The Big Game

by Sarah Jaune

  Eli closed his eyes and fought off the fear and grief. “I was called out right after you left. Ivy and I drove to Chicago and met up with Cole along the way.”

  Pablo’s shoulders stiffened in alarm. “Why did you have to go to Chicago?”

  He forced himself to meet his dad’s eyes, and through sheer stubborn grit didn’t break down. “My mother is dead. She died after having my baby brother. I have another sister as well.”

  Oliver stared at him in horror.

  Pablo’s face fell as he sat and put his arm around Eli. “I am so sorry, Eli. That’s not something anyone should have to deal with.”

  “You went after your siblings?” Oliver asked him in shock. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I wasn’t supposed to say anything,” Eli reminded quietly. “Cole took them home with him.”

  Pablo looked as though he might tell Eli to stop talking, but then seemed to change his mind. “Is he taking them to a foster family?”

  Eli shook his head. “Cole said he was going to raise them. He said his wife just had a baby.”

  Pablo nodded absently as he gazed off towards where Ivy had vanished. “Were you seen?”

  “No,” Eli replied. “We made a clean entrance and exit. No one but Nanny knew we were there.”

  Pablo’s jaw tensed as though he was chewing on words he didn’t want to say.

  “We should probably tell him about the wolf,” Oliver offered as a roaring fire was built up by the Sasquatch in the clearing to their right. The fire was a good thirty feet away, but Eli could still feel the heat of the ten-foot-tall blaze.

  “What wolf?” Pablo questioned as flames danced higher into the sky.

  “It was massive,” Eli sighed. “It was pure white and it led us here, then ditched us right before the Bigfoot came and grabbed us.”

  Oliver shot him an annoyed look. “You’re leaving out the actually weird part of the story.” At Eli’s blank stare, Oliver laughed. “It talked to you!”

  “Oh, that,” Eli nodded.

  “Excuse me?” Pablo glanced between them as though he might have heard them wrong. “It talked?”

  “It’s more like it spoke in my head,” Eli explained quickly. “I could hear its thoughts, but it seemed to only talk at night. Also, I couldn’t use my powers against it.”

  Pablo opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, then shook his head. “I have never heard of anything like that.”

  “I’m voting on a shared hallucination,” Oliver assured him solemnly. “Unfortunately, only Eli and Ivy could hear it talk. I heard nothing.”

  Pablo shook his head. “It gets stranger by the minute.”

  “Then the wolf told us that they were coming for Ivy,” Eli said flatly. “I had about a second to decide to either fight the Sasquatch or let them take us. They had Ivy before I could really form a thought.”

  “Which meant we were taken,” Oliver said in a mocking tone. “Eli doesn’t like her being out of his sight.”

  “Shut up, Oliver,” Eli growled as he pushed his brother over.

  “Leave it,” Pablo ordered Oliver sharply. “We have bigger problems.”

  Oliver shrugged it off, but it still annoyed Eli. He’d thought Oliver had understood what they’d been through.

  Before he could say anything, Pablo went on. “Oliver, your brother has been through something really horrible this last week. His mother died. Could you just give him a break?”

  Oliver scowled down at the ground but nodded. “Yeah, sorry.”

  “Now, back to the talking wolf,” Pablo said.

  “It didn’t really talk,” Ivy said from just outside the cage.

  CHAPTER 18

  DAD

  Eli sprang up and immediately regretted it as his whole body screamed in protest from his injuries. There was a Bigfoot behind Ivy, one of the smaller females. Small was relative, though, as it was still at least nine feet tall.

  “Can you open the door, please?” Ivy asked as she turned back to the Sasquatch.

  It nodded and unlatched the door. Ivy ducked into the cage and Eli saw that, although she’d washed off a lot of the dirt, she still had bits of a thick, greenish-brown goo in patches over her exposed arms and face. She held up a kind of wooden bowl with the stuff. “It’s for the cuts. It actually helps,” she explained as she started dabbing the stuff on Eli’s cuts.

  He watched the process in a detached fascination as the stuff quickly began to take away the stings and bruises. “That’s amazing!”

  “It is,” Ivy agreed as she finished up. “Do you have any, Oliver?”

  “I still have a few on my back and arms,” he said as Ivy handed the cup to Eli.

  The Sasquatch left the cage door open.

  “We can leave,” Ivy explained quietly to Pablo. “I’ve promised to help, which was all they wanted.”

  Pablo nodded in satisfaction. “I was hoping that would be the case.”

  “I’m surprised you stuck around here,” Ivy told him honestly. “Maia is really worried.”

  “She’ll know I’m alive, though,” Pablo pointed out reasonably. “Our attachment works like that.”

  The moment Oliver’s wounds were dealt with, he and Ivy stepped from the cage.

  “Can you give us a minute?” Eli asked them as he pointed to Pablo.

