Soaring Home (21 page)

Aside from the sandwich, he found scratch marks in the snow on the north side of the clearing. That direction led all the way to the pole. Of course, she might have eaten the snow to quench her thirst. He both hoped she had and hadn’t. She needed water to survive, but not snow. Snow would lower her body temperature, doubly dangerous because she was injured.

The injury would slow her down. She couldn’t have gotten far. Jack circled the clearing, looking for broken branches or scuffed ground, anything to tell him which way she went.

To the southeast he found an odd set of holes, an inch in diameter. At first he thought they were snake holes, but then he noticed they were evenly spaced and headed toward a stand of white pine.

She was using a walking stick or crutch. Of course.

He followed the trail to the pines, where it veered to the right. The snow was coming down more rapidly now, filling the holes. He had to hurry. He checked the direction on the compass and snapped off a few branches so he could find his way back.

On the other side of the pines, the trail seemed to vanish. He almost thought he’d deduced incorrectly, when he spotted a
foot-tall sapling mashed to the ground. Something had stepped on it. It had to be her.

“Darcy,” he called out.

Nothing.

Her path meandered around rotting stumps and fallen trees. It avoided hollows and low mounds. A creek crossed the route. He scoured each bank until he located the holes on the other side. Sometimes there were no holes. Other places the holes punctured the earth in tight circles.

Then they stopped.

Jack broke a branch as a marker and glanced back at where he’d come. He might have made a wrong decision, taken the wrong path. His throat was hoarse from calling her name, but he did so again. The snow was falling steadily now, sifting through the branches overhead, and he could barely see his tracks. He saw none of hers.

He had failed. He couldn’t find her. And if he didn’t she’d die. What else could he do? He turned in a circle, looking for some clue.

Nothing.

His empty gut ached so bad he had to lean over, but the pain didn’t come from hunger. It came from fear. He couldn’t lose Darcy. He couldn’t. He loved her. Not
liked
or
cared about
.
Loved.

He had to find her. A rush of wind sent snow cascading down on him. The heavy blobs hit the ground. Wet snow. It would soak through her sweaters and chill her faster. Not much better than dropping into the North Atlantic. Cold and blue, eyebrows frosted white, eyes lifeless.

“Help,” he screamed to the silent trees.

Not even the birds answered. He had nowhere to turn, nowhere but… What had she said? That God hears everyone’s prayers? He’d once thought that, had believed it with every
ounce of his ten-year-old soul, but when those prayers went unanswered he swore he’d never pray again.

He thought he could solve everything himself, but now he knew he couldn’t. To save Darcy, he needed bigger help. He needed God.

Jack dropped to his knees. The words came awkwardly, little better than his boyhood plea. “God, if You’re listening like Darcy says, she needs You. I guess even I need You. But her mostly. I don’t deserve Your help after the way I’ve been, but she believes in You. You have to save her. Please.”

He powered ahead against the welling emotion. “I prayed to You once, long ago, but You didn’t answer. I don’t blame You. You were probably too busy to listen to a little boy. I’m sorry I was angry with You. I’m sorry for everything. You can hold it against me, but please don’t hold it against Darcy. Please let her live.”

The words tore out of him with an anguish he hadn’t felt since his mother died. He’d blamed himself for Sissy’s illness. He’d blamed his father for not taking care of Mom. He even blamed Mom for giving up. But he shouldn’t have blamed God. He’d messed up, but he didn’t know if claiming it before God would be enough. Yet it had to be. He had nothing else to offer.

Gradually, calm came over him and his jumbled thoughts began to clear. Before him stood a long ridge. An injured Darcy would have gone around it, but he saw no breaks in the elevation. She couldn’t have climbed it, could she? He walked in both directions, hoping to find her huddled at the bottom.

Nothing.

He could barely see twenty feet ahead. The snow had piled to his ankles. Soon it would be dark. The flashlight wouldn’t last long.

He turned it on.

Nothing.

He shook it, tried repeatedly, but it wouldn’t light. The dry cells must be too cold. He tucked the icy cylinder next to his body under sweater and jacket. If it warmed, it might work. Might. In the meantime, dusk was falling quickly. He had to find her now.

The melting snow ran into his eyes. His trousers were soaked through and he began to ache from the cold.

“Darcy,” he called out.

The forest gave back only silence.

He could have been wrong all along. He thought she made the holes, but it might have been something else, something natural, and she’d gone another direction entirely.

Please, God.

Once again, God wasn’t answering. He remembered his mother gasping for breath, asking him to come near. She’d pressed the ring, his grandmother’s ring, into his hand and told him she was going home to Jesus. He’d cried and begged her to stay with him, but in the dark hours before dawn she died.

