Escape to the Mesa

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Escape to the Mesa Page 4

by StacyPlays

Seven

  “ALL RIGHT, WHO’S ready to have their picture taken?” Stacy said to the pack, standing at the hearth in the cave the following morning. Page began twirling in front of her, looking at the camera in Stacy’s hands as if it were a piece of meat.

  “Sorry, Page,” Stacy said. “This camera is not edible, and you do not need your picture taken.”

  She turned to the wolves, who were finishing their breakfast—fish, raw egg, and pumpkin.

  “Now I know it’s a risk to photograph all of you,” she began. “But it’s the best chance we have of saving the forest and keeping our home. And to make sure they don’t find our cave, I propose we take the photos in a part of the taiga we hardly ever go to. I was thinking the Forest of Perpetual Darkness.”

  All of the wolves’ ears perked up. Addison’s jaw dropped open, a piece of pumpkin falling back into her wooden bowl.

  The Forest of Perpetual Darkness was a particularly gloomy patch of the taiga biome, northwest of their cave. Stacy always got the impression the wolves were somewhat spooked by it, which was strange. She had never known her wolves to be afraid of anything. They had been there in July when they rescued a young moose, but they hadn’t been back since.

  Everest shook his head, a firm no.

  “I know you don’t like that part of the taiga,” Stacy said. “But that’s what makes it perfect. We shouldn’t go back there after the photos are seen, because that’s where people will be looking for you. After today, we’ll never go back there.”

  All of the wolves seemed to like the idea of never returning after this once. Everest and Addison exchanged glances and both nodded slowly in agreement. It was decided. They were going to the Forest of Perpetual Darkness.

  Stacy spent the rest of the morning trying to figure out how to take pictures on the camera. She had to be quick because she had no way to charge the camera should the battery run low. She taught herself how to focus the lens and take a picture and how to view the picture and delete it.

  They walked north for about an hour before veering a little west, where they began to climb into the low hills that lay at the edge of the dark forest.

  Stacy and the wolves had to walk much more slowly inside the dark forest. Their path was crowded with thick scrub oak trees they needed to climb through. Every few steps, they had to completely change direction to avoid a tangle of branches and brush. Progress was extremely slow, and an hour or so later, Stacy decided they’d gone in far enough. But just as she slowed to a stop, Everest and Addison quickened their pace.

  “Hold on,” Stacy called out. “I think this area will work fine!”

  Everest motioned for the group to keep going.

  “Ever,” Stacy said, slightly annoyed. “No one is going to be able to tell north from south in any photo we take here if you’re worried about someone tracking us back to our cave. But the scrub oak trees are a dead giveaway that we’re in the dark forest, and that big patch of podzol over there proves this is still in the taiga. It’s perfect. Let’s just take the pictures here so we can get home before it gets dark.”

  Relenting, Everest circled back to where Stacy was standing with the other wolves. He nudged her, hurrying her along.

  “Okay,” Stacy said, putting her arms around Wink and Noah as if they were a huddling sports team. “All of you need to be in the photo, because the more Arctic wolves there are, the better the chance they’ll want to protect the land as your habitat. So, spread out, but don’t go so far that you go out of the camera frame.”

  Wink and Noah ran off in front of Stacy and began digging in the soft podzol. Tucker and Basil both decided to lie down and rest. Stacy wasn’t sure if it was for the photos or if they were just tired from the journey there. Addison and Everest awkwardly stood side by side on Stacy’s left. They seemed restless and uneasy.

  “Back up, you two,” she said, waving them away from the lens. They each took a few steps back but maintained their strange posture.

  “It’s too posed,” Stacy said with one eye squinting into the camera viewfinder. “Act natural. Act like you’re a pack. Like you’re a pack of Arctic wolves just living your life in the taiga.”

  Stacy lifted her head above the camera and saw that all the wolves were staring blankly at her.

  “Right,” she said. “Okay, that was a dumb thing to say. Just be yourselves and don’t look at the camera.”

