by Billy Wright
Stewart reached back for the flattened package of bread, tore it open, then ripped off a chunk comprising several slices mashed together, which he chucked outside.
The bear came closer, sniffed it once, and devoured it. Its coat flashed with bright colors again, hypnotic and pulsating. Then it caught Stewart’s eye. Stewart blinked and rubbed his eyes, because what just happened…
The bear had winked at him.
Then it turned and ambled away, the exploding colors of its coat once again subsiding into browns and greens.
It was a couple of minutes before anyone could speak again.
“Did you all just see that?” Stewart asked.
Liz whispered, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
“Mommy, we live in Arizona,” Cassie reminded her in a hushed voice.
Stewart could breathe again, and his heart stopped trying to leap out of his chest.
“What do we do now?” Liz said. Both adults knew they were lost at this point. Off the map. In a wilderness that he was pretty sure wasn’t the real world. Populated by gargantuan creatures.
He eased back to lean against the rocks and squeezed the bridge of his nose. The real question was: Should they try to retrace their steps back to the campsite, and then down the road and back to the highway?
But could they? After that frenzied flight, could they even find the stream again? If they decided to push ahead, where would they be pushing ahead toward?
They had certainly found adventure. They had found magic. They had seen a dino-moose and a rainbow grizzly.
While he was lost in thought, Liz prized apart the cracker-thin slices of bread, slapped some luncheon meat in between them, and gave them to the kids to eat, and they all munched in silence. Liz kept glancing at him. She knew he sometimes had to quiet himself, sweep away mental debris, and wait for the truth to coalesce.
He closed his eyes and listened to the quiet voices within himself.
The bear could still be out there. He was sure of many things now, but he could not be sure the bear had winked at him.
But even if it hadn’t, it had lost interest in them quickly. It hadn’t tried to get at them. Its attitude was more curiosity than hunger or aggression.
Finally, he said, “You all stay here. I’m going to venture out, scout around a little. Maybe I can find our stream again.”
Liz’s eyes widened. “You want to split up?”
“I won’t go far. I just want to have a look around.”
“But, Dad, I’m the scout,” Hunter said.
“Not this time, Son. Sorry.”
With one last peek for threats, he grabbed his hatchet and crawled outside. He took careful note of his surroundings, the lay of the land, the position of the nearby boulders. It would be easy to get lost again if he ventured too far.
He headed around the skirt of the mountain slope, thinking he would make a wider arc downward, just to see what was around before returning to the enclosure.
The forest was silent, except for the buzzing and flitting and chirping of the creatures above and the breath of the wind in the redwoods. These trees possessed a size and majesty he had never seen before, stretching high, high, at least a hundred feet. The lowest branches were at least thirty feet up. He would need a jet pack or wings to get up there.
As he passed around a low, rocky ridge, he lost sight of the cluster of boulders where his family hid. He walked another hundred yards or so, careful to keep himself orientated.
What he discovered on the other side, however, seized his attention.
A trail.
What he couldn’t immediately discern was whether it was game trail or a manmade trail. It was about as wide as a cattle path, just enough to walk single file, but was clean and clear of rocks, easy to follow. In one direction, it snaked upward and switched back out of sight, and in the other it meandered down the slope and disappeared among the trees.
He knelt and studied the trail. There had been a recent rain shower that cleared the dust of the trail, like shaking an Etch-A-Sketch, but there were cloven hoof prints, probably from deer.
For about a hundred more yards, he followed the trail downhill. And that was where his heart bounced with hope. At a spot where the trail snaked around a cluster of boulders lay a small cairn of carefully arranged stones standing maybe a foot high. The stones were stacked meticulously, carefully balanced in a single column, rising to smaller and smaller until the apex was a pebble the size of his thumbnail.
This was a trail that people used, unless the coyote-riding goblins had some sort of artistic bent. Someone had paused here long enough to fashion this little marker. For what purpose, he couldn’t know, but it gave him hope.
