“I don't remember,” said Alice. She took a sip of the tea Jenny gave her. Jenny had made the tea from a kind of dogwood gathered in the surrounding hills.
“You’ve lost the memory of much of your past, Alice,” Jenny said gently.
They were sitting on the deck of a yurt perched on the bank of the Darkertree River, leaning side by side against the curve of the outer wall, gazing down at the white water and the naked bathers at play a hundred or so feet down below the steep bank. They were deep in the forests of western Oregon. Alice had woken up in Jenny's spiritual retreat six weeks before, disheveled and with a very sore head. She had arrived without any memory of how she got there, wearing only a torn T-shirt and cut-off jeans. With a new dragon necklace around her neck.
“Sara came here with you when she was almost eleven years old,” Jenny said. “You both looked as though you were running from something.” Jenny had retired from her medical practice in the city a decade ago and had come to the settlement along the Darkertree to learn to relax after nearly dying in a rush-hour multi-car collision on Interstate 90. Along the way, she had become a master of eddu, a martial arts and exercise system formed from a fusion of western anatomy and physiology with karate. A few days ago, Jenny said that Alice had been the one who taught Jenny eddu many years before—according to Jenny, almost a decade before. When you came here, the retreat was just starting up. We had some trouble with the locals. You helped us… Alice could not remember any of that, but when they had practiced, her body had known how to do the moves even if she could not name them.
“This was a good place for you to come,” Jenny continued. “Sara learned to cook and sew, and she was very good at it. She read everything, and you were always coming back with her from a library or used bookstore with a car full of books. You taught us how to defend ourselves.” Jenny took a sip of the tea.
“You were looking for refuge.” When Jenny smiled, her face lit up in lines like rivers running strong around a look that you knew she saved for something special.
They talked on a spare wooden deck, sitting on reed mats spread between the drying racks filled with herbs and fungi Jenny gathered from secret spots in the forest. Mist from the river floated up, catching the afternoon sun, making glowing rays that drew lines down from the gaps in the dense canopy above. The evergreen smell of fir rode the mist into Alice’s nose, and she breathed in deeply, enjoying the moment.
“Do you know what we were running from?”
When Jenny frowned, one could hear the great fir trees groaning as they turned to see what the matter was. She frowned now. “Sara's father sent you. Something he did or knew about. Something that scared him.” The yurt where Jenny slept stood in a small clearing on the edge of the river and backed up to a village of cabins that visitors rented when they came to bask in the hot waters of Willamette Springs.
“He sent me with Sara?”
Jenny nodded. “You first met her when she was very young. She saw you as an older sister.”
“And this?” Alice held up the dragon necklace.
“All I know about that is what you told me. When I brought you back here, you were raving. You said you saw Sara killed, and she gave you a necklace just before being shot. A killer wanted it, and you needed to keep it from him.” Jenny sighed. “You would not let me take you the hospital or to the police.”
Alice touched her scar. “I’m surprised you listened to me.”
“I checked your wound. You lost a lot of blood. You had a concussion. I couldn’t see then that the bullet had gone into your skull. Later, I found it to be much worse than I’d thought. I really have no idea how you survived.” She stretched her hands up into the air in a calming movement. “Fate. Luck. God. The Tao. The Great Pumpkin. Something more than my skill saved you. I should’ve taken you to the hospital.” She sighed. “You were persuasive.”
“But Jenny, I can’t remember anything about who I am!”
“Retrograde amnesia. Caused by your brain bouncing around in your skull. You remember facts and skills but not people. Brain injuries are complex, variable; the outcomes are often very different even for people with similar wounds. I also feel that at least some of your memory issues are caused by your loss. What the textbooks would call post-traumatic stress.”
“I lost Sara.” Alice felt tears start flowing from her eyes and drip on her cheeks.
An owl's call echoed through the trees. Jenny raised her head, listened. “There are unfriendly men at the gate.”
Alice looked alarmed. “Should I leave? Are they here to hurt you?”
