Wild (3 page)

Maybe, beneath the full moon, he'd find out what color her eyes were.

Four

M
orning glow flooded through the walls of the tent.

Rolling over in the sleeping bags, Josh pulled a pillow over his head. He disappeared beneath the nest of bedding with a grunt. It didn't look like he planned to get up for a while, so Dara dressed quietly. Jeans, boots, sweatshirt, jacket—and lots of batteries. The zipper rumbled as she eased it open.

Several times now, she'd had the sensation that she wasn't alone in the woods. At camp or nearby, there was no way to prove that she wasn't just noticing Josh's presence in the forest. Pulling the topo map out of Josh's pack, she unfolded it by the banked fire for a quick look.

The river where she'd heard the laughter wasn't far. Then there was the tadpole pond. She hadn't heard anything there, not exactly. It just felt like something—someone—had been nearby. A couple of times at the camp now, too. Josh could blow it off all he wanted.

And since he wasn't interested in investigating it, she could do it herself.

Twice, something had drawn her attention by the water. That made sense—another camper would need to refill his canteens, too. Orienting herself by compass and map, Dara looked into the forest. Pale light filtered through the canopy, just streaks of it. Just enough light to make her feel confident.

Stepping on one of the logs they'd dragged to the fire, she opened the cooler in search of something breakfasty. The animals had already eaten the tastiest, easiest things. No yogurt, no pudding, not even a hot dog that she'd shamelessly eat cold since Josh wasn't awake to give her a hard time about it.

Fishing around, she produced a bag of dried apricots. Little, fleshy disks that sat fuzzily on her tongue. The sensation made her shudder, but it was better than hiking off on an empty stomach. Slinging the water jug across her chest, she took one last look at the camp before setting off. It was so peaceful. No alarm clocks or honking horns. No banging cabinets or garage doors grinding open.

Wind through leaves, and birds in trees—that's what made a morning in the forest. Almost out of reflex, Dara raised her camera and took a shot or six. Unremarkable photos, but they'd be memories. This is what serenity looks like. As much as she enjoyed hot and cold running water, the internet, walls, there was something about this place that made her feel whole.

As Dara started into the woods, her eyes flickered from color to color. On the other side of a fallen log she heaved herself over, red bloomed across the forest floor. A field of mushrooms had sprung up overnight. With thick red caps and white spots, they looked straight out of Wonderland.

Dara sank to her knees. Slinging the canteen around to her back, she picked up her camera. Crawling through the moss, she ignored the cold seeping through her jeans. There was a long column of light streaking through the trees. If she could line the mushrooms up with it just so . . .

Dignity would have to wait for another day. Dara slid onto her belly to find the right angle. The fresh, clean beam suddenly filled her viewfinder. A flare danced in the corner while she adjusted her settings. Now lying almost flat, she had an upward view of the mushrooms. The sun rose behind them. They seemed mighty, scarlet giants in perspective.

Her heart pounded, a wild, fluttering beat that rushed blood to her ears, and into her fingers and toes. She tingled everywhere, drunk and dazed on pictures she couldn't have taken anywhere else. That's what photography was to her. The essence of it, the soul: discovering unseen things and revealing them. Though she knew she could probably find thousands of pictures of these toadstools online, none of them would look like hers. This was her moment, a place in space and time that no one had ever seen but her.

“Eat me,” Dara murmured, firing off shot after shot. “Was that to get small or big?”

She made a mental note to look it up when she got home.

 

Up early to collect ice from sheltered water, Cade stopped when he heard Dara's voice. Grabbing a supple hickory branch, he scaled the tree swiftly. Its budding leaves didn't rustle around him so much as whisper. They weren't big enough yet to provide cover.

Moving carefully along the branches, Cade resisted the urge to grab hold of the bittersweet vines left from last year. Usually, they were sturdy enough to carry his weight. They were better for swinging out over lakes and jumping into deep waters than anything else. But when the branches were big enough, aligned enough, he could zip from tree to tree. It was still too early in the season, though.

