Taken (4 page)

Nothing.

My heart hammered in my chest. I reached for the blanket, pulled it out and folded it into the plastic. I started to tie up my small bundle, but there was something I needed to know first. I pulled off my jacket.

Something fell to the ground and sparkled in the morning sun.

I bent down. It was a length of gold chain. Where had that come from?

Then I remembered. When I'd been grabbed from behind, I had kicked and struggled. When I couldn't pry my attacker's arm off my neck, I had reached behind me to try to claw at him, anything to make him let me go. My fingers had closed around something—the chain—and I'd pulled hard. The two end links of the piece of chain on the ground were broken. I must have snapped the chain when I pulled on it. But how had it gotten into my jacket?

I checked inside. There was a small snag in the jacket lining. The chain must have fallen down inside the back of my jacket and got caught there somehow. I picked it up and tucked it into my jeans pocket. Maybe it would help the police find my kidnapper— assuming I ever made it out of these woods.

I peeled off my T-shirt and did what I'd set out to do: I took a good look at my arm. It wasn't easy to spot, but finally I found it—a tiny puncture mark. I was right. I had been jabbed in the arm with a needle. I was already shivering in the crisp morning air, but the thought that someone had drugged me sent a chill deep into my bones. I put my clothes back on, tied up my bundle and looped the rope over my shoulder. I stared back up the hill, looking for any sign of danger. When I had convinced myself that there was no one up there, I crept back up on my hands and knees, staying as low to the ground as I could.

I took another cautious look around before I stood up and began to hunt for the sapling with the piece of string tied around its trunk. I found it easily and positioned myself so that it was between me and the horizon, just as I had done the night before. It was my marker, my only hope. Now all I had to do was remember what Grandpa had taught me.

Up until two years ago, I had barely known my grandfather, partly because he lived far away, but mostly because my mom didn't approve of him. Grandpa lived in the bush outside a small town way up north. He had retired there after a lifetime working for a mining company. My mom always referred to him as the Hermit. Because of that, I'd imagined him as a crazy, long-bearded old man who lived alone and never saw or spoke to another human being. It turned out he did live alone. But he went into town regularly, and everyone there seemed to know him. He couldn't walk more than a few steps without someone calling out hello and wanting to know how he'd been since his last trip in for supplies. He worked sporadically, guiding tourists who wanted a wilderness experience or, one time, a film production company that was shooting some scenes for an action-adventure movie. Most of the time, though, he just enjoyed the peace and quiet.

Despite my mother's disapproval of him, two years ago, she announced that she wanted me to go and stay with him for the summer. I fought with her when she told me her plans. I said I didn't want to spend one day, let alone a whole summer, with a crazy old hermit I barely knew in the middle of the dirty old woods, which I hated even though I had never spent any time in them. Needless to say, I lost the fight. As soon as school was over, I was loaded onto a bus that I'm positive had been a school bus in a previous incarnation and was shipped north to a town I couldn't have located on a map if my life had depended on it. My stomach churned the whole way. I knew my grandfather liked being alone. I knew he preferred silence. My dad told me that his father never could abide mindless chatter. Was he going to expect me to keep my mouth shut all summer? Thinking about that made me mad. I hadn't asked to waste my whole summer with him, so who did he think he was, demanding complete and utter silence, like I was a cloistered nun? What if he didn't even want me there? What if he'd been coerced into taking me because, after all, I was his granddaughter?

He turned out to be as quiet as my dad had said he was. He didn't have a tv or a computer, although he did have a radio that he could use to reach the fire tower and the closest police detachment, just in case. When he wasn't working or hiking, he read. Boy, did he read. All of his trips into town included either a trip to the library or a visit to the post office to pick up packages of books he had ordered by mail. He encouraged me to read too, and I did. What choice did I have? It was either that or sit around and stare at trees all day. He taught me how to cook and bake outdoors. He took me on canoe trips. And we went hiking. Sometimes we'd be gone for days with only a backpack and sleeping bag each, and a small tarp that Grandpa would pitch over us to keep us dry. It turned out to be the best summer of my life.