Jack pulled out the ring. He’d almost given it to Darcy. He’d almost proposed, but he’d been too afraid. Then he let foolish pride stand between them. They didn’t need to fly on Sunday, but he’d been too pigheaded to listen. He should have. He should have answered every invitation. He should have talked to God sooner.

He should have asked her to marry him. If he had, they’d be together now, not lost in the Canadian wilderness.

“Help me,” he called out to God.

He had no idea where to turn.

Something urged him forward, to the top of the hill, but again he found nothing.

“Why won’t You help me? Why won’t You answer?” he
cried. The words died in the thick air, muffled by the snow. He dropped to his knees.

“Jack?”

He almost didn’t hear the faint voice.
Could it be?
God was speaking directly to him? He started shaking. His hearing must be going.

“Jack?” Again, a little louder and directly below.

Not God.
Darcy!

A rush of energy propelled him to his feet and down the slope.

“Darcy? Darcy?” He sang her name as he slipped and slid to the bottom.

He couldn’t see a thing down there. In frustration, he yanked the dead flashlight from his waistband.
Work, please.
He pressed the switch and on came the beam, shining brightly at the glistening snow-covered ground. And Darcy.

“Jack.” She trembled, her lips bluish, and tried hard to smile.

His knees gave way.
Darcy. Darcy.
He dropped the flashlight and it flickered out. He’d found her. He hugged her, shaking as he brushed the snow from the thick sweater. He then wrapped her in his jacket and held her close.

“Home,” she murmured.

“Yes, home.” Relief brought even more spasms as he tried to hold back the emotion. He would never let her go. Not ever. “Thank God. You were right all along. God does listen. He does answer prayers. He led me to you. I’ll never doubt again.”

She wrapped her arms around him, and he gave up trying to hold back the emotion. He didn’t care about being tough anymore. He was going to say what he should have said months ago.

“I love you. I love you so much.”

“Y
ou do?” Darcy’s joy that Jack had returned to God almost overwhelmed those three important words, but once they sunk in they extinguished the pain for precious moments.

He pulled back slightly. “This is news to you? Some newspaper reporter you make.”

She began giggling. Jack had found her. Jack loved her. She couldn’t be close enough to him. Wild emotions raced through her at full throttle. “I love you. I love you. I’ve always loved you.” Her mad confession degenerated into tears.

He buried her words in a kiss, tender yet desperate. “Don’t you ever leave me again, Darcy Shea,” he said between kisses. “No note, not even a word to let me know where you were going.”

A laugh bubbled up. She’d said the very same thing to him after the last crash. “I won’t. I promise.”

“I don’t ever want to lose you again. Ever.”

“Me either.” Ever. She clung to his snow-coated sweater and let the tears flow. No she wouldn’t leave him again. Jack had given her dream wings.

“Don’t cry.” He wiped the tears and melting snow from her cheeks. “Please don’t cry, Miss Optimism.”

His use of her pet name only made her cry harder. She
shouldn’t have gone off on her own, trying to be the heroine. She should have listened to Jack. She should have been more careful straining the oil. So many mistakes. So much false pride.

“I—I thought I’d get help. I thought the mining settlement was close. According to the map…” She hiccupped. “The map. I lost it. I lost the map when I fell. There’s no moon and it’s snowing and we don’t have a map and it’s cold and how will we ever get home?”

“Don’t worry.” His breath felt so hot on her cheek. His arms were so strong. “Together we’ll find a way.”

She gathered herself, ashamed that she’d lost faith. Of course they would. Hadn’t she known that the moment she lifted up her prayers? “The most important thing is we’re together. Jack, you are everything to me.”

“And you to me.”

The tenderness of his kiss resuscitated a deep longing for family and home—and evening walks and picnics and fishing in the creek. How foolishly she’d cast those treasures away. How much she’d give to have them back again.

She shook involuntarily. Then again. Then her teeth started chattering.

Jack rubbed her hands. “You’re freezing. We need a fire.”

“N-n-no m-matches.”

He hunted around in the snow. “If I can find the flashlight, we’ll go back to the camp.”

The camp. Yes, the camp. “N-n-near m-my legs.” The pain came back, dull and aching this time. “S-s-stuck. C-can’t move.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get them free, once I can see.”

It would hurt terribly, but she could endure anything, now that Jack was here.

“Aha. Found it.”

She heard a click but saw nothing.

“Dead.” He sounded discouraged.

She reached for him but felt nothing. Frostbite. “I-I’m a lot o-of t-t-trouble.”

“Not at all. Let’s get your legs freed. It’s going to hurt.”

Jack tucked the flashlight against his body again, hoping for some life from the batteries. It wouldn’t be much, not enough to get them back to the camp—and that meant problems. Big problems.

New moon. Hypothermia. No way to start a fire. Odds were, they wouldn’t survive the night. Before morning they would slip quietly into unconsciousness and death if he didn’t figure out a way to start a fire. He wished he’d thought to bring matches.