Sometimes, the only things keeping the vines up were the shoots that tangled through the trees' canopies. Once fall claimed those, the vines were dangerous. Without warning, they could snap, and he'd plummet into whatever lay below. Usually, it was brush.

Once, memorably, it had been a sharp bit of quartz jutting from the ground. It sliced through his flesh as cleanly as any knife.

His mother had sewed that wound closed with a fish-bone needle and thread she pulled from a worn shirt. Even now, Cade instinctively reached up to touch the scar that furrowed across his scalp. That was a lesson learned the hard way.

The tick-tick-tick of Dara's box acted as a guide. Walking well above the ground, Cade almost passed over her. Only the ticking box stayed him. Curling his toes into the branch, he held on with one hand and leaned over the clearing above her.

Today, instead of tadpoles, it was mushrooms that delighted her. When she reached out to stroke one, he tensed. They were pretty, but poisonous. He collected them in the hottest part of summer to keep the flies away. Chopping them into bits, he left them in bowls of walnut milk. Flies swarmed them, drank, and drowned. It was too bad there was nothing that worked like that on the mosquitoes.

He almost spoke to warn her, but she took her hand back at the last moment. Relieved, Cade pressed his lean body against the trunk of the tree. He didn't understand the ticky box. Or why he kept catching her with it, staring so hard at things in the forest.

But when she put it aside, she always took a few minutes more. Trailing her fingers through the tadpole pond; petting the mushroom with a gentle touch. It was more and more obvious to Cade that she wasn't sick. And she was a little bit like him. She saw things with keen eyes.

As if to prove it, Dara suddenly arched her back. The sun reflected off a bit of glass in her box, the telltale ticking a threat in the quiet. Exhaling all of his breath, Cade closed his eyes and tried to disappear against the tree's bark.

Not yet, he wasn't ready to say hello yet. He wanted to—he was close. But he was waiting for the full moon. That was the rule he made for himself. He was going to honor it. Saying hello at all broke so many of his parents' rules, he couldn't stand the idea of shattering one more.

After a moment, Dara stopped squinting into the tree. She put her box down and brushed the dirt off her chest. Then, consulting a sheaf of paper, she hiked on into the forest. This time, though, she looked back—and she looked up. His pulse raced; he bit his own lips because he didn't dare move.

Perhaps she wasn't aware yet, but almost.

 

When Josh had gone to sleep, everything was fine. When he woke up, he was alone. And when Dara got back from her picture hike, everything went to pieces.

Josh heard Dara before he saw her. Running through a forest wasn't quiet. It sounded like she'd slipped at the top of a hill and was hitting every tree on the way down. The only reason he didn't panic was because she was yelling at the same time.

“Josh! Josh, look! Josh!”

Standing slowly, Josh dumped his stick in the flames. His stomach twisted with hunger. Since they had to ration everything out, breakfast for him was a cup of instant coffee, four Twizzlers he found in his coat pocket, and some peanut butter scraped onto crackers. They had canned stew and chili; those had to wait for dinner.

He felt like one of those starving cartoon dogs, looking around and seeing nothing but T-bone steaks. If they'd started hiking out after breakfast, they could have been in the truck no later than two. Any town in any direction would have a diner or a drive-through, and he could have that burger he'd wished for last night.

He could just imagine Dara's face if he suggested it. She'd gnaw off her own arm before she gave up a place full of so many pictures. Though he kept it to himself, Josh thought all the pictures looked pretty much the same. A really big butterfly in one shot still looked like a really big butterfly in another. She insisted what she was doing was art.

Dara finally came into view. She held her camera above her head and stared at her feet as she ran. Probably not the best plan, but it seemed to work for her. Gasping for breath, she all but stumbled into camp. Red splotches darkened her cheeks. Sucking in a deep breath, she went to say something, but doubled over instead.

“Dara?”

“Cramp. Oh, oh god, cramp.”