Before I left, I made plans to go back the next summer. But by late that winter, Grandpa was gone. He had a heart attack. I guess it had come on fast because he didn't radio anyone. We found out after someone in town remarked to someone else that he hadn't seen Grandpa in a while. When it turned out that no one had, a constable was dispatched to his cabin by snowmobile. By the time he got there, Grandpa had been dead for weeks. “That's what comes of being a hermit,” my mom said when they told her what had happened. I cried for days. He had taught me so much…

Like how to use the sun as a compass.

I gathered some twigs and used three of them to make an arrow pointing directly at the sapling with the string tied around it and at the horizon beyond. Then I found a small clearing on the ground that was bathed in sunlight, and I planted the longest, straightest stick in the ground in the middle of it. When the sun caught the stick, it cast a shadow. I slipped off my watch and set it on the ground so that the hour hand pointed toward and along the shadow cast by the stick. Then I pictured an imaginary line running across the watch halfway between the hour hand and twelve o'clock. That's your north-south line, Grandpa had told me. South is between the hour hand and twelve o'clock. North is the opposite direction. Once I had found north and south, I also knew where east and west were.

I looked at the arrow I had made pointing toward the glow I had seen the night before. According to my compass, it was due west from the sapling. All I had to do was walk west in a straight line and I would eventually reach those lights. I had no idea how far I would have to walk or how long it would take. I hoped I would have the chance to find out. But first I had two more pressing problems to deal with. One, I had to get moving and stay moving before my kidnapper came looking for me. Two, I had to find water. A person could go a long time without food but not without water. And as near as I could figure, it had been more than thirty-six hours since I had had anything to drink. My mouth was dry. My tongue felt heavy and swollen. All I could think of was water.

I looked up at the sky. It was clear blue. The clouds that had covered the stars only hours ago had vanished. There seemed to be no chance that it was going to rain anytime soon, and I sure wasn't going to find any water up here.

I circled the crest of the hill again, careful to keep my only landmark—the sapling with the twine wrapped around it—in sight. I peered down and through the trees until my eyes hurt, but I didn't see a stream, a lake or even a puddle.

I made my way back to the sapling, peered due west into the forest and picked out two distinctive trees. One was a pine tree with a dead branch jutting out from one side. The other, farther along but in the same line as the pine, was a birch that had been split almost in half, probably by lightning. If I kept my eyes on both trees and walked directly toward them, I would be going in the right direction. I removed the string from the trunk of the sapling and threw the sticks I had gathered into the scrub. I set off down the hill.

As I walked, my eyes skipped from the two trees, scanning for any sign of water—a small natural spring, a creek, anything that I hadn't been able to see from up above. Every time I passed an outcropping of rocks, I checked for indentations. Rain water could pool in those indentations, Grandpa had told me. If the indentations were deep enough and it had rained hard enough, it might take a long time for the water to evaporate.

I walked and walked, daydreaming about water the way I used to daydream about ice-cream sundaes on hot summer days when I was a little kid. I passed small rocks, large rocks, massive rocks. Nothing. I scanned the forest floor for any sign of moisture that might indicate a spring. I walked until my idea of paradise was an image of myself bent over a sink, my mouth under a running faucet as water—icy cold water—streamed down my throat. What I wouldn't give…And I kept checking my tree markers to make sure that I wasn't veering off course. Every few minutes I stopped and held my breath and listened for even the smallest of sounds that might signal that someone was following me. Each time I started to breathe again, a tremor ran through me. Just because I didn't hear anything didn't mean someone wasn't out there tracking me.

The ground under my feet sloped downward. Halfway down the slope, a massive outcropping, probably deposited by a retreating glacier millions of years ago, loomed up from the forest floor. As I trudged toward it, I saw something shimmering. I hardly dared to hope. If you don't hope, you won't be disappointed, right? What I was seeing was probably the sun reflecting off some mineral embedded in the rock. Or maybe—it wouldn't surprise me—it was a mirage, like in a movie when some poor guy is dying of thirst out in the desert and suddenly he sees a huge pool of cool, clear, deliciously wet water with people frolicking in it, as if they were in a five-star resort. The guy runs to the side of the pool and starts scooping the water into his mouth with both hands. Then the mirage vanishes and you see that he's eating sand instead of drinking water.