He hurried back to the boulders where his family hid, retracing his steps. As the sanctuary came in sight, Hunter’s voice yelled, “It’s Dad!” As he tramped closer, they all crawled outside to meet him.
“I found a trail,” he said, and then told them where. “I think we should follow it.”
“What about the bear, Daddy?” Cassie asked.
“Honey, the bear went thataway.” He pointed with each hand in different directions. “The trail is thisaway. I hope we won’t see him again. But we’ll keep our eyes and ears open, okay? No talking. We can hear better that way. Can you do that?”
She nodded, face worried.
It would also be better if they didn’t give away their presence to who and whatever might be around, but he didn’t say that. The glint in Hunter’s eye, however, told Stewart the boy understood that very well.
“Let’s pack up and get moving,” Stewart said, looking for the position of the sun. Gauging from its location in the sky, the time was 2:00 or 3:00 p.m.
While the kids shrugged on their backpacks, Liz pulled out the map and examined it again.
“Oh, no way,” she said. She looked at Stewart, eyes wide. “The map changed!”
“I can’t say I’m surprised at this point.” He leaned over her shoulder and looked. Their path had moved away from the stream and now meandered over the side of the mountain.
Some distance away down the mountainside, the map showed the outline of a bear. Some distance behind them now lay the outline of a moose.
“‘Here there be monsters,’” Stewart said.
“Mommy, is the map magic?” Cassie stood on tiptoes to peek over Liz’s hand.
“It sure is, honey,” Liz said.
“Wow!” Hunter breathed. “A real, live magical map!”
“And maybe even a giant-rainbow-bear detector,” Stewart said. He couldn’t be sure, but the bear’s silhouette might have moved away by a few hairsbreadths. “Okay, let’s go. Mom is bear detector and navigator. Hunter and I will be the scouts.”
“What about me, Daddy?”
“You are the rear guard, Cassie. Your job is to watch and listen behind us. Can you do that?”
Cassie nodded vigorously.
“All right then. Remember, lips shut and ears open.”
It was only a few minutes’ walk to the trail, and their spirits picked up as soon as they found it, as if it were a touch of intelligent presence, the fingerprint of civilization in the wilderness.
For a couple more hours they followed the trail, which led generally downslope with a few areas of rocky undulation. But they found more cairns spaced along the trail, some of them taller with more stones, others shorter.
The trail led them into a deep, wide mountain valley, and the going was so much easier than threading their way through the maze of massive tree trunks. The opposite side of the valley was an emerald tapestry of mountains and forest, toward which the sun descended. This meant they were traveling roughly north or northeast. As the sun dipped toward the saw-toothed horizon, it painted orange ribbons across the carpet of needles at the feet of the redwoods, and the sounds of the forest changed. The chitter and chirp of the canopy above hushed to an occasional call and response. The air grew cooler, moist, and smelled of rich fertile earth, fl
owers, and even honey.
Liz kept checking the map, reporting periodically that the bear and the moose outlines did not appear to be getting any closer. About half an hour of light remained when the trail led them to the bank of another stream, prompting her to wonder aloud, “Do you suppose this might be the stream that leads us to the lake? We’re supposed to go to the lake, right?”
“That’s what the shopkeeper told me,” Stewart said.
“What are we going to do when it gets dark?” Liz said, growing nervous. “Those coyotes could come back.”
He’d been thinking about the same thing himself, looking for suitable campsites as they went or another shelter like the one that had protected them from the bear, but had seen nothing suitable. The ground was too steep, too rocky, and at the same time, too wide open to serve as both a campsite and a defensible position. If those coyote-riding goblins caught them in the open, without the defense of a cinder-block toilet, the outcome would be much worse than the night before. Stewart’s wounds ached, but they were nothing he couldn’t endure.
They continued down the trail, paralleling the stream’s flow for maybe another quarter of a mile, when they came to a fork in the trail. At the juncture stood another stone cairn, but unlike any they had seen thus far, these stones were engraved with more runes resembling those the old gas station attendant had embedded in the putty to fix the fuel line.
