The Big Game

by Sarah Jaune

  They heard the footfalls first, softer, then louder, and picking up speed.

  “The water is moving!” one man shouted, while another swore. His voice was loud, the kind that would be piercing if someone were right next to him.

  “The Overseer is going to kill us,” said the third in a slightly deeper voice. Eli thought that he only caught it because they were so close.

  He spotted them. Three big, powerful men were standing at the edge of the old river as they stared in disbelief at the water rushing by them. One had brown hair, one black, and the other was wearing a red cap, so Eli couldn’t tell what color his hair was.

  “This is not good,” the black haired man muttered darkly.

  Eli’s gut clenched in sympathy. This was exactly like the security that worked for his father in Chicago. They didn’t want to follow the crazy dictator’s rules, but death was the penalty for saying no to the Overseer. Ivy’s father wasn’t supposed to be as terrible as Eli’s, but it was still never good for one’s health to tell the Overseer to jump off a cliff.

  Eli squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself to be calm as he pulled in two deep breaths. Then, he slowly opened his eyes and made his move. He swept the men up and over the creek, much like he’d levitated Ivy out of the sinkhole. The second they were over, he dropped them hard to the ground and kept the pressure on them so that they couldn’t rise. Pablo ran as the men yelled and attempted to turn their faces sideways to see.

  One, two, three, Pablo hit the points on the sides of all of their necks and knocked them out.

  Only then did Eli relax and let up. Eli sat back, leaning against the hard, cold rock and observed what he’d done.

  He’d never done something like that before, not deliberately. He walked over to his dad, almost in a trance, to stare down at the unconscious men.

  “You had to,” Pablo called over to him, correctly reading his expression. “They’ll be fine, just have a headache when they wake up.”

  “Where are we—” Eli broke off when Pablo shot to his feet and stared off into the forest at the exact same moment that the Bigfoot sprang to attention.

  “Bear,” Pablo told Eli. “It’s coming this way.”

  Eli glanced between them. “It’s just a bear. So what?”

  His dad’s sideways look was mild, but telling. “Some of us have to worry about bears.”

  He pointed to the twelve-foot-tall Bigfoot. “That is not a problem for them.”

  “Granted,” Pablo agreed with a sigh.

  “We can’t leave them here,” Eli said as he pointed down to the men. “Not with a bear close by.”

  Pak grunted at three of the Bigfoot and they each picked one of the men up.

  “Where are you taking them?” Eli asked as they set off, stepping over the river.

  Pak bent and drew a box with a triangle on top.

  “A house?” Eli questioned, and Pak nodded. “How far away is it?”

  The alpha tapped his hand once.

  “Half a mile,” Pablo explained. Eli paced and waited, waited and paced, until Pablo grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him to stand still. “It won’t go any faster with you doing that.”

  “Is there anything between here and back where we left the others?” Eli asked Pablo, then glanced to Pak.

  Pak scanned the forest and shook his head with a small grunt.

  Pablo sighed as he studied his son. “She’s fine, Eli.”

  Eli felt an itch in his back that he didn’t think he’d ever be able to fully scratch, not with fingernails. It was like a prod to leave, to go back. He didn’t feel like waiting was the right move. “I just want to make sure.”

  Pablo cocked his head to the side and eyed Eli curiously. “Do you feel like she might need you?”

  He opened his mouth to say ‘no, of course not,’ but the words wouldn’t come out. They felt like a lie. “Maybe.”

  “Go,” Pablo ordered him. “Go, now! Run!”

  Eli ran. He sprinted through the forest, dodged trees, and even put on a huge spurt of speed so that his feet barely touched the mossy forest floor. The world blurred around him as he focused on his goal of closing the gap between them. Twenty agonizing, drawn out seconds later, he spotted a Bigfoot and veered towards it, close to the river.

  He immediately saw the problem as he skidded to a stop and nearly flew face first into the river. The banks between the old river and new were crumbling around them. Ivy had her arms out as she attempted to keep the water back as she stood on the solid bank, but it appeared to be all she could to hold it off. If the water broke through, it would spill into the forest, flooding everything around it. It wouldn’t channel down to Portland, but instead would drown whatever ground animals lived between the rivers.

  Eli held up his hands and pushed at the dirt that was working hard to give way. He focused on it, squinting to not lose his concentration as Oliver stepped up next to him and froze the water at the bank, holding the ice in place to shore up what the water wanted to rip away.

  He was impossibly drained from the run, his heart thumping hard with fear in his ears, but he didn’t let go as Ivy shifted her focus to pushing the water back down the chute they’d dug. “A bit more!” she yelled to them. “We’re gaining ground!”

  One second and the blood beat hot through his face, sending a flush up to his cheeks.

  Two seconds and his heart almost skipped a beat as a massive boulder tumbled down the new river’s path, unleashing more water down the wrong path.

