Wild (2 page)

Two

H
er throat was smooth as a doe's. She was golden, her own light in the forest. That's what Cade thought as he trailed Dara to the river. And she was loud. That made her easy to follow.

Climbing from tree to tree, Cade stopped when Dara stopped.

It was as quiet as she had ever been in his woods. All day long, she sang or talked to the other one. They banged pans together. Music jangled inside the tent. At night, the other one drummed on empty pans, and Dara sang. When they were surprised, scared, delighted—anything, they filled the forest with sound.

Now, everything was quiet. Even the birds had settled pensively, and it seemed to put Dara on edge. Proof, Cade thought, that she wasn't oblivious. Her keen eyes darted along the tree line.

When he moved, she stilled—there was intelligence there. Sharp. Innate. The boy with her was blind to it all. But
she
knew something was in the woods. She realized something was following her. And he had been for a couple of days now.

Cade was fascinated by the way she moved over the land. She carried a box around her neck. It clicked when she held it to her face. Most of the time, she let it hang. But when a flash of color or shadow caught her eye, she followed it. Down ravines, into creek beds, beneath the old mill road that looked like nothing but stone arches from below now.

Fearless, curious, she had found the pond where the spring frogs had spawned. Hundreds of tadpoles squirmed in the water. She sank onto her side to watch them at play. It was a well-hidden watering hole, shielded by mossy rocks and overgrowth. Somehow—by listening? By looking?—Dara found it effortlessly.

Then she basked in it before she made her black box click. It was like she was filling herself with every long look. Drinking up details and secrets.

So Cade wasn't surprised when Dara stopped in the silence now, turning slowly within it. Her eyes keen, she searched all around her. Arms held wide to keep her balance, she breathed in relief when she finally made it all the way around. She hadn't seen anything on the ground, so she kept going.

That was a good way to get hurt or killed.

It was too early for snakes in the trees, but just the right time of year for bears. Coyotes, too, though they were more likely to spring between the trees than out of them. Cade might have been dangerous too, up in the canopy. He wasn't; all he wanted to do was study her.

The last woman Cade had seen was his mother. Dara was nothing like her. Mom had kept her hair in a thick brown braid. Her skin was brown, too, baked and freckled from the sun. And her eyes—she always looked up first when she heard an unfamiliar sound. Aware. That was the best way to describe her.

Dara wasn't aware, but she wasn't oblivious. She didn't hear Cade twist a hand in the thick bittersweet vines that clung to the oaks. She had no idea he ran above her head, anticipating her path. She never heard his feet, silent, running along thick branches as easily as she did the earth.

When she reached the river, she didn't know he watched the pale expanse of her neck as she bowed her head.

“Getting some water,” she sang.

She pulled a huge water bladder off her shoulder, dumping it on the bank. Then, she walked back and forth, leaning down to look at the shore. She twisted the cap from the bladder. Tipping its mouth into the water, she frowned.

Puzzled, Cade slipped from his perch to a lower branch. His skins camouflaged him against the tree's trunk. If Dara looked up with the right eyes, she'd see him. But he was brown hair and deerskin against a dark and barely budding forest. He was hidden from her.

And it was better that way. She fascinated him, but she frightened him, too. His mother had told him few of their kind remained. The ones that did were poison.

“Avoid them as if your life depends on it,” she'd told him. “Because it does, my little wolf.”

Dara didn't look like poison. She fascinated him; her lips were pretty. Her hands flashed like swimming fish when she talked.

But as he watched her gathering water, she confused him.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered.

Her distress made no sense at first. Her lips moved. She talked to herself, just loud enough to hear. Bending, she splashed water at the mouth of her bottle, then sighed. It took him a moment to realize the bladder wasn't filling fast enough for her.

If she'd followed the silty riverbank a ways upstream, she would have found a deeper pool. Animals had trampled this bank smooth, creating shallows. It was obvious. Or it should have been.

More proof she didn't belong there. She should have known. Would have seen.

Unexpectedly, she stood. Peeling off her shoes, she stepped into the water. As soon as she did, she spun around, yelping. “Cold, cold, cold. Oh my god, so cold.”

