Lost at Running Brook Trail (19 page)

“Huh.” Miriam said. She’d never thought about doing that.

“There you go; you get to talk to your father.” Kimberly threw on a piece of wood.

“Do you want to talk to yours?” Susan asked Kimberly.

“I don’t know. Sometimes. I think about him a lot. Just thinking about it makes me tired. I used to idolize him. He would say
bloody hell,
and that became my phrase. He used to spit habitually, just for the fun of it, when he was irritated or whatever. I spit too for whatever. Mimicry can be very tiring when the object of my impersonation isn’t around. I don’t think I can idolize someone who lets me down and isn’t around, but still I have some of his habits, and it’s hard to suppress memories.” The wood crackled and popped in the fire as more and more pieces were piled on. “He’s sort of like a cut-out of a famous person or something. I can recognize the outline, but he’s not quite there. And this thing about being pretty, you can’t tell me I’m beautiful and then treat me in an ugly way.”

“It doesn’t mean it isn’t true,” Miriam said. “It probably means you heard it from the wrong person.”

Kimberly got up to snatch her contaminated blouse from the shrub. She came back and threw it on the fire.

“Why’d you do that?” Susan asked.

“It’s not like I can wear it now. I don’t want to infect myself again.”

They watched the blouse catch fire. It left an acrid smell that was cleansed away by the crisp mountain air.

“Bye-bye, poison ivy,” Kimberly said.

The blouse burned until it was just a black lump. Elaine gathered all the used up tissues filled with blackberry juice and alcohol and threw them on the fire. They had found a pure wilderness, and that was the way they would leave it.

“Seems like we should all throw something in the fire before it goes out.” Susan watched the tissue paper dance and curl to black. It was fascinating to see how quickly the paper became nothing.

“This pit is built on your vomit. So not to worry, you have a whole lot of toxins in there already,” Elaine said.

They watched the flames finally die down. The only thing that remained was the red-hot charcoal.

“Maybe this is what she wanted to happen.” Miriam absentmindedly stoked the burning coals with a piece of stick.

“Who?” Elaine asked.

“Mrs. Hamilton. She’s from out here, Calgary I think. She knows what can happen in these woods. We all got injured in some way. There’s the vomiting and the sudden burst of madness, the rashes and a sprained wrist. Only you’re untouched.”

Elaine looked on the glowing coals and felt the heat on her legs. “None of us are untouched. You guys just have the physical marks of this trip. As for the principal wanting all of this to happen, I don’t think so. She didn’t want us to get lost, but she did send all of us out here to find something.”

“So what did we find?” Kimberly shrugged. “I hear she calls each person into her office one by one to talk about the trip. You can imagine how that one will go down. For us, it’s going to be extra special, since we went off track.”

Evening drew near. The trees, the mountains, the sky and the air had that winding down feel. It felt like an eternity from when they had started the hike.

“For once, I don’t think we have to give her bull,” Susan said. “I usually go into her office and tell her what I think she wants to hear so I get out fast. Sometimes I play the fool. But now I have something real to tell her. We kind of found stuff out about ourselves in different ways. It wasn’t like lightning bolts striking or anything, but we got it.”

They sat around the fire and continued to talk until it became dark. The coals burned themselves out until there was nothing left but grey ash. When they all entered the cave, it felt different. They felt its darkness and saw their shadows on the wall, but they felt that they knew where they were.

When the search party found them, they were fast asleep on the strange bed. The searchers had seen the rising smoke and had followed it to the cave. The four girls lay with their arms across each other like links on a chain. The lanterns the search party carried lit up the cave to reveal old stalactites and ones that were just forming. In the deeper and darker recesses of the cave, they saw the many skeletons of long-dead animals.

The walls were filled with more drawings like the ones that the torches had lit up on the outside. Deep inside the cave, the drawings depicted themes of entombment and resurrection. They had heard stories about this cave, stories filled with the stuff of legends—folklores of powerful mythical lessons, death and creation and a whole host of others that were told so often that they became part of everyday life.

There was a famous tale of a boy who had gone hunting with four magical arrows. His instructions were to fire the arrows only at animals that had antlers. All he had to do was shoot, and the arrows would find the heart of his target. His first arrow gave him a deer, but then he decided to take aim at a bear. In that moment a powerful snowstorm came and the boy could see nothing. Unable to find his way, he dragged the deer in the blinding snow; the rest of the arrows had now lost all their powers. He stumbled into this cave and took shelter. While the storm raged on the outside, he slept on the inside and dreamt that he saw a human figure, its hands like strange claws, with a head that sprouted sensory appendages that insects might have. The confusing appendages enveloped him, and the strange thing whispered to him to
be a better hunter and listen
.
Be sure, not swift.

He woke to find the snowstorm completely gone. He tried to continue the hunt, but all his arrows were wayward and off target. Frustrated but with his mind opened to obeying his parents the next time, he took the deer home. At home he described his experiences and was told he had encountered the spirit of the lost and found—the spirit of truth and the way. The perplexing antennae were the state of being lost. He was lucky to have had this encounter at such a young age. And so the stories went on.

Now the experts were talking about preserving the culture and the stories by protecting the cave. These girls had stumbled upon it, but soon others would be led to it. It was the cave of the lost and found.