by Rod O'Grady
Minnie put her arms round Connie and hugged her, and Minnie cried again, and Connie held her again.
Billy sat alone in the rowboat tied to the floating jetty, looking up at his best friend and a tear rolled down his cheek and plopped on to the peeling green boards in the bottom of the boat.
Chapter Nine
Dan was up the ladder working on the wind turbine up on the rocky outcrop, when Minnie walked up the grass path to the cabin. He yelled down to her. ‘Hey, Minnie!’
She feared they were going to ‘have a talk’, which coming from Dan would be so hugely unusual that it would probably unbalance the whole of her universe, and vex her even more. She was still quite annoyed at being called a ‘dreamer’, like it was a bad thing to be. She hesitated before slowing and stopping and turned to look up at him.
He yelled over to her, ‘You OK to stay at Connie’s tonight? I’m going into town later.’
After her mother died Dan would sometimes take the truck and drive into town, and sometimes wouldn’t reappear until morning. Minnie guessed he drank too much in the bar and slept it off in the truck. On those occasions she would stay with Connie and Billy, and Musto always slept curled up with her, which she loved.
‘Sure. Yeah. Fine,’ she yelled. She knew this would have been the perfect time to say something to Dan like, I’m sorry for what I said, but she didn’t and she walked on up to the cabin.
She didn’t want to talk to anyone, not even to Billy and Connie and she didn’t much want to stay with them that night.
She leant out over the edge of the deck so she could see up to Connie and Billy’s cabin, and waited until she saw Connie disappear inside, leaving Billy alone. Then she rushed inside, into the bathroom and climbed out of the small back window.
She let herself hang down holding on to the windowsill, then dropped to the dusty track. She sprinted up the track and breathlessly flopped down next to Billy on the deck.
‘Hey Billy-Bug. Can I borrow Musto for the night? I want to persuade Dan we should get a dog.’
‘You’re getting a dog? That would be great. Musto needs someone to play with and I’m usually way too busy to do that.’
‘Yeah, what with your summer math project and all.’
‘Yeah, so I’ll go get him. Musto!’
‘Or I can come get him later,’ suggested Minnie.
‘No. Take him now. He’s bored. Musto!’
That afternoon Minnie was digging in the vegetable garden and Musto was helping by digging up slugs and snails and crunching them in his mouth.
‘Hey, don’t just kill ’em for fun.’
Leaning on her fork, Minnie looked up at the forest and for a few moments she listened, straining her ears as her eyes searched the shadows for movement.
‘You up there, mister Bigfoot?’
Birds chirruped and whistled close by and squirrels somewhere chattered. The wind gently tapped high branches together. Satisfied, she plunged her fork in the soil.
She was on the other side of the cabin from where Dan was. She felt more comfortable with some distance between them and she thought that by digging up potatoes without being asked she might help the situation. She was dropping them into a green trug, when she heard the loud clunk of a door and the engine of Dan’s truck start up. She watched him drive away through the trees down the track that hugged the shoreline, the only route to the nearest town, which was about a twenty-minute drive away.
In the next bed were sad and untidy tomato plants offering a few tiny red jewels, which Minnie popped into her mouth. They were sweet and juicy and she hunted for more and spied another wooden peg half hidden by a tangle of leaves and hairy green stems. She lifted the name peg and scraped the mud off it. This one had more writing on it than the others she’d found before – ‘Hi Minnie! This is called Raven Zucchini! – see recipe 10 (Dan’s favourite!)’
This took her breath away. Her mom had left her a direct message in the vegetable garden! Suddenly Minnie knew what she had to do.
‘Musto! Let’s go!’
In her bedroom Minnie turned the pages of the folder until she found recipe 10. It was Zucchini Tomato Casserole and she looked down the list of ingredients.
‘How hard can this be, Musto? It’s just zucchini, tomato, garlic, parsley, onions, lemon, salt, pepper and chilli powder!’ She jumped off the bed and ran into the kitchen followed by Musto.
‘Right. Dan won’t be back till tomorrow which gives me plenty of time to start over if I mess this up.’ She opened the cupboard door.
