by Chanda Hahn
She should have felt relief, at seeing her attacker take the form of Jared; instead she was furious at being duped.
“You jerk! How dare you!” Mina argued while refusing to climb closer to him. “If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
“Stop arguing and get up here!” Jared was irritated at her again. “Now is not the time to berate me, there’s plenty of time to do that later. Give me your hand.”
Mina bit her lip, and tried to pull her weight up the tree root so she could get closer to him, but her muscles had reached their limit. She tried to reach for Jared’s hand, but she felt the root slip through her fingers and then, nothing but air. It was like being in a dream and falling in slow motion, except she didn’t wake up when she hit the cold water.
Chapter 8
Coldness ripped through her, and the shock of water made her lose the breath she was holding. It was dark, and she couldn’t figure out which way was up. She tried to kick in the direction of the surface but couldn’t find it. The current started to drag her away. She fought against it and when she didn’t think she could hold her breath any longer, she broke through the surface of the water. She gasped for breath. Her limbs felt heavy and she couldn’t get them to work. Slowly, and with great effort, she paddled for the riverbank. Finally, she dragged her body to the edge and pulled herself up the embankment.
She looked up river and saw something large, frantically diving down and up again. It was Jared, in Ogre form. He must have jumped in after her and was looking for her in the river. It was a comical sight, the giant Ogre scrambling around in the water in an attempt at swimming. The awkwardness at which he fumbled in the water revealed to her, that in either form, Jared didn’t know how to swim. The Ogre had the better chance of surviving the fast moving river than Jared. On any other night, it might be touching to see him trying to rescue her, if she wasn’t so annoyed with him.
As much as Mina wanted to laugh at the display of a frightened Ogre, she couldn’t forget his game and how he had tried to scare her on the bus. She decided that he could worry a little more. She moved down the river away from him and began to peel off her outer jacket, as it was making her cold.
Nevertheless, her movement caught the Ogre’s eye. He growled angrily, and started stomping through the water toward the embankment. He was easily over nine feet tall and looked strong enough to bench press a truck. But something about his current demeanor made him seem more childlike, instead of deadly.
He was pouting. By the time he was within a few paces of her, the giant Ogre had disappeared to be replaced by a wet and tired Jared. He flung himself next to her on the ground.
“You could have shouted to me that you were okay, instead of sitting here all safe and sound, making me look like a fool.”
“You are a fool,” Mina replied as she tried to untie the wet shoelaces so she could get out of the wet socks.
“Point taken, but I thought you were dead.”
“And I thought you were dead, so I think we’re even.” Mina’s fingers were numb and like ice, she started to shake from the cold. She got one shoe off but was struggling with the second.
“Here, let me.” Jared reached for her shoes to help her.
“Don’t touch me!” she screeched, and hit him with her destroyed sneaker. Her teeth were chattering now, and Jared moved closer to her.
“I won’t.” He froze inches from her, his hands up in the air, as if he was waiting to be arrested.
“What happened to the bus driver?” Mina sniffed, using her sleeve to wipe pathetically at her nose.
“Uh, I tricked him into getting off, a few stops ago, and I took his place.” Jared slowly sat down on the ground across from her and folded his hands in his lap.
“And you can just do that? Change into his form and take his place?”
Jared looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I can, it’s that easy.”
“How did you find me? I mean, how did you know I was on the bus to begin with, and how did you…?” she trailed off, losing the ability to form coherent thoughts.
“You really think it was that hard to figure out you would ditch me as soon as we stopped? I saw it in your face. You’re like an open book, and terrible at lying. As soon as I heard the car door close, I went out the back door of the shop and watched you get on the bus. It wasn’t difficult to follow and take the place of the driver, with a little bit of Fae magic.”
“Then why the show? Why the whole over-aggressive Ogre thing?” Mina argued.
“I didn’t think you would believe me if I told you that I’m not a bad guy. I mean look at me. I wanted to prove to you that I was the good guy. At first, I was going to scare you as the Ogre, and then run in to rescue you at the last minute as me. I was trying to prove a point that not all Fae are bad.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and didn’t make eye contact. “I wasn’t planning on letting you see me change, but things got out of hand pretty fast, and I had no choice if I was going to try and save you.”
“So you were going to try and scare me off as an Ogre and then rescue me… from yourself?”
Jared looked down at his feet; he was still dripping wet and hadn’t even attempted to try to dry himself off.
“Pretty much. I wanted you to trust me.”
“By lying to me and deceiving me further?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“Yeah, that was stupid. What can I say, I’m a guy and we don’t always think things through.”
Mina rolled her eyes. “You can say that again, but this doesn’t let you off the hook. All you’ve proved to me is that you’re a prankster and a liar, and I still can’t trust you.”
“So I will have to prove it in a different way.” Jared smiled crookedly.
“No more half brain plans.”
“Hey, my plans aren’t always half brain!”
Mina just looked at him squarely, and he chuckled. He picked up something off of the embankment and handed it to her. It was the Grimoire.
“Oh, no! Now what do I do?” She immediately started to swing the notebook around to flick the water from it.