  Ivy smiled sadly. She knew what this was about, but Oliver hesitated. Finally, he nodded and the two of them wandered off towards the fire with the female Bigfoot, who Ivy said was called Yul, following behind them.

  Pablo waited silently for Eli to collect his thoughts. “I remembered why I’m afraid of snakes,” he told his dad and then related the story of being stuck in the basement with them.

  Pablo’s tanned face grew paler with every second that Eli spoke. When he was finished, Pablo pulled him in for a hard hug. “Daggers, Eli. No wonder you always hated them.”

  “I don’t know how to get past this,” Eli admitted reluctantly as they broke apart. “I don’t know how to not be angry at my father, or to stop being afraid of the snakes. I’m so pissed off right now!” he growled as he glanced away.

  “What’s fueling the anger?” his dad questioned quietly.

  Eli had to dig deep on that one. It hurt so much to think about it. It burned straight to his core to recall all he had been through. “I don’t matter to him. If I mattered, he wouldn’t have dumped me in a basement full of snakes to try to toughen me up. I’m just a potential heir as long as I don’t mess things up for myself. I’m nothing to him, and that’s what really gets to me.”

  “That would hurt anyone,” Pablo agreed evenly. “So let’s take a step back. The way to get around this is to understand all the pieces in play and to decide where you stand with them. Is your father sane?”

  Eli shook his head.

  “Are you loved by other people who you love and respect?”

  Nod.

  “Are you more than a tool for Campbell Hunt to manipulate?”

  Eli closed his eyes and nodded again.

  “Then, Eli, you focus on those things first and foremost. You don’t need him in your life. You’re not alone, you’re family, and we love you,” Pablo said as his big hand rested on Eli’s shoulder. He squeezed lightly. “You have the right to grieve and to be angry for a time, but if you let those things consume you, then your father wins. It means he still has control over you, and what’s worse is that you gave him that control.”

  “You’re right,” Eli told him. “After the snake thing, I struggled to hunt for food. I just couldn’t seem to stomach killing a rabbit.”

  “That is because you’re not a cruel man,” Pablo replied honestly. It was so shocking to hear himself referred to as a man, that Eli’s gaze snapped up to his dad’s, who was smiling in understanding. “You remembered from your dream what it felt like to be the prey, and you couldn’t put anything else in that position. It’s admirable, as long as you don’t let it cripple you. You still have to eat.”

  Eli
felt part of the knot in his chest loosen a fraction of an inch. He felt better. It wasn’t perfect, nothing was fixed, but it was still what he’d needed.

  They joined Ivy and Oliver by the fire as they stood speaking with the alpha. “His name is Pak,” Pablo explained as he hung back.

  Pak eyed him warily, but didn’t make a move as he gestured to Ivy. He drew a circle on the ground and pointed to it.

  “I am lost,” Ivy told the Sasquatch, who grunted in frustration.

  “Here’s what I think happened, and Pak can correct me if I’m wrong,” Pablo said. “I think the Overseer diverted all of the water from around the area, down closer to the Portland city. It’s still in the woods, but it seems that he’s created a lake.”

  “Oh,” Ivy said as she blew out a frustrated breath. “Of course he did,” she retorted sarcastically. “Nothing like ruining an entire ecosystem just for his own enjoyment. Selfish jerk.”

  Pak nodded at that. He pointed to the water again, then swiped at it until it was dispersed into the dirt. The message was clear. They wanted the lake gone. They wanted their water back.

  “We have a couple of problems,” Ivy told Pak. “If the water is downstream, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to bring it back up to you. But—” she stopped when Pak shook his dark head. “It’s upstream?”

  More frustration showed on the Bigfoot’s face.

  Pablo quickly intervened. “How far away is the lake?” he questioned.

  Pak made a series of ten taps on his hand, and then pointed southwest of their current position.

  “I was going to guess about five miles away,” Ivy told him. “I can feel the water that way, a lot of it, but it could also be underground. I don’t always know what it is, exactly.”

  “He’s telling me about ten thousand yards,” Pablo explained as he mimicked the tap. “That’s about a thousand yards to them, so it’s about five and a half miles. We’re in agreement on that.”

  “So what’s the topography like in that area?” Ivy wondered. “Is it in a valley or what?”

  “I think it’s some up and some down,” Pablo explained as he knelt and started to draw. “You have a set of mountains that run in a line this way,” he said as he drew triangles to represent the peaks. “To the south of the mountains, there are a lot of swamps. I think that’s the area that Pak is referring to. But in order to get the rivers over there, he needed to divert most of the water. I haven’t got a clue how he accomplished it, though.”

  Ivy shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know either. It feels like he shifted all the underground aquifers, but there’s no way he’d have had the power to do that. Not alone, anyway.”

