Chapter Twenty
Reg awoke to birds and other sounds of the wild around her. She moved around slowly, expecting to find herself in her sleeping bag, but she didn’t seem to have one. Had she been sleepwalking? Or had something happened?
She encountered something soft and warm beside her and snuggled closer. There was nothing like cuddling with a cat in the sleepy hours of the morning, as long as the cat would stay put. Starlight always got up and wanted to be fed before Reg was ready to be up and around.
Realizing it wasn’t Starlight next to her despite the feline aura nearby, Reg blinked her eyes open and forced herself to look around. She saw the trees overhead, heard the water, and felt the springy ground beneath her. But no sleeping bag. And the cat was much larger than her tuxedo cat.
Reg drew back from the sleeping panther, half afraid and half astonished. She had apparently stayed with the panther until she could no longer walk any farther, and then had lain down and gone to sleep, the cat settling in and keeping watch over her throughout the night.
The cat stretched out his very long body and gave a wide yawn. He turned his head to look at Reg with his bright golden eyes.
“Thank you,” Reg breathed. She couldn’t believe what he had done for her. She sat up and looked around. Now that she was no longer trying to escape, she was able to keep her mind calm enough to sense her surroundings and to try to establish herself in space. Where exactly was she and where did she want to go to find her companions or a way back home?
She had a vague sense of where she was in the park, but she didn’t know the park well enough from the cartoonish maps she had looked at to know what was close by and what direction she should go in.
The cat’s head whipped around suddenly, and Reg followed his gaze to see what he had seen or heard. There was a shape back in the trees. A tall man, cloaked, moving slowly and carefully from one tree to the next. Reg stared at him. Could it be the wizard? How ironic would it be for her to find him while she was lost, unable to help either of them get home?
The panther got to his feet. He was watching the shape but didn’t seem threatened, only curious.
Reg stretched and massaged her arms and legs and then stood up as well.
“Hello? Can you help me?”
The figure froze, then started to move away from her. Reg jogged toward him, not wanting to be left behind. “Excuse me? I don’t want to bother you, but I wonder if you could help me out, just for a minute.”
The figure glanced over his shoulder once, then finally stopped, waiting for her. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help,” he said in a male voice, cultured, with an accent—maybe French or New Orleans?
“Please. I don’t mean to impose, but if you could just point me in the direction of the nearest settlement. I just need to find my way to civilization.”
“There is nowhere near here.”
“There must be something. Or if you have a phone or a boat. Anything, please, I need to make contact with my friends and get out of here.”
He looked over his shoulder again, then finally conceded to turn and face her, letting Reg get a better look at him.
Not the wrinkled old wizard that Reg had expected. A very tall man, his face nearly covered by long reddish whiskers. A full beard and long hair. His eyes were dark and secretive. Someone who lived deep in the swamp and didn’t want to be bothered. He drew the cloak close around him as if he were hiding from her.
“I don’t have a phone.”
“Then how do you get ahold of anyone? There must be some way to get a message out. Please. I can’t just wander around here.”
“Where did you get the cat?”
Reg looked down at the panther, who was following her, just a couple of steps behind. “Oh… uh… we kind of made friends last night. He’s been helping me out.”
The man looked at the cat. “Why did you bring her here?”
Reg laughed. But the hairy man continued to look at the panther as if expecting an answer. The cat tilted its head, looking at him. Reg could not have put words to the communication that was exchanged between the two of them, but the cat imparted feelings and memories from the last couple of days. Reg was surprised to realize that the cat had been there when Tybalt took her. She had been communing with him, the fire in her hands, when Tybalt had managed to sneak up behind her and to knock her out, or whatever it was he had done to overcome her.
He had followed her and Tybalt all the way back to his lair and had waited and watched to see what would happen. Reg stroked his head and scratched behind his ears, the way Starlight liked her to.
“Thank you. If you hadn’t been there… I don’t know what would have happened. He might have killed me.”
The panther reminded her of her ferocious battle with Tybalt in the water. He thought she would eventually have been the winner of that contest.
Reg was glad that she hadn’t had to find out. Fighting a life or death battle was not how she had planned to spend her trip to the Everglades.
The tall, hairy man scratched his head, looking at Reg. “I supposed you’d better come with me.”
“Thank you.”
He turned and started to walk away from Reg. She followed at a bit of a run, feeling like a toddler trying to keep up with an adult. The tall man looked back at her and slowed. Reg looked back at the panther, and he continued to trail them, though getting farther and farther away, until she lost sight of him, somewhere in the trees. He might be up above them, following her from the trees as he had when Tybalt had captured her, but she didn’t think he was. She could no longer sense him close by.
“You can communicate with cats?” She tried to start a conversation with the man, who seemed to be content to walk in silence. After her run-in with Tybalt, Reg wasn’t going to make assumptions about him like she had about Tybalt. She wanted to find out everything she could about him, even if he thought her questions were rude.
The man’s head bobbed. “Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
He didn’t answer for a while. Then finally, he told her, “Etienne.”
