by Kate Sundara
Mia, panting in the moonlight is acutely aware of how viciously defensive her pain has made her; how her barren heart has become a field of land-mines, ready to detonate should anyone step in when she’s not prepared. Their breath makes clouds in the air. ‘I’m sorry, Wil… I don’t know where that came from.’ She fleetingly considers uttering the excuse that he made her jump, but no, he deserves better than lies; she’s owning this. ‘It’s me. I’m not going to smoke anymore. It brings up my stuff. It’s my stuff.’
‘You seem pretty sensitive to it,’ says Wil, almost understandingly. How could he understand her? How could anyone?
Mia and Wil watch each other while they get their breath back, then, stepping over fallen trees, they slowly make their way back to the camp-fire.
* * *
Mia follows Cat through April’s van, crawling through coloured throws and over piles of mess. Cat slinks beneath April’s legs and emerges on the other side. As she turns, Mia flinches, realising the creature has April’s face. Mia looks to the bed where April now cackles with an indecipherable figure, sharing a hookah and a wicked joke. When April sees Mia standing there in her rags and tatters, her laughter twists into a cruel smile. ‘Look out Mia!’ she hisses, ‘I might ‘accidentally’ spill another beer down you!’ Her hand flicks out, soaking Mia with drink as Cat shrieks and leaps to her neck. Mia jumps, yelling, fumbling for the feline. Heart pounding, she feels her pyjamas, wondering why they’re not soaking wet. As Mia tries to catch her breath, one thought sticks in her waking mind: Isn’t anyone who they seem?
Heart racing from the nightmare, Mia lies in a cold sweat, staring up at first light seeping through the canvas. She slept the night alone in an individual hogan, broken away from the pack. Instinct had her do it and none of the group disputed her decision; the girls supposing she wanted time-out from Brent. And though, as she unpacked the spare tent from Wil’s Chevy, she feared from the outside she’s seeming ever-stranger in her remoteness, on the inside she’s getting closer to her animal in its cave. A primal need to lick her wounds in solitude. Now, however, without the body temperature of her peers, the chill is unbearable. Hunger begins to dawn and her stomach rumbles, the kind of hangover stomach that requires good hearty food to soak up toxins and replace the sugar that alcohol has absorbed. If only she’d slept through, if only she’d hung a dreamcatcher above her to let good dreams pass through, while bad ones were caught and dissolved in the morning sun. But today her nightmares wake up with her, and even the thought of dream-catchers remind her of the one in Zak’s room, of Freya’s photos around his bed and the fact that her dreams are shot to shit.
It’s still dark out. With the faintest glow through the fabric, it’ll be ages before breakfast when they’ll light the fire for that giant porridge pot. What she’d give for a warm shower, a nice hot brew. Mia considers a lone trek back up to the hot-spring. She unzips her private tent and enters that of her group, her belongings in the bigger tent too, extra layers and tea-bags now so appealing. She finds the communal tent isn’t as cold as her solo one, but still too cold to settle now she’s awake. It smells of bodies who’ve consumed excess alcohol – Mia’s co-campers are used to knocking back booze and passing out. She, by contrast, has been a single traveller, for years having to be astute. Drinking binges have never really been her thing. Over the past fortnight she’s barely eaten, her stomach full with churned up emotions. Her ribs have become lightly visible and any of the vital fat that might once have kept her warm has burned away. Her clothes are becoming baggy, she’s unintentionally thin.
Wil slept with that loaded gun under his pillow, she’s aware of it as she crawls in. Careful not to wake the others, she opens her bag, muffling the zip-sound with her hand. She pulls out a blanket, then another woollen jumper over her head and sits quietly for a moment, between two bodies, all too mindful of the pinch in the air.
‘Hey,’ says a voice, soft and low.
Mia looks behind her; Wil’s lying there, eyes open. She gives him her best cheery-camper smile, sees his lips are near-blue. ‘Hey,’ she whispers, shuddering. ‘Did I wake you?’
He doesn’t answer that. ‘You okay?’
