by ReGi McClain
Seraph shrugged and handed over the pajamas. “He’ll survive.” She held up the towel to provide Harsha with farcical privacy that shielded her from a single viewpoint out of many.
Harsha’s teeth stopped chattering as she pulled on her pajamas, which also felt warm and cozy. “Thank you, Ms. Owens.”
“Call me Seraph.”
“Thank you, Seraph.”
“You’re welcome. Let’s head back to camp.”
The smell of cooking fish met Harsha’s nostrils before the camp came into view. Her legs picked up the pace of their own accord, following her nose to the food. She paused when she saw Zeeb bending over a camp stove. The tent she had slept in all afternoon, his tent, hung from a tree limb.
Seraph whispered, “Don’t worry. He’s not angry with you.” She nudged Harsha.
Harsha moved forward with the push. Zeeb glanced over his shoulder, smiling. “Good timing. Your fish is done.” He held out a plate and indicated a small blanket spread near the fire.
Feeling awkward, she accepted the plate and settled onto the blanket. “Thank you.”
Seraph sank down next to her while Zeeb sat facing them. Neither of them held plates of their own. Seraph fiddled with her wood pendant, turning it over and over in her hands, brushing her fingers over the dragon carved into the wood. Zeeb took out a knife, picked up a piece of wood, and started whittling.
Harsha looked back and forth between them. “You’re not eating?”
“We ate around six.” A thin curl of wood fell off Zeeb’s knife. “You slept for seven hours.”
Lying, wimpy, intrusive, lazy slob. Ashamed of the lousy first impression she’d made, and too embarrassed to apologize at the moment, Harsha focused on eating. She slipped a bite of fish into her mouth. Not the most elegant meal, but the sauce of hunger worked wonders. Her stomach demanded more. Resigned to the loss of her dignity, she shoveled the food down her throat.
Zeeb chuckled and passed her a napkin. “Funny how a day on the trail works up an appetite, isn’t it?”
She accepted the napkin, mmm’ing her agreement.
“We made you some cream of wheat for when you’re done with your fish,” Seraph added.
Zeeb reached behind him to pull a small pot off the fire. He placed it next to Harsha on the blanket. “I think we’ll need to call this home for a few days. Seraph or I will take you on hikes. We’ll gradually increase the weight of your pack and the distance until you build up some endurance. It took you almost six hours to go four miles and you needed more time to recover. We won’t find anything at that rate.”
Seraph and Zeeb continued to discuss training, asking Harsha for details about her medical condition to guide their decisions. She answered with as much accuracy as she felt necessary, leaving out certain preposterous details. When the sun eased toward the horizon, Seraph tsk’d at her watch. “It’s way past bedtime. Come on, Harsha. We’ll settle in while Zeeb gets himself ready. I recommend trying to fall asleep before him. If you’re not dead to the world by the time he starts snoring, you won’t get a wink of rest.”
Zeeb rolled his eyes. “You tell that to every single group we take out.”
“When one knows of danger, one is obliged to warn others.”
Harsha awoke sore, stiff, and miserable. The sole good point in waking up, she felt, lay in finding herself alone in the tent. Outside, someone moved about, but inside, she savored the relative privacy as the one thing remotely like a luxury available to her at the moment. She oozed out of her sleeping bag, coaxing her muscles to obey. She wanted to collapse back onto it but felt obliged to make an appearance among the living, lest her tour guides leave her for dead.
As soon as she forced herself out of the tent and into the daylight, Seraph, radiating energy as brilliant as her coppery hair, handed her a bowl of oatmeal. “We saved some breakfast for you. I’m sorry it’s cold. Most of our clients have a mania for getting up early, but after the trouble you had yesterday, I should’ve known you’d want to sleep in. If you’re up for it, we’ll do a mile or two without the backpack after you eat.”
Up for it? Is she kidding? This is a terrible idea. I should go back to Kauai and sleep for the rest of the summer. “Okay.” Harsha sat on the ground near the tiny cooking fire, heedless of the dirt rubbing into the backside of her jeans.
