by Emily France
“Um . . .” Essa closed her eyes. “Shelter. Find shelter.”
“Right,” Micah said. “We’re under tree cover, but that lightning is close. So we’d be better off under an outcropping of rock if we can find one. Then what?”
Essa’s breath was coming way too fast.
Shelter. Shelter. Shelter. What comes after shelter?
“Heat,” Micah said. “If we were going to be stuck here a long time, we’d need heat. To dry off once this passes. So we should . . . ?”
“Gather any dry wood we can find. Get it into our shelter so it stays dry.”
The sky broke open again with thunder; it rumbled in her chest.
“Right, and look for pine sap,” Micah surveyed the trees around him. “Which shouldn’t be hard here. Now let’s go.”
“Pine sap?” Oliver looked confused.
“It’s a fire starter,” Micah said. “One of the best there is. Great in wet conditions.” Micah looked up the hill in front of them. “Let’s head this way.”
“Wait,” Essa said. “Let’s just wait out the storm and then hike back. There’s no need to go through all this like we’re staying on the trek.”
Micah looked up at the raindrops and groaned. The sky had darkened to a thick, opaque gray. “The beginning,” he said slowly, “is the most important part of the work.”
“You better not be—”
“Quoting Plato?” Micah asked, looking back at Essa. “Indeed I am. What if this storm lasts all night? What if we can’t hike out of here? The decisions we make right now, in the beginning, will determine what kind of night we have.”
“Storms never last all night up here,” Essa moaned. “It’s Colorado. It’s summer. It’ll be over by three or four.”
Micah raised his eyebrows. “That sounds like the shit people say in movies right before they get killed in some epic storm,” he said. “We should follow protocol. Find shelter, get a heat source. It’s good practice. Plus, what else are we going to do? Sit here in the rain and sing campfire songs?” He turned and began hiking up the hill.
“Fine. You win. But why don’t we head back toward the trail? That way we’re at least heading in the right direction.”
“Better shelter up this way,” Micah called back. He didn’t turn around. He just kept trudging, determined. Which was unlike him. Usually he conferred with Essa about decisions they made out here.
Essa rolled her eyes and took Puck’s hand. “We’ll follow Micah,” she said. “But as soon as humanly possible, we are going home.”
She squeezed Puck’s hand, so relieved that her little sister didn’t get lost or hurt following them in the woods. Puck smiled, looking so pleased with herself. So impressed with the feat of getting to go on one of these treks.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Essa said, trying to look stern. “I still love you. But I am still totally pissed.”
The storm didn’t stop. The rain just kept coming. They searched the mountainside for shelter for at least an hour and couldn’t find one; the sides of the hill were smooth, the boulders were all too small. There was nothing to crawl under or in.
“So let’s put up the tent,” Micah said, pointing to a slightly sheltered spot against a rock face. He motioned for Essa to turn around so he could get it out of her pack.
“I don’t have it,” Essa said. “You have it.”
Micah raised his eyebrows. “Incorrect. You said that if I was going to whine about it, you’d carry it. I was totally planning on whining about it.”
“Great.” Essa closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the raining sky. She felt the cold raindrops hit her cheeks and run down her neck, soaking the collar of her shirt. She looked at the wet ground. “Looks like we’ll be spending the night in a brush shelter. A very wet brush shelter.”
“Oh, shit,” Micah said.
“It’s okay.” Essa sighed. “We’re good at building these—”
“It wasn’t just the tent in the tent bag.” Micah’s eyes were wide with guilt. “It also had the flashlight. And the lighters. And the emergency flint.”
“Oh, shit.”
“A brush shelter will be awesome!” Puck said. “I read all about it. We need a support log. And root rope. And tons of pine branches.” Puck ran to the nearest tree and started gathering boughs that had fallen to the forest floor.
Micah smiled as he watched her. “So . . . let’s get stoked? And build a brush shelter.” He looked back at Essa. “And sorry. Totally my bad.”
