by Emily Asad
Chapter 11: Limping Progress
My ankle kept me awake, not to mention the hunger and thirst. I heard patient sighs from Tony all night long, so I knew he wasn’t sleeping well either. My tosses and turns probably didn’t help. So it was no surprise when he suggested that we pack up camp even though the sun’s rays were only fingers of light, and dawn wouldn’t break for another hour or so.
Hunger burned in my stomach. I couldn’t resist staring at Tony’s pouch. “They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“Can’t hike on an empty stomach,” he agreed.
We ate the last power bar in quiet desperation, knowing that there would be nothing at all for tomorrow’s hike except for little sachets of salt and pepper. I was almost hungry enough to consider drinking the hot sauce from the Army meal. Maybe tomorrow.
“Guess I’ll take that aspirin now.”
He passed me a water packet. “Have some of mine.”
I washed the aspirin down with as little water as I could, sputtering a little because I was trying to ration my gulps. “That’s my water,” I said. “Not yours. Fair is fair.” He opened his mouth to protest, but I held up a finger. “I would have had it for breakfast anyway.” Afraid that he’d try to trick me into drinking his water, I made him open another pouch and drink it down while I finished mine.
“So what’s next on the map?” I asked.
“We should reach that lake today,” he said. “Let’s check.” He fished around inside the pouch for a minute. Startled, he opened it wide, then dumped everything on the forest floor.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s not here!” Frantic, he patted his pockets. Then he groaned. “Oh, no. I left it at Miller’s Lodge. I put it down yesterday when I heard you scream, and I forgot to go back and get it after we fixed your ankle. It’s probably blown away into some valley or something by now.”
“So we’re lost?”
“Not yet. We still have your compass, and I remember some of the landmarks. Basically, we go south until we hit Dead Island Lake, and then west a bit until we hit Otter Paw.”
“The map was a little more complicated than that,” I said, worry coloring my voice. My swollen ankle, compressed beyond belief inside my boot, throbbed more and more each minute. “Tell me we’ll make it.”
He drew a shaky breath. “I remember the map, Alana. We’ll make it.”
We headed due south, falling into a mindless left-step-right-step pattern. For me, it was more of an exhausting left-hop-left-hop as I tried to keep cadence with Tony’s long strides.
After a few hours, breakfast burned away, leaving a thousand needles of hunger stabbing into my stomach. I started to think that eating bark and berries would be delicious, after all. In fact, I was growing so familiar with the plants around me from seeing them each hour, all day long, that I was starting to tell them apart. From time to time, we’d pass berry bushes. I tried one that looked like a future raspberry, but it was so bitter and hard that I spit it out immediately.
“You’re not afraid of poison?” Tony asked as I wiped my tongue on my sleeve.
“If they have a crown, they’re not poisonous,” I said. All of a sudden, I heard my own words. Where had I learned that? Nature Camp, probably, or maybe from a book, but I knew it was true. I started pausing at each berry bush, searching for anything that resembled blueberries.
Though I had never tasted juneberries, I knew they were supposed to be related to blueberries and safe to eat. Imagine how delighted I was to finally find some! Some were still green and unripe, but many had turned red or even dark blue. Maybe they’d all be ripe in another week or so, but red meant edible.
“Look!” I cried, releasing Tony’s neck so I could hop closer to the shrub. Sure enough, when I crushed a red one between my thumb and forefinger, there were little brown seeds inside the yellow fruit. I glanced at Tony. “Wish me luck.” I popped it in my mouth.
It wasn’t exactly delicious, but its light almond flavor was pleasantly sweet on my tongue. I grinned. “Well?”
“If you don’t die, I’ll try one.”
I threw a purple one at him. “Chicken.”
“You mean it tastes like chicken?” He stared at it, sighed, and then bit down. His eyebrows flew up toward his forehead. “Not bad.”
We stood at the bush for a little while, picking all the purple-blue ones first, and then moving to the red ones when those were gone. There weren’t nearly enough to satisfy us, but now we knew what to look for. In my victorious glow, I almost didn’t notice how much my ankle hurt.
We walked, we walked, and we walked some more. Occasionally we’d stop at a juneberry bush, and once we even found a patch of wild strawberries with fruits no bigger than my pinkie nail. Talk about sweet and delicious. But the treasure of the day happened when I heard a loon’s haunting cry. Loons lived on lakes, and lakes meant water.
Tony hesitated when we approached the open water, but the trees were so close that we could dash back for cover if we heard any aircraft overhead.
He knelt beside the lake’s crystal blue waters and filled the canteen to the brim. Some of it leaked out of the hole near the top. “Okay, Wonder-Belt Girl, work your magic against that water-borne cyst the ranger told us about.” He held the canteen out to me.
“Cryptosporidium?”
“You’re a freak for remembering that.”
I grinned at him and read the microscopic instructions on the package. “Well, there’s good news and bad news.”
“Bad first.”
“It takes four hours to work if we want full potency, especially because the lake water is so cold.”
“And we don’t have that kind of time to wait around, especially...”
I knew what he wanted to say: Especially with your ankle. “Except that we don’t have to wait here,” I added, trying to be optimistic. “We can just fill the canteen and wait a while.”