She took her time choking down the gelatinous clumps of bland slop, grateful for the minutes it delayed her training. While she chewed, she took in her surroundings. Zeeb must have set up his tent while she slept, because two miniature tents nestled in a space too small to be called a clearing but big enough to allow the small fire. Evergreens mingled with deciduous trees, packed close together so the sunlight filtered through the leaves in patches of varying brightness. Ferns, fallen leaves, fungi, and shrubs crowded the undergrowth. The creek she’d bathed in the night before burbled somewhere off to her right.
Seraph sat with her back to a tree, reading a thick book and looking engrossed. Her lips moved from time to time, as if she spoke the words in whispers to herself.
Harsha looked around for Zeeb but didn’t see him. “Where’s Zeeb?”
Seraph looked up from her book. “Hmm? Oh, Zeeb. He’s gone scouting.”
“Scouting?”
“For evidence of faerie activity in the vicinity. “
“Oh.”
Seraph’s words gave Harsha a sinking feeling in her gut. The guide’s ability to state the ridiculous with complete seriousness made her question her own sanity for trusting this woman with her safety. It diminished her appetite, so she scarfed down the remaining bites before her stomach decided to reject food. Finished, she hauled herself to her feet. She suppressed groans on her way up but allowed herself a few whispered curses.
Seraph stood in one fluid, graceful, profanity-free movement. “Ready?”
“No.”
Laughing, Seraph hooked an arm through Harsha’s. “Come on. It’s not so bad. We’ll ditch the pack and take it easy today. Look. Do you see those mushrooms? They’re called puffballs, but the Latin name is Lycoperdon , which means wolf’s fart .”
Seraph prattled on while they strolled, pointing out and elucidating upon the species of plants they passed or animals they heard. Early in the one-sided conversation, she mentioned that talking reduced the chance of a bear attack. It made no sense to Harsha, but she wouldn’t dare argue the point with a wilderness guide. From time to time a tidbit of information found its sticky way to her brain. Most of the time, she focused on hiking without whining and let Seraph’s babble flow in one ear and out the other with no stops between.
With each step, the stiffness in Harsha’s muscles worked itself out, whereas the soreness worsened. The complaints she shoved to the back of her mind kept returning, bringing buddies with them whenever they showed up. At this rate, Harsha feared the worst for her no-complaining policy. It looked doomed to a miserable, vociferous death.
In a miniscule clearing, about the time Harsha felt the complaints battering her resolve into smithereens, Seraph paused to lead her through a series of stretches. Seraph moved into a lunge, drawing Harsha’s eye to the ankle-length skirt she wore. It struck Harsha as bizarre and took her mind off her discomfort.
“You wear skirts when you camp?”
“Yes.”
An image of herself falling through the log, this time with no barrier between her legs and the sundry ickies of the rotten wood, flitted through Harsha’s mind.
“Isn’t that sort of impractical?” As soon as she said it, she clamped her teeth together, mortified by the social blunder. Lying, wimpy, intrusive, lazy , critical slob .
“I’m more comfortable in skirts. I wear more than one layer.”
“Oh.” That sounded even more uncomfortable than hiking in a single skirt, although the skirts stretched with Seraph to keep her legs covered. Harsha kept the thought to herself. She switched legs to stretch on the other side and bit back the moan that wanted to escape as her calf muscles squealed in p
rotest.
Seraph watched her with a pitying expression. “Just hold it where you feel the stretch.”
They moved from one stretch into the next, Seraph like a dancer, Harsha like an aging couch potato. Harsha kept her teeth clenched tight at first. She gave up when Seraph demonstrated a beautiful split and spent the rest of the routine mumbling curse words until Seraph interrupted.
“Do you mind if I ask a personal question?”
Harsha used her attempt to copy Seraph’s amazing feat of flexibility as an excuse to release the groan the question provoked. After her breach of courtesy, and in light of the fact she and her tour guides planned to spend three months in near-constant company, she felt it fair to allow some laxity where professionalism required distance, but she loathed the thought of answering any questions about why she came on the trip.
