The Big Game

by Sarah Jaune

  “I know the general location,” Oliver told her as he pointed up to the northwest. “That’s where the Sasquatch had been spotted.”

  Eli pulled in a lungful of air and didn’t stop until he felt the stretching of his chest. It was a good ache, one that helped him feel more alive. “Funny thing is that when we stopped to camp, we ran into a pod of Sasquatch. They needed help with their lake.”

  Oliver snorted. “They needed help with their lake?”

  “It was being poisoned by a nearby stream,” Ivy explained as she fell into step next to Eli. “They sensed I was close and came to get me. We ended up camped there for the night because of a wendigo that was in the area. They protected us.”

  Oliver stumbled and would have fallen if Eli hadn’t caught him. He stood stock still and gaped at Eli and Ivy. “You saw a wendigo?”

  “Do we look dead?” Eli bit out sarcastically. It wasn’t as though anyone could take on a wendigo and live to tell the tale. They only had vague descriptions from people who had seen them from afar, or had been in range when the wendigo had killed.

  Ivy shot him a look that he couldn’t completely interpret. “When I emptied the lake of poison,” she explained quickly, “I passed out. We were staying the night anyway, and the alpha spotted it, or smelled it. It was difficult to tell which it was.” There was so much more to the story than what Ivy had shared, but Eli didn’t feel like adding to it. He didn’t want to know what Oliver would think about Ivy’s fever-induced mumblings. He especially didn’t want Ivy to have to deal with Oliver’s annoying commentary. Eli loved his brother, but that didn’t mean he wanted to put up with Oliver’s opinions.

  Oliver’s expression fell. “I always wanted to know what they looked like.”

  “It would be the last thing you ever saw, so it wouldn’t matter,” Eli reminded him as he grabbed his brother’s arm and started dragging him up the trail. “Come on, we have a lot of ground to cover.”

  They walked for hours, heading northwest into the forest as the sky around them lightened into a crystal blue that was soon beating the sun down on them where the trees were thin. The smell of moss and lichen was thick all around them. It was earthy, damp, and the only thing Eli could think of to describe it was ‘clean.’ Yellowstone had been beautiful, in its own way, but all around them were the smells of the underground volcano that bubbled and boiled just below the surface. It hadn’t smelled like this. Nothing smelled like this. Wherever Eli went in life, he knew he was going to think back to the Portland Zone and it would feel like home.

  The thick, overgrown underbrush that surrounded the path rustled with squirrels and rabbits. The forest around them was alive with bugs.

  The only thing that was missing, still, were deer. When Eli had first come here, and had walked through the forests, there had been deer everywhere. He’d often times come upon one and scared it on accident.

  “It’s too quiet,” Ivy noticed as she looked around. He knew she was thinking the same thing that Eli was thinking. The last time they’d been in the forest they’d run into—

  “Did you hear that?” Oliver asked as he stopped short and glanced around.

  The problem was that Eli didn’t hear anything, except for a smattering of bugs. Dread swamped him as he turned a full circle. He didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean that something wasn’t there.

  “This is not good,” Ivy hissed out. “You can’t go easy on them this time, Eli. You have to kill them.”

  He didn’t want to kill them. He didn’t want to do this, but Ivy was right. The last time they’d come into the woods, they’d barely escaped.

  “Wolves?” Oliver asked in a tight voice.

  “Maybe,” Eli agreed, then added, “probably. You need to help.”

  Oliver scowled but kept his eyes fixed on the trees as they backed together, their backs forming a triangle where they met.

  “They’d be stupid to attack us again,” Ivy said with a small hitch to her words. It was the only fear she showed, though. “We killed some last time, and that wasn’t even four months ago.”

  “They’re not humans,” Oliver argued. “It isn’t like they learn.”

  Tension hung thick between them as they waited, watching the trees and the underbrush. They were in a terrible spot. They had no room to run, no place to maneuver. They were bottlenecked into a sort of gully between the trees. They were essentially sitting targets for anything that wanted to get them.

  “Is there any water?” Eli asked Ivy.

  “Some,” she confirmed. “I’ll be able to fight them off on my side.”

  “No, actually I don’t want you to do that.” Eli quickly explained his plan, and Oliver snorted in amusement. “That’s one way of doing things.”

  Oliver and Ivy set quickly to work. Ivy pulled the water from the ground, and Oliver used his power of ice to freeze the water into huge chunks at their back so that nothing could sneak up on them. If anything tried, it would hit a solid block of ice.

  Eli didn’t watch them work, though. He kept a lookout towards the front to make sure nothing came at them.

  “It’s up,” Ivy told him. “We anchored it to the trees so it should hold and not topple on us, but—”

  BANG!

  Eli spun around and saw the crack in the ice as the wall began to splinter.

  “What the—” he didn’t get to finish the sentence as a huge force rocketed into Eli’s back, knocking him to the ground.

  Oliver and Ivy both shouted as pain exploded into Eli’s chest.

