head, and ruffles her wings. She rouses, stretches one feathered leg straight out, curls her talons, and extends her wing out on the same side. Her long tail trembles. It’s a beautiful, graceful pose. I can’t help but admire the strong, pure white feathers of her full wing. She pulls in, bobs once. And without a backward glance at me, she lifts off and soars to freedom.
I jump to my feet. “No! Stark, come back!” I pound the wall until I feel the pain of my arm. Stupid. I am so incredibly stupid.
“Help!” I scream. “I’m down here!”
I slide back down to the dirt and curl up. Not a soul can hear me.
The morning crawls by. The sun rises along with my raging thirst. My pack looms over me, laughing. That water—just sits there. Even the gummies would work. Something, anything, to stop this horrible thirst. I pick up a rock and hurtle it toward the pack, but it doesn’t reach. I try again with a smaller rock. It goes higher, but my aim is off. After a while, I’m too tired to continue.
I crumple in a heap and point at the pack. “Just tip over a little.”
I imagine the pack tipping and opening, spilling everything down on top of me. I imagine grabbing my water and pouring it down my throat, collecting all the loose gummies on the ground and popping them into my mouth. But I shake my head and glare up at the pack, which continues to hang perfectly closed.
I’m still staring when I think I see a head appear over the rim. Now I’m imagining people above me.
“Hello?” I croak.
“Hello?” the image responds.
My mind clears instantly.
“Crazy, is that you?” a strangely familiar voice calls down.
“Cooper?” The boy from the road? I’m so confused.
“What are you doing down there?”
“How…how are you here? How did you find me?”
“That big white bird of yours is circling above you. I’ve been searching for you for hours,” he says.
Hours? Why has he been searching? How did he know where to search? I have so many questions, but they’ll have to wait.
“I can’t get out!” I call up to him.
Cooper extends a hand down toward me. I stretch up, but it’s too high.
“Can you reach my pack?” I ask. My first reaction is fear that he’ll take my pack and leave me here. But I have to try to trust him. “It has my water.”
He grabs my pack, rummages through it, and tosses the water to me. I’m careful not to spill in my haste to get the cap off. My fingers feel clumsy and thick. I drain it, feeling the cool liquid coat my swollen tongue. It’s like watching the rain sink into parched earth. There isn’t enough water in all the world to slake my thirst.
“Now what?” Cooper says.
I shake the bottle’s last drops into my open mouth and wipe my lips. “Get me out!”
“Duh. The problem is, how?”
“How about a ladder?”
He looks around, then disappears.
“Cooper?” I call. Then louder. “Cooper!”
My shoulders slump. Where did he go? I strain to listen to what he’s doing, but I don’t hear a thing. My heart stutters. He’s gone. He’s taken my pack and left me here. I feel dizzy and put a hand on the wall to brace myself.
For many long minutes I contemplate how anyone could steal a phone and then steal a pack and leave its owner in the bottom of a hole. What is wrong with this boy? What happened to him to make him run around stealing things? And why was I so concerned about him when I first met him?
Then I hear something approach. It’s dragging, scratching, and coming closer. Cooper’s flushed face finally appears again. He’s dirty and panting.
“Watch out,” he says, shoving a broken tree down the hole. It slides to the bottom, neatly wedging itself in the far corner of the crevice. I stare at it in amazement. It’s taller than a basketball hoop. How heavy must that be? The tree’s branches reach out the top of the crevice.
“Climb up!”
I cram the empty bottle into the waistband of my jeans and then attempt to climb. Because of the bite on my arm, my left hand doesn’t grip hard enough. I try grabbing hold with my good hand and shimmying up, but it’s too steep a slope. The rough bark rakes across my skin as I slide back down.
“God. You climb like a girl!” Cooper throws his leg over the edge and drops down onto the tree, skidding down the length of it and hopping off beside me. His little smirk of triumph tells me he’s pretty pleased with himself.
And that’s when I haul back and punch him square in the eye.
Cooper grabs his face and takes a step back. “Ow?” He glares at me.
“You stole our phone!” I shake my good hand, now throbbing from the punch. “Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know.” He touches his eye. “You really are crazy. I think that’s going to leave a mark.”
I don’t dwell on the fact that I’ve just punched a guy who is older and much bigger than I am. I huff at him and look back at the tree.
“Need some help?” Cooper asks with an edge to his voice. “Didn’t think too far ahead, did you?”
“Will you please help me get out of here?”
He glances around and then freezes. “Whoa.” He walks straight to the skeleton and then kicks it, laughing. “Did you see this?”