“Hey, Dad?” Hunter said, interrupting Stewart’s reverie. “Did you notice the river is flowing the wrong direction?”
“What do you mean, ‘wrong direction’?” Stewart said.
Hunter shrugged and pointed.
Liz exclaimed, “Are you telling me the water is flowing uphill?”
He was right.
“Then which way is the lake?” Liz grabbed a handful of her hair and squeezed it. “Is this stream flowing from the lake, or to the lake? Oh, doodles, my head is spinning.” She sat on her haunches and stared at the gurgling stream, throwing the map over her shoulder.
The stream was maybe twenty to thirty feet across, about knee deep, and so crystal clear he could see the dark, streamlined shapes of fish maneuvering in the current, ranging in size from minnow to trout, some of them as long as his forearm. It might be time to go fishing. After all of today’s trek, hunger was chewing on him.
But the water flowing uphill, defying gravity, disoriented him, made him a little dizzy. Could it be an optical illusion? No, the uphill slope was too steep for it to be an illusion.
A fish flipped out of the water and disappeared again with a splash of silver and emerald.
Cassie pointed. “Is that a fish? It was really pretty.”
“Like the bear?” Stewart said.
“No, more like the greenest green I ever seen. Hah, I made a poem!”
He knelt at the river bank, peering into the water.
A brilliant, emerald-green fish leaped into the air and splashed, its scales glimmering like chips of gemstone. It was big, about the length of his forearm, thick as his wrist, but sleek, strongly resembling a koi in shape.
It leaped again, and after the events of today, it became easier to believe its bulbous quarter-sized eyes were looking at him.
“If I didn’t know better,” Liz said, “I’d say it’s trying to get our attention.”
Chapter Twenty
“What makes you think it’s not?” Stewart said. He had never seen such a gymnastic fish in his life.
Then the fish whipped upstream about thirty yards—downhill—and launched into another flurry of arching leaps, twists, and flops.
“It does want us to follow it!” Cassie said with a giggle.
“What if it’s a trick?” Liz said.
Stewart nodded. “I had the same thought.” It was so hard to know what to believe, especially in a state of increasing fatigue. As dusk drew on, the weight of the day’s events and the lack of sleep the night before hung on his limbs and eyelids. Weariness weighed him down.
Liz must have seen it on him. “We need to set up a camp somewhere so you can rest. Maybe if we follow that fish, we’ll come to a place that’s flat enough to at least sit down.”
“Yay!” Cassie jumped up and sprang after the fish.
“Stay close, baby girl!” Liz called.
The closer they got to the fish, the more it moved away. The path grew wider as they went, as if more traveled.
Stewart’s shoes seemed to turn to lead, slowing his tread, even going downhill. All his reserves of energy had abruptly run dry. Liz and the kids gradually outpaced him. He found himself daydreaming, just a little, of a nice flat patch of cool, green grass, the kind that felt like a cushy mattress, but protected by a circle of boulders, a space just big enough for the family, with a nice little fire pit in the center.
Then a white light burst in his vision, and a spike of dizziness brought him to his knees.
“Stewart!” Liz cried, turning at the sound of his collapse and grunt of distress. “Are you all right?” She ran back to his side.
He jammed his fingers into his eyes against the pain and blinding flashes bursting behind his eyelids. Dizziness washed over him. The ground beneath him felt like a rowboat in heavy swells, swells crashing over the landscape, over him, through him, making his skin tingle, his hairs stand on end.
Her warm hand on his shoulder quelled the tossing enough that he could open his eyes without throwing up. He blinked through tears and squeezed her hand to steady himself.
“What is it?” Her voice sounded almost frantic.
“I don’t know...just got...really dizzy.”
“You look like you’re about to pass out!”
“Uh, yeah... But I think it’s over now.” The white spots in his vision faded into rainbow particles, then disappeared.