The closer I got, the bigger the rock outcropping looked, until, by the time I got there, I saw that it was twice as tall as me. If I wanted to find out what was glistening in the sun, I would have to clamber up the side to take a look, and what was the point? I was already exhausted. Besides, it was probably nothing.

On the other hand, it might be something. It might be water.

I found a foothold in the rock face and started to pull myself up, my feet searching for footholds in the rock face. When I finally hoisted myself to the top, my heart skipped a beat. There was a bowl-like indentation in the middle of the highest rock. Cradled in the indentation was a puddle of water.

I hauled myself up onto that rock and knelt beside the puddle.

I had no idea how long it had been there or what might have fallen into it or leeched into it from the rock. Grandpa always said that you should assume water was unsafe to drink unless you knew for certain that it wasn't. He said that before you drink unsafe water, you have to purify it by either boiling it or adding water purification tablets to it. I couldn't do either. I had nothing to start a fire with and no purification tablets. I stared down at the shallow layer of water. If I drank it and it wasn't safe, I could get sick. I could even die. On the other hand, if I didn't drink something soon, I could also die.

I decided to take my chances.

I bent down until my lips touched the surface of the water and drank greedily. It wasn't long before I had drunk the puddle dry. I stayed where I was for a few moments, waiting to see if I was going to start writhing in pain. But I felt okay.

I lowered myself off the rock and checked my landmarks again. They were harder to make out now, and I knew that the farther down the slope I walked, the more difficult it would be to keep them in sight. I needed new markers. I searched for two more distinctive trees along the same westerly line and settled on a massive cedar with a patch of brown near the top and two birches, the second leaning on the first. As I trudged toward them, I searched for more water.

My stomach growled. I hadn't eaten in nearly two whole days. Whenever I had gone hiking or camping with Grandpa, we had taken food with us. Sometimes we picked berries and ate them, but this was only April. It was too early for berries. Sometimes Grandpa caught fish or trapped small animals and cooked them. But how could I catch a fish when there was no stream or lake around? How could I trap an animal without a trap or anything to make one from?

I was hungry, but I also knew that people could live for a surprisingly long time without food. Still, while I walked, I imagined all the things I would eat when I finally got home: pepperoni pizza with extra cheese, my mom's chicken-and-rice casserole, a frosty vanilla milkshake, warm fresh bread from Alice's bakery on Dundas Street. My mouth watered.

SIX

I
picked out landmark after landmark and plodded on. My legs ached. My head ached. What I really wanted to do was curl up under a tree and go to sleep. But if I didn't keep moving, I would never reach my destination. Worse, whoever had taken me might find me and drag me back to that shack. I forced myself to go on. I walked until the sun began to dip in the sky. By the time I finally stumbled into a meadow, my legs as heavy as lead, I was lightheaded from lack of food and water, and the sky had changed from the blue of daytime to the yellow and orange of dusk. Once the sun was down, I wouldn't be able to orient myself properly. I would have to stay put for the night.

Now that I had to stop, I didn't want to. What if the man who had drugged me and brought me to that shack was a hunter? What if he knew how to track animals? If you can track animals, you can track people, right? What if he knew these woods like that back of his hand? What if he could track me even in the dark? What if he crept up on me while I was sleeping? What if…?

Stop it, Steph. Stop it right now.

When you get lost in the woods, Grandpa had told me, your number one enemy is panic. Panic makes you think of all the things that
could
happen. A grizzly could attack you. You could starve to death. You could freeze to death. You could die of thirst. You could stay lost forever. You could die out there. Thoughts like that are what cause people to panic, and when people panic, they do things they shouldn't. They keep moving when they should stop. They walk in the dark instead of waiting for the light and the sun. They reason that if they keep walking, even if they can't see where they're going, they'll get
somewhere
. But what they usually end up doing is walking in circles or stepping into a hole and breaking an ankle or tripping over a rock or a tree trunk and breaking something else. They forget every piece of good sense they ever had—assuming they had any to begin with. Grandpa said he was dismayed by most people's lack of knowledge of the outdoors. They would never get behind the wheel of a car without learning the rules of the road, he said. But they strolled out into the woods without knowing the first thing about orienting themselves or about what to touch and what to avoid. He made sure I knew those things. He also taught me what steps to take to fight off panic.