Fantastical Ramblings (9 page)

Choice. She had choices in her life. Dangerous ones. Sometimes
distasteful ones, sometimes glorious ones. But they were hers and hers alone. She
had enemies. Enemies she could choose to run from or confront.

Her choice.

Without a backward glance she marched ahead of Sha’awna and
her adoring prince, grabbed the reins of her still loaded camels and turned
back the way she had come, across the ford, onto the dangerous and winding path
along the river.

“Kat, where are you going?” Cannik ran up beside her.

“Lady Sha’awna was right,” Katya said softly. Then, turning
to look at Cannik, she answered him in a stronger voice. “My job here is
finished, my friend. It is time now for me to go home and confront my enemies. I
need to do this. I
choose
to do this.
I will run from them no more.”

Cannik looked at her for a long moment, then drew his blade
and tossed her a quick salute. “If your old life ever bores you...” he said.

Katya smiled and returned the salute. “I’ll remember,” she
said, then turned and started on the long, hard journey home.

~THE END~

Um… this story was one of those things that woke me up in
the middle of the night and demanded I write it. Right Now. It first appeared
on the Book View Café when we had new, free fiction on the front page every
day.

<<>>

“Mom, I hate camping,” Ben whined.

“You used to love camping, Benji” his mother replied as she
stuffed boxes of cereal and crackers into the food crate with its bear-proof
lid.

The entire family bounced around the house, getting ready
for tomorrow’s big trip. Like they did every year the first week after school
let out for the summer.

“But there’s nothing interesting to do,” Ben continued his
litany of grief, even though he knew it was pointless.

“Meaning: I told you to leave your sketch book at home,” Mom
replied.

“Yeah.” Ben brightened a bit. Maybe he could convince Mom
that he really ought to be allowed to pack the tablet. “I could draw our campsite,
and the trees, and the river, and the squirrels and birds. Better than a
camera.”

“Benji, we love that you are developing a real talent with
your art work. But you need to do other things, too. You need to swim and hike
and climb trees, not just sit and draw. You haven’t been more than two inches
from your sketch book since we gave it to you for Christmas. It stays home.”

“But, Mo-oM!”

“No buts about it.”

Ben scowled. He wanted to cry. But at twelve he was really
too big for that ploy.

“Look, Benji, how about we let you use the camera on Dad’s
phone. If you get some good shots you can download to the computer when we get
home and sketch from those.”

Ben continued to pout, arms crossed. He felt his chin
sticking further and further out in defiance.

“Compromise, Benji. You can take the sketch pad but you wait
until evening around the campfire, or in your tent. You spend the rest of the
day out-of-doors with your sisters, playing and doing all the things we love
about camping.”

“No. And I hate you calling me Benji. My name is Ben!” He
dashed out of the kitchen, slamming the door hard behind him.

This time the tears came hot and heavy.

He heard his mother following with determined and angry
footsteps. He decided to get himself elsewhere. And quick.

“If you take the sketch pad it stays in your backpack until
I tell you otherwise,” Mom called as Ben climbed out the dormer window of his
bedroom onto the roof.

He sat there a long time baking in the afternoon heat,
pencil flying over the blank sheet of paper. He outlined, shaded, and gave
definition to the curious woodpecker that stared back at him from the trunk of
the old Douglas Fir overhanging the garage. After many meticulous flicks of the
pencil that showed the bird’s feathers, a smile crossed Ben’s face.

He drew a bug. A nice fat, tasty one just right for a
woodpecker dinner. When the bug’s shiny carapace seemed real, almost as if it
was really crawling across the page, he held up the drawing for the bird’s
inspection.

With a raucous call it launched from the tree branch, diving
directly toward Ben.

Ben sat very still. The big bird landed on his crossed legs
and began ramming its beak into the paper, trying desperately to get that bug.

Startled, Ben dropped the page and scrambled back into his
room.

The bird flew away, bits of heavy paper clinging to its
beak.

Ben lay awake a long time that night, wondering what he’d
done; how he’d done it; and if could he repeat it.