“I’m going to touch your leg now.”

He felt along her limb to where it was wedged in the V between two four-inch trunks. The toe of her boot had caught under a fallen log, and her ankle was twisted at a bad angle. She should be screaming with pain. The cold must have numbed it. And her.

Without giving her a chance to prepare herself, he yanked her boot from under the log and lifted her leg out. She screamed.
Good, still some feeling left.

“Oh, my,” she gasped.

Her teeth weren’t chattering anymore. He didn’t have long. He needed to make a fire now. But how, without matches?
Think, Hunter, think.

“I don’t suppose you have a piece of flint on you?” he asked. Together with the steel of the hatchet, he could strike a spark and start a fire.

She didn’t answer right away, and he thought he’d lost her.

“Darcy?” He touched her cheek.

“No, I don’t. Is there a rock nearby?”

How would he know? He couldn’t see more than shadows. “Sorry.” He rubbed his temples. How to start a fire?

She shifted slightly. “We need something that will create a spark, right? Something electrical, perhaps? Like the flashlight?”

“There’s not enough energy in it to create a spark.”

“The lamp?”

“Not hot enough to catch anything on fire.”

“F-filament?”

The filament? Would it get hot enough? Maybe. It was their best and only chance. “We need some dry fiber.”

“C-cotton.”

“Perfect. I still have mine in my pocket.” While the flashlight warmed, he cleared snow from a patch of ground and cut some kindling with the hatchet. Darcy’s hatchet. If they got home alive, he’d have it mounted. “Now the tricky part. Are you still with me, Miss Optimism?”

She giggled softly, and he fished out the flashlight. He had to break the glass off the bulb without damaging the filament, all in the dark. He lightly tapped and the glass came off.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Darcy cautioned.

He inwardly smiled. It felt good to have someone worry and fuss over him. “All right, I need you to blow on the kindling when the cotton ignites.”

She shifted into position.

“Ready?” His finger hesitated on the switch. “We only have one chance.”

“Let’s pray first,” she suggested.

Though he’d never heard of praying for a mechanical device, Jack agreed. Together they held the flashlight cylinder and asked God to give them the fire they needed. That amazing
calm returned, and Jack knew that whatever happened, God was with them.

He pressed the switch. At first nothing happened, but then a glow began, faint at first, but then growing as the fibers smoked and caught fire. He blew gently, transferring the flame to the kindling. Darcy blew until the twigs ignited. Within moments, they had fire.

Darcy cheered, clapping her hands. The fire grew and soon illuminated her in a golden glow. Jack’s chest tightened. They would survive. Together. He’d never felt like this for anyone. Now he understood what Sissy meant. Love was definitely worth the risk.

Neither slept that night. Darcy suffered through thawing her fingers and toes, but being with Jack made the burning pain bearable. They fed the fire and melted snow for drinking water in the metal flashlight cylinder. And they talked on and on until morning, clearing up the questions that stood between them.

Jack explained that the engines had died because the carburetors iced, not due to anything she had done. Darcy asked him to forgive her for thinking he’d been drinking at Mrs. Lawrence’s saloon.

“I would have thought the same,” he said, his face solemn in the firelight. “You couldn’t know I vowed never to touch the stuff. You see, my father is a drunkard.” He cringed slightly when he said it, and Darcy knew he feared her reaction.

“So is my Aunt Meg’s husband,” she whispered.

“Aunt Meg?”

“Not the one in Buffalo. Aunt Meg is Papa’s sister. That’s why he supports temperance so strongly.”

“Now I understand why he doesn’t like me.”

She was puzzled. “He doesn’t know you went to Mrs. Lawrence’s.”

“It’s a small town. That sort of news spreads.”

“That doesn’t mean Papa dislikes you. He might seem forbidding, but he’s all bluster and no bite. He’ll like you once he gets to know you. Mum’s in your corner already.”

“She is?” He sounded shocked.

“She thought the way you rescued me from the plane wreck was quite heroic.”

He laughed. “She’s not going to think much of this rescue.”

By morning they’d covered every member of their families and every minor like and dislike. They laughed. They talked quietly. They held hands and dreamed of future flights.

“If the transatlantic record falls,” Jack said after they’d drunk another cylinder of water, “let’s go for your North Pole flight.”

“Really?” He’d said
let’s,
as in the two of them. “But, this time I’m the pilot.”

He grinned. “The pilot goes with the plane. If you own the plane, you can be the pilot.”

She flexed her hand. The feeling was coming back. “All right. I’ll settle for copilot.”

He leaned close again. “Me, too.”

They sealed the bargain with a kiss.

“Oh,” she cried, breaking away. “Look.” The eastern horizon had begun to lighten, and when Darcy looked overhead, she saw stars, millions upon millions of stars.