‘Fine. Just cold.’ She’d ask him for a hug if they had a tactile relationship, which they don’t. Wil and Mia never touch. He’d never incited it. She pulls her roll-neck up over her ears, tugs down the sleeves of her pyjamas to cover her knuckles. Wil turns to check on the others. His neck looks stiff. Everyone else appears awkward and crooked, asleep in the dimness. Wil rubs his bare eyes, Mia’s never seen him without his glasses before; she notices how different he appears. Sort of vulnerable, young. He fumbles around for his specs, then they just lay there, still and silent, awake even before the birds.
‘I’ll go get firewood,’ says Wil eventually.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she tells him in a hushed voice.
‘It’s alright…’ The cold seems to freeze him as he sits up. ‘You stay here.’
‘What, where it’s nice and warm?!’ she jokes.
Mia crawls back outside to the charred patch from last night’s camp-fire. Dew bejewels both their tents, a thick blue fog lingers above the ground. They went to bed intoxicated and woke up dishevelled, having got dressed drunk and in the dark. Padded with mismatched, inside-out layers, Wil sports clingy florescent cycling-gear under various T-shirts. Woolly-hatted, bespectacled and practical even in half-sleep, he’s rolled his jogging-bottoms up to the knees to avoid the damp. Looking at him cheers Mia up. She stomps around with birds-nest hair, wearing boots that let in the wet, which bites her toes. Probably a good thing the birds aren’t up yet, they might mistake her head for their home.
They go about their task wordlessly. Movement warms up the body to some degree, but Mia’s teeth stay clenched with cold. Despite the nip, she finds something pleasing to the soul in being awake in the world when all other beings are sleeping, finds the morning freshness invigorating. With the cool spring water, shiny stones, wet grass and forest flowers, things feel truthful, pure. I, too, love this time of day. She looks back at the serenity of their camping scene as the sky starts to lighten crags and trees, the distant ranges turning purple pastel. A mist of changing colours swallow her feet with their clinging cobwebs. The sun is rising quickly. The dewy new world re-birthing smells of bracken, cedar and pine. Although sporadic crests grace the landscape, the region is smoother than the mountainous one from which they came and, without the imminent obstruction, the light rolls swiftly over the curve of the world and the first birds begin to sing.
Wil smiles over at her, sleepily. ‘You’re chirpy, Miss Mia.’
It’s because she remembered what Rosa told her about this magical morning time.
Gazing up at fading stars, she declares, ‘Anything is possible!’
‘Is it possible you’re still drunk?’ He laughs a little.
‘Possibly.’
With enough kindling to start a humble fire, Mia decides that water could be boiling in the iron kettle while they continue their search for logs. She fills an earthenware pot with water from the spring, gets a little fire going. Wil looks over at her appreciatively. ‘Brits and their tea,’ he smiles. She leaves the water heating up and rejoins him on the search for more substantial firewood. Wil goes about his task efficiently and without moaning – Wil never moans – and although he’s looking tired and pale, another smile seems never far from his lips. Swinging a stick gently about her, Mia steps a little dizzily over fallen branches and tangled weeds, humming quietly, as she searches the chicory grass, humming like the hummingbird she used to call me before she knew how apt that name would become. The hummingbird: attached to its nectar, its life-force, zapping from place to place, and hovering in the space between; the only bird able to fly backwards, the frequency of its beating wings, like me, inaudible to humans.
Mia and Wil wander this way then that. She tunes into the silence until other sounds infuse it; the sweet birdsong, the quiet snapping beneath their
feet. Wil makes a pointing gesture up into the forest, where Mia squatted by the tree last night, rebuking herself about Wil’s attractiveness. She follows him up there now, ducking under spindly branches as they enter a world of fern, moss and green. She’s refilled with that inner peace she felt the other night. The trees are still breathing, less animatedly than at their other camp-out when she got high, dozing, early sunlight glimmering in their majestic crowns, trickling down through the mist, dousing everything in a glorious haze. A thousand shining silver cobwebs stretch from foliage and bark. Bark that’s been stripped by – I see it before she sees it – I try to warn her but I can’t–
She’s only just noticed the dozen stripped trees she didn’t detect last night by fire-light or flash-light, trees that have been stripped by–
She catches it mid-yawn, that’s when she sees it – the shape of it shocks her eyes, her yawn falls from her face. For a second she thinks it’s a tree-stump, a mossy rock, her mind entertaining an illusion. But when it moves and she sees its breath, its black coat rippling in the half-light, tiredness tumbles away along with all the information she’s read about what to do should you encounter a bear.