‘I see parsley, salt … um … is that chilli powder?’ She flipped over the page and read aloud her mom’s instructions. ‘Minnie, if you ever want to do something nice for Dan, and I’m sure you will eventually, this is quick and easy and he loves it! We should have tomatoes and garlic and zucchini in the garden. If you’re not growing any onion you could forage some from the forest. It looks like this. I love you!’
There was a beautifully drawn, coloured sketch of a slim-leaved plant with small star-shaped white flowers and a small white bulb. ‘Musto! I know where there’s wild onions! I do! Indeed I do!’
She rolled off her bed and started pulling on her hiking boots and gathering things – a coat, two bottles of water, her notepad and a pencil, which she pushed into her backpack, along with a huge chunk of Connie’s apple pie, which she wrapped in foil.
‘OK, Musto. Let’s go get some onions.’ She hitched the pack on to her shoulder and she and Musto left the cabin. Minnie felt happy. It was almost like she and her mom were doing something together in making a special meal for Dan.
She leapt off the wooden steps yelling, ‘Last one to the trail is a rotten oyster!’ She and Musto raced past the vegetable garden.
Chapter Ten
The big footprints on the trail had been walked on by deer and other creatures. Leaves and pine needles had collected in them. She bent down and brushed away some of the leaves. Minnie looked up at the trees towering above the trail, the branches high above her. Only a glimpse of the sky was visible through the swaying dark foliage. She hoped the crow wouldn’t show up. She didn’t want the crow reporting back to the Bigfoots that she was there. She was just going to pick some wild onions and that was all – a quick hike up and a quick hike down.
‘Right, Musto? Just some wild onions and we’ll be outta here.’
Minnie reckoned they probably knew she was there anyway, or they would do by the time she got up to the Aspen Grove and the Giant X in the trees. They would have heard her or smelt her or just would have sensed her presence in the forest by then. The forest was their home and they would know every inch of it and its sounds and smells and its animal inhabitants – every single one of them.
Minnie knew she should be frightened to be alone in the forest where there were wild animals – not just busy little squirrels and inquisitive crows, but potentially mountain lions, moose and bear. She knew Dan would not be happy at all if he thought she was here alone, but when he tasted her zucchini and tomato casserole all would surely be forgiven.
She didn’t feel alone at all; she had Musto, yes, but also she felt her mother was with her, not exactly walking along beside her, but kind of hanging around somehow, in the trees and the wind and the sunbeams, keeping her safe and guiding her.
There were only the four footprints in the mud as before, but she searched the game trail for more, looking either side of the trail between the bushes and on any patch of mud she could find. She found an indentation, not much bigger than her fist and she guessed it was a deer print.
About twenty minutes later she and Musto came out on to the gently sloping meadow where the aspens grew. She could see where she and Dan had walked and followed the impressions they had left in the knee-high grass to the bent-over sapling, still pinned to the ground by the heavy broken limb. Minnie touched the smooth pale grey bark warmed by the sun and rubbed her flat palms on it.
Minnie looked up the slope to the giant symmetrical X just within the tr
ee line marking the start of the denser, darker forest. She and Musto slowly approached. They stood beneath it.
She looked around. ‘Onions,’ she said as she crouched down. The pale green plants were giving off a distinctive woody, oniony scent. She gently pulled at a plant, the soft earth giving up the neat white bulb. She pulled two more and put them in her backpack. She closed her eyes and listened and breathed in deeply and felt the forest.
‘This way, Musto.’ She pointed the way ahead and they ran together under the X and up the trail.
Minnie had to step over logs, tree trunks and deadfall branches that had dropped from above but there was still a visible game trail to follow. Musto ran ahead of her. She watched him as he disappeared behind a stand of firs and then she realised she was looking at another giant X – two tree trunks both stripped of their bark, crossed to form another perfectly symmetrical X.
‘Yes!’ said Minnie. She ran on, then stopped. Just off the trail to one side was a slim tree that had been broken, pulled over at the break, and left pointing in the direction of the trail. She reckoned if she sat on Dan’s shoulders she could maybe touch the break. She flipped open her notebook. ‘Another giant X and a breaker. Check!’ She walked on.
