Spirit of a Hunter (20 page)

“I can keep up.”
I have to
, her determined eyes said, and he had to admire her perseverance.

“All right. You lead. See that Y-shaped maple?”

She nodded.

“Head there, and we’ll take a reading.”

By the time they reached the overgrown Lancet Trail Will had forged decades ago, the wind had risen to a howl, making their forward progress difficult.

Nora’s pale, drawn face worried him. He could feel the drive ebbing out of her. So he prodded, cajoled, egged until the spark of fight came back into her eyes.

At noon, they reached the abandoned shack. He’d half expected Tommy to be there waiting with Scotty, but the building was empty. And he didn’t like the distressed tracks or the sign of a jag of lightning burned into a leaf he saw on the ground.

Sabriel swore, his tirade echoing like an enraged bear. Tommy putting himself in danger was one thing, but putting his son in harm’s way was reprehensible.

“What’s wrong?” Nora asked, voice trembling.

“Tommy’s going to Lightning Point.” The point on Mount Storm that held a record for the most lightning strikes.

“That’s bad?”

“That’s where the Colonel caught us.”

Nora pressed the lightning jagged leaf against her heart. “Why would he go there?”

“Damned if I know.” Tommy’s track was too predictable. The Colonel would have men patrolling the area—just in case. What the hell was he thinking?

“Scotty?” The hollow of her throat bumped with the hard beat of her heart. “He’s still okay?”

“He’s still keeping up with Tommy.”

Scotty’s tracks had started dragging about a mile back and Tommy had slowed down to match the boy’s pace. Scotty was getting tired. The excitement of his adventure had worn off. And the hitch of heel and deeper press of toes seemed to indicate his little lungs were working harder than they should. Something Sabriel didn’t dare share with Nora. Her anguish would slow them down and tracking fast had suddenly become a matter of life and death.

The rising wind seemed to laugh as they climbed the trail.

Sabriel let Nora continue to lead, to catch her in case she fell on this treacherous footing. The switchbacks
took them to a ridge that meandered across a plateau and pushed up to a short, steep pitch that landed them on the edge of cliffs straight out of a monster movie. Adding to the horror effect were the birches that looked as if they’d been hacked willy-nilly by an angry giant.

“What happened to the trees?” Nora asked, gawking up at the broken crowns.

“An ice storm raged through a couple of years back.” Leaving behind the gray ghost of dying trees.

He didn’t like being here while the wind keened and whistled through the trees. “Let’s keep moving.”

Nora bent down to pick up a length of red rope that ended in a complicated knot covering a bubble gum-sized marble. “This is Scotty’s monkey fist.” She fingered the dirty marble. “Tommy showed him how to make it. He carries it everywhere with him.”

Scrutinizing the writhing of amputated limbs above, Sabriel tugged on her sleeve. “We have to get out of here.”

But with a strangled cry, Nora ripped out of his grasp and fell to her knees. She clutched at something he couldn’t see and gasped. Her wide brown eyes turned to him. “It’s Scotty’s inhaler.”

Gulping, she shook the container and pressed on the top. Nothing came out. Her throat bobbed and her voice broke. “It’s empty.”

Overhead, a thread of sound like a hem ripping.

A dry-bone snap. Sabriel grabbed Nora’s arm, shoved her out of the deadfall’s way. The trunk of a birch smashed next to them, thundering against the granite. As the trunk rolled, a stray branch whipped out, cracked
him on the side of the head and sent him flying. He fell hard on his side. The thin skin of earth gave way under him, carrying him down across the slippery surface of the boulder. He braced his feet to slow his descent. His hands sought purchase on knobs and knots, and found none.

With nothing to stop the pull of gravity, he went right over the edge of the cliff.

* * *

“S
ABRIEL
!” Nora, flat on her stomach, every muscle trembling, crawled to the edge of the granite slab and peered carefully over the edge. Sabriel hung on an arm of rock jutting out from the sheer side of cliff with only the pitiful hemlock sapling to give him a handhold.

“I’m okay,” he said

“You’re bleeding.” The blow or the fall had cut his cheek, blood painting him a warrior-stripe of red.

“Just a cut.”

“Just a cut doesn’t lose you a gallon of blood so fast.”