“You’re forgiven, I guess,” Essa said. There was no sense in getting pissed. They needed shelter; she had to make sure Puck would be dry tonight. Essa eyed a fallen tree limb, about as wide as her leg. “There’s a decent support beam. You guys get some roots, and I’ll do the knot.”
The process for building a brush shelter was always the same. Find a fallen limb strong enough to use as the main support beam. Find a bush or other small plant and pull up a handful of live roots to use as rope. Tie the support beam to a tree and layer pine limbs and other brush over it until a cavelike shelter started to take shape.
Oliver helped dig up roots until his hands looked muddy and raw. Essa tied the support beam to the tree because she was the best at bowline knots. Puck was fifty yards off, collecting pine branches for the walls. She was standing on her tip-toes, trying to reach a broken limb.
“Here,” Essa said, jogging to Puck’s side. “Let me help.” Essa reached up and pulled the branch down and handed it to Puck. “Good find.”
“I’m only collecting stuff that’s already broken or fallen. Those are the wilderness rules. And we totally shouldn’t be digging up roots. Leave no trace and all. But this is an emergency.”
“You studied the rules, didn’t you?” Essa wiped her hands on her pants. The pine sap stuck to her palms despite how wet they were.
“I told you I’d be a good partner for this. Did I tell you I learned how to make a Band-Aid out of pine bark?”
“You did,” Essa said. “And I’m impressed.”
“So if you get cut, just tell me.”
“I will. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”
They walked another twenty yards to the left, where several pine branches had fallen. The only sounds Essa could hear were the patter of the heavy raindrops on the trees and an occasional bird tweeting in spite of the storm.
Until she heard whistling.
She looked back in the direction of Micah and Oliver. Oliver was bent over the ground, digging up the roots of a small plant. His hands were covered in dirt and mud as he scratched at the earth. Micah was busy lacing branches together over the shelter. Essa couldn’t tell which one was whistling.
“Who’s the songbird?” she called.
“What?” Oliver called back.
“Who’s whistling? And what’s that song?”
The rain came even harder, and Puck started to giggle. She twirled and held her arms wide, as if the droplets were falling on her giant make-believe wings, sliding off her colorful feathers.
“Not me,” Oliver said. “Can’t whistle. Never been able to.”
“Not me,” Micah called over his shoulder, threading some root rope around a pine bough. “Must be Puck.”
Essa looked over at Puck, still dancing in the storm.
Puck wasn’t whistling, either.
Then who . . . ?
“You know where you are?”
Essa spun around. It was a man wearing a straw fedora. The rain was collecting in the hat’s slightly upturned brim and cascading off to the side, a tiny waterfall that arced to the ground. Puck stopped dancing.
“Yeah,” Essa said. “We do.” She looked back at Oliver. He wasn’t paying attention; he was too focused on yanking a small root out of the ground. Micah was busy messing with the shelter.
“My grandfather’s p
lane went down somewhere around here. Had a lot of Japanese antiques on board. So valuable.” The man looked around the woods, as if there might be a plane lodged in the soft forest floor just behind Essa. “I’ve been looking for what was onboard for years. Think a lot of it was scattered throughout these woods.”
The little hairs on the back of Essa’s neck stood up, her skin tingling. Great. A nut job. She knew there was a trail in the Comanche Wilderness that led to the site of an old WWII plane crash, but still. What were the odds that it was his grandfather’s plane? Or that there were antiques that survived the crash?
“Haven’t seen it,” she said. She turned and managed to catch Micah’s eye. He dropped the large pine bough in his hand and came over.
“I was just passing this way and heard you folks talking,” the man said. “Wanted to make sure you knew where you were. You’re way off trail up the—”
“We’re good.” Essa cut him off. “We’ve backpacked up here a lot. But thanks.”
She looked at the ground and saw that the man was wearing soft rubber clogs with holes in them. Black cotton pants. Not what you’d wear backcountry hiking. He looked so out of place—almost like an illusion, something from a surrealist painting.