Helpfully, Josh said, “Walk it out. What's going on with you?”

Circling the fire, Dara inhaled, then flapped her hands as she exhaled. It looked like she was trying to learn how to breathe and talk at the same time. When the words finally came, they spilled out in a rush. “I was right. You were wrong. There's somebody out here besides us.”

“How does that make me wrong? I said it was probably hikers.”

“No.” Shaking her head, Dara stripped off the canteen and her pack. Each step staggered, she fumbled her camera before righting herself. Exhaling like a horse, she flipped the screen toward him. Thumbing through her pictures, she jittered when she reached one. She almost took his nose off when she thrust the camera at his face. “Look. Look.”

Leaning over, Josh squinted. He saw a mash of brown and touches of green, some wavy motion lines, some sunlight. She said he had a bad eye for details. It pissed him off, but there was no point fighting her about it. Once Dara decided she was right, that was it.

Kinda like then. She kept shuffling and huffing. Annoyance came off her in waves. It was like it was killing her to wait for him to get it. Digging in, Josh raised the camera to his face. Inwardly, he bristled but he finally had to give up. He rolled his head to look at her.

“I don't get it. It's just some trees.”

Dara jabbed her finger at the screen. “No. Right there. That. That's somebody in the trees, Josh. Wearing, like, I don't know, camouflage? It didn't look like camouflage.”

Now that he knew what he was supposed to see, Josh looked again. It shouldn't have been hard. When she pointed out the shapes of rabbits and dragons in the clouds, he noticed. When she shoved a picture under his nose to show him the old woman's face in the bark of a tree, he saw it.

But there was nothing on this screen except blurry trees. Telling her that was gonna start an argument, so he hedged. “Maybe. It's blurry.”

“I told you,” she exclaimed.

Stomach growling, Josh handed back the camera. “So what? It's a free country. He can be out here if he wants to be.”

“That's the thing,” Dara said, turning away from him. “I don't think he's just camping.”

Since she couldn't see him, Josh rolled his eyes. “Why not?”

“His clothes, for one.” Dara stepped onto the log, and started rooting through the last of their supplies. “And he's quiet. I don't think we're that quiet out here, do you?”

Josh thought he might be, but she sure wasn't. Shrugging, he sat down by the fire again. Propping his booted feet on the rocks, he toasted them until he smelled the leather. “I have no idea, Dare.”

“Josh, come on.”

“What?”

“I'm telling you that there's some guy living in the trees out here, following us, and you're all huh huh huh, no idea, Dare.”

Nostrils flaring, Josh dropped his feet and leaned over the fire. “What do you want me to say? I don't know. I don't even see anything. And I think it's hilarious that you think you do see something, and you're not screaming at me to take you home.”

“Why would I do that?”

Sarcastic, Josh said, “I don't know. I'd be kinda scared if the ghost-footed monkey-stalker was following me around the woods.”

Dara's face fell. Wrapping her arms around herself, she looked like she was trying to shrink, which always made Josh feel like crap. Even though she was blonde and sunny, she could turn dark on him.

Pursing her lips, she glared off into the distance. “Why do you have to be like this?”

Wrenching himself to his feet, Josh snatched up the big canteen that she hadn't even bothered to fill while she was out.

“I'm gonna go get some water,” he informed her coldly.

“I am not crazy,” she called after him.

Josh was going to have to respectfully, and silently, disagree.

Five

C
ade woke early.

Yesterday, he'd done something stupid. So stupid that it crept into his head and poisoned his dreams. They had tumbled end over end through the night, waking him long enough to worry, then dragging him into the depths again.

Snatches of his parents' faces melted into shadows. The tick-tick of Dara's box pursued him. Fire swept through his camp; it devoured everything in the cave. His figures swelled and shattered in the heat.

The morning's rain was a relief after a whole night of burning. It deadened his footsteps, not that he had to sneak up on the river. Still in the shadow of the big trees, the water was frigid to the touch. Silvery fish darted in the deepest part, and that's what Cade had come for. Pulling his knife from his belt, he re-sharpened the tip of his gig.