  Stacy peered back into the viewfinder and took a few photos.

  “Except Wink,” she called out. “Wink, I want you to look at me and do that winking thing with your eye so it’s clear that you’re the wolf from the original photo.”

  Stacy took about thirty photos, including some close-ups of the individual wolves, and then quickly turned the camera off to conserve the battery.

  “Okay, we got it!” she said triumphantly. “You all did amazing for your first photo shoot. Now let’s go home.”

  Later that night, Stacy sat in her rocking chair with Page on her lap, scrolling through the photos on the camera. She wanted to make sure the wolves looked like “wild” wolves in all of the pictures. She wasn’t sure yet how she planned to get the camera back to Jack; she still needed to figure that out.

  As she cycled through the photos, she stopped on one of Addison and Everest. Everest had a strange expression in this one, as if he was looking back at someone, or something, behind him. Of course, I should have directed some of them to look slightly nervous, since they’re supposed to look like they’re being spied on, not posing for the photos. Good thinking, Everest. But what was he looking at? Stacy zoomed in on the photo, particularly on a large tree in the distance that was covered with vines. There was something in the tree . . . it looked like . . .

  Stacy couldn’t believe it. It looked like a helicopter blade. What would a helicopter be doing in the forest?

  With a chill, she realized: Addison and Everest knew this was there and they didn’t tell me. Why?

  She thought about how quickly they’d agreed to stop instead of going farther into the forest, and how reluctant they’d been to go there in the first place. They’re hiding something from me, Stacy realized.

  “Oof, Addi,” Stacy said, startled, as Addison plopped a book on Stacy’s lap next to Page. “What’s this?”

  Stacy held the book up, an old atlas they’d salvaged from the dumpster behind the village library, and looked at the page it was open to. It was the last page of a section about the National Parks of the United States of America. Okay, I’m thinking Addison can definitely read. On the bottom of the page there was an address for the National Parks Service, as well as the U.S. Forest Service at the Department of Agriculture.

  “Addi, this is it!” Stacy said excitedly. “This address and book are probably older than me, but it’s worth a try.”

  She turned the camera over and ejected the memory card, like she’d seen tourists do in the past.

  “We’ll send this to the Forest Service, along with a letter about the wolves, and that way we don’t have to explain to Jack how we took the photos.” She felt bad about taking Jack’s memory card, but he had been hoping to get photos of the wolves for just this purpose anyway. If he knew, he would be glad to use his memory card for this.

  Page jumped down to the ground as Stacy stood up from her rocking chair and walked over to where she kept her journal and ink and quill. She turned to the back of the leather-bound journal and carefully tore out a page. Using the ink and quill, she scribbled a quick note about how the memory card contained photos of an Arctic wolf pack, along with the coordinates to the taiga, which she and Addison had deduced several summers ago from their world atlas.

  Stacy placed the memory card from the camera in the center of her note and folded the paper into an envelope, something she’d learned from an origami book she had in the cave. She addressed the envelope to the U.S. Forest Service c/o the Bureau of Federal Land Management. Next, she rummaged through an old ammo container she had filled with little odds and ends she’d colle
cted while walking in the forest over the years, searching for some postage for the letter.

  “I know I’ve found stamps before,” Stacy said, sifting through the layers of coins, fishing lures, lighters, and pocket knives. She glanced up from the container and something silver caught her eye, glinting from one of the shelves of her bookcase.

  It was the charm bracelet Everest had given her for her rescue day. Stacy picked it up, letting the chain run between her fingers, and looked at the charms. A horse, a helicopter, a book, the letter S, a mermaid. She twisted the little helicopter between two fingers. It made her think of the helicopter blade in the picture from the dark forest. Why did both those things give her a strange, hollow feeling in her chest, as if she had forgotten something very important?

  “Addi?” Stacy asked. “Do you know where Everest found this bracelet?” She looked down, but Addison was avoiding her eyes. Instead, the graceful wolf nosed at the ammo container.

