Night Wings (10 page)

“A
h, the wandering boy has been brought back to us. Callooh callay. The prodigal son returneth. Shall we kill the fatted calf?”

It’s only been about three seconds since I came into view of Darby Field posing theatrically on a flat boulder, and I am already sick of his oily voice.

Field unfolds his arms and steps down to grab me by the chin. I don’t resist as he turns my head back and forth to get a better look at the blood clotted on my cheeks and in my hair. He shakes his head and then lets go of me.

“Louise,” he says in a disappointed voice, “my dear girl, didn’t I ask you not to damage the merchandise?”

“He’s walking, isn’t he?” Louise replies. “Ask him what happened to your boys, Tip and Stazi.”

The crocodile grin vanishes from Darby Field’s face. His right hand whips out and slaps me so hard across my cheek that it makes a sound like the crack of a gunshot. It spins me halfway around. His other hand grabs me by the wrist and jerks me back toward him. His nostrils flare with anger as he shoves his face so close to me that I can see the red lines of broken blood vessels in the whites of his eyes.

“Where?” he snarls, so angry that his words are almost choking him. “Where…are…my…men?” He holds his hand up to threaten me with another slap.

I don’t react. I don’t act defiant. I don’t stare him in the eyes, daring him to do it again. I just stand there looking down at the ground, so that striking me will give him about as much satisfaction as hitting a dummy.

Field is breathing hard, but my lack of response is not what he expected. He lowers his hand, then repeats his question in a calmer voice, as if rage had never taken him over.

“Where are Tip and Stazi?”

Give an angry man a gift. That’s an old proverb Mom taught me. So this time I give
him some of what he wants, though I’m careful to word it so it doesn’t make me seem that much responsible.

“Tip got all tangled up in some brush while he was chasing me. I was able to sort of tie him up, so he’s still stuck there. Stazi slid on some wet rocks, and I think he broke his leg. When he shot at me, I ran away.”

Field nods and looks at Louise, who shrugs her shoulders since she didn’t go to check on either of his missing henchmen.

“All right,” Field says. “We shall retrieve them later. For now—Louise, would you handle the camera?—we shall press on.”

Field doesn’t ask how I managed to get my hands free. He’s too busy composing his next dramatic monologue. He has Louise tie me up again. They’re out of duct tape, so this time she uses nylon cord, which would have been cutting into me even more if I hadn’t tensed up my muscles and pressed out against the cord after the first time around my wrists. It’s one of the Houdini tricks that Grampa Peter taught me. After the person tying you up is done, it looks as if your bindings are tight, but as soon as you relax, they loosen up and there’s enough room to start working yourself free.

The fact that she also wrapped the cord around my waist so that my wrists would be tight against my body actually helped too, since she hadn’t knotted the cord before she did that. Louise may be good at some things, but tying up captives is apparently Stazi’s specialty, not hers.

She is also in a hurry—because Field is waiting impatiently in his arms-folded pose back on the boulder. She quickly gets out the smaller of the two cameras.

“Ready?” Field says.

Louise moves around him, getting different angles as he delivers a speech about how close he is to their forbidden mystery, how even though two of his crew were injured and he wanted to stop and secure immediate medical attention for them, they begged him to press on. Onward and upward (and he makes a heroic flourish with his extended right hand, like Don Quixote lifting up his sword), for his motto is
ad astra per aspera
. To the stars through difficulties.

And I have to listen to this hogwash. Talk about torture!

He signals “Cut,” and Louise lowers the camera.

“And now,” he says, “after the fox!”

“Which way?” Louise dares to ask. The tone of her voice is sort of insolent now.

“Ah,” Field says. He walks a few paces up the trail and then points theatrically at a patch of soft earth. “Behold, O ye of little faith.”

Louise pushes me ahead of her, and we both look over Field’s shoulder at what he’s pointing to. It’s a perfect footprint from my grandfather’s left boot. Field climbs a little farther, a superior smile on his face, and then points again, this time at a thin piece of torn cloth, the same color of Grampa Peter’s shirt. It’s tangled in the scraggly branches of a dwarf juniper.

“Elementary, my dear Watson,” he intones in his most self-satisfied, superior voice.

He probably thinks he’s the great white tracker, like Hawkeye from
The Last of the Mohicans
, finding my grandfather’s trail like that. I’m pretty sure Stazi wouldn’t make the mistake he’s making. But Stazi is not here. I look at Louise out of the corner of my eye, wondering if she’ll fall for it too. However, she doesn’t say anything.

It’s no accident that Grampa Peter, who knows how to disappear without a trace when he wants to, has left those marks.

W
e’ve been climbing for over an hour now and we’re well above the tree line, where there’s nothing but dwarfed brush and lichen among the stones. It’s easy to imagine myself back in the time of the flood, when all life was washed away by the great waters that came just shy of the top of this mountain.

