Fabulous Creature

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  “A Zelda. Zelda Fitzgerald. F. Scott’s wife. A girl whose motto is “Anybody who has so much deserves to have everything.” I’ve been meat-axed by several of them. Not all beautiful girls are Zeldas, but enough of them are to make it an occupational hazard of fox hunting. It’s something you have to learn to watch out for. Half the time when you get hold of a really gorgeous one, you suddenly notice that some vital part of your anatomy is missing.”

  “Yeah. Like your heart,” James agreed ruefully.

  “Or whatever,” Max said. “Go on. What did you do then?”

  So he went on—to the very end. He didn’t leave anything out; and he thought he did a pretty good job of it, even the part about Griffin. It wasn’t easy to put something as complicated and original as Griffin into words, but he felt he’d at least come close. When he finished, Max just looked at him for several seconds and then asked, “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to New Moon,” James said.

  “Yeah,” Max said. “I thought that was what you were going to do.”

  CHAPTER 17

  ALMOST IMMEDIATELY MAX came up with a plan that would make it possible for James to leave the next morning—Friday—with no one having to know for almost four days. The first step was for Max to go home with James and tell Charlotte that his family was spending the weekend at a cottage on Bodega Bay and James was invited to go along. Charlotte was sure to say yes—she’d been telling James he was working too hard lately and needed to take a break. Their story would be that James would be going directly from school on Friday and would not be returning until Monday morning, so he should not be expected at home again until Monday after school.

  Then on Monday afternoon, about the time his parents would be beginning to worry, Max would deliver a note from James. The note would explain that he was away on very important business, the nature of which he couldn’t disclose at the moment, and that they were not to worry because he was safe, in good spirits, not kidnapped, not running away, and would undoubtedly be home within a day or two.

  “But what will you do if they insist on calling the police, in spite of the note?” James asked. “They’ll probably grill you.”

  “I know,” Max agreed. “Actually, I’m rather looking forward to it.”

  After the conversation with Charlotte, which went very smoothly, they went downtown to the after-hours window of James’ bank and withdrew his life savings of twenty-seven dollars and thirty-three cents, and then to Max’s house where James wrote the note for Monday, and where Max insisted on contributing what was left of his week’s allowance, which he had been holding in reserve for a heavy date with Trudi Hepplewhite. It was a real sacrifice, and James appreciated it.

  So the very next morning, after another almost sleepless night, James went down to breakfast, where he struggled with guilt and apprehension while his parents chatted about the nice, sunny weather and wondered if it would be warm enough to swim at Bodega Bay. By forcing himself, he managed to eat the proverbial hearty breakfast; and then, after saying good-by as casually as possible, he walked out the back door feeling as if he really were starting on that long last walk to a richly deserved doom.

  He went first to Max’s, where Max met him in the garage with a backpack. Max’s whole family was into wilderness backpacking, and the set-up Max had prepared looked like enough for a whole family, and a large one at that. Max obviously expected James to be overwhelmed, and he was, especially when Max lifted it onto his shoulders.

  “Wow,” James said, struggling to keep from tipping over backward. “Are you sure you can spare all this stuff, Max?”

  “Sure,” Max said. “And don’t worry about the weight. That pack is scientifically designed. After a while you won’t even know it’s there.”

  James said he was glad to hear that; and after thanking Max for everything, he said good-by and started out for the BART station. The plan was for him to go as far as he could by local transit since, according to Max, who had gone through a runaway phase at the age of nine, a long-distance ticket purchased near home is too easy to trace.

  Traveling east during the westward commuter rush, he felt quite safe in the crowded station, but very conspicuous on the almost-empty eastbound car. He slumped in a corner seat, expecting at any moment to be accosted by any or all of five suspiciously innocent-looking fellow travelers—who would identify themselves as members of a special SWAT squad assigned to runaways and lead him off to jail. He left BART at the Concord station, and by catching local buses and hitchhiking, he made it as far as Sacramento by noon, and to the Greyhound bus station barely in time to catch the one-ten bus to South Tahoe. The bus ride was uneventful, and by five-thirty he had started the long hike from New Moon, around the perimeter of The Camp, to the Willowby property.