Next morning, Ben tucked the sketchbook deep into his
sleeping bag and left it there as he threw clean underwear and a swimsuit into
his backpack.

Five hours later, with the camp set up and Mom and Ben’s two
sisters, Jen and Marie making sandwiches for the entire family, Ben and Dad
wandered down to the lake shore. They’d all been so busy Ben hadn’t thought
about his hidden sketch book all day. Well, not much anyway.

Now Ben’s fingers ached to hold a pencil so he could capture
the angle of light against the trees across the water, the ripples and
reflections of mountain and clouds in the surface of the lake. And he had to
add that hawk gliding around the shallows as it looked for its own lunch.

“Mom thinks it’s about time we let you upgrade your old cell
phone to my old smart phone. I got a new one yesterday,” Dad said. “I agree
that you’re old enough to take responsibility for an expensive piece of
equipment that does more than just call home in an emergency.”

For the first time, Ben noted that his head reached almost
to his father’s shoulder. He already stood nose to nose to Mom.

“The camera in the phone is okay. And I’ve got good graphics
software on my computer. But a photo is a poor substitute for a good drawing,”
Ben murmured. At the same time a quiver of excitement started just behind his
breast bone and spread outward. “Did you say take responsibility? Not just
borrow?” He looked up at his father.

“Yeah. I got myself the newest model, with more features. I
think you can handle the old one. The camera is limited, but a good one to
learn with.” Dad pulled the small flat phone out of his jeans pocket.

Ben’s heart leaped to his throat. His very own smart phone. He
reached for it eagerly.

“Now remember, hold it by the outside of the body,” Dad
instructed, subtly moving Ben’s fingers away from the screen.

They spent a happy half hour shooting images of Mirror Lake
and trees, deleting some, keeping some. All the while, Ben kept thinking of
ways to translate the digital pictures to his sketchbook, adding color here,
shading there, letting the pristine white paper shine through there.

“That’s a decent picture, why are you deleting it?” Dad
asked as they settled at the picnic table for lunch.

“The lighting is bland,” Ben said on a shrug. But he
hesitated with his finger over the miniature trash can icon.

“Wait a bit. No sense in being hasty about it. You might
decide you like something better about it later,” Mom added.

“Hey, you’re right. Look there, Dad, right in the upper left
corner. I caught a fish jumping!” He stared gleefully at the entire photo, not
just the bland light in the trees.

Mom shoved a paper plate in a wicker holder filled with
chips and a sandwich toward him.

“Deleted pictures aren’t as easy to recover as a line you’ve
erased and wanted back,” Dad said. “You might want to use your eraser less and
think about what’s already there.” He bit into the thick bread and sliced meat,
thus ending the conversation.

For two days Ben and his sisters swam, hiked, and played
games. Ben kept the phone close, taking lots of pictures and wondering how he’d
draw the water drops glistening on Jen’s hair. He played a bit with the ideas
in his tent, but never got it right, so he put the sketch pad away again.

On the second night, a raccoon raiding their food supplies
woke him up. He caught photos of the little bandit he knew he wouldn’t have
time to draw first-hand but could translate later.

Ben paid extra close attention to details as the family
hiked around the lake and up into the foothills of Mt. Hood the next day. Every
time he heard a bush rustle, he snapped a picture. First glance at the images
didn’t show anything unusual.

He worked through the photos later, while mom and the girls
fixed dinner. He was about to delete one that looked like more shadow than
tree, but hesitated. Was that something unusual about the shape of that shadow.
He peered closer, wishing he a computer to download to and then enhance with
the graphic software.

His hand reached for the sketch pad. He tried again and
again to give the shadow shape. The closest he came was a lopsided blob with a
muzzle that might belong to a bear. Then again it could be just a shadow. Adding
the light of a full moon to the drawing didn’t help either.

With a sigh of disgust, he ripped out those pages and
consigned them to the fire. The paper caught the flames instantly and sent a
long spiral of smoke upward. He and his sisters watched it disappear among the
tree canopy. Little Marie threw in some dry leaves and they watched the same
effect.

Then mom called them to eat, freshly caught fish grilled on
an open fire with just a touch of lemon juice. His favorite camp meal.