Cade couldn't help it. He laughed.

“Josh?” she called. She froze. Her eyes were sharp again. The wind carried her scent away. It made her hair wave, sunlight freckling her like a fawn. And this time, after she'd looked around, she looked up. “Where are you?”

Drawing a thin breath, Cade melted against the tree. He wore its nearly bare twigs for hair. Made his fingers knots, his back just a strange turn of trunk.

When her gaze burned across him, it lingered. He thought she might see him. Part of him wanted her to. To see that he was tall and strong. Smarter than the Josh crashing around at their camp.

But sadly, her gaze drifted by, and then she stopped playing. She waded deep enough to gather her water. Instead of singing or splashing, she stood. Throwing looks over her shoulders, she watched the underbrush. Even when she put her shoes back on, she peered east then west before hiking back to her tent and fire.

She had become aware.

Cade was disappointed. If she'd really belonged, she would have seen him.

He followed her through trees and treetops, all the way back to the clearing. Their tents huddled beneath the ridge, small and obvious in the open. Cade sat in an oak's forked arms, peeling spring green buds from the branches to chew.

“There's somebody else out here,” Dara told Josh, the other one. She hung the bladder on a hooked branch, only a few feet below Cade.

“Where?”

Jerking a thumb over her shoulder, Dara said, “By the river. I heard someone laughing.”

Crouched by the fire, Josh barely looked up from the embers. He pushed them with a stick. Little flames licked up, then sank into the glowing coals. He fed it no kindling, no air. He just stirred it like a raccoon.

“It was probably a bird,” Josh said.

“I know the difference.”

Josh gave up on his fire. He tipped back to sit on the ground and shook his head. “Maybe you imagined it. There's nobody out here for miles. That's the whole reason we came.”

When he reached up to hook a finger in hers, Dara brushed his hand away. “It's a wilderness area, not the moon.”

Cade leaned his head against the tree trunk and sighed. Dara was smart. Too smart for the other one. He couldn't even start a fire. When strange sounds crackled around him, he never looked up. Cade thought if a wolf walked into their camp, Josh would probably try to convince her it was a dog. Maybe he would try to feed it.

Smiling wryly, Cade melted into the shadows again. He listened. From below, Dara and Josh sounded perfectly normal. Not even a little sick. But, Cade reminded himself, he couldn't tell just by looking.

“It feels like the moon,” Josh said. “I'm dying for a burger.”

Dara hummed a neutral sound. Cade had heard his father do the same a hundred times. When Mom rambled too much about the outside world. When she got too vehement about the death and destruction that lay outside the forest. As far as Cade could tell, it was a sound that meant, “I hear you, but I'm not happy about it.”

“You mad?”

Turning his head, Cade peered down from his perch. Dara sat across from him, the fire between them. Holding her clicking box between both hands, she touched something that made it flash. Curious, Cade measured the forest around him, trying to decide if there was a way to get a better look at the light without being seen himself.

With a sigh, Josh hauled himself to his feet. “I'll get some more wood.”

“You do that,” Dara replied.

Now alone in the camp, Dara put the box aside. She didn't watch Josh walk into the coming dark. Instead, she stretched her legs, then her arms. She dragged herself closer to the fire. Its light gleamed in her hair. It gleamed on her skin, too, when she reached out to hold a hand above it.

Passing her fingers through the flame, she turned them, curled them. It was like she was daring it to burn her. Cade shifted his weight, and the branch groaned. Like that, Dara stiffened. This time, she did look up. Her gaze passed right over Cade and stopped.

A shadow lit on her brow. Leaning forward, she narrowed her eyes. Just when Cade was sure she'd spotted him, Josh crashed back into camp. He dumped a meager armful of wood on the ground. The logs drummed the dirt, silencing the forest around them once more.

“That'll do us for tonight, you think?”

Giving up her contemplation, Dara nodded. “I think so.”

