Savage Cinderella

by PJ Sharon

  She touched his cheek and traced her fingers over his ear, smiling as she smoothed a curl into place. She reached into the leather pouch hanging from her belt and handed him a small tin. “It’s burdock salve. Use it on your cuts and scrapes and they will heal more quickly.”

  He took the gift and stepped back, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to leave her if he stood too close. "I’d like to come back and visit you again." Relief swept through him when her face lit up and she nodded.

  She tilted her chin to the sun, which was slowly dropping into the west behind the trees. To the east, a sliver of the pale moon sat above the tree line like a crooked smile on the face of the cloudless blue sky. "I’ll meet you here at midday after the moon has shown its full face. Can you find this trail again?"

  "I’ll find you," he said with certainty and resolve. Unable to stop himself, he stepped closer and took her in his arms. He held her there, thankful for the small grace that she had neither flinched nor pulled away when he approached her uninvited.

  “I don’t think I remembered to thank you for saving me. I don’t know what would have become of me if you hadn’t come to my rescue.” He forced a smile past the aching in his chest as he loosened his hold on her. “I want you to have this.” He lifted the chain from around his neck and slipped it over her head. It was the only thing he had to give her, and he wanted her to have it. Maybe it would protect her or give her some comfort. “This was a present from my grandfather on my graduation day—a Saint Christopher’s medal. “It’s for the protection of travelers.”

  She looked down at the small medal and up into his eyes with an expression of confusion and pain he didn’t understand. She grabbed at the chain and pulled it back off, shoving it into his hand as she stepped away and turned her back. “I can’t wear that. It would mean...” She stopped in mid-sentence.

  When she turned back, Brinn's cheeks were moist with tears. "Good-bye, Justin." She looked away and then took off at a run. She faded into the forest, even as he called after her.

  Chapter 9

  Finding Brinn

  The verdant forest thinned as Justin made his way to a cleared trail that finally ended at the ranger station. The rangers had searched for him, but after the heavy rain had found nothing but his backpack. By the third day they assumed he had met with a tragic end and were amazed by his good condition as he limped in after dark.

  He said nothing about Brinn or her tiny cabin hidden in the high wilderness region beyond the state park. He told them only that he had found shelter under a rock overhang until his ankle was healed enough to support his weight. Reminding him how lucky he was, they officially called off the search and a ranger drove him to a hospital in Atlanta, just to have an x-ray done of his foot and to be sure he suffered no ill effects from his ordeal. His BMW, he was told, had been towed to impound. He called his friend Cody to pick him up at the hospital.

  By the time he retrieved his car and reached home, all he wanted to do was take a long, hot shower and sleep for a day or two. He pressed the play button on his answering machine. There were six messages from his mother, three from Cody, and fourteen from Charlene. He let out a tired sigh and retreated to the shower.

  He returned calls and briefly related the story of his adventure, which included nothing about his encounter with Brinn. Exhausted, he settled into the warmth of his own bed and slept, dreaming of falling, of dancing bears, and of waking with the slender body of the wild girl wrapped in his arms.

  ∞∞∞

  Justin returned to work at the magazine the next morning, thankful it was Thursday and almost the end of a very long week. Greeted with a swarm of smiling faces, he was bombarded with questions and hugs of relief from coworkers. Charlene dragged him bodily into her office, closed the blinds, and threw her arms around his neck.

  "Oh, God, I thought I'd lost you. You have no idea how worried I've been. I knew something like this would happen. You never listen to me. You should have let me come with you, or taken Cody. Why don't you at least get a dog to take with you on these reckless mountain treks of yours?" Her tirade continued for another minute or two before he finally put up his hands in surrender.