I’m not talking about the Bible story, but our own ancient tale. Long, long ago the people were out of balance. They showed no respect for the earth. Instead of hunting for food and clothing, they killed things for pleasure. Instead of picking berries, they pulled the bushes up by the roots. When they fished, they would catch every fish in the stream with nets and leave most of them to rot on the shore.

Only the people of one small village remembered to do things the right way, to give thanks and to only take what they needed. In fact, they went out of their way to be kind. One day, a man and woman from that little village saw a rabbit that had fallen in the river and was about to drown. They pulled that rabbit out and set him free out of the kindness of their hearts.

But most of the people continued hurting everything around then. Finally, Ktsi Nwaskw, the Great Mystery, sent a flood to cleanse the earth of those bad people. Of course the Great Mystery warned the animal and bird and insect nations first and provided ways for them to survive. The flood was only meant to wipe out human beings.

The rabbit, though, took pity on the people of the little village. He went to that man and woman who had saved him and told them a flood was coming.

“Follow me,” the rabbit said. Then, with the waters rising behind them, he led that couple and the other people of the village up to the very top of Agiocochook, where the flood could not drown them.

That is why, to this day, we incise the shape of the rabbit onto birch bark and carve it into wood. We want to remember how that rabbit
saved us and how important it is to show respect to all things in creation.

It’s not a story that the people who are dragging me up the mountain would understand. As far as they are concerned, the most important thing in life is to get as much for yourself as you possibly can.

“We have your grandson!” Darby Field yells, his hands cupped around his mouth. It is maybe the twentieth time he has yelled this as we’ve been following Grampa Peter’s trail. I keep waiting for Field and Louise to wise up that they’re being led the way he wants them to go. But I guess their greed has made them blind, blind to the fact, too, that a wall of mist has been following us up the mountain as we’ve climbed.

Why can’t they see, as I can, that we are being pushed up the mountain by that wall of mist? We’re not being followed by floodwaters, but something just as powerful and deadly is waiting above us at the highest point.

Suddenly my grandfather appears right in front of us. It isn’t as if he stepped out from behind a stone or stood up from some hiding place. One moment he was not there and in the next breath he was.

Darby Field lets out a noise like a toad that’s been stepped on and jumps back. Louise is probably equally surprised, but keeps her cool and stares hard at Grampa Peter, who holds out both his hands, palms up.

“Here,” he says.

And what he means is, I give myself up to you. I am going to give you what you want.

His eyes make contact with mine, and I get the message as he flicks his gaze behind me. I’m to hold back, wait for the right moment, and be very cautious. I understand that last bit from the expression on his face. It’s not fear, but the look of someone who has just seen something that made his heart pound. And he seems tired, as if what he has just done—and it’s not the quick climb to the top—has taken much of his energy. I think again about where we are on this trail into the past.

I try to go to his side. Louise grabs the line around my waist and yanks me back behind her.

“Stay,” she commands me. Apparently she and Darby Field both learned their people skills at the same dog obedience school. She points one of her guns at Grampa Peter and gestures up with it. “Lead the way, gramps.”

Field gives her a fishy glare. He wanted to be the one to take control, especially after
embarrassing himself with that toad squawk. But Grampa Peter has already started climbing, mist swirling about him. The clouds are all around us.

Now I see things I recognize. Formations of stone, the way the path sweeps in and out of them. We are almost at the very top of Agiocochook. It has gotten much cooler, and not just from the mist, which blocks out the view in all directions.

There’s a strange tension in the air, though I seem to be the only one who notices it. And there’s a faint scent that I think I’ve smelled before. We just passed over the place where the road was cut up the mountain decades ago. But there’s no road here. No cog railway, no weather station, no human-built structures.

Something else, though, is here. I know that Grampa Peter feels its presence as much as I do. I only hope that it knows the difference between our intentions and those of the man and woman with us.

Grampa Peter looks back over his shoulder. We’re in a tight group now, the only way we can all keep each other in sight. No one is more than an arm’s length apart.

“Here!” he says, dropping his arms. At the
same time he cuts his eyes quickly to the left. Then he takes a quick step to the right and vanishes.

Things begin to happen fast. I yank free of Louise’s grasp, turn, dive into the mist, and begin to run down the slope. I think I know where I’m going, but a rock turns under my foot and I find myself twisting to the side and going down on my right knee.

Good thing, too. I hear the blast of Louise’s gun from behind me and feel a searing pain as the bullet tears through my jacket and the flesh of my left shoulder. She’s firing blind, but I know that shot was meant for the back of my head.

I crawl forward as more shots ricochet off the stones. Then I’m around a rock, and up on my feet. My knee is numb, and all I can do right now is limp, not run. There’s a wind in my face that wasn’t blowing before. It is cutting through the mist that hid me, sweeping it off the mountain. They’ll be able to see me and get off a shot at me if I don’t find a place to hide.