  He kept to the woods at first, out of sight of Camp traffic, and when he was opposite the main gate he stopped to rest. Max’s backpack, which obviously was scientifically designed for someone quite unlike James Archer Fielding, was already crushing his shoulders and turning his legs into strands of spaghetti. The gate was a temptation. If the guard on duty happened to remember him, he might let him in and out again at the west gate, which would cut miles off his journey. But he didn’t dare risk being reported in a few days, when his name, as well as Griffin’s might be in all the papers. So he gritted his teeth and trudged on around the outer fortifications of old T.J.’s stockade.

  Beyond the gate, the road was deserted, and James walked in the middle of it—walked and slogged and staggered as the road climbed and dipped, curved and then curved back again. He began to stop and rest more and more often. The sun was setting, and he wanted very much to get at least as far as the Willowby property before setting up his camp for the night, but there were times when his feet simply refused to cooperate. Leaning against the trunks of trees, or sitting on fallen logs, he rubbed his aching shoulders, nibbled on the contents of a plastic envelope labeled Backpackers High Energy Mix, and watched the shadows darkening among the trees. And while he nibbled, he wondered what he thought he was doing out there all alone in the middle of nowhere. He also wondered if there was any chance at all that he would find Griffin, and if he did if he’d be able to help her. He even contemplated going home, once or twice. But each time he got up and went on again; and by the time it was really dark, he was so close to the Willowby cabin he decided to push on and spend the night there.

  Actually there was very little reason to go on, since the cabin would be shuttered, locked and bolted, just as they had left it three weeks before. But each time he contemplated setting up his tent in the midst of endless open darkness, the urge to get to the cabin got stronger. So he dug a flashlight out of the backpack—of course there was a flashlight, he was lucky there wasn’t a complete electric generator—and stumbled on down the narrow path of light. The cabin began to seem more and more like a refuge, a place of sanctuary that waited at the end of the ordeal, offering rest and comfort and safety. It must have been well after ten o’clock when he dragged himself up the stairs to the veranda, unrolled his sleeping bag against the wall, crawled into it and almost immediately fell asleep.

  He woke in the morning to the familiar rusty creak of the old lounge swing. It was daylight, but just barely, and the sun was still only a halo of light behind the mountainous rim of the lake’s deep bowl. He recognized the tangy essence of evergreen forest, but the crisp cool prophesy of approaching winter was new and different. Sniffing appreciatively, he began to feel, for the first time since leaving home, vaguely optimistic. There was a peacefulness in the calm, motionless air—but the swing was still creaking—in the breeze. He sat up quickly and looked behind him—and, of course, it wasn’t there. He’d helped move it into the cabin himself, just before they left. As the faint rusty creak went on and on, he began to feel a crawling sensation on the back of his neck.

  The sound seemed to be coming from the end of the veranda where the swing always sat, and as he crawled out o
f his sleeping bag and moved toward it, it got distinctly louder, but there was still nothing there. It wasn’t until he was standing on the very spot that he realized the sound was coming from inside the house—from just inside the shuttered window. Putting his ear to the crack in the heavy shutters he verified the fact. Just inside the window in the closed and shuttered room where he and William had put the swing, something was making it sway rhythmically back and forth. Listening to the slow, rusty squeak, James discovered that his heartbeat seemed not only to have magnified, but also to have proliferated so that it was thumping away not only in his chest, but also in his stomach, his throat and the roof of his mouth. Swallowing hard, he began to tiptoe backwards. When he reached the stairs, he reluctantly turned his back on the cabin and hurried down them.

  Leaning against a tree several yards from the house, he began to think more rationally. Obviously, someone was in the house. Somewhere a door or a shuttered window had been forced and someone had gotten in. Moving cautiously, James began to reconnoiter.