Sitting all day with hooks in the water was fine in the hottest part of summer. But in the colder months, gigging was a better bet. As long as he was faster than the sluggish fish, he could take care of a whole day's meals in an hour.

He'd cut down a green maple branch a little thicker than his thumb. He stripped the bark to make it smooth, then whittled two points onto one end. With careful strokes of the knife, he shaped them. Then he reinforced the joint with long strips of leather to keep it from splitting. The gig looked like a two-pronged spear. That's how Cade hefted it as he walked the bank of the river.

The water hissed, splashing on the banks. Cold seeped through the air, and into Cade's clothes. Even as he steadied himself, his thoughts started to swim. Dara had seen him. That's not how it was supposed to go at all. He hadn't made a sound. Not a broken branch, not a foot out of place. But somehow, she knew to look up, and she saw him.

Cade balanced the gig, then plunged it into the water. It bounced uselessly off a rock. The vibration went all the way up his arm, and ached into his shoulder. Readying the gig again, he tried to clear his thoughts. Though he saw his prey, he hesitated. His mind was just too scattered. He couldn't wait for the full moon now. Or could he? Maybe it was time to change camp.

When he was little, his parents changed camp every couple of weeks. Or, if the rangers strayed too close, there was another move immediately. That was how they stayed safe, his mother insisted. Usually, they circled out from the bee hollow, which was too rich to give up. But it was a big circle, sometimes a whole day's walk and back.

Even after Mom died, they kept moving. Just the two of them, until Dad got sick. He was pale for a long time. After long walks, his lips would turn bluish.

“Just getting old,” Dad would say with a smile. “Try not to do it. I don't recommend it.”

Always, Cade smiled back. “I won't. I'll live forever.”

“You keep thinking that.”

Each time Dad said it, it sounded more and more forlorn. Before Cade's eyes, he grew thin, the shape of his skull beneath his skin uncomfortably obvious. Without Mom to insist, they stayed in one place a whole summer, a whole autumn, a whole winter.

Slowly, Cade took over all the hunting, all the gathering. By the time spring came, he did everything but tan the deerskin and cook the meals. Dad could do those without getting up. The tanning left him breathless, but he refused to give it up.

Until he gave up everything. One rainy day, he pulled a fur over his head to catch the heat as he sat by the fire. He closed his eyes and soon was dozing. It wasn't until Cade went to wake him that he realized that the sleep was permanent.

Stunned, Cade lay beside him that whole day, and that whole night. He understood that Dad was dead. That he wouldn't be coming back. They had buried his mother together; he'd hunted enough animals. Death wasn't a mystery to him, but solitude was. He knew as soon as he put his father in the ground that he'd be alone. Completely. Marooned in an empty, devastated world.

The next morning, Cade didn't hunt. He went to the river and cut down huge bundles of cattails. He didn't have time to cut a tree and carve it into a box. So Cade wove two long mats from the reeds, then sewed them together with leather. He tried not to cry as he slid his father's body into it. He was so cold. So heavy. It was almost a relief to sew the top of the mats closed, because then he didn't have to look at Dad's empty face anymore.

By himself, he dragged Dad down to the cairn where they'd buried Mom. He scraped away the dirt beside her to make room. His fingers bled, because he had to dig deep. Animals had keen senses; if the grave was too shallow, they'd find it and unearth it.

Tears slicked Cade's face, as he pulled the body in, covered it with his fir-branch mattress and a full deerskin. Then dirt, then rocks, like he had to weigh him down to keep him beneath the ground.

Without words, Cade stumbled back to the cave. Mixing water into ashes, he darkened his face then pressed handprints to the wall, as high as he could reach, as far back as he could. It was endless, mindless—something to think about so he wouldn't have to think about his father. His family.