Essa walked closer to Puck, instantly feeling protective. Sometimes hikers ran into creeps in the woods. It didn’t happen often, but it had happened before. Essa guessed he was a sketchy person who was trying to live in the wilderness or was running from something or was just plain out of it.
“Everything okay?” Oliver joined them, a tangle of roots in his hands.
“Yeah,” Essa said. “Let’s go.” She steered Puck in the direction of the shelter.
“Have a good hike,” the man said. He started whistling again as he turned and slowly walked away, his white straw fedora like a freak summertime snowflake bobbing through the woods, refusing to melt.
“Creeper,” Oliver said. “I thought you guys didn’t have those out here. I thought you only ran into dudes like that in the city.”
“He was weird,” Puck said, wrinkling her brow. “Who wears clogs like that in the woods?”
“You know what they say,” Micah said, still watching the guy walk away. “Fear is the anticipation of . . . creepers.”
Essa leveled her eyes at Micah. “Let me guess,” she said. “Plato again?”
“Nope. Aristotle. Bet you didn’t know he was fond of the word creepers.” Micah smiled. “Okay. So I slightly modified the quote.”
Essa rolled her eyes and draped an arm around her sister’s tiny shoulders. In a way, Essa was suddenly glad Puck was here instead of back down in Boulder. She thought about how there were so many creeps in the world. So many dangers. And maybe Essa would rather have Puck with her up here, even in the cold and the storm.
As long as you’re with me, you’re safe.
“So, who wants to hear the real Aristotle quote?” Micah asked as they walked back toward the shelter. No one responded. “Excellent. The real quote is ‘Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.’ But ‘creeper’ is a fair substitution.”
“I’m sure that’s what Aristotle was referring to,” Essa said.
Micah turned to Oliver and Puck. “You guys want to collect some pine sap off that tree?” he asked, pointing. “I’ll start a fire in a little bit. Could use some fuel.”
Puck didn’t look thrilled, but agreed to go with Oliver. The two headed off to scrape the dripping sap off a nearby tree.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Micah turned to Essa. “Question for you.”
“Go for it.” Essa pulled the elastic off the end of her wet braid and slowly undid the overlapping strands. She bent over and shook out her hair; the damp braid had crimped it into hundreds of tiny waves.
“That guy,” Micah said, looking back in the direction where they’d seen him. “He say anything before I got there?”
“Not really,” Essa said. “Something freaky about looking for his grandfather’s plane? Antiques? I think he means the trail to the B17 site. I don’t know. Totally wacko.”
“Did he tell you where we are?”
Essa’s eyes widened. “No,” she said slowly. “He started to, but I cut him off. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
Essa stared at Micah, noticing that he seemed a little jittery, a little on edge. “Micah. Do you not know where we are?”
“Well . . . we walked for almost an hour in the storm, and I thought I knew exactly where we were going when I led us up that ridge. But when I went to look for pine boughs, I didn’t recognize any of the landmarks I’d noted to get us back. And it was so dark with the storm, I didn’t really . . .” Micah trailed off. Essa looked around her at the dripping trees and realized the worst:
She hadn’t been paying attention.
After Puck had shown up, her mind had gone into panic mode; all her survival skills had flown out the window. Micah had convinced her they needed to set off to look for shelter and firewood, and she’d just blindly followed him. She hadn’t looked for landmarks; she hadn’t even tried to figure out if they were walking north, south, east, or west. Now, everything looked the same.
“When we dry out, we’ll take a bearing with the compass,” Essa said, trying desperately to stop the panic pooling in her chest like the rainwater in her hiking boots. “We’ll hike to a high point. Get a good view. We’re not lost.”
“No,” Micah said, shaking his head. “Hell, no. Definitely not lost.”