  CHAPTER 12

  SUNK

  Before he could even register that he had a massive gray wolf on his chest, the animal was blasted off of him by a huge jet of water, and all Eli saw was flying tufts of fur. He scrambled to his feet just in time to see a black wolf leaping towards his face. Eli threw his hands up and the wolf was rocketed into a tree further down the path. It hit with a sickening crunch and didn’t get up.

  He turned quickly to see another wolf frozen off the edge of the path, and more circling them further in the trees. “You have got to be kidding me,” Eli muttered as he closed in with Ivy.

  Ivy had her hands up, ready to shoot more water. “This is so beyond not normal that I don’t even know what to think.”

  “If I don’t unfreeze the one, it’s going to die,” Oliver informed them. “I have maybe thirty seconds.”

  Eli honestly wondered if they could risk it. The last time they’d tried to show mercy to the wolves, they’d ended up hospitalized. Something cracked close to their backs. “Is the wall going to fall?”

  He’d barely said the words when he heard the grinding of the ice wall that Oliver and Ivy had created. Eli twisted around and threw out his hands to stop the chunks of ice falling on them. He forced the heavy weight over, and away from them, but their distraction was all the wolves needed.

  “No!” Ivy screamed in fury. Eli felt, more than heard, the ground tremble beneath them as she pulled the water up.

  The ground didn’t stop shaking, and they all stumbled sideways as trees sagged drunkenly all over each other.

  The wolves howled and bayed, but didn’t come closer.

  “What happened?” Oliver shouted over the rumbling of the earth and cracking of the trees.

  “I drained too much water,” Ivy yelled back, attempting to be heard. “I must have destabilized something.”

  Eli could only marvel at that. It was amazing just how fragile the earth’s systems were if she could so easily knock them askew. Ivy wasn’t even exhausted from what she’d done. She was still on her feet despite being sick recently and having not slept all night.

  Ten seconds later the ground settled. Unfortunately, they were now in a ditch, almost like crabs in a pot.

  “This is not good,” Eli groaned as he kept his eyes on the wolves he could see. That, sadly, left the wolves behind him that he couldn’t.

  “Eli, do something!” Ivy told him sharply.

  Frustrated, he tried not to l
ose focus. “What, exactly, am I going to do?” It was difficult not to be sarcastic, but he was so scared he doubted she noticed.

  “Take care of them!” Ivy bellowed loudly as the wolves sprang for him.

  A roar filled Eli’s ears as he screamed at the top of his lungs and threw out his arms. He pushed his magic out, sending out a wave of energy so intense that he felt his knees immediately give out. Eli sagged sideways into Ivy as he fought not to pass out.

  She held onto him and lowered him to the ground. “You’re heavier than you look.”

  “What was that?” Oliver said with a voice that was several octaves above his normal voice. Eli tried to focus on his brother, but only saw his trembling hand as he pointed all around them. “Daggers, what was that, Elijah?! What the bugger did you do?”

  Eli closed his eyes and fought the urge to throw up. He dropped his head onto Ivy’s shoulder. They sat together on the ground, in the mud, but he couldn’t work up the energy to care. Ivy ran her hand down his back, and he felt the nausea begin to fade.

  “It’s a good thing Maia isn’t here to hear you swearing,” Ivy laughed as she continued to keep Eli steady.

  “Yeah, well,” Oliver replied in something like bewilderment. “What Mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her, and daggers, Ivy! Are you seeing what he did?”

  Eli felt Ivy nod because her cheek was next to his. He wanted to look, but couldn’t manage to do more than sit somewhat upright.

  “This is just unbelievable,” Oliver went on in a daze. “I didn’t know anyone had this much power.”

  “Get something for Eli to eat,” Ivy told Oliver.

  Eli ate with his eyes closed since the spinning world made him want to throw up again. Ten minutes later he was able to finally look around at the chaos he’d wrought.

  The trees, which had already been falling down, were thrown clear from them in a wide circle. It wasn’t just in front, where he’d been facing, but all around them as though a wave had rushed outward from his body. Trees were splinted into other trees, smashed into rocks. Bushes were blown clear from the ground and mounds of dirt formed a perimeter around them like a fence. He didn’t see anything moving as he slowly turned to survey the destruction. He didn’t hear anything. The bits of the ice wall were gone as well, as was their path back towards home. He looked up at the sky and saw the brilliant blue pulsing in the sunlight as it beat down, undisturbed from its direct path to the ground. “I didn’t do this.”

  “Yes, you did,” Ivy replied without a hint of emotion. She shrugged on her backpack and picked his up. “I can carry this for you for a bit.”

  He held out his hand for the pack and reluctantly, she handed it over. “We’ll just go slow for a bit, yeah?”

  “I want to call you an old fart or something,” Oliver admitted as they began to walk from the clearing, “but I’m afraid you’ll blast me into the next zone if I do.”

  Eli glanced to Ivy, then back to the ground before him so he wouldn’t trip. “You knew I could do that?”