“Head wounds always look worse than they are.” He moved slowly and shook off the pack. From the inside, he unwound a rope. “I’m going to throw this rope up to you.”

With an awkward sideways throw, he launched the rope up the cliff.

Grimly, Nora wrestled with the rope that came snaking up at her. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“I’m fine. I just need to rest for a bit.” He attached the pack to his end of the rope. “Nora, listen to me carefully. You’ll have to go to Mount Storm and catch up to Tommy before he gets there. Otherwise, the Colonel will get him.”

“I can’t leave you here.” The way he hobbled awkwardly
on his left foot as he threw the rope up, figuring out he’d hurt his ankle didn’t take a genius. Was it broken? Would infection set in before she could come back with help?

“You don’t have a choice unless you want to lose Scotty,” he said.

She couldn’t risk losing Scotty. The fast closing of her throat had her taking a too-big gulp of air. “I need you.”

“You’ve been leading all day.”

“Because you were there to correct my mistakes.”

“You know the songline.”

She shook her head, not bothering to wipe the tears as she furiously worked to free the pack so she could tie off the rope to a tree for leverage and pull him up. “I can’t leave you like that.”

“Give it to me, Nora. Give me the song.”

“What if you go into shock? What if you fall off that ledge?” What if he died?

“Give me the song, Nora.”

She kept knotting the rope around the sturdiest trunk she could find. “‘Pinball Wizard,’ ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me.’ ‘Stones in the Road’ lead to a ‘Landslide.’ ‘All Things Must Pass’ until you’re ‘High and Dry’…” She gave him his song, verse by silly verse. “‘Divided Sky,’ look ‘Heaven’s Right There.’”

“Look where you’ve been,” Sabriel reminded her. “Make up a line, then focus on where you’re going. For Scotty.”

“I’m sending down a rope.” She dribbled the rope so it wouldn’t lash him on its way down.

“Honey, you don’t have the upper-body strength and I don’t want to have to go fish you off the side of this cliff, too.”

For an instant, she was sixteen again, watching her mother drive away, her gut twisted in a knot, hoping the car would turn around, knowing that it wouldn’t. And she could
not
do this to Sabriel. Could
not
turn her back and walk away when he needed help.

“Only you can reach Scotty in time.” Sabriel’s voice was gentle, too gentle, and it made the tears flow again. “That was the whole point of this exercise, wasn’t it? Finding Scotty?”

Reality crashed down on her as if another ghost tree had fallen. He was right. She had no choice. He could survive where he was. As a Ranger he’d suffered through worse. Heck, he’d lived in these wilds for a whole summer, evaded the Colonel and his trained men for a whole summer. He’d lived through the Colonel’s revenge.

Scotty couldn’t defend himself, and she wasn’t sure enough of Tommy’s state of mind to take the risk that he could protect their son. She would come back once Scotty was safe, and she and Tommy could pull Sabriel up.

Her conscience chafed.
You’re doing to him what you swore you’d never do to anyone
.

“You don’t have much time left before the Colonel’s men catch up.” Though Sabriel tried to hide the urgency in his voice, it climbed up rope and vibrated against her palms, bringing the whole nightmare back in vivid three-dimensional color.

“You’re a sitting duck where you are.” Her voice cracked.

“There’s enough scrub here to hide me.”

A few dead hemlocks clinging to the cliff’s side? He was trying to calm her down, to give her a reason to go. The truth was that if the Colonel’s men caught up to either of them, she and Sabriel would be killed.

Torn in half, she dragged up the rope.

“I’ll be right back,” she said through the mist of her tears. “And I swear, if you die before I get back, I’ll kill you.”

He laughed. “That’s my girl.”

She’d put him in danger. And now she had to make it right. She had to find Tommy and Scotty. Fast. She had to bring them back to free Sabriel.

In the bear bag, she lowered the first-aid kit, most of the food, the stove with the barrel filled with water.

“Keep it,” he said, pushing the bag back up. “You’ll need it.”

“I don’t have time to haul it back up. Besides, I can’t carry a pack that heavy.”

“Nora, don’t be a fool.”

I already am
. Because losing him would hurt. And she was still going to leave him wounded and bleeding. Scotty had to come first. She shouldered Sabriel’s pack, swallowed hard and turned her back to the cliff.