“When you leave, I think they’ll follow you, Alice. They want what you have, not what I have.”
“Do you know more about this thing they are after?”
Jenny reached out and stroked Alice’s head, pushing her hair back from her scar.
“I don’t. And I don’t know that finding the answer is worth your life. You have money. You should go south, Alice.”
Alice held the necklace up in the afternoon light. It sparkled. “Why did he want it? It's shiny, but it's just obsidian and silver, not worth killing for.” Or dying for! “I have to find out why this happened to Sara! I have to bring justice to her killer.” Alice’s voice broke, and Jenny gathered her into her arms. “She was like my little sister,” Alice whispered. They hugged silently for a moment.
“Alice, you came here many years ago to get away from the outside world.” Jenny pointed at the edge of an old scar on Alice’s chest, peeking out of her V-neck shirt. “I thought you were going to die that time, too. You’ve been happy, hiding here in the mountains. Living a peaceful life, avoiding confrontation. In touch with your spirit. Anyway, you seemed happy until Sara came back. Do you really want to go back to that world now?”
“I can’t remember that life, Jenny. I can remember Sara as a person, though I can’t recall anything we did together, other than the night she died… the night that man killed her! I remember that I loved her. I remember seeing her die. I have to find the man who did that… and find out why. Maybe that is all I have left?”
“If you go back up into the hills, meditate, remain peaceful, I think in time your memories will come back.”
“I saw her die, Jenny! That’s the one thing I can remember of my life before this.” Alice touched her scar.
Jenny finished her tea. “I don’t think you should do this, but I’ll do what I can to help you, Alice. I owe you for all of this.” Jenny swept her hand in a gesture that encompassed the yurt, the trees, and the river.
They sat in silence for a time. Alice watched the shadows dance in the breeze-blown trees in the valley below. She heard another owl call. Three long notes, two short. The signal for intruders.
“Can I do it? Am I able enough? I have memory problems, I hear voices, and sometimes parts of my body just stop working.”
“Seizures. Petit mal. From your wound. They should heal over time. As I said before, you’ll heal faster if you take it easy.”
“You are saying they’re too strong for me?”
“The problem is not the strength of your enemies. The ability to create force is a lower-level skill. A bear, a horse, even a cow—all can create more force than even a highly-trained person. Redirecting force is the core of eddu. Keep your center, direct their power away from you, and let your hands and feet find their weak points. Your body remembers what your head does not.” Jenny smiled. “I know. When we practice, I end up with sore spots that show you’ve not forgotten. They prove you are not too weak. You shouldn’t go out there after them, but it’s possible you will succeed if you do.”
“What if they have guns… bullets kill horses and bears quite well!”
“They have to see you to shoot you. Wait a little longer, and the shadows in the woods will be very long. That’s the best time to go. The gloom before nightfall is easier to hide in than pitch dark.”
“They seem to expect me to walk out the front door like a good little girl.”
&nb
sp; “Then, they don't know you as well as you know yourself, even in your present state…”
“When I barely recall my name!” Alice laughed.
“I am glad that you can laugh. Your health and strength are returning.” Jenny reached out and grasped Alice's arm above the elbow. “Your mind is damaged, dear, but your body is strong. When the time comes, let your body lead your mind. Feel your way.”
“I just wish I knew more about that way.”
“Much of what I’m telling you, you told me. Before you got shot.”
“Back then, was I worried about Sara?”
“That I can't say. You did tell me she came from Tampa.”
“Tampa, in Florida?”
“I think there is only one Tampa. The name meant “the place of burning sticks” to the Tocobagas, the natives who lived there before the Spanish came.”
“You’re a wealth of knowledge, Jenny.”
“Ha! I read too much.”
“Maybe the answer is in Tampa.”
“Maybe it’s a place to start.” Jenny took a silver rectangle from her bag. “Take this.”
“What is it?”
“A smartphone in my name. It has an application on it that may help you. It is called Ami.”