“Etienne.” Reg repeated it. “My name is Reg. For Regina. Is that French?”
“Yes, it comes from the French.”
“Are you French? You have an accent.”
“I am not. Some of my people came from there generations ago. But we keep to ourselves, so we have not fully… integrated.”
Reg had known other insular populations that had retained their original language and accents, so that made sense to her. She looked up at the tall, cloaked man, trying to determine what she could from his body and manner of dress. It was hard for her to be sure of anything with the cloak around him. It disguised his shape and covered most of his body, leaving only his heavily whiskered face visible.
“Have your people lived in the Everglades long? Or did you move here by yourself?” She was assuming that he was native to the swamp and not just a tourist like Reg. He seemed at home there, and he had talked to the panther.
“We have been here for many years. I was born here.”
“Cool. So you must know the park very well.”
“Park?”
“The Everglades. It’s a national park.” Maybe he didn’t know that. He might not have any communication with the outside world. If he didn’t even have a phone, how would he know about what was going on in the world around him? And what would it matter to him if they named it a park or not? It was to his benefit, protecting the natural habitat he lived in, but that didn’t mean that he was one of the people who had lobbied to have it declared a protected area.
“That will cause more people to come here?”
“Uh, no, I don’t think you need to worry about that. It was declared a park years ago.”
He nodded. “Good.”
“You didn’t know that? You don’t have much contact with… visitors?”
“No.” Etienne’s head turned in her direction briefly. “I try to avoid contact.”
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“Sorry. Getting kidnapped by a swamp goblin wasn’t really in my plans.”
“Then you should not have talked to him.”
Reg shrugged. “Well… I guess. But he might have stalked and kidnapped me anyway.”
“Goblins usually seek out victims they enjoyed talking with.”
“Oh.” Reg blew out her breath. So, talking to someone she didn’t know was a goblin could be a problem. And what was she doing? Talking to someone else she didn’t know. She had no idea whether her companion were just a tall, wild-looking man, or whether he might have powers or an agenda she couldn’t fathom. She probed his mind, trying to do it gently so as not to tip him off. He made a woofing sound and shook his head. He looked in her direction again.
“I did not invite you in.”
Reg’s face warmed. She did know that it was rude to try to read him without his permission. But she was in sort of a difficult situation. Of course, if she asked him, he would say that he didn’t have any evil intentions toward her. He hadn’t even wanted her to go with him. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t turn on her and try to shove her into his oven, like the witch in a fairy tale.
“I am not a witch,” Etienne said with a growl.
“Now, who is reading minds without permission?”
“You reached out to me.”
“I suppose.” Reg looked for some sign of a settlement or the man’s house. How far away were they? She hoped she didn’t have to hike several miles through the swamp to get wherever he was taking her. And she hoped that there was a way to make contact with civilization once she did. She wasn’t sure she would be able to. He said he didn’t have a phone. How else was she supposed to get a message to Corvin and Damon if they were still alive and looking for her? Or how was she supposed to find her way back to civilization by herself if they were not there to help her?
“Not much farther,” Etienne assured her. “I was just gathering some breakfast.”
With his cloak wrapped around him, she couldn’t see what he might be carrying. What did a giant gather for breakfast? Nuts and berries? Birds? Bunnies? Larger prey that happened to stumble into his parlor?
Eventually, they reached a small house. The boards were gray and aging. It looked like it had been there for a hundred years or more and might just collapse at any minute. Reg hesitated when he opened the thin board door and gestured for her to enter. Was she going to be trapped? What would happen to her inside?
She hoped that he didn’t have shelves full of human skulls like Tybalt.
Chapter Twenty-One
The house was dimly lit by the sunlight making its way through the cracks of the walls and under the roof. Reg looked around. No skulls.
There were some animal parts—a fur rug in front of the fireplace, a couple of trophy heads and taxidermied swamp animals that looked like they had been there gathering dust for many years. Etienne nodded to each of them as if he were greeting old friends. And maybe that’s what they were—his only friends.
Reg rubbed her arms and looked around. It was cooler in the house than it was outside, and she had a sudden chill. Etienne moved over to a rough plank table and set a satchel onto it. Reg watched as he unbuckled it and started to remove mushrooms, moss, and other lumps that she couldn’t identify. Some kind of root? Fungus? This was breakfast. No birds or bunnies. Nothing to be worried about, unless they were to whet his appetite before a main course of psychic wandering in the swamp.
Etienne turned his head toward her slightly. “I prefer not to eat flesh.”
“Okay. Good.”
She watched his hands as he sorted through his breakfast. They were thick and covered with hair. She had seen men with hair growing thickly down the backs of their hands and knuckles before, but never one with as much as Etienne.
He washed the mushrooms, moss, and some of the other lumps in a bowl of water, and then put them into a frying pan on top of his stove. In a few minutes, he had the fire roaring, filling the room with waves of heat, and the food in the frying pan began to sizzle.