Frozen, she’s afraid to blink. Busy foraging in the undergrowth, it hasn’t seen her. Yet. Rearing up onto its hind legs to over six foot tall, it sniffs the air. Mia holds her breath, gripping her little stick, watching the mass of fur, weight and muscle judder as the giant creature lollops back down.
One thing’s not escaped her: against her primitive instinct to, she knows not to run. If she runs, the beast would outrun her in seconds. And where would she run to? She’s small and unarmed with only soft clothes and a flimsy tent for cover – a tent full of snoozing campers…
Hidden behind a tree, Wil’s hand near hers. He looks at her, biting his bottom lip, they don’t say a word. A cracking of twigs, the rustling of under-growth, things snapping and crunching under huge heavy paws. A moist, solid grunt sets Mia’s heart thumping so fast there’s almost no space between beats. Her head’s near Wil’s chest – his heart booming, too; adrenaline and alcohol surge through their veins.
It’s sniffing them out. Mia scans the dawn for a shelter but the forest floor starts to spin. She looks up the trees – none of them have branches – great mountain ashes – except the tree they’re hid behind – branches! Without a word, Wil grasps her waist and hoists her up into the tree. She dangles, gropes, clasps, but the hollow branches break apart like rotten fruit, mustard dust crumbling away, her boots slip-sliding down the trunk, running through air with nothing to cling to.
‘I can’t!’ she panics, tumbling back to the ground.
The sound of a popping jaw – bears do that when they’re angry; snippets from newspapers flare up in her memory: pepper spray, that incident up at Hidden Creek – the mother not reading the directions, spraying pepper on her kids instead of in the bear’s eyes – big mistake! But they don’t have pepper spray, they’ve a rotten tree, the silly twig she was holding – that’s gone – and, where’s Wil’s gun? As the huge black smudge lunges towards them, a giddy swirl of horror and her heart leaps into her mouth.
It’s a code-red situation: Life or Death, the last thing on her bucket-list. Truth untold she’d always thirsted for this. To come this close to the edge of joining me.
Wil pushes her to the forest floor, her face against soil and twigs. For a split-second of madness she allows herself to enjoying it – a perverse clash of joy and terror and a flash-shot to the brain of lions mating. He’s not thinking about what he’s doing. Primal instinct takes him over, she feels it.
Mia’s become the kind of girl who can take care of her- self. Only last night she yelled at the man now on her back that she didn’t need his protection. A bear attack is some exception.
I’m no mind-reader, not usually. I’m in her thoughts so much I can’t help it, even now. We’ve become entwined – our connection mental, not physical. I have to stop it. To stop all of it. I try to pick up a rock, a stick, to scare off the bear, but my hands slip through solids again and again. My powerlessness is torture. I’m strong but stuck. All I can do is watch. Since my death, most of my male ego is vanquished but when I’m with her, I’m still the guy – I want to be the hero.
I am the seer. I am the unseen.
Mia’s heart pounds in her neck, head and ears. She draws in her elbows, her fingers. Warm liquid trickles down the back of her neck – she can’t tell if it’s his saliva or blood. It’s the closest she’s ever been to him. She loves his smell. She always has, though she’s tried to deny it.
The bear toys with their bodies like it’s trying to overturn a half-buried stone, Mia’s one squished eye confronted with a thick, wire-fur paw. A guttural grunt, its dripping cavernous mouth, its muzzle – Mia turns herself into a centipede recoiling – too much of everything to protect. Wil’s elbows locked under her armpits, his nose in her ear, her head bent against hard ground, no room to move, she can barely breathe, she’s fighting for oxygen…
As the bear drops down on them, all air’s sucked up out of the world. In her windedness, Mia shoots above the trees, looking down: Wil’s body shielding her own, his hands clasped behind his neck, hers poking out beneath him, yet she’s floating outside herself. She’s watching them both, but not as part of it, blind-sided by a vision instead: pure white feathers billowing in sunlight, a golden glow, awesome wings. Then the mightiest of squawks vortexes through the forest, flocks of birds rushing upwards past her through the tops of the trees.