“See what?” Does he really think I missed the creepy skeleton lying right next to me?
He bends with his back to me, inspecting it, muttering to himself, poking it.
I scoot farther away. It doesn’t feel right to be looking at it, never mind touching it. Maybe th
e dust of this person’s soul is going to float all over me.
“If you’re done disturbing a resting place, can we just get out of here?”
“Well, technically, you’re the one who disturbed it, right?” Cooper suddenly swings toward me, gesturing for me to start climbing again. “Come on, we have to go. Now. Now. Now.” He stuffs something into his jacket and shoves me toward the tree.
I resist. “What? What is it?”
“Later. No time. Come on. Climb!”
I climb onto the narrow trunk, and Cooper hops up behind me. With our combined weight, the trunk lifts off the rim and teeters in the air.
“Whoa,” I say.
“Move up—it will balance once your butt gets going.” Cooper pushes me from behind.
I manage to grab hold of the trunk with my good hand. We tip forward again, and I clutch at the bark.
“Are we moving today,” he asks, “or staying here forever?”
“I just…would you…”
“Grab it! Now that one. Yes, that’s it.” Cooper keeps giving me ungentle shoves.
Finally I heave myself past the broken root, and then I’m sprawled out on the rock where the glorious sun beats down on me. I raise my arms up and close my eyes. I didn’t think I’d ever see it again. The feel of the sun is wonderful on my skin. Then, thinking of Stark, I open my eyes and scan the sky. I don’t see her anywhere.
“Let’s go,” Cooper says, glancing around us.
I stand. “Give me my phone. I’ll call my mom, and we’ll be gone in no time.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “I tossed it.”
“What?” I stare at him, thinking about how hard I’m going to punch him this time. “My family needs it! I have to get help for them.”
He shrugs, but I see a speck of guilt flick across his face.
“The battery died. Plus there’s sketchy service here. Where’s your family, anyway? And the van?”
“We had an accident, and they’re still in the van. I’m going to the highway to get help.”
The effect this has on Cooper is immediate. The color drains out of his face as he gapes at me. But just as quickly, he ducks his head, shrugs, and looks around, not meeting my eyes. “Why are you going this way? The highway is back there,” he says.
“Our GPS showed Highway 287 not far this way.” Shading my eyes, I search the distant hills for the road I thought I saw before the crevice grabbed me. I don’t see it. But it has to be there.
“Come on,” I say. “We’ve got to get help.”
Squinting, Cooper searches the horizon. “Why would I help? You guys ditched me, remember?” He pauses, kicks a rock, and then pats his pocket. “I’m going that way, anyway. My dirt bike ran out of gas at the berm. You can come if you want. We can split up once we get to the highway.”
“What…your bike?” This conversation is so confusing. I almost wonder if I’m still in the crevice, hallucinating. “You have a dirt bike?”
“I borrowed it.”
“You bor—? You mean you stole it!” At least that explains how he got here so fast. “Why did you steal a dirt bike? Why did you steal our phone?”
He shrugs. “Was going to sell the phone. Had to eat. But it was ancient. Like the very first edition prototype. Why wouldn’t you upgrade?”
I have to fight against the frustration surging through me. “Well, an ancient phone would be better than no phone right now, wouldn’t you agree?” Why am I still standing in the middle of nowhere, arguing with a stranger when I need to be on that highway.
I turn and skid down the slope, more careful this time. “Anyway, the real question is, why are you here with a dirt bike at all? How did you know I was here?”
Cooper slides past me, taking the lead. “I told you. Your bird showed me where you were.”
“But…”
“Man, you don’t stop talking, do you?” Cooper turns and stares at me with a look of warning. “Listen, kid—”
“Hello, I’m almost fourteen. I’m not a kid.”
“Well, I’m fifteen, so I don’t need to listen to any lectures from you. You can tag along if you want to. I’m going to the highway.”
“You’re not that much older.” I clench my fists in frustration. Why is he being so difficult? I’ve never met anyone who made me so mad. He reminds me of Chaos the hawk. You can’t push Chaos. She does things on her own time. And to train her to come back to a whistle, we had to first let her fly.
“Okay, I’ll tag along,” I say, letting Cooper think he has control of the situation.
We slide to the bottom of the slope, but my eyes scan upward, to the sky.
“Give me the laces on your shoes,” I say as I shrug off my pack and drop it beside me. To make what I need, I’ll have to sacrifice a sock—maybe I can fill it with dirt.
“I’m not giving you my laces. What do you need laces for, anyway?”