A strangled cry comes from up the mountain. And though I probably shouldn’t look back, I can’t help myself. The wind has cut a path through the clouds and I can see the peak fifty feet away from me perfectly. Field
and Louise have fallen to the ground and are looking up at the tall dark figure above them, its wide black wings spread, blotting out the setting sun. Its pitiless gaze is on them. Then, as if feeling my eyes on it, it turns its head in my direction.

I whirl around, start to run. I’m not limping anymore. If there is one place on earth I shouldn’t be right now, this is it!

I
t’s dark now. Eerily so. I suppose I’ve been on my own for at least an hour. But I can’t tell what time it is because my watch is no longer working. Maybe it broke when I hit it against the rocks. I’ve lost the trail several times and have had to turn and slowly feel my way back to it. At least my trick of flexing against my bonds as I was tied up served its purpose. I was able to work myself free—not as fast as a professional escape artist, but quick enough to avoid too many out-of-control falls.

There’s no light from the sky, no sign of moon or stars. I’ve never been afraid of the dark, but right now I am definitely wary of what it’s hiding. I’ve thought more than once of taking
out my Mini Maglite, which is still zipped into the inner pocket of my jacket. But showing a light in enemy territory is one of the worst mistakes a soldier can make, according to Mom. The beam might show me a few feet of the path, but it could also show someone—something—where I am. Most people are so scared of the dark that the first thing they do is try to make a light.

I don’t say its name, not even in my thoughts. Grampa Peter has told me more than once to be careful about that. Do not say or think the name of anything with power, unless you want it to be heard. If you are in rattlesnake territory, you never say or think the word
rattlesnake
, because doing that might call it to you. If you have to mention it to someone else, maybe to warn them that there are dangerous reptiles around, you should say something like, “Watch out for a moving stick.” Words have power, and names have even more power. So I don’t allow the name of that old being to come into my mind.

I just keep moving, and if my mind starts to stray I count my steps. I’m up to a thousand and twenty now.

It’s quiet all around me. Ever since I started
to run it’s been quiet, except for the rattle of stones dislodged by my clumsy feet. The last loud noises I heard were three loud cries from behind and above me. Not shouts of terror and despair, like the one that burst from Darby Field and led me to turn and see the scene that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Those three harsh, echoing cries that split the air came from no human throat.

One thousand and forty, one thousand and forty-one…

Actually, it hasn’t been completely quiet. Twice when I’ve paused, I’ve thought I heard something. A soft sound that came not from behind or in front of me, but from high above. Almost like the sound of a kite flapping in the wind or a sheet hung on the line, buffeted by a breeze. Or—and I don’t want to think this, which is why I only allow it to come to me as a last comparison—like wide wings in the night.

The thought of that makes me start to walk faster.

One thousand fifty one, one thousand fifty two, one thou—dang!

I’ve run into another rock with my knee. I can’t keep going like this. I have to stop, try to get my bearings. Breathe. That’s what both
Mom and Dad would tell me to do in a situation like this. If you run in panic, you may end up running toward whatever danger panicked you.

I sit down and take a slow breath. As soon as I do that, the sky begins to clear over me, and the moon shows itself. It lights not just the path and the roll of ridges visible from this high place, but a narrow dark opening in the rock face right next to me. A cave. One I’ve never seen before.

Then I hear something. Wide leathery wings. I’m sure of it. The sound is not high in the sky. It’s coming closer, toward me. I look up. A black shape is dropping down from above me, blotting out the moon.

I duck my head and leap frantically for the cave mouth, just as something strikes at me. A talon digs into my wounded shoulder, tearing my jacket even more. I twist away, claw into the cave, pulling my legs in just before something hits the stones hard. I’m panting, as winded as if I just ran ten miles. I turn around and see the glint of red eyes staring at me from outside. A low throaty growl, then a long arm reaches in, clawed fingers spread wide. I scuttle back as quickly as I can, praying that it is too big to force its way in after me.

The cave is wider back here, the roof higher. It’s so dark that I can’t see anything, but I can hear a soft fluttering sound from above me. Little brown bats, most likely. Caves like this are their home at this time of year. Bats don’t bother me at all. Plus worrying about creatures with little wings is the last thing on my mind now.

I take a deep breath, trying to slow my pounding heart before it explodes in my chest like a grenade. The faint light of the moon shining through the narrow opening ten yards away, no longer blocked by a huge body. Has it given up? Not likely.

I crawl farther back to look for another way out of here. I reach in front of me to keep from banging into anything. Good thing, too, because my hand finds a wall in front of me, walls and roof narrowing in on each side. I’ve reached the end of the cave.

I’m trapped.