“It’s fine; it can protect itself. Just ask it to reform into another shape, it will dry.”
Mina raised an eyebrow at Jared before envisioning the Grimoire into a much smaller, sturdier leather bound book. A quick glow surrounded the book, and it shrank to fit her thought. “Wow, I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that.” She tucked it securely into her pocket.
“You’ll have to get used to it. It’s Fae magic,” Jared said in a sour voice. He didn’t seem too thrilled about it, when he said it.
Sighing, she stood up and looked around trying to find a way to get out. The river was on her left, and the cliff that she fell from didn’t have an easy path up, it was pure shale. She looked across the river to the other side and that cliff was even higher. They were going to have to walk along the river bed until they could find a smaller slope.
But then what? She had no clue where she was. She knew the national forest covered almost a 1,000 square miles and they couldn’t have possibly gone that far into the reserve, but what if they started walking the wrong way and ended up deeper into the woods? Granted, it was dark when Jared had pulled the bus over and she’d taken off running. She couldn’t have run that far right? Their best bet was to follow the river bed and hope it led them out.
Mina wrung out her socks and tucked them into her jacket. She put on her freezing cold shoes and started to walk along the bank.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Home, I have to get out of here, my mom is going to be worried sick.”
Jared jumped up quickly to follow along behind her as they walked. It was slow going with only the rising moon to guide their steps, and Mina frequently slipped and scraped her hands and knees. It probably would have been easier in the daylight, but the forest made her jump at every little sound. After a while, Jared took the lead and they s
topped often to listen for cars, or sounds of civilization, but all they could hear was the river.
“I think we’re lost,” Jared finally spoke up.
Mina didn’t answer and Jared turned to look at her. She was so tired and she could barely stand. “You are done in.” He turned to her and grabbed her shoulder, forcing her to turn to him.
She pulled away. “N,n,no. I have to get home.” She was shivering uncontrollably.
“Mina! Your lips are blue! I’m so dense. I forgot how frail you humans are.” Jared swatted away Mina’s hands and pulled her over to an outcropping that jutted out from the cliff. It was a natural made cave that didn’t look big enough for one person let alone two teenagers.
He pushed her inside and pressed his hands to the back of the cave wall. His hands began to glow, and she watched as the rock changed beneath his hands and moved back making the cave bigger. When it was big enough for them to fit in it comfortably, but small enough to keep them warm, he switched to making a fire. He quickly dug a hole with a large rock, lined the hole with small kindling and a few sticks, and pulled out a zippo lighter.
“What, you can’t make fire?” Mina tried to joke, but she could barely get her mouth to form the words and she was sure it came out in an unintelligible mumble. Mina didn’t believe it would light, but was surprised when the spark produced a yellow blue flame. Minutes later, Jared had a small fire going right outside the cave. Mina drew as close to it as she could, but her fingers were still frozen. She was so cold she actually considered putting her hands into the flames.
Jared crouched near her and began to rub her hands between his, trying to bring warmth back to them. His clothes were completely dry, and his body temperature was warmer than normal.
“Are you sick?” Mina asked. “You are so hot.”
“No, I can make my body temperature rise to warm me.” Jared unbuttoned his outer flannel and handed it to her. “Put this on.”
Mina shook her head. “N,n,no.”
“That wasn’t a request! Here, I’ll walk over there.” Jared immediately walked a few paces toward the river, keeping his back to her.
Mina quickly took her shirt off and pulled on Jared’s. It was completely dry already, unlike her shirt. It even smelled like him and was still warm with his body heat. When she was done, she laid out her shirt to dry on a bush. A few minutes later he walked back over to her.
“I think we should stay here until morning. We aren’t making good time, and you need to get dry.”
“But what about my mom?” she whined.
“There’s nothing we can do now. She’s probably already contacted the police and they’re looking for you.”
“Oh no! They’re going to think that you kidnapped me!” Mina brought her hands up to her mouth in horror.
Jared just shrugged. “In a way, I kind of did.”
“They won’t know where to look!”
“I’m sorry, Mina. This is my fault,” he said solemnly.
“Yes, Jared. It is.” A few seconds later her stomach growled noisily, and Jared started laughing.
“Holy cow! Did you hear that?” He blurted out.
Mina punched Jared in the arm. “I’m hungry, which happens to be your fault too.” Ignoring him, she crawled into the small cave and tried to curl in a ball to sleep.
“Hey, is there room for me?” Jared looked into the cave expectantly.
“NO!” Mina growled at him. “Don’t even think about it. And just because you got us into this, you can keep watch and tell me if you see anything. ”
“Fine,” Jared stated and leaned against the outer wall of the cave.
A few moments of silence passed, and Mina was almost asleep when she heard Jared speaking out loud in a droning voice. “I’m keeping watch, and I see the river. I see the moon rise over the trees. I see that the forest looks really, really creepy right now. I bet you there is some sort of killer vampire turtle slowly crawling toward us out of the woods. Yep, I can almost hear its little turtley steps inching closer to us.”
“Jared?”