She caught up with Musto. She found him standing on his back legs with his front legs up against a tree. He was looking up into its branches. ‘What is it, Musto?’ A squirrel scurried along a branch, jumped to a nearby pine and hurried round to the far side of the trunk. ‘Oh, a squirrel!’ The squirrel reappeared on the other side of the trunk chattering at them. ‘Hey, squirrel.’
Just then the black crow arrived and landed on a branch of the same pine tree. ‘Oh great, it’s you Caw-Caw. You gonna tell on me? Keeping an eye on me, are you?’ The crow cawed once, flapped its wings and flew away in the direction of the mountain, up and up towards the summit.
Ahead on the trail a broken tree limb stripped of its bark had been carefully leant up against a redwood tree. Next to the big stick was a smaller one about a foot long. ‘Leaner and baby leaner. Check!’ She said, making a check mark in her notebook.
‘Musto, here boy, keep close,’ she whispered to the dog. And they walked on up the trail.
‘Oh my goodness!’ Minnie put a hand to her mouth in astonishment as straight ahead of her in an open clearing bordered by a ring of giant redwoods was a structure made of straight tree trunks, all stripped of their bark, all leaning together to a high-up point. ‘Teepee, Musto. That, we call a teepee. Bigfoots don’t live in them, but they must mean something to them.’
But Musto wasn’t looking at her; he was looking over at the tree line. He’d seen something. Minnie stepped into the clearing, approached the ‘teepee’ and looked closely at the bottoms of the tree trunks.
‘Broken. None of them cut with a saw.’ She looked up. ‘Musto?’ Musto was not where he was a second ago. Then she heard him bark, just once, somewhere off in the trees.
Minnie headed for the tree line and ran past the redwoods into the forest. ‘Musto!’ Where are you?’ She stopped because she couldn’t go any further.
Ahead of her was a tangled pile of broken branches, some with fresh green pine needles still on them. There were long, straight pine limbs stacked one on top of the other, kind of like a fence. It was too high for her to climb over.
Minnie looked in her notepad. ‘Ah hah! This is a blind,’ she said. ‘A hunting blind to hide behind and wait for unsuspecting deer. But it’s kinda like a giant nest!’ Musto barked again. She ran around the ‘blind’. She was looking at a tangled mass of dark brush, more tree trunks, more bushes, more tangle, more shapes, and shadows.
There was no wind, no movement, no sound, just her heavy breathing. And the only movement was from Musto who was agitatedly pacing back and forth, while looking at one particular spot in the undergrowth between the trees. Then Musto did a curious thing – he stood absolutely still, like a statue. His whole body seemed to quiver, his fur vibrating like he was shivering. Then Musto slowly walked into a small gap in the pile of stacked pine trunks and disappeared into the dense underbrush beyond it.
Minnie was in a daze. She just stood there, staring at the place she’d last set eyes on Musto for what seemed to her like ages. She heard a clear solid knock! It was the distinct sound of wood on wood. She put her pack down and stood still listening to the forest. She took a deep breath in and slowly, slowly breathed out.
She opened the notepad. Further away and fainter she heard another answering wood knock. She dropped her pencil. The hairs on her forearms stood up, goosebumps pimpled her skin and Minnie gazed at her arms and rubbed them briskly with her hands.
‘Musto! Here! Here boy!’ But she couldn’t get through the gap Musto had gone through. She had to fight her way through a pile of loose boughs ripped from trees. She found a gap in the brush and followed the trail. She couldn’t see Musto’s paw prints. There was no mud, only leaf litter and matted, knotty grass.
Far ahead she heard a distant barking, just two ‘woofs’. She looked up at the sky and realised the light was beginning to fade. She couldn’t leave Musto. She had to find him.
She walked and walked, calling for Musto. The underbrush gave way to a stone and boulder-strewn path. She came to what she realised was the top of a ridge. The ground sloped down to a ravine with a tumble of grey rocks along the bottom. In the woods on the other side of the ravine she heard barking. It was the same excited barking Musto had made when he’d found a grass snake under one of the cabins; he had picked it up in his teeth and thrown it around until Dan grabbed it off him and ended its torment.
