A Wilder Heart

by Loki Renard

  “I feel like he’s almost human,” Aster said thoughtfully. “I mean, I know he’s not a human obviously, but he’s just so opinionated.”

  Owen glanced at the bird and gave a little masculine shrug. “According to legend, these birds belong to the spirits of the forest. They might even be the spirits of the forest.”

  “You’re saying he could be more than a bird?”

  “Maybe,” Owen said. “Hopefully we don’t have to eat him.”

  “We’re not going to eat him!” Aster’s voice rose in a squawk, which prompted the tui to begin warbling and chirping as if in agreement.

  “Fine,” Owen said in tones that suggested he had never considered actually using the bird as a source of food anyway. “Then I guess it’s pork and berries for us. We might be able to fish later.”

  For a short time, it almost felt as though they weren’t fighting for survival. It felt as though they were on some exotic, survivor style holiday. It was Owen’s attitude that did it. He was impressively upbeat and calm about the whole situation. Aster got the distinct feeling that even if they were never rescued they would still be all right.

  The shelter took form over the course of the day, a triangular structure which was twice as long as Owen laying down and wide enough for them both to sit inside comfortably. There was space for storing food and the provisions Owen had managed to salvage. The opening faced toward the fire and there were even rudimentary windows, though they were more like vertical shutters, squares of wooden sticks bound together and hinged with flax ties, which, when pushed out, could be held up with smaller sticks to allow air to pass through. Owen was particularly proud of those.

  “That’ll do,” he said, nodding to himself.

  “That’s nice,” Aster agreed. “I wonder how it will hold up in the rain?”

  “We can try daubing the outside with mud if it doesn’t, but I think thatching it with as much plant material as possible will do the trick,” he said. “And this is just our first one. We can make one much larger, with walls and perhaps a door.”

  “How long do you think we’re going to be here?” Aster half-laughed the question.

  “Hopefully not long enough for me to build a mansion,” he said with a wink to her. “But it’s good to keep busy.”

  It was good to be busy. The day had passed quite quickly while they worked and though Aster’s fingers were red and sore from the task of plaiting and weaving, she was pleased with her efforts.

  They took their meager possessions into the interior of the hut and sat inside it, looking out at the clearing and the fire.

  “This is sort of cozy,” Aster said, leaning into Owen, who wrapped his arm around her shoulders and held her close.

  “It is,” he agreed, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Tomorrow, we’re going to get some more water from the stream. We’ll have to boil it up, and we’ll have a hangi with the rest of the meat. We need to look for some roots too.”

  “Wait, what’s a hangi?”

  “It’s how the Maori people cook food underground. You heat rocks in the fire and then you bury the hot rocks with the food, splash water on the rocks to create steam then bury it all. It cooks over several hours, slow roasting. It’s delicious.”

  “You cook it in the ground?”

  “You cook it on hot rocks,” he said. “There’s no fire, so it doesn’t burn.”

  “You know everything,” she said, amazed at how good he was at the business of staying alive.

  “It is my job to make sure I know how to keep people alive,” Owen said. “And in New Zealand, the traditional ways are pretty solid. In any country, the traditional ways are pretty solid, come to think of it. When you don’t have technology to rely on, you have to go old school.”

  “Which suits you, because you never became new school anyway,” Aster teased, smilingly. “You’re like a man out of time anyway.”

  “A man out of time?” He gave her a sideways look. “Is that what you think?”

  “Mmm hmm. With your old fashioned ideas about everything...”

  “I have some very old fashioned ideas for your bottom,” he agreed. “In fact, I think right now would be a good time for a little lesson.”

  Aster pulled away and gave him a look of horror. “A lesson of what? I worked hard all day!”

  “You did,” he agreed. “And that’s why you need a good butt warming.”

  “That makes literally no sense!”

  “If the only time you get to go over my lap is when you’re naughty, you might start to miss it and misbehave on purpose. We can’t have that now, can we?”

  “But—”

  “No buts now,” Owen said, patting his lap. “Over you go, young lady.”

  Aster did not want to go over. She hadn’t done anything to deserve a spanking and truth be told, Owen’s easy domination made her feel as if she had perhaps not been putting up enough of a fight of late. Instead of laying herself over his lap like a demure little lamb, Aster decided to demonstrate her independence. She got up, and she ran.

  “Hey! Get back here, brat!” There was a hint of amusement in his tone, and a lot of it in Aster’s giggle of reply.

  The dusk was fast falling and the moon had already risen. Owen gave chase as she gleefully dashed between trees in an attempt to escape the fate he had decided for her.

  “Aster!” Owen boomed, no longer sounding amused. “Stop bloody running or you’ll break your damn neck!”

  That seemed like an overreaction – until she tripped over a stray root and ended up tumbling into the leaf litter of the forest floor. She came up spluttering bits of dead dried leaves. Owen was on her in an instant, of course, his tall frame looming over her.

  “See,” he said, helping her to stand. “This is what happens when you try to escape what’s coming to you.”

