8 Gone is the Witch (14 page)

“Okay, now lean forward
.”

H
e did, and the rock popped out behind his back like a giant floating turd.

“Thank you!” he cried.

“You’re welcome. Now then, I don’t know about you two, but I’m catching some shuteye. I think we all could use some sleep.”

“What about the rock?
It could still fall on our heads.”

“
Screw it. I’ll take my chances.”

I curled up by the fire and went to sleep. Later I learned that
Carlos had stayed up half the night watching the rock as it bobbed about the campsite. Eventually it cooled and just settled into the dirt softly like a hot air balloon touching down after an uneventful flight. He seemed disappointed by that. I don’t know why. Maybe he wanted it to drop on someone’s head so that he could say I told you so.

By the time we awoke
, the first black sun had already come up and the temperature was again on the rise. We buried the fire pit embers in dirt and headed through the woods towards the sound of running water.

Tony spotted it first, a rippling stream percolating along a rocky bed just a few dozen yards from where we camped
. There, the water was clear, cold and refreshing.

Ursula and I elected to
stay in close to shore where we splashed our faces and called it a bath. Tony and Carlos felt a bit more daring. Both disrobed and waded into the stream in just their underwear. They were hip-deep in the water when Carlos yelled, “Damn, it’s freezing!”

I cupped my hands to the sides of my mouth and yelled back,
“Suck it up, Rodriquez. After last night, you’d think it’d feel good on the old boys!”

“I’ll thank you to leave my boys out of this
,” he hollered back.

Ursula
leaned in to me and said, “I did not know Master Carlos had children.”

“He doesn’t
.”

“But you said––”

“I know what I said. You see, last night Carlos hitched his boys to a––”

“
Be they young boys?”

“No,
see that’s the thing. When I say boys, I’m really talking about his...”

“Yes?”

“Know what? Let’s drop it. It’s not important.”

“Oh, `tis a relief then,
I am sure.”

“
Why’s that?”

“
For a moment, I feared thou might tell me he did but hurt himself last night.”

“
Last night? I thought you were asleep.”

“Nay,
I slept not. How could I, pray tell, whilst poor Master Carlos had his balls so snagged upon a rock.”

Tony and Carlos
came out of the water then, which gave me a great excuse to change the subject. I grabbed the two robes and held them out.

“What’s this?” Tony
asked.

“
Your robe.”

Carlos unfurled his and held it up. “
They’re wet.”

“We wrung them out the best we could.”

Tony shook his out. “How did they get wet?”

“We wash
ed them.”

“Why?”

“It smelled like cow.”

Carlos
said, “You mean dog.”

“Yours smelled like dog
. His smelled like cow.”

Tony
regarded the garment as if I had dipped it in shit. “If we wanted to get`em wet, we would have gone into the water wearing them.” He pointed out over the stream. “Now we have to walk around all morning in wet...”

His words froze mid-sentence. I looked at Carlos and then at Ursula. Both seemed equally puzzled. I
reached out and touched Tony’s arm. “Are you all right?”

He turned
his body completely toward the stream. “Look at that.”

The three of us edged closer to the
water line. “What is it?”

“
The water.”

“Yeah. It’s
wet. What did you expect?”

“
Look at the flow.”

“Okay. It’s flowing. That’s what streams do.”

He pointed downstream. “It’s flowing that way.”

“
Yes. That’s an astute observation. Look. I’m sorry we got your robes wet. Clearly, you’re having a brain freeze, or a stroke or both. I took his arm. “Come. We’ll build you a nice fire and get you all warmed up again.”

“No.”
He brushed my hand off his arm as if it were a bug. “I’m not having a stroke. I’m telling you that the stream is flowing that way.”

“Yes, and
it’s very nice, but––”

“A moment ago it was flowing
in the other direction.” He pointed upstream. “That way.”

“
What?”

“
Wait. He’s right,” said Carlos. “I remember the leaves floating past me going the other way.”

“O
h, this can’t be good.”

Tony turned and looked behind us.
The bank sloped gradually for several feet before rising vertically to the tree line at an elevation of eight feet. “Look there. That’s the high water mark up there.”

Carlos
said, “And that means….”

I
glanced down at the water surging over the tops of our feet. “I think it means this stream is about to turn into a river.”

Carlos
scoffed. “Stream, river, What’s the difference?”

Tony pulled the robe over his head
. “About eight feet. Come on. We need to get out of here.”

W
e scrambled for the slope as fast as we could. Just not fast enough. A wall of water came crushing down on us like a tsunami. It picked us up and swept us downstream in a torrent, or was it upstream? Who knew anymore? All I knew is that we were riding whitewater so swift that everything along the banks passed us in a blur.

“
Take my hand!” Tony shouted. I thought he was calling to me, but then I saw him reaching for Ursula. Somehow, she managed to grab it. “Lilith!” He tried reaching for me next, but I was too far away.

“Don’t worry
!” cried Carlos. “I got you!”

Just as he grabbed
my collar, a powerful undertow sucked him down, pulling me with him. I had barely half a breath in my lungs when I went under and none when I finally resurfaced. I spit out a mouthful of water and hollered, “Carlos, you son-of-a-bitch! Let me go. I can swim!”

“Cramp
,” he sputtered, “Cramp! I can’t move my leg.”