Within the hour, the forest creatures began their day gathering food. The rustling, cheeping and occasional scolding gladdened Darcy’s soul. She was terribly hungry and weak, but they’d survived the night. Somehow they’d make it home. She knew it.

Jack found the map resting against a birch tree, and using the compass, determined their approximate location. He sat
beside her with a grunt. “I’d say we’re a good ten miles from the coast.”

“Ten miles?” How would she walk that far? Nevertheless, she said, “I can make it.”

Jack lifted the hatchet. “First I make you a new crutch.” He hesitated a moment. “I wish I had brought the sandwich that you started to eat.”

She wrinkled her nose. Even in starvation she couldn’t stomach that. “It was soaked in gasoline.”

“Rest,” he ordered, rising.

But how could she? While Jack looked for the perfect branch from which to craft a crutch, Darcy surveyed their surroundings. Last night’s snow was already melting. It was only an inch thick and in some places the twigs and dead leaves and plants poked through. Plants. Darcy looked closely. If she wasn’t mistaken, that was wintergreen. She broke off a leaf and sniffed. Sure enough. She chewed on it. It didn’t fill the stomach but it helped.

She’d gathered handfuls by the time Jack returned with the crutch.

He pounded it on the ground. “This’ll last a good twenty, thirty miles.”

“I sure hope it’s not twenty miles to the mining camp.”

“Ten, twelve at most. We’ll take it slow, and I’ll help you over the hills.” He handed her the crutch and held out a hand to assist her to her feet.

“First, eat.” She held out the wintergreen. “It’s mint. Try it.”

He took a leaf and chewed. His eyebrows shot up. “So it is. Where’d you learn about edible plants?”

“Papa’s expedition books.”

He munched on a handful. “I’ll have to thank your father. After we walk to the mine.”

A familiar screech drew Darcy’s attention upward. A dozen
white, black and gray birds floated above them. “We won’t have very far to go, maybe one or two miles.”

“Impossible. The location of the stream, the terrain; it all indicates we’re here.” He pointed to the map.

“Then how do you explain the seagulls?”

Jack followed her outstretched arm. “What do gulls have to do with where we’re located?”

“Gulls mean we must be near the coast. Near Lake Superior.” As if to confirm her statement, a long low moan reached their ears. Darcy pushed to one knee. “A steam horn.”

“A ship’s horn.” Jack looked around. “That direction.” He pointed to the next ridge.

“Well, help me up.”

Instead, Jack scooped her into his arms. “Hold on tight.”

“You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Stop nagging.” But he was grinning.

She laughed, bouncing against his chest. They reached the top of the hill, and he stopped. She felt something release in him.

“What is it?”

He let her down, making sure she had her crutch for balance. There before them spread the deep blue of Lake Superior. Far below sat the mining settlement, smoke trailing from the shacks’ chimneys. A steamboat moored at the pier, taking on ore. The descent would be difficult, but they’d survive.

“We’re going home.” She positioned the crutch under her right arm, but before she could move he drew her close. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, something I should have done long ago. Give me your hand.”

She lifted her right hand.

“No, the other one.”

Darcy caught her breath. Her
left
hand.
Was he? Could it possibly be?
She started to tremble.

“Darcy Opal Shea, I know it’s lousy timing and I should have asked you sooner, but there’s no one else I want to spend my life loving.”

The spasms started the moment he used her full name and accelerated with each successive word.

He gazed deep into her eyes. “Will you fly with me across the Atlantic or to the North Pole or just to the next town? Will you navigate the rest of our lives?”

He wanted her to navigate. And not just aeroplanes but an entire life together. Her throat ached as she blinked back tears.

He steadied, his voice clear and true. “Will you share every takeoff and landing, no matter how many or few, for the rest of our lives? Will you marry me, Darcy?”

She couldn’t restrain the sobs any longer. They choked out of her punctuated by hiccups. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.”

Then he slipped a sapphire-studded band on her left ring finger. “My grandmother’s. She and my grandfather spent nearly fifty years together before he passed. Please wear this as a token of my love.”

“I will.” She touched it, feeling the power of fifty years of marriage. “It’s beautiful, Jack.”

“Understand that I want to marry you properly, in your church, if they will have me.”

“Of course, of course. Oh, Jack, we welcome you with open arms.” She hugged him close and thanked God for answering even the prayers she didn’t know to ask. Jack had made peace with God. They would walk forward in faith. God’s plan was truly more glorious than anything she could ever have imagined.

He pulled back a little, terribly serious. “And we will need your father’s blessing. I hope you’re willing to wait.”

Wait for Papa? Oh, dear.
What would he think of Jack
after this failed flight? Would he forbid their marriage? If so, how long before she convinced him? Darcy wanted to marry now, but Jack was adamant. She’d have to wait.