  Stacy looked down again and saw what she had been looking for: an old roll of postcard stamps with little hummingbirds on them. She turned around to see Addison standing at her desk with her tongue out.

  “Why, thank you, Addi,” Stacy said, ripping a stamp from the roll and pressing it to Addison’s tongue and then onto the envelope. “We better add two, just in case.”

  It was Addison’s turn to patrol the ridge that night, which worked out perfectly. Under the cover of night, Stacy and Addison snuck into the village and mailed the letter.

  Stacy climbed on top of Addison so she could look down into the metal mailbox.

  “Looks like it fell to the bottom,” Stacy whispered to Addison, who was peering up at her inquisitively. “Fingers crossed this works.”

  Stacy carefully climbed off Addison and the two set off back toward the forest.

  “I should have included a name suggestion,” Stacy said as she and Addison slipped back into the trees. “Stacy’s Taiga.”

  Addison rolled her eyes and gave Stacy a playful nudge.

  “Oh, you don’t like that, girl?” Stacy said, wrapping her arms around Addison’s neck and hugging her as they walked. “Okay, let’s see . . .

  “Mount Stacy National Park . . .

  “Addison’s Acres . . .

  “Stacy and Addison’s National Forest . . .

  “Fine, Addison and Stacy’s National Forest.”

  Stacy’s voice disappeared into the sound of the swaying taiga trees that enveloped them as they made their way back to the cave by the light of the stars.

  Eight

  THE SUN WAS just beginning to peek through the mega spruce trees that surrounded their cave as Stacy set out the next morning. Stacy had told the wolves she was going to meet Addison as the wolf was coming off her patrol duty, but that was another lie. She was going to the Forest of Perpetual Darkness to look for the helicopter. If her wolves were hiding something from her, she wanted to know what it was.

  Without a wolf to ride, it took Stacy several hours to make her way back to the spot where they had taken the photos. The sun was directly overhead as Stacy entered the dark forest. She knew Addison would be back by now and the wolves would have discovered she and Addison had never met up. They might be looking for her right now. But she kept going. This felt like her only chance to find out the truth.

  Finally, Stacy pushed her way through a last tangle of brush and saw the wreckage in front of her. It looked like the skeleton of a helicopter. There had been a fire: the metal of the helicopter and the branches around it were charred and black. The glass was gone from the windows. She moved closer, examining it. The helicopter must have fallen through the trees, she realized—there were broken branches and felled trees beneath it—but it had been there long enough that more trees and bushes had grown over and around it.

  The front of the helicopter was crushed and blackened, but the back was almost whole. Stacy stepped up on a fallen log and peered in. Fire had destroyed the front seats, she saw at a glance. There were a few white bones among the ashes, and Stacy felt sick at the sight. Humans had died here.

  The back seat was still intact. There were the remains of a brightly colored book there, its pages pulpy and unreadable from the rains that had fallen since the helicopter had crashed. Beside it was a half-destroyed, moldy shape that Stacy recognized as a stuffed animal. A lamb, she thought, and she reached out a hand to touch it, leaning against the side of the helicopter. There was an alarming creak and the helicopter shifted. Stacy stepped back.

  There was something familiar about the stuffed lamb. Just like there was something familiar about the bracelet. The bracelet that Everest had brought her, without wanting to tell her where it came from.

  This is how I came to the forest, Stacy realized. She was sure of it. She looked again at the charred and crushed front of the helicopter. No one could have survived in there.

  My parents are dead.

  Stacy heard a branch break and spun around to see Basil, Everest, and Tucker.

  “Is this where you found me?” Stacy said, her eyes welling up with tears.

  Everest nodded solemnly while Basil hung her head. Tucker ran to Stacy and she threw her arms around him and sobbed into his chest.

  Stacy cried for a long time, her face buried in Tucker’s thick white fur. He made soft, comforting noises, licking the top of her head, while Basil and Everest pressed their cool noses against her cheeks.

  At last, she stopped crying. Her eyes felt sore and itchy, and she was dragging in long, harsh breaths. While she cried, hot anger had been rising inside her. Her pack had known where she had come from and they had tried to keep her away from the place where they had found her. They had known that her parents were dead.

