The Big Game

by Sarah Jaune

  Eli stared at her helplessly, then lay down next to Ivy, pulling her against him. She was way too cold. Ghan, who seemed to have noticed, was moving around the cave and came back with a small root. He mimed eating it, then handed it to Eli.

  “I need you to eat this, Ivy,” he told her.

  She shook her head violently. “Don’t… it hurts. I hurt, no. I hurt, I hurt. Why don’t they want me?”

  That could apply to a lot of things, but if he had to guess, Eli would have said probably her parents, and specifically her father. “It’s because he’s moronic and selfish. Ivy, eat this.”

  Ivy opened her mouth and chewed on the small root. Swallowing looked ridiculously painful. “It’s the water, the red, so red, blood…”

  Eli’s mind immediately flashed back to his dream from the night before and had to fight not to shudder.

  She kept going. “Blood, poison, water, poison, me… it hurts.”

  “Oh,” Eli said, feeling stupid to have not realized before. She was more in tune with water. If the water was poisoned, which they knew it had been, then she would have a tougher time being around it. “Will that root help the poison?” he asked Ghan.

  Ghan nodded in concern, then motioned for them to stay put. He came back a moment later with a large fur pelt that he draped over Ivy. Then he walked out.

  Eli held Ivy close, hoping she’d warm up soon and that the root would kick in to help fight whatever was wrong with her.

  “Don’t leave me,” she begged again, so close to a sob that he actually checked to see if she was crying. She wasn’t, which didn’t surprise him.

  “I’m not leaving you,” Eli assured her firmly. “I’ll stay here all night if you want.”

  “No one stayed, no one cared, no one wanted me, throw me away like I’m just trash,” she said, this time with a noticeable slowing down of her words. “Why was I always alone?”

  Ivy had never had someone there to take care of her when she was sick, not before they’d become friends. She’d lived with a grandmother who hadn’t cared one bit for her. She had a father who ignored her. Her mother had gone crazy, and if Eli were honest with himself, Ivy had probably always been a pawn for her mother to try to gain power.

  It hadn’t worked. Ivy hadn’t been enough to get the Overseer of Portland to marry Monica Sandler, which left Monica the insane mother of a child who wasn’t what she’d hoped for. In a world of unfair families, Ivy’s was fighting for a top spot.

  She was so smart, so kind, so brave, and it infuriated Eli that her father didn’t even know or care about what he was missing.

  Ivy groaned and thrashed her head back and forth. “It hurts.”

  “I know,” Eli said as he ran his hand up and down her back, trying to sooth. “It will be better soon, Ivy. Just wait. The medicine needs to kick in.”

  “Please don’t leave me.”

  “No,” he promised as his voice cracked painfully. “I’m not going to.” He’d never had a friend like Ivy. He’d had Beth, but she’d always needed him to look out for her. He had his brothers, but Eli couldn’t say everything that he wanted to say with them. They’d make fun of him for the rest of his life if he’d ever admitted, even once, that he was scared. If he’d puked in front of his brothers because he’d seen a snake, it would be what they’d talk about at his funeral. Ivy didn’t. She accepted him for what he was, faults and all. They’d grown so close, so fast, and he never wanted to look back.

  She was truly his best friend.

  Ivy moved in closer with her head on his shoulder until her nose was pressed into his neck. Moments later she let out a shuddering breath and fell asleep.

  He stared blankly at the cave ceiling as Ivy slowly started to go back to a normal temperature. Then within minutes she was throwing the covers off as sweat beaded on her brow. Eli touched her cheek and felt the heat there.

  Fever.

  Before he could react, all of the Sasquatch piled into the cave in a panic as Ghan and one of the other big males moved a heavy wooden door in front of the cave. They fastened it to a rod that Eli hadn’t noticed before. “What’s wrong?”

  Ghan came over and attempted to speak, but gave up. He bent and drew something in the sand that Eli couldn’t see because Ivy had his arm pinned. He sat up, pulling Ivy with him so that he could see what Ghan was trying to show him.

  It was an amazingly well done depiction for a finger in sand. It was a thin, crouching, human like figure with antlers. “A wendigo,” Eli said as he thought back on the stories he’d heard as a child.

  Ghan nodded and real fear clutched at Eli.

  If they’d gone back to the cabin, they’d have been dead. Wendigoes were almost impossible to kill, and were their most dangerous at night. They were the only creatures that were perfectly suited for hunting down and killing magical humans, although they didn’t discriminate. They’d kill anything if the mood struck. “Can it get in?”

  Ghan shook his head and pointed to the door.

  Nodding, Eli lay back and held Ivy even closer as she started to shiver again. He pulled the covering back on as he thought about the legend of the wendigo. Eli hated the stories. They were a throwback to people who had lived in their land so long before that there were almost no records of them. The wendigoes had once been men, who had turned into monsters. There weren’t many of them, as far as Eli knew. He’d never heard of anyone having seen one, but the story was still whispered about.