Essa smiled thinly, and Micah headed back to work on the shelter. She needed to stay calm, to follow her breath, to be in the moment. She needed to call on all her orienteering skills, her survival skills, her gut instincts. She needed to keep Puck safe and get her home as fast as possible. She needed the thought that was racing through her mind to go away.
We’re lost.
24
ESSA
The rain didn’t stop until dusk. If they set off for the car, they would have to spend several hours hiking in the dark. With no flashlight.
There was only one option—stay the night.
Micah put together a small nest of cedar bark and pine sap. He used leftover roots, a curved live branch, a thick stick, and the driest slab of wood he could find to build a bow and drill: a fire-starting tool. The roots wrapped around the branch and were tied to either end to create the bow; he used it to work the thick stick back and forth against the dry wood slab, smoking and finally creating an ember he could dump on the nest. Once the fire was crackling, he put Essa in charge of watching it and promptly crawled into the finished shelter and fell asleep. Essa and Oliver sat by the flames and stuck their wet, sock-covered feet as close to the heat as they could without burning them. Puck was close by, bent over the ground playing with sticks.
Oliver wiggled his toes. Essa eyed the deadfall trap Micah had set nearby.
“You guys really going to eat a mouse if you catch one?” Oliver asked. “Did we not bring enough food?” He looked at the deadfall, which consisted of a large rock perched on top of two sticks rigged to fall if they were triggered. The rock was supposed to squash whatever animal was below.
She knew why Micah had set it. Oliver was right; they’d brought plenty of food on the trip. To last three days. A few extra if necessary. But if they were lost, none of them knew how long their stores would need to last. Micah was preparing for the worst.
“Micah’s just practicing,” Essa lied. “Good wilderness skill.”
“But I thought you were a vegetarian?”
“Yeah, I am. Puck is too. But we’d eat meat in a true emergency.” Essa looked at Oliver. “Not that we’re in one or anything. An emergency.” She said it a little too quickly, and hoped Oliver didn’t pick up on her nerves. She shivered and scooted closer to the fire. The storm had brought much cooler air than usual for June. There was a chill that was making her co
ld to her core. It didn’t help that everything she had was soaked. Essa picked up the small pot they’d brought with them and held it over the fire. It was filled with rainwater. “Check this out. Pull some pine needles off that branch and hand them to me.”
“Huh?”
“We’ll make pine needle tea,” Essa said. “You just dump a bunch of needles into hot water and let them steep. And voilà—tea. It’s actually pretty high in vitamin C, so it’s a good way to get some nutrition.” She gently moved the pot, adjusting it over the fire.
“Look what I made! It’s stick art.” Puck sat up and leaned against the white bark of an aspen tree. She pointed at the ground. “You’re gonna love it.”
The flames of the campfire leaped in the air as a stiff breeze blew from the east. The fire curled around the small pot Essa was holding and singed the side of her finger. She nearly dropped the pot from the pain. “Damn Colorado wind.”
“Seriously, come here.” Puck stood up and brushed away the little twigs and stones that were stuck to the backside of her pants. She pointed at the ground. “I made a forest stick mural. I think it’s beautiful.”
“Not now, Puck,” Essa said, still concentrating on the throbbing pain in her swelling finger. “In a little bit, okay? I’m making tea.”
“We haven’t even been hungry that long, and you’re getting cranky. Don’t forget to look at my art.” Puck wagged a finger at Essa and then ran over to the shelter. “I’m going to see if Micah wants to go star hunting with me. I can’t see any from here.” She craned her neck to get a view of the sky. It was too dark to see the outlines of clouds, but Essa knew they were there by the absence of starlight.
“Fine, but don’t go far,” she said. The water began to boil.
“Do I put the needles in now?” Oliver asked, ready with a handful.
“Yep,” Essa said. Oliver dropped the thin green spikes into the water, and Puck disappeared inside the shelter.
Darkness thickened around them. Essa and Oliver finished off the pine needle tea as the fire pip-popped. Essa slid off the log she was sitting on and spread out on a spot close to the flames.