“Hey, c'mere,” Josh coaxed. Brushing wood chips off his hands, he trailed his touch up her arms. Watching him touch her lit a different fire in Cade's skin. This one was swift and furious. His teeth felt molten and his stomach, too. For some reason, Dara pressed closer instead of pushing away.

Cade didn't understand it, but he knew he didn't like it. He liked it even less when Josh put his mouth on Dara's and clasped the back of her neck. She twisted her hands in his shirt; to Cade, it looked like she wanted to put space between them.

When Josh's hands slipped lower, Cade couldn't help himself. Cupping hands around his mouth, he keened like a hawk. The cry echoed, was answered. The forest rose up, other birds arguing. Squirrels rushed to safe perches. The owls would question soon. Their low, booming calls would go on and on.

Scrambling away, Cade didn't try to go quietly. He just went. Back to his home; back to the last safe place in the world. With nimble steps, he bounded through the narrow valley. A maze of grape vines hung like a wood curtain.

His path was nothing but a trace in the brush. Cade saw his own ghostly footsteps. Hints of him left behind in broken twigs and soft earth, leading to the cave he called home.

The red cooler swayed in the wind, the only evidence anyone lived there at all. Trees, full of beehives, hummed when he slipped past. They gave off heat, the faintest bit, because they were alive.

Cade found the mouth of his cave unerringly. The cool vault greeted him, sharp with just a hint of still-smoldering moss. Picking up the box that held his kindling, he breathed it back to life. It glowed as he started a new fire, illuminating the place where he lived. That fast. That easy. Josh was an idiot.

A rough-hewn table and chair stood nearby. There were boxes, some with peg-locks, and a shelf to keep his few books dry. In the back, a carved bed frame held a thin mattress off the ground.

Fir branches sweetened the mattress from below. Tanned deerskin and beaver pelts covered it. It was stuffed with goose down. Cade needed to get more to fill it out. Once this season's goslings were hatched and grown, he'd do just that.

But for the moment, he satisfied himself with dinner and pride. Pulling two thick fish from his pack, he wrapped them in wet hide and laid them on the fire. He stepped over the pit, trailing his fingers through the shell chime he'd made. It was a little bit of music, and if he got it started, the heat from the fire would keep it going.

Sprawling in the light, he reached for his clay animals. He'd lost the giraffe years ago, but he still had a cat and a bear. Holding them over his head, he turned them until they cast giant shadows on the wall behind him. With just a trick of the light, they came to life.

First, he made the cat chase the bear. He swirled it in lazy circles, its shadow growing and shrinking by turn. Then the bear fought back, chasing the cat until it was tiny and disappeared. Tucking the cat into his shirt, Cade savored its stone coolness against his skin.

The bear, he held over his head, studying it by the light of the fire. Pressed into one side was a faint fingerprint. Its whorls had smoothed over time, now barely visible. But Cade knew it was there. Fitting his finger into the impression, he discovered that it fit now. His hands were as big as his father's.

His gaze trailed back to the little cairn by the wall. It was just smooth stones, stacked together. Behind it, he'd scraped figures into the wall. A woman, a man, a boy. He'd drawn it right after Dad died, on his first night completely alone. Handprints surrounded the figures, painted with wet ashes that same night.

That was such a long time ago. Twelve seasons, at least. All those days and months and years alone. His own company was starting to drive him crazy. Tucking the bear figure into his shirt, Cade turned back to his fire. The fish crackled; they would be delicious.

While he waited for his dinner, the stone animals weighed on his heart. They cooled his skin and turned his thoughts deliberate.

He made a deal with himself. If Dara and Josh were fine by the full moon. If their eyes were still clear, their skin smooth. No coughs or sneezes or spots—maybe then, he'd walk into their camp and say hello.

His parents wouldn't like it. But his parents hadn't been there for a while. Maybe it was time to make some decisions of his own.

Three

S
ince he hadn't slept much, Josh found it easy to wake before dawn.

He crept from the tent in his boxers. Instantly chilled, Josh slapped his chest for warmth, then scrubbed his arms with his hands. Though it had been cold other mornings, it shouldn't have been on this one. He was sure of that enough to roll out without getting dressed.

