“Fleur, are you okay?”
She continued to ignore me, although she had closed her eyes and had begun to sing softly to herself as she rocked back and forth.
“She’s seeking strength from Grandmother Moon,” a voice rang out from behind me.
I whirled around to see Eric half-raised on his elbows, before he sank back down with a groan.
“Oh my God, you’re okay.”
I ran to him. I brushed my fingers gently over his face, his eyes, his cheeks, his lips, and his scar to convince myself that he really was okay. He reached for my hand and brought it to his lips.
“My little Red Flower,” he murmured. I leaned down and kissed him on those soft, full lips and felt an invigorating warmth in his answering response.
Then he chuckled. “What took you so long?” He grinned, and the dimples I adored erupted on either cheek.
I helped him sit up and watched as the expression on his face changed to one of horror as he took in his surroundings. “Christ, I didn’t know such places existed.”
His silvery grey eyes looked up at me questioningly. “How in the hell did I get here?” Then he shook his head. “No, you can’t answer that.”
He raised his hand and gingerly felt the injury on his head. He winced. “Ouch. I think I know what happened. I was eating dinner in the cabin where they’d been holding me when a couple of guys I hadn’t seen before came in and began dragging me towards the door. They didn’t even bother to remove the chains around my ankles. I know I put up a fight. In fact, I can remember hitting one guy squarely on the jaw.”
He grinned as he eyed the bruises and cuts on his knuckles. “Next thing I know I’m hearing your voice, your sweet, angelic voice, my Miskowàbigonens.”
I blushed. “I think they brought you by boat to the main lodge. We heard it as we were approaching the hunting cabin.”
Just then a shout from outside rang through the torture chamber.
We froze.
“Don’t worry, I’ve locked the door. And I have the key.” I held up the dangling iris keychain. Nonetheless, I could feel my body start to tremble with fear. What the hell were we going to do now?
“Meg, Meg, where are you?” someone called.
“That sounds like Will,” Eric said. “Is he here too?”
“We’re in here,” I yelled back, hastening to unlock the door.
I opened it onto a dishevelled Will, his baseball cap gone, a jagged red cut across his cheek, his arm clenched to his side and a revolver jammed into the waist of his pants. A broad grin spread from cheek to cheek.
“You’re hurt! What happened?” I asked.
“A bloody gun fight, that’s what.” He laughed. “But as you can see, we won. Three of the bad guys are trussed up in a shed and are being guarded by George. One has a gunshot wound to his leg, while the fourth guy is dead. I think he’s the one you said was the manager’s brother.”
“You mean Fran.”
“Yup. He was a shifty bastard, tried to sneak up on Teht’aa.”
“Oh no, did he hurt her?”
“Nope, I caught him just as he was raising his gun. But we haven’t been able to find Eric or Fleur.”
“I have.” I opened the door wide.
“That you, Will?” Eric called out. “I tell ya, you two are the best things I’ve seen in two months.” He was now sitting with his legs dangling over the side of the rack and the duvet tightly wrapped around his body.
Fleur, however, remained where I’d left her sitting awkwardly on the barrel with her kimono hanging open. I ran to hide her nakedness. Still chanting, she paid no attention to me or to the others and limply submitted to the kimono being tied around her.
“She’s been through a very rough time,” Eric said. “If you can get her out of this room and into a safer place, her healing will begin.”
“We’d better do the same with you,” I said. “Will, here’s the sat phone to call for rescue.”
“Already done,” he answered. “I used George’s phone. But the planes can’t land until daylight, so let’s put them in one of the hotel rooms.”
“Hey, man, you look like shit.” Will walked up to his friend. “But Christ, it’s sure good to see you alive and kicking.”
He gripped the other man with the intensity of an enduring friendship.
With Will supporting a wobbly Eric and me guiding Fleur, we left the hellhole and firmly shut the door on the nightmare. We surprised Teht’aa in the lobby of the lodge, where she’d been checking the rooms to ensure they were empty.