  When he had circled the entire cabin, he was more mystified than ever. All the doors were still locked and padlocked, and the windows were all shuttered, except for the small round one in the hall, which didn’t open and was too small, anyway, to admit an intruder.

  Tiptoeing back up the stairs, James went to the door and listened. The creaking had stopped. Raising his fist, he poised it for a firm, sharp rap, thought better of it, and was quietly gathering up his gear, when a voice from the foot of the stairs said, “What are you doing here?”

  It was Griffin. It really was Griffin, dirty and tousled and dressed in torn jeans and a baggy old flannel shirt. Her face seemed thinner and her dark-fringed eyes more enormous, and she returned James’ smile with a stare as warily distrustful as a trapped animal’s.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I came to help you.”

  “To help me? How did you know I was here?”

  “I read in the paper that you’d disappeared and I thought you’d probably come back here. To help the deer. So I decided to see if I could help you.”

  There was no thaw in the cold suspicious stare. “Did you tell anyone else?”

  “No. Nobody.”

  She lowered her head and looked at him from shadowed eyes.

  “Honestly. No one knows except my friend, Max, and he won’t tell. He helped me set it up so no one will even know I’m gone until Monday.” He briefly explained the scheme, and she listened intently; but when he finished, she was still distant and watchful. “Honestly, Griffin,” he repeated. “I came to help. You and the deer.”

  She was nodding doubtfully when suddenly her eyes widened and she pointed at his backpack. “What’s in there?”

  “What isn’t? Enough provisions for a full infantry battalion.”

  “Food?” she asked, and the way she swallowed as she said it told the story. A few moments later they were sitting on the top step of the veranda, and James was digging fruit and cheese and crackers and a variety of fancy survival mixes out of his pack. Griffin was eating as if she were starving. It turned out she very nearly was.

  Between mouthfuls she told him how she’d left school with only a sleeping bag stuffed into a large shopping bag, because a suitcase or backpack would have given her away. That had been on Tuesday; and that first day, before anyone knew she was missing, she’d dared to buy some food in bus stations and grocery stores; but after that she’d eaten very little until yesterday afternoon when she broke into the Willowby cabin.

  “Broke in,” James said. “How?”

  “The little porthole window that doesn’t have a shutter,” she said.

  “But it doesn’t open.”

  “I know. I broke it and took out all the glass. And then I squeezed through. I had to do it because I was so hungry and I didn’t dare go to The Camp or New Moon.”

  “But there wasn’t much food in there, was there? I remember my mother saying Dr. Willowby didn’t want us to leave anything that mice might get into.”

  “There were a few canned things. Peas and beans and one can of pineapple. Most of it’s gone now. When you get back, will you tell Dr. Willowby that I’ll pay for everything? The food and the window?”

  She went on eating then, and James ate too. When they were finished, she thanked him for the food and smiled for the first time; but when he asked her about her plans, the curtain came down again. Her eyes went shallow and shielded and her voice tightened as she asked him why he wanted to know.

  “Because I want to help. I want to save the deer. I want…”

  But he could see she wasn’t buying it. Wasn’t believing a word he said. Was probably suspecting him of trying to find out what she was planning so he could report to the Jarretts. Grabbing her shoulders he shook her hard. “Goddamn it, Griffin. You’ve got to believe me: I didn’t mean to betray the stag. You’ve got to listen to me.”

  She did listen then as he went through the whole stupid, sordid thing. All about how he’d fallen for Diane and how she’d used him and lied to him. But he didn’t spare himself, either. He laid it all out—about how he kept on making excuses for her long after he should have been able to see what was happening, and how he convinced himself that if he could only get her attention away from the other guy for a little while, he’d be able to get her back. He explained how he hadn’t really meant to tell her where the deer was, and how he had believed her promise never to tell. But even as he told it, he could see that there was no way he could make it understandable, because it wasn’t. Even while he was telling it, he knew if he were Griffin he’d never forgive himself.