He approached the fire pit, looking for an explanation, and groaned. Black and cold, the embers had died.

Which was deeply unfair. Because instead of dumping water on it last night, Josh had left it burning. There wasn't an open fire or anything. The flames had faded to an orange glow in the ashes.

Since they'd built the pit up with stones, Josh felt safe leaving it. The river rocks kept the sparks in, and it had been raining a little at night. If the wood was too wet to start the fire in the first place, they weren't gonna burn the forest down. He was getting a head start on morning, he reasoned.

Or not. The pit was so dead, it didn't even smoke. An acidic smell wafted from it, though. Slapping his chest again, Josh returned to the tent to get dressed. Sweatshirt, jeans . . . He pulled the latter on, then lay back on his bedroll. Shifting to face Dara, he smiled. Her hair threaded across her face. It wavered when she breathed.

With a careful touch, he smoothed it away.

Lashes flickering, Dara crinkled her nose, but she didn't wake up.

When she was awake, she was gorgeous. Bright and loud, and too smart for him. Since she didn't care, he tried not to. But every so often, she'd go off about something and he'd wish he had a Wikipedia chip in his head.

She wasn't perfect. She was insanely bossy, and sometimes lost in her own world. That evened it out, some.

But right now, when she was asleep, she was beautiful. Quiet and elegant, even. Not just her face. The way she curled her fingers in her T-shirt. The perfect angle of her eyelashes, sort of golden, sort of brown. The roundness of her knee, tenting the sleeping bag as she slept.

He loved her. Most of the time, it was a regular feeling, a ticking clock in the background. Steady. Reliable.

Here, in the forest, on their own? With no one watching, and nothing between them—when the only, best thing he had to do all day was look at her and listen to her laugh? It was a roar. A storm inside him, distant and immediate at the same time.

How his skin contained it, he didn't know. But he kissed her shoulder, and rolled to his feet at once. He needed a breath, some cold air. Space. With one last look, he ducked outside. He felt bigger. Stronger.

Grabbing his pack, he squared his shoulders. Time to conquer the fire.

 

Dara peeked out the tent window, then curled up again.

Bright and frigid, dawn transformed the forest. It was too cold for dew. Instead, there was fog. It made silhouettes of the trees and softened the sunlight. A blue cast hung in the air, darkened by smoke.

Metal tapped against metal by the fire—Josh making breakfast. Instead of sliding from her sleeping bag, Dara burrowed deeper. Warmth washed around her. The red nylon tent filtered morning to a pleasant crimson glow, but she hid from it.

Sleeping late was part of a vacation. She wasn't ready to strip in the cold, and she didn't want to do it by the fire. Even if Josh wasn't,
she
was convinced. They weren't alone in these woods. Not the way Josh thought they were.

Anyone was allowed to hike into the wilderness area and camp.

Last summer, she and Josh had hiked a short stretch of the Appalachian Trail. They walked miles of beautiful solitude, but they weren't alone. No matter how far they got from town, no matter how far between stations, there were still people.

Stubbornly, to herself, she insisted. She heard somebody laughing at the river.

And that weird bird scream last night . . . Every single horror movie she'd ever seen came to mind. Strangers lurking in the dark. Getting lost in the woods. Girls running through backlit trees, tripping at the worst possible moment.

Of course Josh laughed it off. He was six five, athletic, and oblivious. He'd never parked his car under a light so he wouldn't have to unlock it later in the dark. When Dara carried her keys with one spiking between her fingers, he thought she was playing Wolverine. Josh wasn't oblivious on purpose. He was just fearless in a way she never could be.

The tent zipper sang, and Josh slid inside. “I have cocoa.”

“Really?” Sitting up, Dara let the sleeping bag bunch at her waist. She took the mug, warming her hands on it.

With a sweet smile, Josh sank next to her. His eyelashes glinted in filtered sunlight. The red glow from the tent made his eyes seem lavender instead of pale blue. Stealing a kiss, he said, “And I knocked the spiders out of your boots.”