  She sat back on her heels, pushing away from Tucker’s chest. Then she got to her feet without looking at any of her wolves. They tried to stand close beside her, but she turned away.

  “You should have shown me this sooner,” Stacy said, brushing past Everest so that she was ahead of the wolves.

  If Stacy had looked into Everest’s eyes, she would have been met with a sorrowful expression that said, I know. But she trudged past him and set off down the hill.

  They walked in silence all the way back to the cave.

  Nine

  BACK AT THE cave, Stacy walked right past Addison and Noah and took a seat in her rocking chair. She stayed there for the rest of the night.

  It was the first time she could ever remember not sleeping next to the wolves. And sleep did not come easy. Stacy might have blamed it on the hard wooden rocking chair—it was difficult to find a comfortable sleeping position—but she was also cycling through a whole range of emotions that kept her from falling asleep.

  She felt betrayed by her wolves and angry with Everest. But she was also relieved to finally know how she had wound up lost in the taiga and happy to know there was no one looking for her who would take her from her wolf family. The wolf family that didn’t tell me the truth, she thought, feeling furious at them all over again. She shifted in the chair and wiped one hand across her wet eyes.

  Most of all, Stacy was sad that her parents were dead. She hadn’t been abandoned in the woods, hadn’t wandered away from an absentminded mom and dad. Her parents had loved her.

  This both comforted Stacy and saddened her. She would never know them. Stacy cradled the small charm bracelet in her hand and pulled her arms into her shirt to stay warm. Page stretched out on her lap for the night and Wink curled up at her feet, his warm brown eyes looking up at her anxiously. Stacy knew she could never stay mad at Wink, and besides, he had been only a pup when Stacy had come to live with the wolves. He had been as clueless as Stacy about her origins.

  Morning eventually came and Stacy pried herself out of the sturdy rocking chair. She didn’t speak to the wolves like she normally would. Instead she silently fixed herself something to eat from the pantry and returned to her chair. Addison nudged her with a peace offering, a slice of pumpkin bread, but Stacy didn’t even look up fr
om the book she was reading. After a moment, Addison put the pumpkin bread beside her and walked away, her tail drooping sadly.

  Stacy bit her lip. Ignoring Addison was the cruelest thing she’d ever done to her. It wasn’t that Stacy wanted to give the wolves the silent treatment, but she honestly didn’t know what to say to them. Deep down she knew the wolves had only meant well, but it still felt like a betrayal. So she kept quiet, afraid of saying something she might regret.

  Usually at about this time, Stacy would be choosing a wolf to accompany her on whatever outing she had planned for that day, but she didn’t feel like going anywhere. So Stacy lost herself in a book instead, and didn’t even look up as Noah, Everest, and Basil set out to visit Droplet and Splat.

  Several hours passed and Stacy stayed completely immersed in her book. It was a long one, Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. Stacy had just reached the halfway point when Milo the bat swooped into the cave at breakneck speed. Page jumped off Stacy’s lap and ran out of the cave with all the wolves on her heels.

  Stacy quickly dog-eared the page of her book she was reading (there was no time to find a bookmark) and hurried after everyone else. She knew it must be an emergency rescue. Usually they would take the time to at least look at the map before leaving the cave so that Page could show them where they were headed. Stacy ran out of the cave into the clearing and gasped.

  “Noah!”

  Propped up against Everest was a very unsteady Noah. He took a wobbly step forward and then collapsed onto the ground. His eyes closed, and Stacy couldn’t tell if he was still breathing.

  “What happened to him?” Stacy yelled at Everest, breaking her silence as the alpha ran into the cave. And then she saw it. Sticking out of Noah’s shoulder was a small dart.

  Did they poison him? Stacy’s heart was pounding with panic.

  What if the villagers have found my wolves before we’ve had a chance to make up? She didn’t want anything to happen to Noah, especially not while he thought she was angry with him.

 

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