  When he finished, she was staring at him with what looked like intense anger, and he shrugged hopelessly. At least he’d tried. He started to say, “I’m sorry,” and found that they were saying the same thing—in unison. “You’re sorry?” he asked. “What are you sorry for?”

  “For blaming you. I don’t anymore.” She got to her feet. “I was just going back to the valley. Do you want to come? I’ll show you my plan.”

  It took him a minute to shift mental and emotional gears. But it wasn’t the first time that trying to account for Griffin’s thought processes had made him feel like a computer with a few chips missing, so he recovered quickly and said great, that he couldn’t wait to hear about her plan to save the deer. Of course, he was glad to hear that she had a plan, but he wasn’t entirely confident that it would be workable, and he began to feel even more uneasy when he saw the pick-axe.

  Just as he had feared, her plan was typically Griffinesque—imaginative, courageous and not very realistic. She was planning to chop away the ledge at the highest point of the cliff trail so there would no longer be any access to the valley. The day before James arrival she’d actually begun work, chopping away at the rock ledge with Dan Willowby’s enormous pickaxe.

  “I got that much done yesterday,” she said, pointing to a place where she’d managed to erode away an inch or two of the already dangerously narrow trail. “But it doesn’t go very fast. See.” She held out her hands, palm upwards, exposing rows of angry red blisters.

  The shiver that slid down his spine could have been related to the blisters, or to the thought of swinging a pickaxe on that precarious perch. When she asked him if he thought it would work, he hesitated, and then put off saying what he really thought by suggesting that he’d think about it while they went to see the deer.

  “I haven’t seen him for a long time,” he said. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s wonderful,” Griffin said, and she put down the pickaxe and led the way on across the high trail.

  Unlike the slopes around the lake, the sheltered valley was as yet untouched by the approach of winter. The meadow grass was still lushly green, jays screeched in the pines, dragonflies hummed over the creek bed, and the deer came out to meet them, quickly and confidently. Moving through the tall grass with a calm, measured dignity, he came to within a few yards of the boulder before he stopped. James could see the liquid
sheen of his large eyes, the flare of his nostrils as he tested the air, and the small oval amulets that still dangled from his antlers, attached by ribbons, limp and faded now, but still faintly red.

  James looked at Griffin. Sitting just as she had on that day in August when he had first brought her to see the deer, she hugged her knees against her chest and gazed with wide-fixed eyes—dreaming who-knew-what deer myths and stag legends. Dreams that, like the deer itself, were doomed to die in only two more days. Involuntarily he sighed sharply and heard Griffin’s sigh echoing his. She turned to look at him, her eyes begging for reassurance.”

  “Do you think it will work?” she asked. “My plan?”

  Feeling that to mention the plan’s difficulties and dangers would only make her more determined he said, “Well, I don’t know. I’m afraid the Jarretts won’t give up that easily. If they can’t get over the trail, they’ll probably just go back and get mountain climbing equipment and try again. And besides, have you thought about what might happen to the deer if you make the trail impassable? He won’t be able to get out either.”

  “I know. But couldn’t he just go on living in the valley?”

  “I’m not sure. I think he only stays there in the summer and fall.”

  She nodded. “Laurel said her uncle told about hearing rumors that skiers had seen a fantastic buck in this area during the winter, but no one ever saw it when the snow was gone. He said he’d always thought it was just a local legend—until Diane found out about the hidden valley.”

  “The thing is,” James said, “he probably goes out every year at mating season and stays out during the winter.”

  “But it would be better for him to have to stay in the valley all the time than to be shot by the Jarretts,” Griffin said. “At least he’d be alive.”

  “Well, maybe. I’m not sure there’d be enough food for him in this little valley in the wintertime. The snow must get very deep here. He might starve to death.”

  Griffin looked horror-stricken, and then completely crushed. “But what can we do?”