She began scrambling down the steep slope. Loose rocks dislodged no matter how slowly and carefully she climbed. She slipped as a flat rock skidded away from under her boot. She tumbled down the ravine. Her world went black.
Chapter Eleven
Minnie woke to an aching in her head. She was lying on her side on a pile of moss and leaves. As she breathed out a large torn leaf that was stuck under her cheek in front of her nose fluttered as she exhaled, like the whirring of a dragonfly’s wings.
She started to pull herself up but there was a pain in her right hand. It was cut under the little finger and oozed blood. Touching her head with her left hand, she could feel a bump and it was wet with blood from a small gash. She wasn’t at the bottom of the ravine. She wasn’t in the ravine at all, and she was not on the ridge where she had been. To her astonishment she realised she was on top of the wooded ridge on the other side of the ravine from where she’d been.
Minnie realised she must have blacked out for a while as it was much darker now. She looked up at the sky. It would very soon be night.
A chill spread through her body. Her mouth was dry. Pulling off her backpack, she yanked one of the bottles out and drank from it. She went through the side pockets and in one of them was a small pack of wipes. Her mom must have shoved them in there ages ago. Minnie cleaned the cut on her hand as best she could. Then she sat holding a wipe to her cut head. She looked around. ‘Musto!’
For the first time she was afraid. The forest was silent – it was the transition time between daytime creatures and night-time creatures. No wind rustled the twilight treetops, no birds called.
Minnie knew trying to find her way back in the dark would be dangerous and she might walk further in the wrong direction. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to get down the ravine safely anyway, and she really didn’t want to leave Musto in the woods on his own.
‘Mom? What should I do?’ She waited for an answer to come to her. She tugged her green jacket out of her pack and pulled it on. She found talking to her mom was a comfort.
‘Yes, Mom, I must hunker down somewhere and keep warm, and in the morning walk back and tell Connie I have lost her dog and we’ll get a search party with professional trackers organised, and we’ll come up here and find Musto, and all will be well once more.’
She walked a little way into the trees where the ground flattened out. In the twilight she cou
ld vaguely make out what she was treading on, mostly pine needles and soft, dry leaf litter.
‘Darn it. If I smoked I’d have a lighter. Or matches for a fire. Just kidding, Mom. I’m never gonna smoke. I wonder how cold it will get.’ There was a fir tree whose lower branches arched low to the ground. Minnie got on her hands and knees and crawled under the boughs. It was even darker inside but felt safe and enclosed. She stretched her legs and began shoving the pine needles out with her booted feet, pushing small piles towards the low hanging branches, digging herself a bowl to curl up in.
Scrabbling in her pack she pulled out the apple pie in tin foil. She sat against the trunk of the tree and ate half of it. She hoped Billy wouldn’t start missing Musto and head over to her cabin to look for them. Most likely no one would notice they were gone until Dan came back in the morning and Minnie planned to be home before that happened. Until then she was very much alone.
Just then she heard some rustling in the underbrush outside her small dark den. Something was coming towards her, moving closer and closer.
She heard sniffing, snuffling and panting. In her mind she ran through some animals it could be – porcupine, raccoon, weasel. Then she remembered mountain lions, coyotes, and…
Musto! He pushed his way in through the branches and she grabbed him. ‘Oh Musto! Musto! Thank you!’
She curled up with her arms round Musto who licked away the tears on her cheeks and, though a long dark night was just beginning, things weren’t nearly so bad now they were together.
KAAYII
Chapter One
High, high, high up in a pine tree on the ridge near the summit of the mountain sat the young Sasquatch, Kaayii. He sat on a branch hugging the slender trunk as the wind gently swayed his tree and all the lofty tops of the pine trees in the forest at the top of the mountain. Ants, centipedes and spiders that lived in its scaly brown bark scurried about their business until they got too close to the Sasquatch and he sucked them into his mouth with his flexible lips.