Reg watched the fire, mesmerized, feeling it pulling at the fire within her. She tried to resist it and to think of other things. Davin was her firecasting mentor and had told her that she was not yet practiced enough to play with fire on her own. She had probably done more than he would have liked the night before, using the fire to light her way, and then letting it get away from her in anger to knock down Tybalt. He had deserved it, of course. And Reg couldn’t help it if he had made her react instinctively in self-defense. That wasn’t her fault.
Etienne looked in her direction, then closed the front of the stove so that she could no longer see the fire. That was probably for the best. As it grew warmer, he fingered the edges of his cloak. It was warm enough that he didn’t need it on indoors. He was ready to take it off, but she could see he was hesitant.
“What is it?” Reg asked.
“I am not the same as you.”
“No,” Reg agreed with some amusement. “You’re different from me in a lot of ways.”
“You will be frightened.”
“I won’t. What’s wrong, are you… scarred or deformed? I won’t scream or run away.”
“I am different.”
“Okay. It’s up to you whether you take it off or not. Do you want me to… look away? Or shut myself in another room?”
He hadn’t invited her to any other rooms of the house, so she had stayed with him in the kitchen. There was a great room with heavy furniture grouped around the fireplace. And there were doorways to other rooms, probably bedrooms, along the side. She didn’t know if there was any kind of indoor plumbing. She assumed not, since she didn’t see any faucet or indoor pump in the kitchen.
Etienne considered this for a moment, then shook his head. The best thing for him to do was probably just to remove the cloak without ceremony and to expect Reg to be able to handle it. Prolonging it was just making her more curious and probably making him more anxious.
Reg walked into the great room and made a show of examining the trophies. If Etienne did not eat flesh, why hunt big game? For the sport? Or did they belong to some long-ago ancestor? Maybe someone who was not vegetarian.
She could hear Etienne moving around, and didn’t look at him. She continued to examine the trophies as if she were a connoisseur of taxidermy. Eventually, as she heard him pull the frying pan off the burner, she turned back toward the kitchen. The smell of the frying mushrooms and other vegetable matter was making her stomach growl. She couldn’t remember what she had eaten since lunch the day before at the Skunk Man Saloon.
She saw Etienne standing there, working over the food without his cloak on, and it all clicked into place.
It probably shouldn’t have taken her so long. She had been looking at the Bigfoot pictures in the restaurant’s menu just the day before, but it seemed like a very long time before.
“You’re the skunk man!”
“A skunk man,” he corrected. He shook his head grumpily. “Skunk man. Do I smell like a skunk to your sensitive nose?”
“No.” Reg was surprised. She took a sniff in his direction. She could smell musk, damp fur steaming dry close to the wood stove, and other swamp smells melding together, but they weren’t unpleasant. Rather like the smell of the ground after rainfall.
Etienne’s fur or body hair was a reddish-brown. He wore little clothing, already well-dressed in his fur coat, like any primate other than the bare-skinned humans. Just what was necessary for modesty and to carry about a couple of essential tools.
“Homo sapiens smell worse than other hominini,” Etienne told her. “Always trying to cover up their natural odors with store-bought scents.” He made a sniffling, sneezing sound and shook his head. “But then, it is hard for you to stay clean, with all of those clothes trapping the scents and oils.”
Hard to stay clean?
Reg had a sudden vision of Etienne sitting down and grooming himself like a cat and tried to suppress giggles. Etienne looked a
t her uncertainly. She didn’t know if he could see what she had pictured or whether he was wondering. Either way, she wasn’t about to explain herself. She looked at the food in the skillet, and the food still on the table, berries and a few other edible leaves and flowers. Her stomach growled loudly.
“Sit,” Etienne told her, motioning to a chair.
It was taller than a human’s chair. More like a bar stool. Reg felt childish boosting herself into it and letting her legs swing free, feet hanging above the floor. Etienne didn’t make any comment on it.
“Are you sure there is enough?” Reg asked. “I don’t want to eat your share. You must… get very hungry.” She stopped short of saying that he must eat a lot. A human might take that the wrong way. She didn’t know how a Bigfoot would feel about it.
“There is enough. I will gather more before dinner.”
Reg didn’t argue.
Etienne removed two large bowls from the cupboard and divided the hot food between them. He provided Reg with a knife and fork, and a larger set for himself. He muttered for a moment before he began to eat. Maybe a prayer or a blessing. Maybe just irritated by having a guest at breakfast.
Reg had no idea what the mosses and unidentifiable lumps would taste like, but their savory smell filled the little house, so she dug in. It was warm, hearty, and satisfying.
They both ate in silence for a while.
“It’s delicious,” Reg told Etienne. “You are a good cook.”
“We eat simply. We live simply.”
Looking at the rustic interior of the house, Reg had to agree. But he said it as if it were a good thing, something to be proud of, rather than sounding like he was being denied the finer things in life. As if he really did enjoy living the way he did.
The food was good, Reg had to admit that. But entertainment? As far as she could see, there was none. It would be a very boring life with no TV, telephone, internet, or other electronics.
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