“The phone?”
“Sort of. It’s easier to show you.” Jenny held up the phone. “Ami, is there a Peter Moore who lives in Tampa, Florida?”
A tinny voice responded, “I find more than two hundred thousand results for Peter Moore and Tampa. Do you have any other information I could use to narrow these results?”
Alice gasped. “That’s cool!”
Jenny laughed. “Yeah. It’s pretty good. I’ve another one, though. Last week I helped a man from a computer company down south with his back pain. He gave me this new Sequence Seven phone. Some patent dispute, and now his company can’t sell them. But I just got myself an iPhone. So you can take this one.”
“Thank you, Jenny!”
“Please don’t worry about it, Alice. You’ve given me much for what little help I’ve been to you.”
“You saved my life.”
“Maybe.” Jenny held up a set of keys. “I asked Jonathan to bring my motorcycle up to the National Forest Service road beyond the river. You can get to it by heading due north through the woods. When you hit the road, go uphill until you see a large rock with a Pacific yew growing on top of it. You remember how to identify a yew?”
“You showed me last week. Small tree with needles that come out in a spiral but then twist to stay flat. Red berries on it now. Usually by itself. Very rare.”
“Right. Behind the tree, you’ll find the bike. I would stay off the main streets until you get up to the Collawash.”
“We took that ride last month on all those dirt roads!”
“That is the back way out of Willamette Springs. You can take those trails most of the way to Portland.”
“So just head north. Look for the mossy sides of the trees?”
“Also, your smartphone has a GPS.”
Alice raised her eyebrows.
“That means you can ask Ami the way if you get lost.”
“I think I’ll like this Ami.”
With one last hug, Alice headed down the hill below Jenny’s yurt. She had stayed here long enough; she felt almost healed, although she still had occasional lapses where an arm or leg would go numb, or she would blank out and find herself several minutes later with no idea what had happened. And my memories about myself start with seeing Sara get shot!
Alice crossed the river in the fading light. The way to Jenny’s motorcycle snaked up a narrow ravine between the two hills, following a creek from where it flowed into the Darkertree River. She waded through the shallow water and ducked into the fern-covered gully formed by the junction of Mansfield Creek and the Darkertree. Growing from ground too steep and remote to be easy to log, large Douglas firs dominated the drainage, the old trees seeded or left behind after loggers had come through in the late 1800s. They rose more than two hundred feet into the air and ranged from two feet to ten feet in diameter. Beneath the dark green canopy, trunks of fallen giants crossed the creek and ran up and down the banks, and huge stumps rose from the trees that had been cut and taken out. The dead trees rotted slowly, covered with the purple flowers of wild rhododendrons, bright green huckleberry bushes with small red fruit, the fronds of rough sword ferns in the brighter areas, and delicate lady ferns where the thick canopy kept most of the sun out. Nearer the flowing water, big-leafed maples left dappled shadows, black and emerald in the fading light.
Alice loved to practice being quiet when she walked alone in the woods. When the clicks and cheeps of the frogs, the buzz of the cicadas, and the peeping of crickets sang on as she passed, she knew she was being successful. She felt no rush, as Jenny had told her planes flew to Tampa every few hours from Portland, and the money belt Jenny had given her when she had left held plenty of cash.
Alice had been hiking up the creek for about half an hour when all of a sudden something seemed wrong. The twilight song did not play here. Alice stopped and then slowly backed into the thick huckleberries lining the banks of the creek. She waited for a few minutes. Nothing changed. The woods remained quiet. Whoever or whatever scared the small creatures into silence must have been close by.
Alice got down on her belly and inched through the undergrowth. She winced as something in the money belt poked her belly. Probably the set of small tools Jenny had showed her. She said they were Alice’s. “For picking locks. Your fingers will know how to use them.”