  Eli’s mind spun at the possibilities. “He could have your siblings helping him. Presumably at least one of them has their power in, and since the powers almost always come from the father, they’re likely to be water.”

  “The Overseer has a younger brother, as well,” Pablo told them. “So her uncle could have been a part of diverting the water.”

  “This is sick,” Oliver said with the shake of his head. “The forests are dying around us. The animals are starving.”

  Pak shook his head violently. He drew an impressive representation of a deer in the dirt, then a bird, and pointed towards the lake.

  “Is everything migrating that way?” Eli asked him.

  Pak nodded.

  “That might explain the wolves, then,” Oliver told them. “The wolves really are starving, but I imagine that if they made it close to the lake they’d be shot by the humans.”

  “Or there could be another wolf pack,” Eli agreed.

  “Wait,” Pablo held up his hands. “What wolves? I thought you said it was one giant white wolf?”

  Pak punched the ground, which shook under their feet.

  All four of them jumped and spun to look at him. Pak looked simply terrified as he pointed at Pablo. He opened his huge mouth and forced out the words, “White wolf.”

  It sounded painful for him to speak, and the words were not very clear, but Eli understood the message. “We were led here by the white wolf,” Eli told him as he tried not to show his fear. “It left us only moments before you arrived. You didn’t smell him?”

  Pak shook his head and stalked off to speak to the other huge males in the pod.

  “What was that about?” Oliver asked, clearly stunned.

  Pablo stared after them in concern. “I doubt we’re ever going to get a straight answer, but suffice it to say that the white wolf is significant to them. Now, tell me about the other wolves.”

  “It was just like a few months ago,” Ivy explained with the shake of her head. “They ambushed us, but this time Eli killed them all.”

  “That was an accident,” Eli added quickly. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Regardless,” Pablo went on. “The wolves are extremely territorial. There is a different pack near the lake, and they would not tolerate another pack invading their territory.”

  “But why would all of the game move that way,” Oliver asked as he gestured vaguely towards the new lake.

  “It’s where the food is,” Ivy said in disgust. “It’s also drawing them in for my dad to be able to hunt them.”

  Pablo nodded, clearly impressed. “That was my thought as well. I’ve heard rumors that the Overseer is an avid hunter and fisherman.”

  “The fishing one is a joke, though,” Eli pointed out. “He can just call the fish straight to him.”

  Pablo shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s what Ivy does,” Oliver explained. “She touches the water and the fish swim straight to her. It’s how we’ve been eating the last few days.”

  Clearly impressed, Pablo let out a low whistle. “I have never heard of that, Ivy.”

  She shrugged and glanced away as her cheeks turned pink. “Well, we didn’t starve. Eli and I tried to fish when we were in Yellowstone, but we caught nothing.”

  “Wait, when did you go to Yellowstone?” Pablo asked in confusion.

  “After we dropped off Cole and the babies,” she explained as Pak started back over to them. “We drove through there and stopped to camp.”

  Pak came back and appeared to be, at least on the outside, more in control than he had been before. He bent down and drew a squiggly line in the dirt that led parallel to the lake that Pablo had already sketched out.

  “A river?” Eli asked, and Pak nodded.

  Next, Pak cut a line through the river at the midpoint and drew a new line from the river to the lake.

  “I get it,” Ivy said as she met the Sasquatch’s dark eyes. “They diverted the river, maybe by blowing it up, and it sent the water away from here and towards the new lake.”

  Pak patted her lightly on the head, stood up and left again.

  “I am starving,” Oliver said after a long silence. “I don’t suppose they have a lot of food, though.”

  There was enough food for them. They didn’t have the same kinds of food that the other Bigfoot had had in Yellowstone, but they dined on venison and gathered greens from the surrounding forests. The females prepared most of the food, but a few of the men helped as well. When Eli had offered to help, he was sent back to his group to sit on the outskirts of the fire.

  “They are male dominant by and large,” Pablo explained as he studied the group. “I’ve been watching how things have gone around here, and it has been interesting. Pak is definitely in charge, but Yul is his wife, of sorts, and she has a huge amount of influence over him. They have a young one as well.”

  “I saw him in the hut,” Ivy grinned. “He was sleeping. He’s huge, like the size of Alexi, but he’s so cute. I don’t think he’s even six months old.”

  “We have to help them,” Eli said as he studied all of the Bigfoot as they moved through their encampment.

  “We will help them,” Ivy reminded him. “First, because it’s the right thing to do. Secondly, because I know I can reroute the rivers again.”

 
“The third is because you really want to piss your father off and take away his new toy,” Oliver added with a sly grin. Eli had never thought of a lake as a toy, but he supposed in this case it made sense.

  Ivy laughed. “That goes without saying. I wouldn’t mind being a thorn in his side. Also, he’s wrong. He shouldn’t be abusing the land like this.”