Mina had no idea where Jared’s sense of humor suddenly came from, but it seemed to pour out of him in the most annoying boy fashion. Something about being outdoors and away from people brought out a different side of him. He didn’t seem so surly and angry. Maybe it was because something had changed between them, or he didn’t feel like he was hiding from her anymore. He was finally free to be himself. Mina would bet anything that there still were loads of things he wasn’t telling her…but it was a start.
“Yeah?” he answered a little too brightly.
“Are you going to shut up?”
“Nope,” he answered back. She could hear the grin in his voice.
“Will you shut up if I said please?”
“Probably not!” he chuckled. He was enjoying teasing her.
“Fine, then you can sleep in the cave if you promise me that nothing is going to eat us during the night.”
“I promise that if something comes to harm us during the night, I will eat it, instead.” Jared crawled into the small cave, being careful to not touch her. He turned on his side and faced away from her. Mina mirrored the action. She watched the dying fire cast shadows on the cave wall.
All of a sudden, Mina couldn’t sleep with Jared so close to her. For some reason, questions kept plaguing her and they were ones she was pretty sure he wouldn’t answer. She shivered again from the cold as her pants were still wet. But you could bet to high heaven they were staying on.
“So how come you never told me you’re an Ogre?” she asked quietly, her finger tracing circles on the ground.
“You weren’t ready,” he stated simply.
“And what made you decide to tell me now?”
“I was tired of you always being angry with me because there are some things that I can’t tell you. And, in a way, I wanted you to know. You also have to remember that I’m not gonna win homecoming king in my Fae form.” There was something in his voice that sounded vulnerable. Gone was the tough biker Jared, replaced by a young teenage boy who just wanted to be liked, to fit in. But she could tell he was still withholding something.
“So how come the Grimoire didn’t work on you? Isn’t it supposed to protect me when I’m in trouble?”
“It won’t work on me,” Jared sighed loudly, trying to sound annoyed, like he was the one that was almost asleep.
“Why not?” Mina asked.
“Cause, I’m cool like that.” He laughed.
Mina snorted. “Really? You’re going to evade the question? I actually thought that you were going to be truthful with me.”
“Mina, I don’t know what to tell you other than the Grimoire can’t harm me. Call it Ogre power if you must.”
She pondered what he said for a moment before asking, “It can’t or won’t?”
“Both… neither. I don’t know what you are trying to get at.”
Mina worried at her bottom lip before speaking again, this time it came out at a whisper. “I just need to know that the Grimoire is still going to protect me. I want to know that, next time, it is going to work. I don’t know what my father did wrong, but the Grimoire wasn’t able to help him and he died during one of these stupid God forsaken quests.
“Today, when I opened the book and tried to use it on you, it didn’t work. I panicked and really believed I was going to die, like my father.”
“Oh…” Jared became quiet. “You wished I would’ve gotten sucked into the book then. Boy, you really must not like me!”
Mina was annoyed. “I didn’t know it was you, remember! And yes, truthfully, like right now, I almost wish the book would suck you in it.”
Jared made a noise that sounded like laughter. When she became quiet, he apologized. “I’m sorry, I can tell this is really bothering you.”
“Yes, it is. The Grimoire came to my Uncle Jack, and he died. My father had it and became obsessed with ending the curse on our family. Even with the help of the Grimoire, he
wasn’t strong enough. I just…” Mina became choked up. “I thought today was it. The end...and I’m not ready to die.”
***
Jared could hear her crying softly, and guilt like he had never felt before overcame him. “Mina,” Jared spoke softly, turning toward her in the cave; he leaned up on one elbow to look at her.
“Mina, look at me.” She turned to look at him; her brown eyes looked even larger with tears in them. “It will work next time. I promise.”
Her voice sounded small, like a child’s, “How can you be sure?”
For once in his life he really wished he could believe his own words as he tried to comfort her. “I’m just sure.”
She nodded halfheartedly and turned back to looking at the wall. A few minutes later, she had cried herself to sleep. He watched her sleep, and when she continued to shiver, he slid closer to her and wrapped his arms around her, spooning her while she slept. He knew that she would never allow this while she was awake, but it was the only comfort he could give her. He breathed in her hair. Even after the dunk in the river, she still smelled faintly of strawberries.
He had to be better at shielding himself from her. She was breaking down his walls and leaving him vulnerable. He knew that he couldn’t always protect her, that one day he would be commanded to leave her side. He just hoped, beyond hope, that those commands would never come. But more than that, he was scared that she was being tracked.
It was one of the reasons he brought her out here, to hide her scent trail from that which hunts the Grimms. But he didn’t think he could ever tell her how her ancestors really died. It was easier to let her believe it was the Grimoire’s fault. Sometimes, people were better off, not knowing about the things that went bump in the night.
Chapter 9
Mina dreamed of Ogres. Being chased by Ogres, eaten by Ogres, and finally caught and smothered by an Ogre. She dreamed that she was wrapped in its arms and it was hugging her to death. When she awoke, she was in the cave alone.
Sounds of a crackling fire drew her attention to the cave opening. Jared was cleaning a fish, and there was one already cooking over the fire.