“Dad, you’re alive!”
Tears flowed from her eyes as she ran and flung her arms around her father with such force that he almost fell.
I beamed as the love I felt for both of them overwhelmed me. After giving them a few moments, I joined them in a communal hug and in turn was joined by Will. Finally we broke apart, laughing and crying at the same time. Even Will had wet cheeks.
But I’d forgotten about Fleur. She wasn’t standing where I’d left her.
“Where’s Fleur gone?” I cried out.
“What, you’ve got Fleur too? Thank God,” Teht’aa said.
“But she’s not in good shape. Come on, we’d better go look for her.” I headed into the adjoining room filled with overstuffed leather chairs and chesterfields and a dying fire in a stone fireplace, a room that would’ve made a comfortable and warming retreat, but clearly not for her.
Instead I found her in the bar, talking quietly to the parrot, who glanced at her suspiciously out of one eye. She didn’t turn or make any acknowledgement of my presence.
“Fleur, it’s me, Meg.”
She continued talking to the green parrot.
“Everything’s going to be okay. Those men can’t hurt you any more. They’re locked up.”
I saw her body go rigid, but that was the only indication that she was listening.
I continued, “The police will be here in the morning. You’ll soon be going home to your mother, your father, and your sisters.”
She jerked around, her eyes wide with fear. “No, I can’t.”
Before I could catch her, she sprinted out of the room, onto the verandah, and down the stairs.
I raced after her. “Fleur, come back! You’re safe. You don’t need to run. No one is going to hurt you.”
She sped across the front grounds, the white kimono flapping in the glare of the floodlights. Even in her bare feet, she could outrun me. By the time she disappeared into the blackness of the forest, the distance between us had stretched.
“Fleur, please stop. You might hurt yourself.”
“Who cares,” came the response.
I stopped at the forest edge and flicked on my headlamp. I could hear her footsteps, still running. A path cut its way through the trees. I followed it, stopping every few minutes to listen to her running footsteps to ensure that she was still in front of me. Despite the blackness of the night, she never faltered, never stopped. She ran relentlessly onward, getting further and further away. So far she seemed to be staying on the trail. I followed at a slower pace until I could no longer hear her footsteps. By now I was convinced she’d travelled this path many times before, so I kept walking. She had a destination in mind. I would find her there.
The night had turned cold, but thankfully the rain still held off. My breath sent swirls of steam into the light of my headlamp. I zipped up my jacket, wishing I’d brought something warm with me to give to the girl. Once she cooled down from her running, she would need it.
I entered a copse of birch, and believing this might be her destination, I shone my headlight around their silvery trunks. She wasn’t there. I continued onwards and upwards. The path was starting to climb, not sharply, but in a slow, steady rise. It had also changed in texture. Until this point the path had been predominantly bare ground with scatterings of dead leaves and pine needles. Now it was covered in soft, cushiony moss. Tall, feathery ferns defined its borders.
I could hear a
low rumble coming from the direction I was headed. It made me nervous. I followed the trail upward until it suddenly opened onto a broad carpet of moss. The path stopped. The noise had become the roar of rushing water. My light shone out into a yawning, mist-filled blackness. Below glimmered water tumbling over rock. I had little doubt that I was looking down at the dangerous falls that lay upriver from where we’d left the canoes.
Terrified Fleur might have slipped over the edge, I scanned the rocks below but saw nothing but foaming white. Then I heard the sound of singing.
The young woman stood at the edge, her arms outstretched as if she was about to fly. Her long hair swirled in the breeze rising from the river.
“Fleur, don’t!” I cried out. “You have too much to live for.”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “I’m filth, I’m dirt. No one will want to come near me.”
“But none of what’s happened to you is your fault. Your mother loves you very much. She sent me to find you.”
“I don’t believe you. She kicked me out of the house.”
“She’s very sorry. She knows she was wrong and only wants you to return home. Here, I’ve got a satellite phone, call her, talk to her.”