“You can ask.”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Seraph looked at the ground between her legs and swiveled her ankles, “but you’re spending a lot of money on a slim chance. You don’t look old enough to be a retiree with cash to blow and a midlife crisis to slake. How’d you make your money? Real estate? I hear real estate makes money fast.”
Harsha laughed with relief. Money, she enjoyed talking about, though she feared her tour guides’ low opinions of her would never recover after she revealed her secret. “I own a rental property, and my job pays eighty thousand a year, and I do well in the stock market, but I made most of my money counting cards in Las Vegas.”
Seraph brought her feet together and pressed her knees into the dirt. “You mean, cheating at blackjack?” Her face wore an expression which looked as if she felt torn between admiration and disapproval.
“Essentially.” Harsha understood why so many people disliked the idea of gambling, let alone cheating at gambling, but she refused to let other people’s opinions on the matter bother her. It paid for college and doctors and lifted her and Jason out of poverty.
“That’s…”
Reprehensible? Now she’s afraid she’s accepted ill-gotten gains. Lying, wimpy, intrusive, lazy, critical, thieving, gambling, cheating slob.
“Effective. Come on. Let’s keep going.”
Not a hint of condemnation or apprehension touched Seraph’s tone. Harsha followed her, puzzled by her mild reaction. She told few people about her days in Vegas because few people understood the desperation that led to her actions. Fewer allowed it as justification. The conundrum distracted her until she twisted her ankle and switched her focus to setting her feet in safe places and pretending she didn’t mind being sore, achy, and exhausted for a hopeless cause.
About the time her mind wandered toward the hell theory, she realized Seraph had led her in a circle back to their own camp.
“I’m taking a nap.”
As she ducked under the tent flap—after double-checking she chose the right tent this time—the lower front edge of the tent caught her foot and she tripped. Instead of resisting the fall, she aimed her body for her sleeping bag. Her left knee found a pointy rock hidden beneath the tent before she landed flat on her face. Her knee throbbed, her muscles screamed, and her nose ached in testimony to the laws of gravity and inertia. To top it off, a tension headache promising to be a doozy chomped at the base of her skull.
Yup. Jason was right to laugh . She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to make it all go away.
Harsha needed to wake up. She loathed the idea. Her eyes told her to keep them shut and her muscles felt wearier than when she awoke in the hospital after the Rice Clinic, but she needed to wake up. Or else.
Shivering, she realized she had never been as cold as she was now, not when she lived in Chicago, not when she bathed in the glacial stream. She rolled to the side, unzipped her sleeping bag, rolled into it, and rezipped. Seraph slept nearby, her breath smooth, slow, and even. She radiated warmth. Harsha shuffled her sleeping bag as close as she dared, her bones thirsty for the spare body heat her guide offered.
“Cold?”
Embarrassed to be caught, Harsha mumbled an affirmative, “mm-hmm.”
Seraph shifted a couple inches nearer
Harsha stared at the redhead, unsure how to react until the chill convinced her to appreciate the gesture without questioning it. She hadn’t slept near another woman since the death of her sister. A rush of memories of herself as a little girl jumping from her bed to Ami’s to avoid touching the ground in case of monsters brought a smile to her face. After a few minutes, she fell into a peaceful slumber filled with happy, childish dreams.
Chapter 8
The next day started like the day before, with Harsha easing her muscles into wakefulness and crawling out of the tent feeling like a slab of pounded meat. While her oatmeal cooked, she commandeered the kettle to sneak in a cup of tea before the day’s torture session began.
“Your tea smells nice. What kind is it?”
Harsha looked up from her cup. “Hmm?”
Seraph indicated Harsha’s cup. “Your tea. It smells nice.”
“Oh. Thanks. I blend it myself.”
“Really?” Seraph sounded impressed.
Harsha nodded, amused. Mixing a few herbs and spices together took little skill, but it amazed people. “Mm-hmm. Would you like to try some?”
Seraph accepted the offer and, before long, drained a cup of her own. “Mmm… yummy.” She stood up, put away the tea things, and held out a hand for Harsha. “It reminds me of a tea Nanny used to make.”