She crawled up the steep bank of Mansfield Creek, taking a quarter of an hour to move one hundred feet up to the top, and the long summer twilight had nearly ended when she arrived. She looked down on the remains of a tree almost twice as thick as she was tall. Thick huckleberry covered the stump, which rose about twenty feet above the flowing water, providing a perfect vantage point to watch for someone using the creek as an easy trail through the dense forest. Someone like me!
Some of the huckleberry branches on top of the stump moved from side to side, as if they hid a stalking lizard.
When the bushes moved, she heard a slight clicking sound of metal hitting metal.
Alice stared at the moving bushes, and after a bit of study she could distinguish the outline of a human form, with a large apparatus on its head and the long shape of a hunting rifle by its side. Night vision goggles.
The camouflaged shape looked to be that of a big man. You do not want to get into a long fight with that one.
Looking close, she saw an earpiece and a throat mike he talked softly into. She couldn’t hear the words he spoke, but along with the metal clicking of his scanning, his voice must be loud enough to spook the small creatures. And he didn’t notice. That suggested training in the city, somewhere the sounds of the night going silent would not warn him. Or he knew they were silent but did not think his prey would notice it.
He is a fighter, not a spy.
How the voice in her head knew that, she had no idea. Alice knew she could silently move around him and on up the wash to where Jenny’s motorcycle waited. Jenny and her friends were able to take care of themselves.
However, this man waited for her. He must have a reason. She would like to find out what that reason might be. She looked up. Many years ago, an old Douglas fir had fallen here across the creek.
The durable old trunk stretched from one bank to the other still, covered in moss, honeysuckle, and small fir trees slowly recycling the carcass. It passed over the man’s hiding spot. Alice got up on one knee—then the other leg. She slowly worked back from the edge of the ravine, shuffling her feet into the needle litter covering the ground so she did not step on any crackling twigs.
Alice made her way up to where the tree once stood tall, where now only the remains of its roots pointed toward the sky, ripped from the ground and left naked, slowly rotting. Rough, rounded moss marked the old tree’s trunk, covering protuberances created by
scars from broken branches and parasites that the tree had long ago covered with bark and wood. She took great care to avoid making noise as she wound her way around the opportunistic growth covering the mossy bridge formed by the old log. After a few minutes of choosing every spot her hands or feet touched the bark, she arrived at a spot directly above the watcher.
Imagining herself agile as Jenny’s cat, Alice crouched, jumped, and leapt the six feet down onto the man. Her heels struck the man’s solid shoulders, knocking him back and away from his gun. She shot out her hand and grabbed the goggles off his face, leaving him blinking. Alice rolled with the fall, the man’s gun in one hand, her finger unconsciously moving the safety to “off” as she rolled. She came up on one knee with the hunting rifle aimed between the man’s eyes. He recovered quickly with a crab-like move that put him right back on his feet, and he faced her with a long, sharp-looking knife with a jagged top and a shining point that seemed thirsty for her blood.
“I’ll cut you for that!” his voice boomed.
Alice aimed the gun at him. Winchester 88. Serious big game rifle. The words came to her as if spoken by someone else; she had no idea how she knew these things.
“You can try,” Alice said. “This is a fine gun. Powerful. I know how to shoot it.” Do I? “You won’t be able to use that knife, so let’s drop it, okay?”
The man glowered down at his knife. “Fat lot of good it did.” He dropped the knife and looked up at her. “You’re pretty quick, girl. How the heck did you get up there without me hearing you?”
“Practice.”
“Ah, and the enemy is the best teacher. So what are you looking for out here?”
“What am I looking for? You are the one out in the woods dressed like a backcountry Stormtrooper. I think you were waiting for me. Why?”
The man’s eyes got big and wide. “Well, I was just hoping to bag a bear when you attacked me! Are you one of those granola nazis who hate hunters?”
That took Alice aback. What if he were telling the truth? Thank goodness she didn’t seem to have hurt him. She looked more closely at the night-vision goggles. Four tubes—that kind of NVG costs more than sixty thousand dollars.
The Gift of the Dragon Page 4