Dara wasn't afraid of them, but Josh was. Melted by cocoa and gallantry, Dara leaned into him. Dipping cold fingers down the front of his shirt, she pulled him closer and thanked him with another kiss.

Last night's irritation had passed. She felt more than a little guilty, because even she could tell she vacillated between come-here and go-away with him. In her head, it was an irrational carousel that turned and turned. We're together, we're in love; we're doomed, this time is wasted.

And even now, it turned again. He was warm and tempting, but they only had so much daylight in the forest. She'd come to the wild to be with him, but also to capture it with her camera. The forest had so many secrets; if she could just catch them, print them with light . . .

Gently breaking away, she said, “Mmm, okay, I have to get dressed now.”

“Go ahead.”

“I will as soon as you let yourself out.”

“You sure?”

“Josh,” Dara said, warning.

Amused, he sighed and rolled away. On his feet and already at the tent door, he looked back. “Because if you're not sure . . .”

“Can you get the extra batteries out of the cooler, please?” she asked, changing the subject. “I don't want to miss anything this time.”

Stepping into the cold, Josh pushed his head through the tent flap to smile at her. “You're never going to get over that, are you?”

Dara shook her head. She had no pictures from their day trip to the Appalachians. All because of a pair of dead Duracells. The camera had hung heavy in her bag, chastising her with every step. This time, she had a pack of forty batteries in the cooler and eight more in her jacket. Just in case.

It didn't take long to dress, or to bolt down the sparse breakfast. She filled their canteens while Josh hauled the cooler into the tree. It dangled listlessly against the trunk, like it had fallen out of a plane and gotten stuck. But it was up high now, and tied with bungee cords. The raccoons would have to find dinner somewhere else.

With their camp secured, Josh and Dara set off for the falls. The woods were sweetly manipulative. They tempted with strange and beautiful sights. Dew clung to a spiderweb canopy, a veil of diamonds overhead. New vines crept up the trees. Old, thick ones dangled from above.

And then, the forest opened.

Dara put her camera case on a mossy log. She couldn't tear her eyes away. They stood at the foot of a cliff. It was obvious on the topological maps, but maps hadn't prepared them for the sight.

The stone rose in curved walls, thirty feet high, at least. They were shaped like a horseshoe. No, a broken bowl, and she and Josh stood in the open end. It was like a giant had dropped a bowl in the forest, and the forest had grown in around it.

White, lacy water spilled over the far edge, a perfect waterfall. It filled a pool, never smooth, never glassy. Above, spindling trees stretched toward the sky and left a clearing in the middle to reveal it. Fog lingered above the water, and early frogs peeped in their hollows.

“A gate to Avalon,” Dara murmured.

A scarlet bird burst into the air. It didn't cry out. Just streaked from beneath the stone ceiling and disappeared.

“Look at that,” Josh replied.

He let his pack slip from his shoulders. It made a good chair, and he stared into the alcove. Pulling his phone out, he held it above his head. There was still no signal. The stone probably blocked it.

Freeing her camera from its case, Dara edged the pool carefully. There was so much to capture there. Too much. She angled up, stopped to focus on velvety moss and water-smoothed ledges. Then, down with the macro lens, to capture the fine sheet of ice lining the walls.

Despite the cold, she shed her shoes and waded into the pool. Not to get wet, but to get a picture of the mist in the air, and the water spilling into the pond. Aching from the frigid water, her toes curled over stones beneath the surface. The camera sang, clicking again and again.

It didn't stop—she couldn't stop. Not until she had the picture. The perfect moment. The gate to Avalon, captured forever. Everything else, home and camp, the noises in the woods and even Josh, fell away.

She was alone in the world with this strange altar to nature, and her camera.

 

As he checked his traps Cade chewed a sweet gum twig. It cleaned the night-taste out of his mouth. His mother said it protected his teeth, too, but he didn't know from what. Every day, he did things she'd taught him.

Mixing ash with fat for soap. Rubbing crushed yarrow on his cuts and burns. Chewing willow leaves when he hurt.