  "Okay, okay, already. I get it. You were worried, but I'm fine, see?" He waved a hand over his body, dismissing the crutches he’d been issued at the hospital. He smiled amiably at the woman, whose face flushed with the excitement of his return. Charlene had fair skin, which turned instantly red and blotchy when she was upset or excited, a color that matched her hair perfectly. The auburn curls were swept back in a fashionable style and held up by a decorative barrette studded with shiny, colored stones. Her dark eye makeup accentuated her green eyes and she was undeniably pretty, but Justin couldn't help but compare her tight skirt, voluptuous curves, and made-up beauty to the earthy, natural glow of the girl he'd just met. Somehow, he found the overbearing redhead lacking.

  "Tell me every harrowing detail of your experience. Did you get lots of pictures?"

  "Sorry to say, I lost my camera when I fell down the mountain. As well as my cell phone,” he added. “I wasn't in any shape to worry about it at the time."

  "That's a shame; the pictures would have added a lot to the story. But don't worry, the magazine will replace your camera and your phone, and I want a copy of the story, complete with all the gruesome details, on my desk by Monday. We'll run it in next week’s edition and then we can do a follow-up in a few weeks when you can make it back to the park to get some shots of where you were and how you survived." She eyed him suspiciously. "You look remarkably well for a man who just spent three days living on ferns and suffering a head injury and a broken ankle."

  Justin laughed, "It was only a sprain; and as you know, I have a very hard head. Fortunately, I found a shelter and ate fish and day lilies."

  Charlene's eyes widened with surprise. "I didn't know day lilies were edible. You never cease to amaze me, Sweetie-Pie." Justin flinched. Her deep southern drawl was as exaggerated as the rest of her charms and as annoying as nails on a chalkboard.

  "If you get hungry enough, anything is edible.” Justin ignored the compliment and term of endearment and continued, “I just got lucky, I guess. Nothing I ate was poisonous. I figured as long as I stayed away from mushrooms and berries I couldn't identify, I'd be safe enough." He hated lying to Charlene, but he owed it to Brinn to keep her secret, at least until he figured out what her story was.

  He remembered looking through Brinn's books and talking with her about how she learned the hard way as a child what was good to eat and what had made her terribly ill. She’d told him about a bad incident involving some berries from a Virginia Creeper. She’d explained that her friend Abby, whom she spoke of only a few times in passing, had found some books on edible plants of the Southeast and taught her about planting and gardening, putting an end to Brinn's suffering for her ignorance. She also discovered that by watching what the animals ate, she could be relatively certain that any plants or roots that were safe for them would be okay for her to eat as well. It wasn’t foolproof, but nothing had killed her yet.

  Charlene broke through his reverie and threw her arms around his neck again, pressing the fullness of her revealing cleavage against his chest with intent. "Why are you smiling like that, Handsome?"

  Justin tensed, but returned the embrace, hugging past her warm cheek and giving her a firm squeeze. "I'm just feeling lucky to be alive, I guess." He rested his hands on her hips and gently pushed her away.

  Charlene was complicated. He was fond of her, and at one time, thought maybe that he even loved her. He’d been drawn to the fact that she was a few years older and more experienced than he was. They had journalism school in common and the sex was good—not that he had anything else to compare it to. It was his first and only serious relationship. But their careers had collided when she took the job as managing editor of the magazine he was working for, and the relationship had taken a dive. He refused to sleep with the boss, and she couldn't give up the perfect car
eer opportunity for the sake of a relationship.

  If it was up to her, they would still be sleeping together and she would still be bossing him around the next day. Justin decided his infatuation with her had worn off with the novelty of the experience. It seemed most of the women he’d tried to date were only looking for a fast car and a fat wallet. He didn’t want to be that for anybody.

  Since taking the job, his career had been his only focus. Not that he had big plans for fortune or fame, but he wanted the freedom to photograph and write what he wanted. For that privilege, he had to be the best, and he had to make a name for himself.