He broke his mother's first rule, because he never left that camp again. When he couldn't sleep, he counted the handprints. When he was lonely, they kept him company. Bit by bit, the camp became permanent. Only now, Dara had seen him. Now, instead of walking into her camp, she might stroll into his.

Because last night he did something stupid. The full moon had seemed so far away that he sought out their camp to listen to their voices. Instead, he heard them argue: Dara knew he was here. The idiot Josh refused to listen to her.

His voice, his attitude—they infuriated Cade. He knew what love looked like. His parents had it. They never raised their voices. Even when they disagreed, they spoke thoughtfully. They worked things through, together. Dad never would have spoken to Mom the way Josh did to Dara.

So, angry, Cade decided to prove Josh wrong once and for all. He cut one of the carved antler pendants from his shirt. His favorite one, the one with two bees on ivy. It was his finest bit of carving, rich and lifelike on the creamy buff interior of the antler. Pulling a thin length of leather from his kit, he threaded it through the pendant and tied it off.

Then, when they were sleeping, he walked into their camp. Planting a stick in the soft ground, he hung the pendant from it. Left it there, dangling, for them to find. He was all the way back to his own camp when he realized what he'd done. What he'd really done—not taught Josh a lesson, no.

He'd told two strangers, two dangerous strangers, that he was there. He was real. Now, instead of idly stalking Dara, he felt like prey. That's why the nightmares came. That's why he couldn't settle his thoughts. Usually the rain soothed him, but not this morning. This morning, he was raw and exposed. And what if he was infected?

That thought distracted him so much that he missed the next two throws.

 

The whisper of rain on nylon woke Dara.

A fresh, green scent filled the air, but it was cut with something bitter. The smell was familiar, but still half-asleep, Dara had a hard time placing it. The light didn't glow through the sides of the tent this morning. Dara shifted, stroking her hand through the sleeping bags to find her sweatshirt. She pulled it over her head.

Breath hazing in the air, she considered going back to sleep. The best pictures would come after the rain, when droplets still hung from leaves and spiderwebs; when water flowed down surprise falls. But she'd let the cold into her sleeping bag, and now she was hungry.

“You want breakfast?” she asked Josh. She prodded his shoulder, but he rolled over and burrowed deeper. “Guess not,” she mumbled as she picked up her boots and knocked them together. Nothing living in them, so she shoved them on her feet. Without bothering to tie them, she ventured outside.

She pulled her sweatshirt's hood over her head. The rain was more a mist, but it gathered on the leaves above, and fell in fat splashes. As soon as Dara approached the fire pit, her nostrils burned. Now that she stood over the source, she knew exactly what the smell was: wet ash.

That was a problem. They had some dry wood in the tent, but she didn't know if she could get a new fire going while it was still raining. In fact, she wasn't sure she could start a fire at all. She didn't know where the matches were, and she wasn't sure where Josh had stashed the newspaper they used for kindling.

Disappointed, Dara straightened up to consider her options. And when she did, she saw it: a stake in the ground, straight and deliberate. A chill streaked up her spine. She hadn't put it there, and neither had Josh, she was sure of it.

With deliberate steps, she approached the stake. Something dangled from it; when she crouched down, she realized it was a necklace. Gingerly touching the pendant, she shivered again. Two bees swirled around an ivy leaf on the disk. When she rubbed it, it felt warm, strangely alive. Definitely not wood or stone. She wondered if it was bone.

Her breath slipped out of her. This was proof. She wasn't crazy. She might have missed the shot, but she'd definitely seen someone in that tree. And that someone knew where she and Josh were camping. Suddenly burning from the inside out, she snatched the necklace from the stake. Stumbling to the tent, she nearly fell into it as she tried to unzip it.

“Josh,” she said, kneeling down to shove him. “Josh, wake up. Look at this.”

“What?”

Thrusting the pendant at Josh, she refused to let it go. She didn't know why, but she felt possessive about it. Like it was meant for her alone. Still, she had to let him look at it, otherwise he'd never believe her. “He was in the camp last night. He left this by the fire.”