  Three seconds and time slowed to a crawl as a thunderous roar shook the trees around them and the dammed up river collapsed, sending a tidal wave of water, mud, sticks, and debris rocketing down the hill.

  Eli held the hill with one part of his mind, while another focused on the loose boulder that had tumbled free. He lifted it into the air and dropped it below the crumbling wall he was trying to keep intact.

  Then he sank to his knees and let out a short breath as Oliver maintained his ice wall.

  “Where did you come from?” Ivy demanded in shock.

  He shook his head, too winded and too exhausted to explain.

  Eli really hoped that everyone downstream would sense the tsunami that was coming for them and would get out of the way.

  “Yeah,” Ivy said sadly, clearly reading his mood. “That didn’t work out well.”

  CHAPTER 24

  I DON’T FIDGET

  “I tried to hold it back, but there was too much,” Ivy said as she flopped back into the muddy grass. “I’ve had too many days on the run.”

  Eli knew exactly what she was talking about. He was wiped out as well. Oliver dropped his arms. “I’m out,” he told them. “I can’t hold it anymore.”

  One of the Sasquatch motioned to Eli, then pointed back down the hill towards where the other group would come. “They should be on their way,” he explained. “I felt like something was wrong up here so I came back.”

  The Bigfoot grunted and mimed eating something, then pointed to the forest.

  “You are going to hunt?” Eli asked and received a nod of acknowledgement. “Okay, we’ll wait here for you.” He silently watched the water flowing down both river channels, splitting them in two. With every passing minute, though, more water went down the old river.

  “We need to dam that up,” Oliver told him.

  “I know,” he agreed evenly as hunger gnawed at him. “I don’t know about you, but I need to eat first.”

  “What I want to know,” Ivy said from behind them with one arm thrown over her eyes, “is how you knew we needed help.”

  He shrugged. “I just did. It felt like something was trying to push me back here.”

  “Riiiight,” Oliver drew the word out skeptically. “Whatever you say.”

  Within an hour everyone was back, and it was decided that they’d set up camp here on the riverbank. Eli barely had enough strength to pay attention to what he ate. As soon as he was full, he moved several huge rocks into the junction with
the new river in an effort to slow it down. It worked well enough. The water still made it through, but now it was a slow trickle rather than the full force.

  “It was just too much water,” Ivy said once they had done all they could. “There shouldn’t be this many major rivers running so close together. That’s something else I don’t get. I’m starting to wonder if maybe he wasn’t rerouting them through his zone in order to make sure that we always had water to grow food.”

  Pablo nodded in consideration. “That is a possibility, but it ruins everything for anyone who was downstream.”

  “Exactly,” Ivy sighed. “These rivers have been this way for more than a decade, maybe longer, so whatever he did, it’s unlikely I’d be able to put it right.”

  Eli turned from his musing over the river to ask her a question and found Pablo studying him intently. “What?”

  “We need to talk about how you knew there was a problem back here,” Pablo explained quietly.

  Eli shook his head. “Maybe I have telepathy, too, buried down deep. What does it matter? I have good instincts.”

  Instead of responding to him, Pablo turned to Ivy. “Do you know when Eli is in trouble?”

  Looking unsure, and more than a little alarmed, Ivy shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “What about his moods?” Pablo questioned bluntly. “You read his moods, right?”

  “Sure,” she answered a little more confidently. “But, he has a fairly expressive face, and he fidgets when things start to overwhelm him. It’s pretty easy to read.”

  “Wait,” Eli protested as he held up a hand. “I do not fidget!”

  Pablo smiled now, a little sadly. “Or pace back and forth?”

  Sheepishly, Eli grinned. He had to concede that one. “Where are you going with this?”

  “I don’t know,” Pablo admitted. “It seems like you two have a deeper connection than just as friends. It’s something that the Sasquatch sense. I don’t feel like I should dismiss it, but as with everything that has happened with you two, I don’t know what to make of it. You shouldn’t have more than one power, but you both do. You talked to a wolf that Oliver couldn’t communicate with. Something is different about you two, and I don’t know what to do about it.” Pablo wrapped an arm around Eli’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze. “I’m feeling out of control and a little helpless.”

  “But you’re not angry,” Eli pointed out quietly. Unlike himself, his dad always had things under control.

  “That has taken a lot of years and a lot of practice,” Pablo admitted. “It’s helped by knowing that whatever has happened to you, and whatever is happening between you two, I don’t think it’s bad for either of you. I can let that be enough.”

  Pak barked out a growl and motioned them over to the fire.

  “Yes,” his dad agreed. “We need to form a plan.”

  No matter how much Eli wanted to sleep, no matter how worn thin he felt, there was no rest at that moment. They had battles to fight, and wars to wage. There was a lake that would need to be destroyed before the Overseer was alerted to their presence. They had that night and maybe the next day when the water stopped flowing to the lake to get down there and finish the job.