That night, Wednesday, when Ben heard a rattling of tree
branches, he grabbed his phone and opened the camera as he poked his head out
of the little pup tent he had all to himself. Whatever made that much noise had
to be big. Bigger than the raccoon last night. Maybe a coyote. Or even a bear.

That thought almost sent him cowering back into his sleeping
bag.

A full moon high overhead sent a diffuse, silvery light all
through the clearing where his parents had an umbrella tent across from him,
and his little sisters had their own pup tent between them. To his right, their
SUV sat parked. The picnic table and fire pit in the middle lay empty.

Something crashed behind Ben’s tent, between him and the
lake. It sounded like an entire tree uprooted and fell. He’d heard that sound
before, last winter during the big windstorm after a week of soaking rain. The
top-heavy Douglas Fir across the street from their house had gone down right
through the neighbor’s roof.

Dad stuck his head and shoulders out of the tent opening. He
had a better angle to see the lake. His eyes went wide and his jaw dropped.

“Get back,” he whispered frantically. “Stay out of sight,
Ben.”

Another big crash sent Ben diving back inside the fragile
nylon walls of his tent. Fear warred with curiosity. He didn’t dare go outside
again.

Quaking from the inside all the way out to his fingertips,
he peeked out the tiny screened window at the back of the tent.

A shifting black and red shadow streaked with silver from
the moonlight wavered before his vision. He blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to
clear them.

Still the wobbling shadow, as tall as the first branches on
the fir trees, a good ten feet up, remained just as blurry as before. Like when
he moved the camera just as he clicked the shutter.

Camera. Maybe the camera could get a better picture. He held
it up to the screen and clicked. And clicked again.

The thing out there roared. It turned its muzzle full of big
teeth toward the pup tent. Three long strides took the beast to the center of
camp and reduced the picnic table to splinters with one blow of its clenched
fist.

Each movement seemed here and there and everywhere between
at the same time. Like the creature he’d seen in a SciFi movie phasing in and
out of this dimension so that it was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

The “phasing” made it seem like it moved jerkily. But it
made steady, if slow and lumbering progress toward him.

Ben ducked down in fear.

“Everybody in the truck!” Dad yelled.

An acrid scent of fear overlaid the musky odor of the animal’s
garbage breath. Underneath both smells he thought he caught a wisp of burning
leaves.

Ben broke out in sweat and his knees turned to jelly.

Under the noisy roar of the beast, Ben heard the tiny click
of the automatic locks as Dad hit the key remote.

Ben didn’t need a second order from Dad to dash to safety. He
didn’t bother pulling on his jeans over his Transformers boxer sleeping shorts,
or grabbing a pair of shoes. He just ducked and ran as fast as he could,
pausing only long enough to let little Marie scramble into the seat before
diving in and pulling the door closed after him.

He kept trembling as he held his sisters close. What if that
thing slashed through the metal and ate them! The little scratch on his leg
suddenly looked huge and the blood droplets seemed a gushing torrent.

His dinner wanted to come up.

The SUV began shaking. Ben peered out a window from his
crouch on the floor.

All he could see was something black and red and sliver with
fur that looked like dried ferns leaning against the car roof and pushing.

His sisters wailed. Mom cried. Dad hid his head beneath his
arms.

Ben discovered he still held the phone. Click, click, click.

Then the moon went down. The beast gave a mighty roar, as if
he hurt a lot, just gave up and lumbered away.

Ben and his family stayed huddled together in the car until
the sun finally brightened the horizon, turning the lake blood red.

They packed up in a hurry, throwing tents and gear half
folded into the truck haphazardly. Dad didn’t yell at them for making a mess. He
didn’t care when they left behind a box of dry food.

They left the campground without eating breakfast or trying
to get their money back for the rest of the week’s stay.

Over the next two weeks, Ben tried again and again to draw
the beast. He looked at the blowup of his pictures on his computer. He closed
his eyes and remembered only blurred movements and huge teeth multiplied over
and over again as the beast phased in and out of sight. Everywhere and nowhere
all at the same time.