  As luck, or perhaps fate would have it, there was a fallen tree nearby, covered in moss and lichen. Owen sat on it and pulled her over his lap, yanking her jeans down as he went. They were not as tight as they had been the day she first put them on, repetitive wear had made them stretch enough that all it took was one hard tug from his hand and they came down, along with her panties, leaving her backside bared. He started spanking her with no further warning, his hand clapping against her cheeks in a fast tattoo that left her breathless and squealing.

  “Owen! Cut it out!”

  “Nope,” he said. “Now you’ve gone and actually earned a spanking.”

  Every stroke of his hand brought with it sting and heat, which grew and grew until Aster felt as though her bottom must look like the hot charcoal in the fire. What had started off as a playful reminder had turned into something seriously uncomfortable. She drummed her toes against the forest floor, her legs flailing as she tried to work some of the heat out that way. It didn’t work. Owen kept searing it in with slap after slap, her whole bottom consumed by his palm.

  “Owen!” she cried his name again, much more plaintively this time. “That really hurts! You’re seriously beating me and I just fell out of the sky two days ago!”

  “Almost four days ago,” he said, pausing to rub her bottom instead of spank it. “And you’ve barely got a scratch on you from that. Scientists are going to study you when this is over.”

  “You’re not hurt either,” she pointed out. “We were both lucky.”

  “Lucky isn’t the word for it,” Owen said. “The forest caught you. We’re lucky we crashed in such dense woods.”

  “The pilot wasn’t so lucky,” Aster said somberly. She could not think of their escape from death without thinking about the fact that one of their number had not been so lucky.

  “No,” Owen agreed. “He wasn’t.”

  “That could have been either of us.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It could.”

  A little shiver went through Aster. What was it that separated the lucky from the dead? Was it pure chance? The random throw of the cosmic dice? Any other explanation seemed perverse.

&nb
sp; “I don’t understand,” she said, her voice shaking as she was overwhelmed with sadness and guilt. “Why him? Why not us? Why... just why?”

  Owen smoothed his hand over her hot bottom and up along her back and then back down again. “There are so many whys in life,” he said. “And a lot of them aren’t fair at all. I think we just have to mourn the ones we lose and be grateful for whatever mercies fate grants us.”

  “Fate is fucked up,” Aster sniffed.

  “Yes,” Owen agreed again. “It is.”

  She closed her eyes and let hot tears run slowly down her cheeks. She was so tired, so emotionally wrung out that she could do nothing but stay in place and let Owen massage her bottom and back. Eventually, he began spanking her again, this time much more lightly. Aster had no objection, she was just happy to feel the rhythmic tapping against her bottom, a reminder that she was still part of the world, no matter how strange the world now was.

  Slowly, she began to relax. She and Owen were alive. She had to be grateful for that. Being anything other than grateful was unthinkable. She stretched out, pointing her toes as she let out a little sigh of newfound contentment.

  “Better?”

  “Much,” Aster said. Owen had been right. She had been in need of a spanking. It had brought out the tumult of emotions brewing beneath her skin and given release to them. Now she felt peaceful. Stretched out along the log, she felt a deep sense of calm. She felt... a tickling over her fingers.

  With her bare bottom still raised to the moonlight, Aster opened her eyes and screamed at the top of her lungs. This was followed by a violent scrambling backwards, her red cheeks bouncing as she pointed at the monster that was crawling along the log.

  It was an insect, if insects could be giants. It was vaguely like a grasshopper, but much, much larger, with great plated ridges running along its back terminating in a long black spike. On either side of that rose two hind legs barbed with spurs. It was longer than Aster’s hand, and two great antennae twitched back and forth in the night breeze. Beneath those, huge mandibles were hung menacingly, curved scimitar mouthparts.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “That is a weta,” Owen said, not moving from where he sat, even as the monster insect crawled toward him. “It’s harmless.”

  “That is not harmless.”

  “Well it’s not going to attack you. If you try to eat it, it might kick you.”

  The notion of eating the insect made Aster shiver with disgust. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said, taking shelter in Owen’s arms and simultaneously pulling him away from the beast. “Look at it!”

  “They weigh about 50 grams,” Owen said. “Same weight as a candy bar and full of protein.”

  “If you eat it, I will gag,” Aster declared. “That is... oh, my god I want to go home!”

  Hot tears started to flow down her cheeks. The fright of seeing the insect, combined with the heat of her bottom and a sudden longing for a world where giant insectoid beasts didn’t loom out of nowhere made her thoroughly distraught. She could no longer pretend that all was well, or that she and Owen were on a camping trip.

  Her meltdown was complete and thoroughly incoherent. She sobbed against his chest, her shoulders shaking and her knees becoming weak as emotion flooded through her. Owen held her close, his arms wrapped tightly around her fragile frame.

  “I’m going to get you home,” he murmured in her ear. “I promise. You just have to give it a little more time. This is an adventure, Aster. And adventures are hard, and uncomfortable and sometimes they hurt a lot, but this is going to come to an end soon.”