Harsha grasped Seraph’s hand and used it to leverage herself to her feet. Seraph held steady with Harsha’s pulling. “You had a nanny?” Images of Mary Poppins and Fran playing with a miniature Seraph popped into her head. She caught herself before she smirked.
“Actually, my mother did, but Nanny still lives with my grandmother and helped raise me.”
Interesting . Prior to her father’s abandonment, Harsha lived a solid middle-class life. After he left, her mother, often too sick to work or needed at home to care for Ami, found it difficult to make ends meet. The family slipped into poverty. Harsha went to work the moment the law allowed and never looked back or regretted the lost years of childhood, but she often wondered how it would feel to grow up rich, with freedom to spend time with friends or catch a movie on the weekends.
“It must have been nice to have three people to care for you.”
“Yes. I was quite a handful, they tell me. I don’t remember being much trouble watch out for the cow parsnip! It can give you blisters. I don’t remember being much trouble, but my mother assures me I made their lives difficult for several years.”
Harsha shuffled around a chest-high bush of dinner-plate-sized leaves. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“Several half-siblings, but they all left home before I came along. I don’t know any of them.”
This struck Harsha as a tragedy, but saying so seemed rude and talking about her own siblings seemed insensitive, so she looked around for a flower she liked to ask the name of it.
Before she could find one, Seraph went on. “My grandmother lives in Ireland. Two of my brothers live there, but I’ve never met them. Mom moved us here when I was past the destructive phase, as she put it.”
The thought of growing up in Ireland piqued Harsha’s interest and offered her a release from what she felt to be an awkward discussion of siblings. “What part of Ireland are you from?”
“Not too far outside Dublin. Well, not by Alaskan standards. I’ve gathered from some of our clients not everyone considers a four-hour drive a reasonable distance to go for groceries.”
Four hours! That’s insane . “Why did your mother want to move from Ireland to Alaska? Was it to get away from big cities?” After living in Chicago and Vegas, the move to Waimea had caused some culture shock, but Harsha soon learned to appreciate the nuances of a small town.
“The weather, actually, but getting away from big cities is a perk.”
The weather. Harsha thought for sure that was what she’d heard. She ma
ssaged her ears for a few seconds, then asked, “I’m sorry, did you say the weather?” She didn’t say ‘the weather.’ I know she didn’t say the weather. I heard wrong. She’s going to laugh and give me a reasonable explanation.
“Yes. She feels most at home in ice and snow.”
Harsha shivered, the mere thought of living somewhere to enjoy the cold sending a chill down her spine and raising goose bumps along her arms. This confirms my faulty-DNA theory.
Seraph chuckled. “It’s not so bad if you’re used to it.”
Harsha shook her head in solemn denial. “Not for me, and I grew up in Chicago.”
“And now you’re in Alaska,” Seraph pointed out, with a hint of amusement. “And on a faerie hunt. I know Tom referred you to us, but I don’t understand the connection. He’s never sent us a patient before. Did Zeeb’s dad come up or something?”
“Zeeb’s dad?”
“He’s a doctor. Tom was his mentor.”
“Oh. I, um…”
Nausea hit her full force. No wonder her doctor sent her on a wild goose chase. He saw an opportunity to help out his friend’s kid by using a gullible patient, and she fell for it.
Harsha scrambled around her brain, looking for some plausible, non-accusatory excuse for this fiasco. “I might have mentioned something about a faerie godmother making me all better.” That sounds plausible, right? Given you lead sasquatch tours . “He took me seriously and I was overdue for a vacation, so I went with it.” That sounds utterly lame.
Seraph’s face held the mild, steady smile Harsha plastered on her own face when a client or potential investor made an outrageous statement. “Well, it’s great to have you. We’ll do our best to help you find what you’re looking for.” Seraph spoke the words with the well-schooled neutrality of someone with enough business sense to know not to insult a client.
Harsha acknowledged the vague compliment with a wave of her hand and pointed out a flower to change the subject. “What’s that one called?”