That woke Josh up. Without hesitation, he sat up and craned to look outside the tent. He'd gone from sleepy to bristling in an instant. “What the hell? Dara, we're leaving. Let's start getting this stuff together.”

Dara surprised herself when she said, “No.”

“Wait, what?”

“No,” she repeated. Tugging the necklace away from him, she tucked it in her pocket. “I'm not afraid. I'm curious. I mean, if he wanted to hurt us, he could have slit our throats last night while we were sleeping.”

“That's real comforting.”

“That's the point,” Dara said, scrambling back to her feet. “He didn't. And I told you, there was something about him. The way he walked, his clothes . . . I don't know what it is. But I want to find out more. What if he lives out here? What if he's got a story to tell?”

Setting his jaw, Josh glared at her. “What if I tell you I'm packing my stuff and you can stay out here on your own?”

That sounded like an ultimatum. If she'd had doubts about staying, that would have burned them away completely. Since she didn't, all it did was fire her resolve. “Go for it,” she said. “Have fun explaining to my dad why I didn't make it home
from
Orlando
with you.”

There was just enough threat in that. Josh said nothing. Instead, he turned over in his sleeping bag. Punching the pillow a couple of times, he dropped his head into it. Pointedly, he put his back to her, and pulled his hoodie over his head.

Fine. If that was how he wanted it, then that was okay by her. Grabbing an extra pair of socks and an extra sweatshirt, she ducked out of the tent again. Heading for the water had worked yesterday, so that's what she would try today. Somebody was out there, and he wanted her to find him.

So that's exactly what she was going to do.

 

The pile of fish on the riverbank grew.

After a while, sheer cold had quieted Cade's mind. Once he had silence inside and out, he found his balance again. His body remembered how to do this. He found a regular, steady pleasure in forgetting everything and just working.

Still, he should have stopped three fish ago. He could only eat so much in a single day. There was still ice to be found in some of the sheltered ponds, but he hadn't brought his cooler with him.

Sprawling on the ground, Cade tossed the gig aside. He rolled back, laying on the cool, clay earth. Rain kissed his face, and he smiled. Steam rose off his skin. It happened sometimes, when he worked too hard in the cold. Though it wasn't mystical at all, it seemed like it. There wasn't a lot of magic in his life. Plenty of beauty, but no wonders or marvels.

At least, not until Dara came. She had music in a magic box. Her ticky box. Fire in a tube, lamps that glowed without flame or smoke. In his heart, he knew it was technology. His parents had talked about the world before the fall. But to him, it was stories. To see it working—magic.

Suddenly, the brush crackled. Rolling over, Cade plastered himself to the ground. He held his breath so it wouldn't reverberate in his ears. There were a hundred sounds the body made that could distract a tracker. Gritting teeth dimmed sound; grinding them blotted it out. Sharp breaths muddied the direction. Swallowing could obscure it completely.

Breathless and motionless, Cade listened. It only took a few seconds to figure it out. It was human, and it was heading that way. Panic roared inside him, but outwardly, he stayed calm. Grabbing his gig, he pierced three of the fish. Two more went inside his shirt. That left two on the ground and he hesitated.

That was good food. Even if he couldn't preserve it, he could stuff himself with it tonight. But he had one free hand left. That meant no way to climb if he needed to. No way to catch himself, to fend anything off. Eyes darting, he peered through the hazy morning in search of motion.

Footsteps, light, purposeful. Just one. It was Dara; it had to be. The rangers always came in pairs: their boots thumped, their radios crackled, they talked. It couldn't be them. It moved too keenly to be
Josh
. He tramped around behind Dara with feet of stone.

Any other time, Cade would have already been gone. Some wandering bear would have found a treat in the abandoned fish, and nothing else would have happened all day. But a small, senseless part of him wanted to see her. He wondered if she'd found the pendant yet. Probably; it was impossible to miss.