  “I suspected as much,” Ivy told him simply. “I thought that if you were pushed, you could make something happen.”

  “Not this, though,” Oliver stopped by a tree that was still standing. A shard of wood stuck out straight from the trunk. “You blasted one tree into another! It had to be going at a hundred miles an hour.”

  “Or more,” Ivy agreed as she bent to study it. “Well…”

  Which was really all there was to say about it. Eli might have been more impressed with himself if he had even the strength to take more than four steps without getting winded.

  “We need to find some place for him to sleep this off,” Ivy said as they started down a hill.

  Eli followed in a daze, barely conscious of where they were leading him until they dragged him in between two large rocks. Ivy dropped her bag on the ground and guided him to lay down with his head on the pack. He closed his eyes, with only a faint idea of his surroundings, and sleep stole over him.

  He awoke to the sounds of low talking that echoed dully around him. One soft voice, one deep… his brain engaged, clicking into gear, and Eli forced his eyes open to see a high, cave wall carved into the rock around him. He glanced to his right and saw his brother and friend sitting near him, staring at him.

  “You’ve been out about an hour,” Ivy told him quickly. “That’s actually not too bad considering.”

  Oliver shot him a sheepish grin, then looked away. Unsure of what that had been about, Eli forced himself to sit up. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Ivy assured him quickly. “I think we’re in a Sasquatch cave.”

  He glanced around and saw what she meant. It was carved out. This niche had clearly been dug into the side of the mountain. He could see the rough gouges from the hand tools that the Bigfoot of the area would have made. It had a dirt floor, and nothing else except an abandoned fire pit in the middle of cave.

  There was just one problem. “That entrance is too small,” Eli said as he pointed to the area they’d used to squeeze in which was only wide enough to allow Oliver to slide through sideways. “How did you make it in?” he asked his brother.

  Oliver kicked out and connected his foot with Eli’s shin. It was painful, but without any real heat to it. “Shut up, shrimp. If you turned sideways no one could see you.”

  Eli opened his mouth to argue, but Oliver was right. He was so skinny it was stupid. Still…

  “The rock at the entrance was moved in place,” Ivy interrupted them before it could turn into a fight. “We can see from the dirt that it hasn’t been there that long. There’s also no vegetation growing at the base of the rock on the outside.”

  He was still so dazed that nothing she said made much sense. Eli looked to Oliver who smirked. “It means it’s been here less than a year, moron. Wake up.”

  Eli signaled, with his hand, exactly what his brother could do with himself, and let his head thump back onto the bag.

  “If you two do this the entire trip, I will dump you both in a lake and leave you there to rot,” Ivy told them shortly.

  “It’s only ‘cause we love each other,” Oliver assured her. “That’s how he tells me he loves me, right Eli?”

  Eli waved halfheartedly towards him. “Sure.”

  “We were deciding on if we should move or stay here,” Oliver told him. “Can you walk yet, or are you still too fragile? Ow!”

  Laughing, Eli glanced over to see Oliver rubbing his arm.

  “If he doesn’t sleep, Oliver, then he’ll be useless to us if we run into big trouble,” Ivy bit out. She sounded angry, but Eli could hear what was beneath it, even if Oliver couldn’t. She was scared. Eli wanted to reach out to her, to tell her it would be okay, but he couldn’t raise his arm enough to do so. “Do I need to remind you,” she went on, “that without Eli, you and I would have been eaten? We need to stay here and wait for him to be better. We’re no good to Pablo if we’re dead.”

  “Fine,” Oliver held up his hands for peace. “We’ll stay here for the night. I definitely don’t want to hurt Eli’s delicate—” he stopped midsentence. “Fine, I’ll stop. Daggers, Ivy, you’re no fun.”

  It wasn’t that she was no fun, though. Eli wanted to shout at his brother, but knew it wouldn’t do any good.

  “I’ll go get wood for a fire,” Oliver said.

  The moment he heard Oliver’s footsteps fade, Eli held out his hand for Ivy, “Come here,” he said to her.

  “What’s wrong?” Ivy demanded urgently as she came towards him and took his hand.

  Eli tugged on her hand.

  “What?” Ivy asked again.

  “Here,” Eli said as she sat next to him. He focused on her brilliant green eyes and saw the fear. He didn’t need to see it, though. “Why are you scared?”

  She hesitated, glanced away from him and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She turned towards the entrance and saw that no one was there, then she scooted down until her head was on his shoulder, and
she could hug him. “I’m terrified,” she said with a hitch. “I don’t even know why, Eli. I’m just so scared that it’s difficult not to run home screaming.”

  Eli tightened his arms around her. “Is it the wolves?”

  “Partially,” she confirmed quietly. “It was like reliving that moment from months ago, then limping back to get to the hospital, but… there’s something wrong. I don’t know what, but there’s something very wrong here. This forest isn’t what it should be. There’s not enough life.”

  Water was life. Eli knew that all too well. That’s part of what made Ivy so powerful.