The middle aged man with silver haired yelled “Girl, get back here!”
Connor caught the sight of Sarah running away, almost as if her life depended on it. She stopped by the trees and then turned around to look at him, and at no one else, to smile, but it was her that eyes said ‘I’m trying to protect you, Connor.’ She turned away and burst through the tree line of her property.
The silver haired man turned sharply and went back inside his house and he staggered in. “Drunk? Great she has a drunkard she has to live with.”
Kara grabbed Connor’s attention “What was that about?”
“I’m not sure, but I don’t like it. I’d better get you inside, Sis.” He answered her while feeling unsure and worried for his teacher.
“I trust your instincts, Brother.” She said in the same tense manner, while looking worried herself. Kara got up and out of the wagon and went inside. Connor quickly put the wagon in the garage, and sat down on the front step, waiting for Sarah to come back. Looking up to the sky, he noticed how the clouds were moving and building. “If Sarah doesn’t come home in three hours I’m going to track her down to see that she is alright.” Looking up again he said to himself. “If she doesn’t, it’s going to rain in about six hours.” It was time to be patient and wait. Not something many were good at, but he excelled.
Three and a half hours went by and it began getting very dark and the clouds were building just as predicted. Connor hadn’t moved from the front step since he saw Sarah flee into the woods. The front door slowly opened up behind him. Light flooded from the living room all around where he sat on the porch step, looking like a large black rock with sandy blonde hair. Kara stepped around and into his line of sight to say “Brother? You’re worried about her huh?”
Replying to her question felt easy. “Yes, Kara, I am very worried.”
Kara kicked his shin gently saying “Go track her down then! You’re the best there is and she is probably lost if she hasn’t come back by now. This isn’t the city, Brother, there are animals out here capable of making a snack out of someone like her. I’ll be fine.” His sister wanted him to go.
Before he took off after Sarah, Connor called Mark’s apartment quickly, knowing it was his night off. “Hey Bud, I have to go do something. Will you come over to my house and keep an eye on Kara for me while I’m gone? Our neighbor drinks and it wouldn’t be good for my sister to be home alone.” And Mark seriously replied “Sure, no problem. Just inform me on what’s going on later, ok?” Connor said that it is more than fair.
He hung up the phone and Kara felt thankful for calling Mark over. She didn’t think of the neighbor while he ran into the woods alone. Connor then put on the outdoor hiking boots again, knowing the terrain isn’t the best and can be treacherous at the best of times, especially at night made everything worse. He still wore his black long sleeves and black pants and there wasn’t time to change into a new pair of clothes.
Walking into the garage, Connor grabbed Kara’s poncho from her bag and stuffed it into his pocket. He also walked over to his work bench and grabbed Tool. It is an outdoorsman’s necessity. It is a tool that has a hammer on one side and a sharp hatchet on the other. It is made of solid metal as is its shaft. Sliding the shaft of Tool into his pants belt loop, he thought. “I hope that I don’t need this, but just in case I’d better keep it close. Thank goodness I sharpened it last night and…” Connor looked into the bleak and cloudy sky becoming more engorged once again and thought “I need to get going before it’s too late and her tracks wash away.”
Finally he was off. Connor raced silently across his own yard, crossed the road and ran to the exact spot where he last saw Sarah in just a few moments. When he found where the leaves of a tree had broken from someone violently pushing through, he took off following her footprints as quickly as he could without losing her trail.
He stopped.
Suddenly he realized a few things after only a few yards. With a quick glance over his shoulder he realized that none could have witnesses how her trail she left behind altered so dramatically. Her strides became too far apart for her legs to be running normally, especially for a girl her size. She was also barely leaving a trail unlike your average person. Then he noticed a seriously big problem. She ran off barefooted, “Not Good!” he said to himself and quickened his pace instead of admiring her running technique.
He started sprinting beside her unique tracks and thought “Nope, she is defiantly no amateur. No wonder why I had a suspicion about how she walked earlier in class.” He smiled to himself, ready to take on her challenge.
Sarah didn’t stick to game trails like average people; she cut through brush that would make weaker people cringe, and without barely disturbing the foliage. She ran on top of rocks and tree roots instead of dirt and grass, limiting her impact while trying to hide her trail from any who would follow. Connor knew it was her because the rocks were pressed down into the dirt by something approximately Sarah’s weight, making the soil rise slightly up the sides of the small objects that were traversed upon. She avoided tree branches that would snap and reveal her presence. She clearly was an expert on avoiding being found, that is for certain.
Connor stopped suddenly when he found a perfect casting of her right footprint in the dirt after several miles of searching. It was pressed deep and most of the pressure of her foot had been placed over the ball instead of the heel. Her footprint announced that she had jumped, and powerfully at that. Looking forward, he noticed a thicket of dense ferns and saw that not one stem or leaf had been recently disturbed in weeks. Nearby tree limbs also remained mostly undisturbed, but some smaller twigs were snapped, all pointing in the same direction. She proved to be very good at avoiding a normal tracker, but normal wasn’t applied to Connor. He followed the trajectory that her foot pointed for her jump. He found where she landed on both feet. She had jumped well over fifteen feet, heavily, and easily cleared the thicket without much of trace. Those broken twigs also told that she had jumped that high as well.
Darkness grew until becoming pitch black because the fat clouds were still building and the clouds began hiding the full moon, plunging the night even darker. “Little does Sara know I can track during a new moon as well as well as I can during the daylight hours.” Connor’s eyesight and hearing had always been sharp and acute and his mom always said his genes were the best.
He began running again, following her the faint trail of footprints the rest of the way as safely in the darkness as he dared. Rushing would only serve to harm the rescue and she didn’t allow herself to be found, even after that impressive jump.
After thirty more minutes of solid running and tracking, he felt that same comforting sensation on the back of his neck again. Connor’s instinct told him Sarah was nearby.
A faint orange glow in the trees broke the curtain of darkness just a few moments later, confirming his instinct right once again. He knew that she had a fire going. “Thank goodness you’re ok Sarah.” He finally stepped closer to the fire and to Sarah, very quietly so as to be absolutely certain.