“What was the good news?”
“It only takes half an hour to kill most bacteria and viruses. And maybe those cysts he was talking about are only found in lakes, not running water.”
His smile could have melted snow, and it wasn’t just on his lips. I would have known he was smiling even if he’d been wearing a ski mask with only his eyes exposed. It caught me by surprise. ‘Beautiful’ is a word that most people use on women, but I have to say, just then, that he was beautiful. I grinned back at him.
He licked his parched lips. “And if we get sick anyway, we’ll be in Otter Paw tomorrow. Didn’t the ranger say they had a hospital there?”
I glanced down at my ankle. “I sure hope so.” I plopped the water purification tablet into the canteen. “So... what do you say we drink the rest of those water packets, then?”
“Four left,” he replied. “How about half now, and save the others for tomorrow?”
Boy, did that water taste good. I drank down my entire packet without even stopping to sip or ration or let it stay on my tongue a while. Full gulps - my reward for making it this far.
As I stepped away from the lake, I noticed all the cattails lining the shore. I burst into a sharp gasp.
Tony reached a hand toward me. “What? Your ankle?”
“No,” I laughed. “Lunch!” I tugged one of the tall stalks up by its shallow root and showed it to him. “This is the only thing I know for sure how to eat out here.”
He made a face. “You were guessing about the berries?”
“No, goofball. I’m sure that berries with a crown are edible. But this thing is amazing. Check it out.” I held the stalk upside down and peeled as I talked. “If we remove the outside layers, there’s this white core inside. See?” I bit into it with no hesitations; it was the only thing I remembered clearly from Nature Camp because I had been chosen as the volunteer for that particular plant. At the time, I’d been jealous; other kids got to try the normal foods, like deer jerky or rhubarb pie. Even the survival bar looked better than my cattails, with all
the dried berries and powdered nuts packed into some sort of fat. Now I was glad for my humble lesson.
Tony must have sensed my enthusiasm, because he didn’t argue like he did with the berries. In fact, I completely ignored him as I uprooted stalk after stalk, grazing on the sweet white inner core. “I feel kind of bad, wasting them like this,” I mentioned after a while. “Did you know you can collect the pollen and turn it into flour for biscuits? I think you can pound the starch into flour, too. Oh! And put a few of these into your pouch. They’ll make great kindling for tonight’s fire.” I handed him the velvety brown heads.
“Thanks, Ranger Alana,” he said. “Any other tricks up your sleeve?”
“Boy, I wish.” I tucked a few cattail roots into the pouch, too, for a snack.
Over the next few hours, I surprised myself with my strength. With my ankle growing worse and worse, I just wanted to sit down, have a good cry, and wait for the bad guys to show up. Instead, I didn’t complain at all, or whine, or even feel sorry for myself. Of course it was impossible not to worry about my ankle, but it was nice to be independent, for a change. Always before, Mom was the guide. She never let me make my own decisions, and Dad always let her lead the way because it was too tiring to argue with her. But out here, in the middle of a forest that should have killed me by now, I was still going strong without their help. Ha!
Relief washed over me when made it to Bear Ridge. Not that I didn’t trust Tony’s sense of direction without the map, but it was nice to be sure. Still, we were going so slow that we’d never make it to Dead Island Lake by nightfall. I knew it bothered him because Wednesday was the trial. At this pace, we’d never make it to Otter Paw in time for him to testify.
When we finally settled down for the evening, he was really quiet. We munched on the berries and cattails we’d gathered along the way, and drank our iodine-flavored water from the canteen, but we didn’t joke around. In fact, Tony just stared into the fire, all sad and quiet.
“Oh, man,” I groaned. “We should have tried fishing when we passed that lake back there. We could have had trout or something for dinner.”
“Trout are a river fish,” he mumbled.
“Some live in lakes,” I argued. When he didn’t respond, I tried again. “I remembered something else about cattails. Did you know Indians used to roll the sap into balls and eat them mixed with powdered dried meat?”
“Doesn’t do us much good right now, now, does it?” Careless of sparks, he threw his stick into the flames, causing a minor firework shower to spray into the air.
“Are you angry with me?” I asked, blinking at his sharp tone. “Look, I’m walking as fast as I can. It’s not my fault.”
“It’s nobody’s fault,” he said. “Look, just leave me alone for a while, okay?”
I didn’t know what to do. When Dad was in that sort of mood, Mom only made it worse by asking and asking what was wrong, or by insulting his ability to stay positive. “Okay,” I said.
He rubbed his forehead.
I could see his exhaustion - and not just the physical part. The whole Drosnin thing - all the years of worry and survival, all the different places he’d had to move with his family just to stay ahead of danger - was supposed to be ending soon, but here he was, powerless to fulfill his duty at last. And I was powerless to make him feel any better. “I’m heading to bed,” I said. “You coming?”
“I’m gonna stay out here for a while longer.”
“Need anything?”
If he heard me, he didn’t reply. But I don’t think he heard me; he was so caught up in his own thoughts. I hoped that a good night of sleep would help him feel better.