Everything stops. Lying on the soil, Wil’s heartbeat resumes in the small of Mia’s back, bringing her back down to earth. The bear’s weight finally lifted, Mia inhales a stream of dirty air. Wil’s breath trembles in the nape of her neck as she lies like a dead thing, waiting.
I feel more helpless than ever.
* * *
Back by the cars. Immersed in white noise. Everywhere people rushing, voices, fuss. Mia knows she’s hurt but she’s too numb to sense it. Light-headed with a watery tongue, the churning come-and-go feeling of wanting to throw up, Megan catches Mia as her legs give way and slumps her into the back-seat of the Chevy.
Wil is on the grass, looking white-washed with shock and catatonic. Eric is squatted beside him, applying direct pressure to Wil’s wounds with a folded sweater. Tess is holding up his injured arm. Georgia is rummaging in the trunk for the first-aid kit. Megan is making Mia drink water. The others are quickly packing away all the camping gear whilst keeping lookout for the bear. Peeling back the press from Wil’s forearm, Georgia pours water over the bloody mess. Eric exclaims there are three deep claw gashes in Wil’s skin, one of them almost through to the bone. ‘Oh yikes…’
‘I’m dizzy, I think I’m going to faint,’ warbles Heather. Amber throws her a bottle of juice.
Mia is overcome with the strange compulsion to laugh or cry – to cry now that she can – but all that comes is a gritty splutter. She goes to hang her head between her legs but finds she can’t; she’s starting to hurt, ribs tender and bruised. With lungs only letting in shallow streams of air and the rancid taste of bile in her mouth from a gastric reflux, she falls back against the headrest.
‘We need help,’ says Heather.
‘We’re in the middle of nowhere,’ says Amber.
‘Amber’s right,’ agrees Tess. ‘I know this route. The closest hospital’s hours away. We need to staunch the bleeding. What do we do?’
‘A tourniquet,’ says Wil, slowly coming back to himself. ‘We make a tourniquet.’
Mia looks over at him in awe: he’s just survived a bear attack yet he’s still the calmest and most competent of them all. Looking cold and clammy with accelerated breathing, he seems to switch onto auto-mode, talks them through what to do: ‘Someone pass me a T-shirt or something. And a stick. A short stick.’
Eric whips off his top. Georgia fetches a stout branch from the nearby outskirts of the forest.
‘Vodka… please,’ requests Wil.
�
�Should you be drinking?’ asks Heather.
‘For shock,’ says Tess.
Brent scrambles around for the bottle, passes it to Eric who opens it; Wil splashes what’s left of the alcohol over the gashes in his forearm with his other hand. It’s shaking, vodka dripping everywhere.
‘It’s an anaesthetic and disinfectant,’ explains Megan.
‘Will get straight into his system, too,’ adds Josh. ‘Get drunk quicker, ease the pain.’
Wil turns to Eric: ‘Fold up your T-shirt so it’s about three or four inches wide. Then wrap it around my arm, but not on the wound itself – just above so it acts as barrier between the wound and my heart.’
His heart. Mia shuts her eyes, it’s all too much a reminder of me, already this day…
‘You got to do it right,’ says Brent. ‘Or else it could wind up being amputated.’
‘Not helping, Brent,’ says Megan.
‘Try to keep the fabric as flat as possible as you bind it around my arm a few times.’
Mia opens her eyes, sees Georgia tying a knot at each end of the stick she found. Two knots made out of two strips of bandage; Mia wants to ask why they don’t wrap the bandages around Wil’s arm instead of the T-shirt but she can’t speak. Maybe their supply’s not enough.
Megan snatches a towel and a blanket, drapes one over Mia and one across Wil’s shoulders, like the cape on a superhero. A hero, thinks Mia.
Georgia bends, inserting her torsion device, she and Eric attaching the loose ends of the tourniquet to the ends of her instrument, then tightening it with a little tug and a twist. Georgia applies some dampened dressing to the infliction itself. Wil holds it in place.
‘Perfect. Good job, guys. Thanks,’ he tells them.
‘We’re not out of the woods, yet,’ says Tess. ‘C’mon. My dad’s a vet. He’ll give you stitches.’
‘How far are we from there?’