  He was now really thankful that Ivy had become so ill that they hadn’t left that night. Eli didn’t sleep much. Ivy’s fever finally broke around midnight, and she slept deeply after that. Ghan and one of the other Sasquatch kept watch on the door all night. At about one they heard something moving around the entrance of the cave, but it didn’t push against the wooden, latched door.

  It suddenly occurred to Eli that the bars on the door of the cabin they’d rented hadn’t been for bears.

  They hadn’t been for Bigfoot, either.

  He hugged Ivy tighter, and finally the exhaustion claimed him, and he slept.

  Eli opened his eyes to find light in the cave and Ivy’s big, green eyes watching him only about three inches from his face. Her lips were cracked and her cheeks flushed, but her eyes were clear now. He raised a hand to feel her forehead and was monumentally grateful that she didn’t feel feverish anymore.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Ivy croaked out.

  “You were sick,” Eli told her quietly. “You drained the lake of the poison, passed out, and then you developed a fever. Ghan gave you a root that helped.”

  “Oh,” she whispered as she studied him. “You look exhausted. Was I a pain to deal with?”

  She gave away nothing, but for once Eli knew exactly what was going on in her head. “No, of course not. You were sick, Ivy. You didn’t want to be by yourself, so I stayed. It was fine.”

  Her red cheeks flushed even brighter as she focused on a spot near his collar. “Sorry.”

  “Why?” he asked her, trying not to be annoyed. “If I’d been sick, you’d have stayed with me.”

  “Yeah,” she said offhandedly.

  Eli hugged her. He pulled her in close and held on. That was something else he didn’t get to do with anyone else, and although he’d never admit it out loud, he liked the connection, and feeling like he wasn’t alone. He’d spent his first ten years with Beth attached at the hip and when that had gone, when he’d only had Maia and Pablo to hug him, he’d missed that human contact.

  Ivy’s arms snuck around his waist and hugged him back. “I always feel like you’re going to disappear.” It sounded like the words were pulled from her with a hook, wrenched forcibly from her heart.

  “I’m not going to,” Eli told her fiercely. “You’re my friend. I’m not going anywhere.”

  They stayed together like that until they heard the movement of the large door.

  “Where did that come from?” Ivy asked him curiously as she slowly sat up. She was still unsteady, but seemed
to be much better.

  “There was a wendigo outside last night,” Eli said on a long sigh. “We need to get back to the jeep and get home. The wendigo is probably drawn to us and our magic. We’ll put the Sasquatch at risk if we stay any longer. It’s a good thing you were too sick to go last night, or we might have been in real trouble.”

  Nodding, Ivy slowly stood. She stared down at her feet, then gave Eli half a grin. “The cave isn’t spinning.”

  He laughed in sheer relief. “Improvement. I’ll take it.”

  CHAPTER 11

  HOME AND GONE

  The scenery on the drive back was something that Eli wouldn’t remember in the years to come. He barely registered telling the people that they were leaving and the cabin was free. He failed to mention the major dents in the door from where Ghan had been bashing it with his fists, but Eli left some gold in the cabin to compensate for it.

  It was odd. They’d rented the cabin, then hadn’t stayed there even one night, but that thought was gone as soon as it flitted into his head.

  Ivy slept the whole first day they were on the road, but by that evening she was fine and took the second shift to drive through the night so Eli could sleep. It wouldn’t come. Ivy’s words kept running through his head like a catchy tune. He wanted to ask her about it, but didn’t want her to get mad. Plus, he was a little afraid of what her answer might be.

  “I can hear you thinking,” Ivy told him.

  He glanced sideways and studied her profile in the darkened interior of the jeep. The only light, apart from the headlights, were the instruments on the dashboard that glowed green. “How can you hear me thinking?” he questioned, trying to deflect from what he had actually been thinking about.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Things like that are easy with you.”

  Eli stared at her, astonished. He’d felt the same way, but hadn’t ever thought to mention it. “Do you think it’s because we’re good friends?”

  “I guess,” she said as she flicked her gaze to his, then back to the road. “It felt easy to talk to you straight away. I never talked to anyone. I never had friends, but it wasn’t a big deal with you. Most of the time I see a cute boy and my brain shuts off.”

  His mouth fell open.

  “I didn’t…” Ivy cringed when she realized what she’d said. “Sorry.”

  Eli had two options and he chose the one that would spare Ivy’s feelings. He definitely didn’t want to focus on the fact that she thought he was cute. “You keep asking guys to go on dates, though. That takes guts. I hated asking Autumn.”

  “I’m trying to get over it,” she said reluctantly. “Maia suggested it. She thought it might be good for me to get out of my shell and make other friends. I spent so much of my life taking care of my mom, and then I moved to Redmond and found that my grandmother was always drunk. I took care of her a lot of the time as well. I didn’t have a normal life, and when Maia said I should try to have one…”

  “You thought going to a dance would be a normal thing,” Eli finished the thought for her.