Great
. Just what I needed, a dead weight anchor. I could see he was still holding the robe in his left hand, probably the reason the undertow sucked him down to begin with.

“Give me
that!” I shouted. He didn’t hesitate. He shoved it at me.

As best I could in the swift-moving current, I tied the sleeves in
to a knot, closing off both the neck and armholes at once. Next, I held the robe by the open bottom and flagged it over my head, filling it with air. Still bobbing like a cork, I twisted it off and passed the stinky thing back to Carlos.

“Here!” I
hollered, taking on another mouthful of water for my efforts.

The poor bastard was already turning blue; still he had enough cognition about him to know what to do. He took the
robe and rode it like a beach ball until the whitewater subsided enough for us to float downstream like driftwood.

We
dragged ourselves up onto a beach and collapsed onto our bellies, aching and exhausted. Ursula lay sprawled to my left, Tony to my right. Carlos washed up another ten feet away, but was still close enough that I could hear him muttering to himself, “This sucks. Man, this really sucks.”

His head
was resting on his now deflated robe, his bare ass smiling up at the dark sky. I leaned up on my elbow. “Carlos, what happened to your underwear?”

“The
rapids tore them off.”

“
Okay. Are you going to put your robe back on?”

“Yes.”

I waited a few seconds. “When?”

“When you and Ursula turn your heads
, so that I can go back into the water and rinse the sand out of my crack.”

For the record, we did turn our heads. It’s not our fault he didn’t specify for how long.

Chapter
Eight

After collecting our
breaths, we headed out again in search of the Dark Forest. We didn’t know if we were heading in the right direction, but the gradual increase in plant growth suggested we were. At times, the vegetation grew so thick that Carlos had to lead us single file, slashing and hacking a path through the brush with his bolo.

Tony
took up position at the end of the line to protect our backs, his bayonet always at the ready. I turned back on several occasions and caught him looking over his shoulder. He did it enough that I began to worry. I slowed my pace and allowed us to fall back from the others.

“What are you doing?”
I whispered.

He shook his head. “
Nothing.”

“You’re a rotten liar, Tony.
What’s going on?”

“I think
someone’s following us.”

I stopped
to look. “Did you see something?”

“
Nothing, but it’s more than just a feeling. I keep hearing sounds.”

“
Like what?” We started walking again.

“That’s just it. I don’t know.
Twigs snapping, leaves rustling. I’m thinking of hanging back, maybe let you three get far enough ahead so that I can sneak up from behind whatever it is.”

“No.
Absolutely not.” I took him by the arm and pulled him along. “We stick together. The last thing we need is to split up in this hellhole.” I called up ahead. “Hey, guys! Wait up!”

We caught
up with the others and I told them what Tony told me. Carlos seemed particularly concerned, perhaps fearful it could be the malodytes.

“What do you think it is?” he asked.

“Probably nothing.”

I kn
ew Tony meant to keep Ursula from worrying, but it worked better on Carlos.

“Yeah?
You think it’s just the wind or something?”

“
Sure,” he said convincingly. Okay, so maybe Tony isn’t such a rotten liar. “I’m sure that’s it. Just the wind. Now let’s move on.”

We
continued through alternating patches of thick and thin cover for what seemed like hours. I was just about to suggest we stop and rest, when our path abruptly spilled us out onto a small perch overlooking a great divide.

We
gathered on the rocky ground beneath a cluster of broad-leaf trees and gazed out over the expanse. A blanket of fog on the other side concealed the geographical disposition of the terrain there, but for the treetops, which stood as tall as skyscrapers above the fog, we knew we had found the edge of the Dark Forest.

I looked
down into the gorge. Along the bottom, ran another river of boiling rapids, flanked by jagged walls of granite too impossibly high to scale.

Carlos picked up a rock and pitched
it over the edge. It tumbled in silent freefall before fading into a churning mist of whitewater below.

“Now what?”
he asked. “Down is definitely not an option.”

Tony, renewing concerns of what may or may not have follow
ed us, looked back over his shoulder. “Going back isn’t a good idea, either.”

I looked to my left where the narrow, rocky ledge along the gorge seemed unfit
for travel even for a puma. “I’ve gotten myself in some precarious situations before,” I said, “but going that way is just downright dangerous.”

“Guess that leaves––”

“Look!” cried Ursula, pointing in the only direction left to consider. “What line doth stretch 'twixt there and there? Be that a bridge, pray tell, or doth my eyes deceive?”

“A bridge?”

“Aye, through what fog breaks yonder.”

“I don’t see anything
,” said Carlos.

“No, wait, she’s right,” I said. “I see something. I think it is a bridge.”

Tony pushed past Carlos in a charge for the lead. “Come on. It ain’t getting any closer just standing here.”

We followed Tony along the rocky ledge. With each step, one of us would inevitably dislodge a chunk of ground, a small boulder or ill-rooted shrub and send it tumbling into the angry waters below.
How we all made it through that perilous stretch of geological landmines remains a mystery to me still.

At the end of the trail, we discovered that
the curious line Ursula saw shrouded in the fog was, indeed, a bridge, though it was a lot further away than any of us imagined. It took us an hour to reach it, or maybe it was a day. It’s hard to say. Spatial reference and time perception had already begun to bleed into vague portraits of suppositions and abstract reckoning.