But she ignored my offer. Instead, she continued to stand with her toes curled over the mossy edge and her arms outstretched.
“Please, Fleur, come away from the edge so we can talk better.”
“What’s there to talk about? Sure I can tell you about the forty-one different ways I learned to fuck or the number of times I sucked the cocks of old men dressed in diapers, while I wore a nurse’s uniform with my boobs hanging out. But I don’t think you want to hear about that.”
“Fleur, you can put all that behind you. You have your whole life ahead of you.”
“No, I don’t. It’s over.”
While we talked, I’d inched closer, hoping to reach her before she made up her mind to jump.
“Please, Fleur, there are people that can help you. Summer Grass Woman and others.”
I was almost within touching distance when she turned her tear-stained face towards me and cried out, “You don’t understand. You see, I enjoyed the filth. In fact, I liked the chains and the rack the best.” She gave a high, almost hysterical laugh. “My father was a good teacher. Because of that I can’t live with myself.”
With those last words, she jumped. I flung out my arms and screamed, “Don’t!” Our fingertips touched as her arms spread into a swan dive, and over she went into the mad water below.
Chapter
Fifty—Five
After frantically scrambling along the rocky shore hoping to catch sight of Fleur, I eventually gave up and headed back to the lodge to get more help. By then it had started to pour and visibility had been reduced to zero. Nonetheless, Will and Teht’aa took up the search, intending to use our canoes to check the shoreline downriver from the falls. We prayed that the desperate girl had survived against all odds and had managed to make it to shore.
I stayed behind with Eric to make sure his condition didn’t worsen. We huddled together under the warmth of a thick, fluffy duvet in the lodge’s only guestroom with a fireplace. I had scrounged firewood from the bar, enough to stoke it into an acceptable blaze, and had been adding the occasional log.
On the advice of emergency personnel over the satellite phone, I’d carefully cleansed Eric’s wound, bandaged it with gauze from Will’s first aid kit then applied several treatments with an ice pack to minimize the swelling. Apart from being unconscious for an hour or more, he so far hadn’t displayed any other symptoms of possible brain injury.
Aside from whispered endearments, we said little to each other. He wasn’t ready to share his ordeal nor did I want to tell him about Fleur for fear that it would hinder his recovery. Instead we clung to each other, overjoyed to be in each other’s arms once again.
He was tired, very tired, so when he drifted off to sleep, I relaxed. I’d been told that sleep would begin the healing process. But just in case, I remained firmly tucked in beside him, watchful for signs that all was not well. Every once in a while I would give him a gentle nudge, and when he would respond with a caress or a grunt, I’d smile. He was going to be okay.
But I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. While the rain tapped a staccato on the window, my mind tapped its own. My thoughts and emotions were a conflicting whirl of jubilation and guilt. Jubilation that my friend, my lover was alive, that he was going to be all right. But these joyful thoughts were overshadowed by guilt that I had let Marie-Claude’s daughter fall to her death. I held out little hope that she’d be found alive. The rocks under the falls were just too treacherous to survive.
I should’ve realized that Fleur would be so stressed by her forced prostitution that she would hate herself enough to want to end it. I should’ve tried harder to talk her out of jumping. I should’ve been close enough to get a firm grip on her when she dove off the edge.
I’d promised Marie-Claude that I would save her daughter. Instead I’d let her eldest die. I had no idea what I was going to tell her when I finally got home, but tell her something I must.
Fleur’s words about her father also deeply troubled me. Had more than physical abuse occurred in her family? Was this the underlying cause of Marie-Claude’s paralyzing guilt? Had she turned a blind eye to the situation? And if Fleur had been sexually abused, what about the other two daughters? Did their father abuse them too? Perhaps this was the real reason behind Marie-Claude leaving the man.