  Ivy nodded miserably. “That didn’t work, of course. I might keep asking, but at this point I’m ready to give up. When you take into consideration what Coral said about us having closed off hearts, there isn’t much sense in trying to be normal. We aren’t typical teenagers.”

  Eli decided to go for it. They were already talking about mushy stuff, so this would fit right in. “Why do you think I’m going to disappear?”

  Ivy didn’t answer, and he realized suddenly that he didn’t need her to. Her father had never been there, her mother died, her grandmother died, and it hadn’t even been a year since they’d joined the Guard. She’d said it when she’d been feverish and delirious. Everyone leaves.

  “I’m not going to vanish on you,” Eli promised her quietly, earnestly.

  “You can’t promise that, Eli,” Ivy said in a voice so fragile and exhausted that it wrenched at his heart. “We don’t know what tomorrow holds, and even though I know you do not want it, you might end up the Overseer of Chicago.”

  “You could be there with me, though,” Eli pointed out, even as he forced himself not to panic at the thought of having to take over for his father.

  She shrugged. “You’ll have an attachment. I know it’s going to happen for you.”

  “But still,” he said and stopped because he realized he didn’t know what to say. If he formed an attachment, which didn’t seem likely since he clearly had repressed a good bit of his past, then the girl might not want Ivy around. But if the girl was perfect for him, then they would want Ivy around because Eli wanted Ivy around. That’s how attachments worked. It was the person best suited to them. It was supposed to be the easiest thing in the world. If he met the person, he’d look at them and know that they are it. It was an instantaneous thing.

  Except not for him, because he kept dreaming about things he didn’t want to remember, including blood on his hands.

  He still had a tough time imagining that his mother had thrown away her attachment to marry Campbell Hunt of all people.

  She could have had her heart’s perfect match, but instead she’d chosen a maniacal, rich jerk. It beggared belief that she’d seen being the Overseer’s wife as more important than love or happiness.

  “It might happen for you,” Eli pointed out reasonably. “I could be the one thrown to the wolves here.”

  “Maybe,” she said and this time he heard the unspoken plea of, ‘drop it.’

  He did, and minutes later he was asleep.

  He didn’t wake again until Ivy was pulling into the driveway of his house in Redmond. He yawned and stretched. “I wonder what day it is.”

  The front door flew open and Maia came running for the car.

  Eli sprung from his seat at the sight of her anxious face and met her halfway, hugging her hard. “What’s wrong?”

  “Your dad isn’t back yet!” she said as she hugged him hard and kissed his cheek. “I’m so glad you’re safe, Eli, but I need you to go find him.”

  Eli showered, while Ivy ran home to do the same. It wasn’t that they weren’t going to be filthy ten minutes after they left to begin the trek, but Eli knew being a week without a shower felt very different than two weeks.

  He came back from the shower to find Oliver packing bags. He was a year older than Eli, and shorter now by a few inches. His hair was a deep brown, close to the same color as Pablo, but with blue eyes. They didn’t look anything alike. Eli was painfully thin, and Oliver had always been a little overweight. Despite the weight, Oliver was a fierce fighter, trained in combat the same way that Eli had trained. Thankfully, his acne was starting to clear up. “Are you coming with us?”

  “Yeah,” Oliver confirmed as he continued to stuff food in the backpack. “I was going to go by myself if you didn’t get back today.”

  They headed for the woods the moment Ivy arrived back from her house, with her wet hair in a knot on top of her head. She looked exhausted.

  “You don’t have to go,” Eli told her.

  She walked past him towards the path into the woods. “I’m going.”

  Eli and Oliver exchanged a look. “She drove all night last night,” Eli explained quietly to his brother.

  “I can still kick your butt!” Ivy called out from ten feet up the path that led into the woods across from his house.

  “She’s right,” Oliver agreed solemnly. “She can still kick your butt.”

  “Shut up,” Eli grumbled as they took off into the woods after Ivy. At the last moment, he turned to wave at Maia, who stood in the window with Ava in her arms.

  “What took you so long to get back?” Oliver asked after they’d stepped into the trees. “We were expecting you two days ago.”

  Eli tried to parse together what to say to him as they caught up to Ivy, who was trudging along ahead of them at a good clip. “The kids we went to save didn’t travel well. It took a while to get them to safety.”

  “Oh,” O
liver said somewhat lamely. “Who were they?”

  A lump formed in Eli’s throat as he thought back to those short hours with Becca and Jonas. He wasn’t really supposed to talk about it, not even with Oliver. He flicked a glance and saw Oliver’s expression had turned serious. It was too much for Eli. He shook his head and bit hard on his cheek. He wouldn’t cry in front of his brother, not when they both had a job to do.

  “Do we have any idea where he might have gone?” Ivy asked, interrupting their awkward silence. Eli shot her a grateful smile. She’d saved him from making a fool of himself, which he was really thankful for.