“Maybe I can use tape to tie it together,” I say, opening my pack. Did I bring tape? I glance at Cooper. “I need to make…wait…what am I going to use as a tidbit?”
“Make what? What’s a tidbit?”
I growl and dig deeper in the pack. “Maybe we can trap a mouse or something.” My hand closes around a familiar duck-shaped object. “Ah! My lure!”
I had originally packed it back home with a quail leg in a Ziploc baggie to fly Stark. But that was in my falconry satchel.
“My brother must have put this in my backpack. Thank you, Gavin!”
I tie the tidbit to the lure and then search the sky. “I need to get my bird before I do anything.” I whistle and swing the lure as far as I can so Stark can see it. She was with me this morning, and I hope she hasn’t given up on me yet.
Suddenly a shadow passes over me. Stark snatches the lure, and I almost cry out in relief. I reach her on the ground and pick her up, along with the bit of meat and bone.
The weight of her hurts my wound, but the fact that she’s with me makes me feel lighter. I smile and croon to her, but she’ll have none of it. She mantles over her prize, hiding it from me, before choking it down. She hasn’t mantled with me since the first weeks. She makes small noises, irritated pips, and then glares at Cooper.
“Whoa,” Cooper says.
“She’s hungry,” I say as we walk. “She’s asking, where’s the meat?”
Cooper lets out a muffled laugh. “I know how she feels.”
After a few minutes of walking, Cooper asks, “Why doesn’t she just hunt something?”
“She’s an imprinted bird. And she was trained poorly. She’s used to people and lures and being fed. When a bird is trained to the lure too much, that’s all they want. But some birds are trained to hunt with people. That’s called falconry. Right now I help with education demonstrations at our center. But as an apprentice falconer next year, I’ll learn the magic of hunting with a wild animal—when the bird accepts you as a partner.”
“Well, if she can’t hunt, what good is she?”
I recoil. “It’s not her fault she can’t hunt! Besides, she was doing something important at our center. She was teaching all kinds of people about falcons and making them fall in love with her.”
Cooper makes a gagging sound, ending the discussion. We walk in silence.
After a while I realize how thirsty I still am. I lick my lips and look around.
“Why didn’t you bring any water?” I ask.
“I wasn’t planning on following a bird this far. Or being stuck out here without a bike. How much farther to that highway? We must’ve walked a mile by now.”
I point to the forest at the base of the mountain. “We should head in there.”
We’re moving west, and the forest runs east-west along the side of the open prairie. We can look for water on our way.
Once we step into the trees, the cooler air is a relief. The smell of it brings me back to early-season hunts with Aunt Amy and Tank. Gavin and I would be dogging—running through the alders to scare out hares for the bird.
I wish we were home. An ache fills me. I wish we were home.
Shaking my head, I adjust Stark on my fist. She’s getting heavy.
We hike over soft needles and crunchy pinecones. Squirrels chitter at us. We’re surrounded by lush pines. Between the mountain, the forest, and the prairie, I think Dad would like to do an Outdoor Classroom lesson in this area.
When I think about Dad, a sickening dread fills me. If I’m thirsty, so are they. Three days. That’s as long as anyone can live without water. I left them yesterday, so the clock started then. Gavin would have finished the water they had by now. I need to find that highway. Where is it?
My throat burns. I lick my lips again.
“Where would we find water, you think?” Cooper asks.
“Dig into my pack,” I say as I turn my back to him. “I’ve got some gummies.”
I stand still as Cooper rummages through my pack. I’m not sure why it feels so personal with him in my pack while it’s on my back. But I didn’t want to move Stark from my fist. I’m afraid she’ll leave.
Cooper pulls out the Ziploc bag but doesn’t give it to me when I hold my hand out for it. He empties it into his own hand. I have time to see there were only five left in the bag before he grabs them and tosses them into his mouth.
I’m just about to kick him in the shin when he hands me the ones he saved. Three gummies tumble into my palm.
“We need a creek or something,” Cooper says. I nod.
I suck my gummies slowly as we continue. The sugar rush helps keep my feet moving, but too soon my steps are sluggish. My thirst roars in my head. My empty stomach growls. I feel hollowed out. I’m painfully aware I haven’t eaten a real meal since yesterday morning. Was it only yesterday that I was at home eating flax pancakes? It feels like a lifetime ago.
My arm throbs with the effort of carrying Stark. I’m about to call a break when Cooper slows down and then sits on a log. With relief, I transfer Stark to a stump and swing my arm around. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Cooper pull out the thing he’s been hiding in his jacket.
Falcon Wild Page 5