  There was no real reason to believe him. He couldn’t possibly know whether or not they would be rescued. There had been no helicopters or planes to speak of. There had not been any sign of searchers of any kind.

  “Why haven’t they come looking yet?” She sobbed the question against his chest.

  “I was thinking, if there was something wrong with the helicopter, there may have been something wrong with the navigation. We might be quite a way off the usual course for those flights. But that doesn’t mean they won’t find us,” Owen said. “If they don’t find us, we will find them. Hell, if we have to walk back to civilization, we will.”

  There was a determined gravel in his tone that made her tears dry. He was so entirely determined she couldn’t imagine him failing in his aim. What he said, she believed and most of her fears were chased back into the shadows from where they had come.

  “You come from a line of thousands upon thousands of survivors,” he said. “Humans make it, Aster. We’re going to make it too. So don’t you worry.”

  She tried not to worry, but when she looked back the weta was still there, being a relic of a time long gone by. Everything about this place was primordial in nature. Just looking around at the ferns and the trees and the odd creatures that called this slice of history home, Aster felt as though she’d gone back to the dawn of time.

  “What if the helicopter fell out of time?”

  “What?” Owen rumbled the question down at her.

  “What if it’s not even 2015 anymore? What if it’s... just 15?”

  “You mean you think we’ve time traveled?”

  “I don’t know what’s happened to us,” Aster said tearfully. “But nothing feels right. Even the bugs are wrong.”

  “Do you know what wetas are?”

  “Scary.”

  “Apart from that,” Owen said. “They’re just big grasshoppers, that’s all. And there’s no need to be scared of a grasshopper, is there?”

  “That is not a fucking grasshopper,” Aster swore. “That is a grasshopper on some serious steroids. That is a grasshopper that fell into a radioactive vat and turned into a super grasshopper. That is the superman of grasshoppers...” as she belted various hyperbole out, Aster began to find the creature a little less frightening than it had been at first. In certain ways, it was actually very cool.

  Morepork...

  More pork...

  A voice cooed out of the forest, frightening her all over again.

  “Someone’s here,” she whispered. “And it wants our food.”

  Owen let out a hearty laugh. “No, that’s an owl.”

  More pork... More pork...

  How does it know we have pig meat?”

  “It doesn’t,” Owen chuckled. “That’s just the call they make. They’re called moreporks because they sound like they’re demanding more pork.”

  A second later, there was a beating of wings and a flurry of motion on the log and in an instant, the weta was gone.

  “Well. You don’t have to worry about him anymore,” Owen said. “He just became dinner.” He patted her bottom, still bare and gave her a light swat. “I think we should finish our business by the fire.”

  “Finish it! But—”

  “No buts,” he said. “Not until I’m done with yours.”

  He could be so goofy sometimes, but there in the middle of the forest it was reassuring. He bent down and scooped her up over his shoulder, carrying her back to the safety of camp and the fire. Aster did not put up any kind of a fight, she was glad to feel the strength of his body under her, happy to be swept away by the man who was the only thing standing between her and the frightening forces of nature.

  Chapter Nine

  A week went by. Seven more days making ten in total and there was absolutely no sign of a search happening. In that time Aster’s bruises more or less healed and she found herself in good shape. A diet largely consisting of meat and a few roots that Owen said were edible was taking its toll on her digestive system, but aside from that she was quite pleased with how well they had survived. The terror of imminent demise had melted away as Owen continued to find food in the most unlikely places.

  There was, however, no sign of rescue whatsoever. They had not so much as heard a plane, or spotted a speck of a search helicopter in the distance. Each and every day Aster scanned the skies as Owen fan
ned the flames of the fire, adding green leaves to create a smoke signal. They were often stymied by low cloud that settled all around them, wrapping them in a blanket of fog through which no smoke signal could ever be seen.

  “What are we going to do?” Aster finally asked. “How long are we going to sit and wait?”

  It was a question that made Owen’s eyes become serious. “We may need to move to a spot where they will find us more easily. Usually they say you stay with the wreckage, but if they can’t find the wreckage, then we have to find them.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “It means either somewhere high, or somewhere open,” he said. “Like a riverbed. I don’t like the idea of going somewhere high where we’ll be exposed to the elements. And I don’t like the riverbed either because we’ll be subject to flooding.”

  “Nature sucks,” Aster announced profoundly.

  “I suppose the thing to do is to try to move toward flight paths,” Owen said. “Though we could wait another week or so here, see if they show up.” He scratched at his chin, where a beard was beginning to establish itself quite fully. Living rough made men look better. Aster was not faring as well. Her hair was greasy and she desperately needed a bath.

  “Let’s move toward a river,” she said. “I want to clean myself properly and wash my clothes.”

  “Moving is a risk.”

  “Staying is a risk,” Aster said. “We can always come back if it doesn’t work out, right?”

  “We need to scout out the terrain,” he said. “I’ve not found the main river yet. I don’t know if there is one. The stream we’ve been getting our water from could easily run to the sea.”