“You want me to help you up?” Liz asked. The kids stood on either side of her, worried.
He shook his head. “Need to try it myself.” Gathering his strength, he stood, concentrating on steadying himself. He took a couple of deep, slow breaths. “That was—”
“Terrifying!” Liz threw her arms around him, her face alight with fear. Then she whispered for only him to hear, “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”
Meanwhile, the sliver of emerald green leaped out of the water again. “Let’s keep going,” he said, “before it gets too dark to see anything.”
They moved on down the path again, sticking close to Stewart this time.
Ahead, the fish seemed careful to keep them in sight.
After another fifteen minutes of walking, they rounded a sharp bend in the trail, below which the river narrowed and sped up, tossing whitewater over jagged boulders. Thirty yards ahead, to the side of the trail, stood a cluster of more boulders, each at least fifteen feet tall.
Stewart’s dizziness returned for a moment, and his mouth fell open. He grabbed Liz’s arm as he approached the circle of stones. Between two boulders stood a gap just wide enough for him to slip through sideways, an entrance that faced the trail and the river. Within the circle of boulders, open to the sky, lay a lush swath of bright green grass, and in the center, an old fire pit ringed by stones. The space looked to be about fifteen feet across, plenty of room for them to sleep, but close enough to be sheltered from a horde of goblins on coyote-back.
“Stewart, what is it?”
He touched one of the boulders at the entrance, as if he could feel its antiquity rising out of the earth. He rubbed his face, his eyes.
Hunter darted past him into the space. “It’s like Stonehenge, but small! I read about Stonehenge in one of Gramm’s magazines.”
Of roughly uniform size and shape, the boulders did make a circle, but except for the entrance, they were spaced closely enough they formed a wall.
The setting sun shone through the trees and splashed orange through the opening onto the floor of the space.
“Let’s camp here,” he said, glancing at Liz.
“Are you sure?” Liz said, rubbing the back of her n
eck, her voice nervous. “It feels almost too convenient.”
“I’m sure,” was all Stewart said, because what he wanted to tell her felt too weird, even after everything that had happened today. He wanted to bounce it off her, in case it was too absurd, before he said anything in front of the kids. He didn’t want them thinking their father was a nut case.
“First priority,” he said, “Hunter and I will gather some firewood before it gets too dark.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Hunter said with a salute.
Half an hour later, the sun was gone, but their circle of stones was lit by a crackling fire that cast an orange glow up the sides. The air cooled and made their fire a comfort that went all the way down into their caveman instincts. Shelter. Warmth. Food. Tribe. It was good in ways that few things in the modern world could match.
The bear’s visit had taken a chunk out of their food supplies. All they had left was a few granola bars and dried apple slices. Liz made the kids brush their teeth and settle down for bed, but keep their clothes on. No pajamas. They unrolled their sleeping bags on the soft grass, which acted like a springy, fresh-smelling cushion. He could see from the looks on their faces they were worried, but weariness would soon overcome that.
He took Liz down to the water, where he removed his hiking boots and socks and put his feet into the stream. The dash of chill cooled and soothed his blistered feet, and staved off the exhaustion that threatened to make him pass out on his feet.
She sat beside him and did the same. “Okay, spill it.”
He squeezed her hand. “Remember that dizzy spell I had?”
“Yup.”
“Right before that, I was daydreaming about finding the perfect campsite. A protective circle of boulders, soft grass, a fire pit.” He gestured toward it. “And here we are.”
She considered this for a moment, sucking on her teeth, scratching her head. “So, are you saying you dreamed this up, or was it some kind of premonition?”
“Those seem to be the possibilities, yes.”
“So, which is it?”
“I think maybe it was like fulfilling my own wish, creating it.” He didn’t have the words to express that sense of immense shifting that blasted up through his feet when it happened, rocked his sense of the world under him, like standing in a crashing ocean wave but the wave was invisible and made of earth.