His head was full of practical things. And the rabbit skin pouch at his waist was full of early herbs and greens. Dandelion shoots and parsnips, mostly. He broke into a smile when he found a patch of field garlic. Before he pulled it up, he stopped to study the land.

He wasn't the only creature who ate greens. Better to let the rabbits have it, and then have the rabbits. As soon as spring bloomed, he'd have to leave the animals alone for a while. They needed time to grow their families and to grow fat.

But this garlic, and the trails of it that disappeared into the underbrush, lay untouched. No pellets or scat nearby. The tree trunks bore no marks from nibbling deer. So Cade claimed it for himself, then hiked on to his traps.

The woods were quiet, but not silent. Birds sang this morning. Daredevil squirrels flung themselves from tree to tree. Just at the top of the hill, a doe quivered. Alert, she slowly turned her head. She bolted. Wind whispered, trees crackled.

And Cade's own footsteps rattled through dry leaves and underbrush. No need to be stealthy today. Dara and the other one had hiked to the pool.

It made him anxious. They were in his forest. He knew they were there, all the paths they walked on. They touched things, and left their scents everywhere. They weren't like the rangers who sometimes appeared. The ones who took samples of the water, and the earth.

When he was little, Cade had to hide when the rangers came. His mother insisted on it. She tucked him in caves, in burrows, and once inside a hollowed tree. She would whisper, “Shh, shh,” and wait for them to go.

Dad followed the rangers when they moved away from the camp. Then he and mother would pack their things. That night, always that very night, they moved. Up the ridge or down it. Sometimes into the stone ruins left by ancient people. Never into the ruined hunting lodges or old mining town.

“Too many people remember these are here,” Mom explained.

It was the truth. Cade knew because he remembered where they were. When he was little, he loved to sneak back to them. Though the forest had swallowed the edges, the spaces between, Cade could still see the town in it. The houses fascinated him. They had windows. They had doors.

In one house, the floor had rotted away. It revealed a cellar, and in that cellar, people's things. A doll, its face marred by crackled paint. Photographs faded close to nothing. In a fine box, he found a half-rotted Bible. Most of the pages were ruined, slick with mold. But he could make out spidery handwriting inside the back cover. Names. Jedediah and Hepzibah. Ann and Charles. Mary and Oren.

There were lives in that town. Their ghosts filled the ivy-choked walks, drifted through crumbling walls. This wasn't the world his parents had described. It was an antique version of it. No Mustangs or telephones in the mining town. No televisions or escalators. He had the hardest time imagining an escalator.

Once, with a bit of charcoal, his father drew stairs to explain. His mother described the belts and the pulleys underneath them. The motor that made them go. She claimed the stairs would flatten into a metal band at the top. That gears would pull it inside. Then it would reappear at the bottom to turn into a step again.

“But how?” Cade asked.

His parents exchanged a look, then shrugged. He'd asked for more than they knew. It happened a lot. More as he got older.

Though they both swore escalators were real, he never quite believed them. And it didn't matter anyway. They claimed it was all gone. Forgotten, just like a mining town in a forest. Just like him.

A small scream jolted Cade from his memories. The cool air wrapped around him, the cool earth pressing from below. Winding down an uneven slope, he found a rabbit in his snare. It was fat, its fur shimmering in shades of brown and grey. Paws beat at the air. Black eyes darted, wild and frightened.

Cade picked it up with both hands, and gently turned it over. He stroked his thumb over its belly, then sighed. There was a litter in there already. He pulled out his knife, and cut the snare. Setting the animal free, he smiled ruefully.

No rabbit for dinner, and probably not for a while. Fish would have to do, and if he got lucky, he might find a wild hog. They rooted mercilessly, devoured turkey eggs, gobbled down roots and greens. It was never a bad time to take down a wild hog, and the meat would last if he cured it. The salt lick wasn't far; it would be worth the trip if he took down a hog. It would get him through till summer. His stomach rumbled in anticipation.

But maybe soon he'd walk into Dara's camp and say hello. Maybe she would feed him from her pot, and sit next to him. Close to him.