  Financial independence had the added benefit of making it clear to his father that he wouldn’t be caving in to the pressure of following in his footsteps. There was nothing about a career in corporate law that appealed to Justin. Power and wealth meant very little to him considering the mess his father had made of their family in the name of material comforts and rising to the top. Luckily, Justin’s trust fund from his grandfather had allowed him to break away from his family problems when he went off to college. Even more fortunate was that Gramps had paved a way for Justin’s mom to leave the ruins of a violent and destructive marriage.

  His grandfather’s forethought had saved Justin a lot of grief and given him a good start. He’d paid for school, bought the Beemer, and settled into a nice condo in downtown Atlanta on Grandfather’s dime. Making his own way now was up to him. Thoughts of his grandfather reminded him of the Saint Christopher’s medal he had given to Brinn. The girl’s odd reaction and powerful emotional response had him frowning.

  "Let me get to work on my story. I'll have something for you to look at by the end of the day tomorrow." Justin extricated himself from the clutches of his boss and headed to his desk to start writing.

  But the words wouldn't come. He couldn't possibly make up anything that would be nearly close to or as interesting as the truth, and he couldn't stop thinking about the reality of what had actually happened. Brinn was like some mystical creature that transcended reality—a feral child grown into a young woman. Her survival in the mountains was beyond miraculous. As much as he admired her strength, her tenacity, and her obvious iron will, his heart still ached at the thought of her alone on the mountain, facing a life of fear and desolation. Her story was too important not to tell.

  It was a story that could write his ticket as a photojournalist—if he was willing to go back on his word. He’d reluctantly promised Brinn that he wouldn't tell anyone about her. The terror in her expression and her extreme physical response to the idea of being discovered seemed disproportionate to the threat—unless whoever hurt her found out where she was. And why was she so freaked out about the police?

  Whatever her story was, the fear in her eyes overrode any argument he had. Finding out the truth about her identity was his first order of business. Without pictures, and only a first name to go on, he really had nothing to tell anyway.

  Justin drew a folded paper from his back pocket. Other than a small tin of burdock salve, it was the only evidence he had that Brinn even existed. He’d dropped off the tin to a buddy at the crime lab that morning and asked him to ID any fingerprints. It couldn’t hurt to check if she was in the system. He unfolded the square and flattened it on his desk, discreetly looking around to make sure no one else was watching. Brinn’s self-portrait lay before him, the charcoal smudged at the creases. Her forlorn expression and the deep sadness in her eyes called out to him as she peered into the still water.

  Writing her story could only help her, right? It would free her from her lonely existence. She would be better off in the world. But how would someone like her take to being a celebrity? If he wrote about her, every nut job paparazzo would comb the hills looking for her and she’d never be truly free. There would be nowhere she could hide from whatever she was afraid of.

  He released a sigh of resignation as he remembered a lesson learned from his grandfather when he was a teenager on the verge of trouble: honesty and dependability will get you further in life than ambition. Being that his own father wasn’t what he would call honest or dependable, but most definitely ambitious, Justin had stubbornly held, instead, to his grandfather’s credo.

  He wanted more than anything to believe he could be a better man than his father. Loyalty and self-respect—traits his father lacked—meant everything to him. Those traits, he was finding, were often at odds with his chosen profession. For now, his career would have to take a back seat to doing the right thing. Brinn’s future was in his hands. Her best interests had to be his first priority. He stared at the blank page before him. Who was she, where had she come from, and what was he going to do to help her?

  Unable to fill the blank page before him and losing focus on the task at hand, Justin surfed the web for clues. He had access to government databases, police records, and old newspaper reports that most people had no idea how to find. Research was one of his strengths. He guessed her age to be around eighteen. He couldn't be certain and Brinn didn't know. She hadn't told him much at all about her past and couldn't or wouldn't tell him how she'd come to be on the mountain—just that she had been there for about eight years.