  They needed the big game to migrate back to the rest of the forest. The Bigfoot needed to be able to spread back out again so that their large pod didn’t end up fighting. It was not the ideal situation. Eli would have desperately loved to have slept a solid twelve hours, but sleep had to wait. As soon as they’d eaten and cleared up their camp, they set out back down the trail. Darkness fell quickly, swallowing them whole while they marched on, keeping the old river to their right. Eventually, they would need to jump across the river and move west, but not yet.

  A lone owl hooted above them in the trees as they marked time in their soft footfalls. No one spoke or made a noise. Eli walked by Ivy’s side, making a conscious effort to stick next to her now that he knew it gave him an edge with Pak. Plus, he liked walking with her.

  “Bear,” Pablo said into the quiet of the night.

  Eli glanced back at his dad and saw him pointing to his left. “Is it the same one?”

  “Yes,” he confirmed. “I think it’s following us.”

  “There was another time in my life when a bear following me would have been a big deal,” Ivy mused softly. “Now, not so much.”

  “It’s probably hungry,” Pablo told her. “There aren’t a lot of big animals around here to hunt, and if it heads down to the lake, then the Overseer will shoot it for sport.”

  Ivy sucked in a lungful of air and blew it out slowly. “I’m sensing that the lake is about two and a half miles southwest of us.”

  Clearly she was done talking about her father.

  They walked fast, aided by the need to keep up with the twelve-foot tall giants that dominated their group. Within an hour, Ivy had located a manmade wooden bridge that spanned the old river, and they crossed to continue on perpendicular to the water.

  “How long until we hit where the new river is located?” Oliver asked Ivy as they stumbled through landscapes lit only in pale hints of moonlight. “This is confusing. The new river is now the old river since we stopped it.”

  “Don’t think too hard,” Eli told him earnestly. “You might hurt something.”

  Oliver slugged him in the shoulder, and he laughed.

  “As soon as we reach the lake, we have to scout and figure out where the men are staying,” Pablo explained as he fell into step next to his sons. “I can smell at least a dozen, but maybe more.”

  “I do not envy you that power,” Oliver mused as he ducked under a low branch. “You get to smell absolutely every disgusting thing out there.”

  “You learn to tune it out,” Pablo assured him. “I only smell it when I want to smell it. It’s like how you only freeze things when you choose to.”

  Ivy swayed next to Eli, and he grabbed her arm to hold her steady. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just tired,” she admitted weakly. Her skin, always pale, almost glowed from lack of color in the diminished light. “I’ve never been drunk, but I’ve seen enough of them to know that I probably feel like they did; stumbling around in the darkness.”

  Eli knew exactly what she meant. He, too, was using everything he had to continue to put one foot in front of the other. They were going to be useless when they finally made it to the lake. “I think we should stop for a bit.”

  Pablo began to object, but on reflection changed his mind. “Pak,” he said to the alpha. “They won’t be able to use magic to help if we don’t let them sleep. We can’t destroy the lake without Ivy’s help.”

  Although he didn’t look happy about it, Pak seemed to understand the significance of that. He called a halt, and they moved over to a small opening in the trees. Eli dropped to the ground and Ivy stumbled down next to him. She pulled her sweatshirt off and formed it into a wad so she could lay with her head on it. Eli laid his head next to hers, and when she shivered, wrapped an arm around her waist.

  They were both sound asleep before the fire was even lit.

  “You really need to wake up, now,” said his dad’s voice as something shook his shoulder. “Eli, it’s morning. You need to get up.”

  He didn’t even bother to acknowledge the words. He was still so tired that he just couldn’t will himself to care.

  “It’s no good,” Pablo said from somewhere to Eli’s right. “They’re still too drained.”

  They…

  Eli became aware of a warmth next to his, and soft hair against his cheek. He felt the gentle brush of air on his neck. His hand was in Ivy’s hair. He knew it had to be Ivy. He tried to picture what was going on, but couldn’t make his eyes open to see it for himself.

  “I wish I had a camera,” Oliver said in amusement. “I could tease him about this for years. He’s hugging her in his sleep!”

  “Now you’re starting to sound jealous,” Pablo told him mildly. “I wish you’d leave them alone, Oliver. They
’ve been through enough.”

  Oliver snorted. “Would you have left your brother alone about it?”

  “Yes,” Pablo promised immediately. “My brother tried to kill me several times.”

  Eli felt his heart clench and, reflexively, his fingers tightened in the loosened tendrils of Ivy’s hair.

  “I…” Oliver’s voice hitched. “I’m sorry, Dad. I forgot.”

  “You have an advantage that they will never have,” Dad reminded him as the sounds of others moving in the clearing finally broke into Eli’s contracted consciousness. “We have raised you from when you were small. You don’t even remember what it was like before. It isn’t to say it has been easy for you, but you can’t remember the abuse, and in so many ways that has saved you.”