Chapter 16
Way to Start a Brouhaha…
Gideon trailed after me once I put my tray away. Two someone elses had dish duty, and I didn’t feel guilty over that. (The group was following the camp’s former traditions by bussing their own tables, much to my continued bemusement.) A great many pairs of eyes tracked us as we went out the double doors in the front of the cafeteria. I paused to allow Gideon to catch up.
The temperature felt like it was in the low sixties, and the sun was starting to plummet. I wrapped my arms around my body and waited. Gideon took a breath and said, “Let’s take a walk.” He motioned with his hand. “It’ll keep us warm enough.” We moved around the building that housed the cafeteria and the kitchen and went through a copse of thick redwoods. The campground was situated in the thickest part of the national forest. The land had been privately owned before the national forest had been established.
Privately I thought it was a wonderful place. Although I had never gone to camp, hiking had been my dad’s mainstay, and I had been dragged along for the walk. Most of the time I hadn’t minded, but I always fussed as if I had. Thinking about my father made me glower, so I clenched my lips together and tried to think of nothing at all.
There were trails everywhere around the campground. A few had wood burned signs indicating where they led. One path said it was the Bluff Trail – 2 miles. Another said it was the Hill Trail – 5 miles. A third stated it was the Orick Trail – 8 miles. Gideon pointed at that one and said, “If you ever need to go to town, that one goes to the nearest small town. You have to ford Redwood Creek, which can be tricky if the water level is up, but it’s doable.”
We passed someone coming in to eat. It was one of the men I didn’t know who did periodic guard duty near the highway. “Hi,” Gideon said. “Gibby made a great chicken dish. Also peas, and can you believe it? Peach cobbler.”
The man smacked his lips in appreciation. He said reverently as he went past, “That woman sure can cook.”
“What difference does it make if I know what trail goes where?” I asked, more sullenly than I would have liked. People at the camp probably thought it was my permanent expression.
Gideon studied the forest before us and made the turn onto the Bluff Trail. I followed without exception. “It doesn’t matter to me,” he said precisely. “I think it matters to you. It’s an escape route for you. It parallels the highway, comes close sometimes, but it’ll keep you off the main road. If you should have to go, you might have an easier time on the trail rather than the road.”
I hesitated. Well color me easy-to-read. Resident obsessed teenager. “Where are we going?”
“Up on the bluff,” Gideon answered straightforwardly. “It’s got a great view. I want to show you something.”
Okay. I followed along slowly because I wasn’t as chipper as I was pretending to be. Gideon set a mellow pace, and before long, we were going up a gradual incline. I had to stop halfway to the top, and Gideon didn’t mind waiting as I huffed and puffed.
“The lung’s still healing,” he said. I looked up at him and silently cursed his younger, healthier, non-injured body.
“Been talking to Sinclair?” I panted.
“Got his permission to bring you up here,” Gideon grinned at me. He looked like a cheerful fifteen-year-old boy. Red hair like the color of carrots. He had blue eyes, and that didn’t seem right to me. A boy with hair that red should have had green eyes. His shoulders were broad, and he had yet to fill into a man’s body. He was about five inches taller than I was, and I thought that he wasn’t done growing yet.
When we finally made it to the top, I was delighted, i.e. mucho relieved, to see a bench that had been made from fallen logs. It was parked in the middle of a clearing that looked out over the Redwood Forest and over the Pacific Ocean at the end of the trail. Gideon said, “You should sit before you fall down.”
I grimaced at him and sat before he became correct. I didn’t think a little hill and a meager two miles would have bothered me that much, but I had been sedentary and sick for too many days. Gideon stood beside me and looked out to the west. “Look,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”
I struggled for my breath and scanned the forest before us. I finally settled on what appeared to be a trail through the great trees. I didn’t get it at first, but I craned my neck for a closer view. The size and width of the trail was contrary to the size of the redwood forest. “Did something make that trail?” I asked warily. “Something really, really big?”
“They’re like a mix between an elephant and a brachiosaurus,” Gideon said wryly. “Kind of, anyway. Apparently, they migrate through the forest to the sea. They made that trail, and look, there’s a few of them.”
Faintly, I heard the crunching and thumping of distant large creatures. They followed their ready-made trail and headed toward the ocean. All I could see were the gray humps and the heads as they bobbed up and down. They were a little too distant for me to make out details. I could see their oversized ears and a long tail that stretched far back. They appeared to be several times bigger than any elephant I’ve ever seen. It was one for the notebook. “Vegetarians?” I asked hopefully.
“Herbivores,” Gideon confirmed. “Grass, trees, leaves. Lucky for the redwoods there aren’t very many of them. They head for the grassy plains of the coastal ranges to eat. Then they migrate back to the ocean.”
“What, they sleep in the ocean?”
“The islands there,” Gideon pointed. “They swim out there every day and swim back in the morning like clockwork.” The shapes were faint in the distant lights. The sun just barely silhouetted their forms.
I frowned. “I don’t remember California having islands up here.”
“They didn’t,” Gideon said solemnly. “They weren’t here before the change.”
“Sweet,” I muttered, awestricken. What was next? Dragons? “They hang out on the island? And what do you call them?”
“I haven’t been over there,” Gideon said regretfully. “Big Mamas is the going phrase for them. It’s still open for debate.”
I took a minute to tell Gideon about the big green fish thing we’d seen up the coast, AKA Big Green. “I don’t think going out in a boat is a good idea,” I added.
Gideon shrugged. “Maybe not. Why did you want to talk to me?”