At some point during the night, the rain stopped, and we awoke to the delight of morning sun spilling onto the bed. Eric no doubt was expecting to read bliss on my face. Instead, he must have read anguish, for he immediately asked, “What’s wrong, my little red flower?” And he kissed me gently on the forehead.
Although I’d only wanted to give him comfort, to shield him from further pain, all my worry, all my guilt came spilling out.
I told him about Fleur fleeing into the forest, about her horrific dive into the raging river. I told him about my role and how I should’ve done more to prevent it. His response was to wrap me in his arms, saying it was the will of the Creator.
“She visited me several times on the sly, while I was detained in a cabin,” he said. “She’d overheard one of the men talking about me, so she came to see if she could set me free. But we both realized even if she could unlock the chains around my legs, my chances of survival so far from any habitation were even worse than remaining in the cabin. So when no one was watching either of us, she would come to visit and to talk. At first she was reluctant to tell me how she was being used, but eventually she opened up. I tell you, Meg, I’ve seen and heard of some pretty sordid things in my life, but what she was forced to do topped them all.”
As he said this, I thought of his own situation, chained to the rack, and hoped he’d been unconscious the entire time. Apart from the men who put him there, I was the only one who knew of the degrading position in which he’d been placed, and I would never divulge this to anyone.
“She was just a kid, a good kid, who’d never caused anyone trouble,” he continued. “The despicable acts they forced her to do shattered her. I could tell by the desperation in her eyes. I’m not surprised she wanted to end her life. Some people can overcome demoralizing trauma to their bodies and minds. They are able to lock it away and continue on with living. Fleur was too open, too innocent, too young. It truly destroyed her, so please don’t blame yourself, Meg.”
Clearly Eric didn’t suspect that any sexual abuse had happened in the Lightbody family. I felt that until I learned if it was true, it was best to keep my suspicions from Eric. He, after all, was the man’s boss. A false accusation could lead Eric to do something he would later regret.
“Meg, even if you had stopped her from killing herself this time, she would have kept trying until she finally succeeded. You can put your mind at ease knowing that Fleur has returned to the protection of Mother Earth, where she will never again have to suf
fer at the hands of men nor relive the experience over and over again.”
I kissed him for these comforting words and snuggled further into his warmth, while his hands gently brushed the tears from my face. I felt as if I had come home after a long absence in the frozen wasteland of estrangement.
Then, without realizing it, I found myself telling him about another person whose death I wore on my conscience, my one and only brother. I told him about the snowstorm, about how I’d defied my mother and taken Joey tobogganing, and how I’d made him fly down the hill to his death. I admitted to the cowardly lies I’d told my mother to move the blame from myself and onto Joey.
And I confessed to something I’d never divulged to anyone, not even Summer Grass Woman. I’d been jealous of Joey. Much celebration had taken place at his birth when I was six. My father finally had a male heir to carry on the Harris name. Though Father had done his best to give me and my sister equal attention, I could see that he preferred Joey, his only son, named after a favoured family member, Great-grandpa Joe. Even after Father’s disappearance, Joey remained the special child in Mother’s eyes. So when my little brother went flying down that steep snowy hill to his death, I’d felt a tiny quiver of satisfaction.
When I finished my confession, I waited in the deafening silence. I waited for the revulsion to harden the softness in his eyes, the same revulsion that had appeared in Gareth’s. I waited for the damning judgment that still lurked in my mother’s. I waited for him to say, “Go. Get out of my life. You are not worthy.”
The room’s coldness washed my face. The fire was almost out, but I dared not get out of bed to restart it, for fear of triggering a response. I wanted him to respond in his own way and in his own time.
And then I heard the rhythmic pattern of his breathing and turned around to see his eyes lightly closed in sleep.
I groaned. Had he heard any part of my confession? Was I going to have to repeat it all over again?
I carefully slipped out from under the duvet and coaxed the dying fire back to life. Once I felt the warmth of its blaze, I crawled back in beside him, careful not to wake him. But his arms reached around and drew me closer.
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