“It’s almost eight miles to Lightning Point,” he said. “It should take you about seven hours to get there.”

Seven hours on her own in woods that might as well be an alien planet. She gulped.

“I’ll come back.” She curled her hand tight around the pack’s straps. “I promise.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

The first step away from the cliff was the hardest. She wanted to cry.
Hold it back. Choke it down. Concentrate
.

The wind mocked her.

Please, please, give me the strength to help Sabriel and to help Scotty
.

She focused on the songline and took another step and another, the angry whip of wind battering her as if to test her courage.

She’d never feared monsters under her bed, in her closet or knocking at her window. No, the monsters on the other side of her bedroom door were enough to keep her wide awake at night, building playlists the way other children might Lego. She’d survived then. She could do it now. For Scotty. For Sabriel.

The trail descended through spruce and hardwoods to a steep slope she had to cut with switchbacks—“Pinball Wizard.” There, she found Tommy’s next sign—“Don’t Stand So Close to Me”—a wall of pebbles pointing her toward a narrow ravine, and she cheered her small progress. “One down.”

Too many more to go.

Trees thrashed like mad harpies, prodded by the rant of the wind filled with chaos.

I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared
. She jabbed the ground with her heels and kept heading down the gorge. “No, you’re not!”

Yes, you are, but it doesn’t matter
. She was
not
going
to give up. Scotty and Sabriel depended on her. She couldn’t let them down.

Stay safe, Scotty. Mommy’s working hard to find you
.

Stay safe, Sabriel. I’m not going to leave you there alone
.

The narrow gorge climbed up steeply to a ridge. “Don’t Stand So Close To Me.” Then through woods that broke over a granite slab with broken views—“Stones in the Road.” To a slippery slope that crumbled under her feet—“Landslide.”

In the growl of wind, she thought she could hear the Colonel’s voice berating her.
Look at you, you miserable piece of street scum. Tommy could have done so much better than you. You ruined him
.

Then Sabriel’s, encouraging her.
Keep going. Follow the songline. That’s my girl
.

The twin blasts of wind had her swinging from desperation to elation.

Focus. Focus on what you’re doing right. Focus on where you’re going. Focus on Scotty
.

As she walked, she bolstered her confidence with all the reasons she had to be grateful—Scotty, Sabriel, water in her pack, dry clothes, healthy feet. “I will not fall apart. I will find Scotty and Tommy. I will warn them of the Colonel’s men. And I will find Sabriel again. I
am
a survivor.”

Maples, beeches and oaks gave way to red spruce and opened up to a granite ledge with lush caps of moss, lichen and lowbush blueberry, then ended abruptly in a cliff with views of valleys and mountains. Night fell.
Cliff faces, exposed slides, mountain capped with metamorphic rock, made granite bald islands in a sea of forested peaks. The wind called like wolves, a howling, hungry beast.

She stopped to rest for a bit. How many miles had she gone? She’d lost her watch in the river and couldn’t tell how long she’d been walking. The beauty of sky and stars choked emotions in her chest until a veil of clouds stole both.

She didn’t want to be here, alone. Falling back on old habits, to go deep into her mind where she went at night when the ghosts crawled around her head, was tempting. Her teeth wanted to chatter. She wanted to curl up. She wanted to just let this nightmare pass.

And what? Let the Colonel win, let him get Scotty? Let Sabriel die after all he’s done for you?

Out here, there was no one to help. All she had was herself. And if she failed, three others could die. With determination, she rose, grabbed a branch, fashioned a walking stick and put one foot in front of the other.

She remembered the pace Sabriel had kept, resting—rationing her strength just as she was her water.

Hunger took over, filling her with an intense need to stuff herself. She became intensely aware that all she carried with her was one of Sabriel’s energy bars and a three-quarter empty bladder of water. She had to hang on to both as long as she could. “It’s not like you’re starving. You had lunch. And when you get back down the mountain, you can eat all you want. Anything you want.”

To hell with dieting. To hell with all the Camden rules.

As hard as she tried to push away thoughts of food, her mind filled with the forbidden chocolate death dessert she’d indulge in when she got back. She was going to take a half-hour shower, blasting hot, then linger in peppermint bubbles for another. She was going to sheath herself in cashmere and silk and she was going to drink a gallon of hot tea in front of a roaring fire.