“Take down your signs,” I said vehemently. I wasn’t going to pull any punches. Based on Gideon’s reaction, he knew exactly what I was talking about.
“What makes you think he hasn’t already seen a sign?”
“I don’t know that he hasn’t,” I said, frustrated with Gideon’s perceptiveness. “But the Burned Man is dangerous. He’s a threat to your people. Think about it, Gideon. He won’t come in here and cut your throats in the night. He’ll set a fire one day when the wind is blowing fiercely to the south. He’ll wait until the forest is dry from lack of rain. He’ll set it, and he’ll laugh when he does it.”
“Lightning starts fires every season, Sophie,” Gideon said gently. “It’s one of the risks we have by living here.”
I nearly groaned. “If you destroy the signs, he might not be able to find this place.”
“I sent two people to replace the sign you burned down,” Gideon said almost idly.
I stood straight up and measured myself against him. “Have you lost your mind?”
“There are others out there who are looking for something,” Gideon told me compassionately. “They need other people, too. They need people like us. They have to have a way of finding us.”
I wanted to chew something just so my teeth had something to grind upon. “I realize that,” I said. “But you’ve given an open invitation to this…freak show. This man wanted to carve my lungs from my body. What makes you think you can stop him from killing people here?”
“You stopped him,” he said calmly.
“I broke his jaw with my foot, Gideon, not because I knew what to do, but because I got lucky,” I told him coolly. “I took a bite
out of his arm the size of a walnut. If I hadn’t hit an artery, I’m not sure if he would have stopped. You, Zach, and Kara would have just found a big red stain on the highway and nothing else.”
That got a slight reaction out of Gideon. His body jerked. He knew exactly how close I had come to dying. “How did you know he would be there?” he asked deliberately.
My mouth snapped shut.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you instead. You had a hunch. Something in your mind told you he’d be there and that you had to hold him back somehow. Maybe you thought that burning the sign would do the trick. He wouldn’t find the invitation and wouldn’t be able to track you.”
There was a distant roar from the Big Mamas. It was a trumpeting sound that reverberated around us. It made me think of being cast into a time machine that had taken me back to the age of dinosaurs. I guess the Grimm brothers missed the Big Mamas.
“Am I correct?” he asked.
I sat back down on the log seat. The sun had completed its descent and all that was left were orange and pink clouds. “Not exactly,” I said.
Gideon seemed surprised. I guessed he thought he had all the answers. “Where am I wrong?”
“I didn’t go there to stop him. I went to save Zach,” the words were out of my mouth before I could help myself. I could have thrown myself on the ground in mute aggravation when I realized what I had done. If my mouth was any larger, they would name it after a president and have tours.
Gideon considered my words. “But Zach didn’t go because you drugged him and Kara.” He looked back toward the ocean and smiled slightly. “And you didn’t tell Zach why.”
I shook my head.
“He’s angry with you, and you won’t tell him?” Gideon asked incredulously. He reached up to stroke his chin. “Puzzling. Why wouldn’t you tell him?”
I knew that Gideon wasn’t asking me the question. He was asking himself instead.
“We’ve had a few people come in who didn’t warm up to the others right away,” Gideon said quietly. “Like you. You’re the longest shutout, however. You like to stay by yourself. You talk to Kara and that’s about it. Sometimes you talk to Sinclair. Thad tries hard with you. Elan’s got his claws into you, too. Despite that, when you talk about our group, you don’t use the word ‘our.’ You use ‘your’ and ‘you’ve.’ I think it’s something to do with being isolated for so long.”
“It wasn’t that long,” I inserted rapidly, wanting him to stop his wretched psychoanalysis.
“And the first person you run into isn’t someone like me or Kara or Zach, but a crazed maniac intent on killing you,” he went on evenly.
“I think he’s of the cannibal persuasion,” I put in, sarcastic now.
“Killing you and eating you.” He rubbed his chin some more. “Must have scared the holy living crud out of you. I think I’d still be having nightmares.”
“I didn’t mean to wake them up,” I said regretfully, referring to my cabin mates.
“They didn’t complain,” Gideon told me.
My big mouth. Big. Big. Biggest.
“And you’ve never talked about how you woke up the morning after the change,” Gideon went on. “People have asked, but you’ve avoided it and deftly, too.”
“I have talked about it,” I said sourly. “And I don’t feel like talking about it more.”
“Kara said you were with your father on a hiking trip,” Gideon said kindly. “Alone in the mountains in Oregon.”
Kara’s got a bigger mouth that I do. Huh. For a woman who didn’t want to get in the middle of Zach and I having power struggles, she didn’t mind starting a little something-something on the side. Must be a side effect from not having daytime television to watch anymore.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” I said sharply. I stood up again. “And let’s get off this bluff before its pitch-black. I can’t see in the dark.”
“We won’t need to see in the dark,” Gideon said. He smiled as the horde of firefly pixies came over the side of the bluff and began to circle us avidly. They buzzed and whirled and chattered joyfully at me, and I smiled even though I didn’t feel like smiling. Several even jittered happily at Gideon.
They lit the way for us, and Gideon didn’t rub it in. As we walked the trail, he hummed Jingle Bells all the way down to the camp.
When I got to the camp it didn’t take any little coaxing to get one of the pixies to land on Elan’s arm. They did it as if they had been doing it for years. The broad-faced sappy grin on the kid’s face was worth a million bucks, or in this case, a bowl of vanilla ice cream.
And when I looked up Gideon was smiling knowingly at me.
Jerkinstein.