  Justin’s heart ached with sadness as he thought about the life she’d lived over those eight years. She measured time by counting the winters she'd survived. The Georgia mountain climate was fairly temperate and didn't get much colder than the thirties or forties even in winter, but the higher altitudes with unexpected snowstorms, heavy rainfall, and precipitous winds must have been a brutal existence for a small child. It could only have been by luck, the grace of God, and her own sheer force of will that she had survived at all.

  When Justin had questioned Brinn about her family, she became sullen. “My mother and father are dead and no one else would ever want me after...” She had refused to finish and whatever she could not say haunted Justin, confirming to him more than ever that she needed his help. An uncomfortable twist of his insides made him wonder whether he would be able to protect her from whomever she was afraid of. That is, if he could convince her to come down from the mountain.

  It didn’t take him long, searching through archives and news clippings, missing persons’ reports and death notices, when his attention was captured by an article in the Atlanta Times from ten years earlier, reporting a missing girl. Her name was Briana Hathaway, the only child of then-Senator John Hathaway and his wife, Dr. Shannon Hathaway. They reported their daughter missing from Piedmont Park on August 28th.

  The words blurred and Justin's eyes focused only on the picture of the little girl. The teardrop-shaped face, the full-lipped smile, and the wide, gently angled eyes that stared out to him from the page were undeniably that of a much younger, chubbier, Brinn. She had long, straight, shiny black hair and held a teddy bear in the picture. Justin smiled at the little girl on the screen before him. "Hello, Briana Hathaway. It's nice to meet you. Now, let's see what really happened to your parents."

  Chapter 10

  Old Friends and New

  Brinn made her way into town. The full-day hike had her breathing heavy by the time she reached the alleyway of the General Store. The sun had dipped below the horizon an hour ago and she rushed to reach her destination before full-on darkness took over. Thursday wasn’t her regularly scheduled night to work, but Mr. Hoffman was used to the oddities of her comings and goings. He’d eventually stopped questioning her on much of anything since they’d come to know each other three summers before. It quickly became clear that trust and privacy were equally important to both of them. Brinn proved herself a hard and honest worker and the old man rewarded her with respect for her secrets and an open door policy that meant everything to her.

  It wasn’t long before Mr. Hoffman had set up an old cot in the store room for her twice monthly visits and allowed her to come and go as she pleased, a blessing on frigid winter nights or especially lonely times.

  She slid her pack from her shoulder and dug for her key. She would spend
the night in the comfort and warmth of the storeroom, the scent of old wood and bags of grain there to break the monotony of sleeping all alone in her musty cabin.

  The alley, with its smelly dumpster, reminded her of how different life was before meeting Mr. Hoffman. When he first found her scrounging through his trash, he tried to convince her that he wasn’t angry; he just wanted to help her. He said that his wife, Mary, would never forgive him if he allowed a child to go hungry or eat from the trash. When he explained that Mary had died back in the late nineties and that, after that, life seemed pointless, Brinn decided to take a chance. Maybe they had something to offer each other.

  With no children, and only a few distant relatives remaining, he seemed to have found in Brinn, a reason to go on. They were both on a first name basis with loneliness and both of them knew it was a hard friend to have. They’d been drawn together by the common bond of a broken heart and their relationship had turned into one of mutual respect and a deep friendship.

  In return for her help around the store, he agreed to let her take whatever supplies she needed. She chose carefully and took only small boxes of grains and dried fruits, items she could easily carry and that would last for some time. He always added an extra treat to her pack, shoving handfuls of sourballs or penny candy into the side pouch. "Every kid deserves a sweet treat now and again," he’d said, even as she argued that he'd given her enough already. Sometimes he would add a book from the shelf after catching her reading. He would smile at her ability to repeat interesting passages back to him.

  Unlike her attachment to the written word, her math skills left much to be desired. He taught her to take inventory as she stocked shelves, and spent extra time at first reminding her how to write her numbers and count accurately. To her credit, she caught on quickly and became proficient over time. As the years passed, she took on new responsibilities around the store. She organized the shelves, took over the inventory, and even handled filling out purchase orders.