by J. J. Murray
Bianca stopped in the middle of the bridge and burped. Oh God. “Miss Minola, I think I’m going to be sick!” For real! Raisins, stew, and Kashi do not mix!
“Well, don’t puke in that stream, damn,” Katharina said, continuing down the steep hill toward the clearing.
Bianca burped again, felt much better, waited until Katha-rina’s bobbing form disappeared, and headed directly to Vincenzo’s cabin.
Katharina entered the clearing and found Vincenzo wearing headphones and sitting on a log looking at a monitor. I’m almost beginning to respect this man, she thought. He seems to know exactly where and when I’ll need him at any given time. She sat beside him and took off his headphones. “Roll it back,” she said, putting on the headphones.
Vincenzo slid the monitor into her lap, hit a few buttons, and smiled broadly. “This is where I started filming. See the wonderful splashing?”
“I don’t want to see this,” Katharina said. “I want to see what I saw with the headset.”
“Oh.” Vincenzo looked up at the camera in the tree to his right, hoping Fish was paying attention.
“Um, Fish?” Walt said. “If what he’s watching in that monitor is from his camera, how can she see what the headset recorded?”
Fish flexed his fingers, then typed in several commands, hitting a button here and there, rolling his mouse and clicking. “We broadcast her footage from here to there.”
“We can do that?” Walt asked.
“We can,” Fish said.
“What if she wants to freeze or rewind or fast-forward or just see one part of a scene?”
Fish frowned. “This ain’t like TiVo, Walt. She can only see it start to finish, but I already edited it down to just her crossing. I’m good like that.” He cued up Katharina’s first dash across the stream. “Sending.” He hit another button.
“What’s taking so long?” Katharina asked.
“Is, um, rewinding,” Vincenzo said, sweat trickling down his back. “Ah. There it is.”
Katharina watched and listened in amazement to the Canadian world through her eyes and ears. She saw her hands, her feet, snatches of her dress, the spray of water all around her, her muddy hands, even the steam of her breath. The stream thundered, her curses echoed, and her filmed panting hummed continuously in her ears. The top of the bank looked so far away, then close, then far away as she tumbled. She felt the thrill of cresting that bank, resting a moment, then crawling close to the ground to the shelter of the brush. She saw her arms reaching around her legs and pulling her knees in, her right arm scratched and bleeding, the only sound a whispered “Thank You, Jesus.”
I said that? she thought. I don’t remember saying that. I guess I did.
She took off the headphones. “That was, that was intense, Sly.”
“A good idea, yes?”
“Yeah. Wow.” The audience is going to be as amazed as I just was. “But I cussed a lot, though.”
Vincenzo shrugged. “We can cover your curses with thunder, more stream noise, tracking dogs, the howls of wolves—or erase it entirely. Your choice.”
“Tracking dogs?” Katharina asked. “That’s a little cliché, isn’t it? I mean, this is the place she sets up shop, right? She has to be far across the border by now.”
Vincenzo nodded. “But she does not know that. She has no map to tell her.”
Good point, Katharina thought.
“And what is she running from?” Vincenzo asked. “Why is she hiding? Something is after her.”
Katharina pondered his questions. “She’s running because … she’s been running for weeks, and that’s all she knows to do. She’s hiding because she’s been hiding for weeks. She doesn’t know she’s safe yet. She doesn’t know she’s made it to freedom.” She laughed softly. “She doesn’t know how free and freeing freedom can be.”
“Bingo,” Walt said.
“You got lucky,” Fish said.
“I have my moments.”
Katharina stood and looked around her. “This place, all the shadows, all the places the unknown can hide, all these freaking trees! She has to feel a constant sense of paranoia, constant feelings of dread, has to feel watched, can’t let her guard down, even for a second.” She reached under her dress for the knife tucked all this time at the top of her leggings. “I can’t believe I’ve been running around with this blade so close to my skin. I’m surprised I haven’t cut myself. I never even thought about using it.”
“You had no time to use it,” Vincenzo said. “You were acting by instinct. Your mind said, ‘Get away, hide, stay quiet.’”
My mind actually said, “Run, bitch, it’s freaking cold!” Katharina nodded. “But now … Now she needs to build a fire or she’ll die.” She looked around the clearing, picking up several rocks.
“What are you looking for?” Vincenzo asked.
“Flint,” Katharina said. “Only I don’t know what flint looks like.”
Vincenzo looked at the ground as well. “But what do you need the flint for?”
“The script says I have to start a fire with this knife and some flint.”
Vincenzo shook his head. “Um. No. We will use a lighter. Much more efficient, the audience will never know. Just hit the knife on any rock a few times, I will swing around behind, you will start fire with lighter … Your character would know how to start a fire, yes?”
Katharina kept searching the ground. “She might, she might not. Kitchen slaves kept the fires going all day. They had no need to start one, get me? I mean, those kitchen fires might have been going for generations.”
Vincenzo nodded.
“And not all slaves were in the kitchen.” She picked up a slab of black rock and put it in the pocket of her dress. “Look at me. Am I a kitchen slave, a house slave, or a field slave?”
Vincenzo looked at his star nearly covered with mud speckles, the hem of her dress already starting to tatter. “I will say … field. You are strong and lean.”
“I’m lean because I’m still hungry,” Katharina said, “but we’ll talk about that later. Right now … I want to start a fire.”
Vincenzo looked at the clouds rolling in above, some of them dark and forbidding. “The light is okay, not great. Fire scenes always look better at night.”
“But she’s freezing,” Katharina said. “She’s just been through a stream. She’s wet and cold. I doubt she’d wait for night to set in to make the fire that will save her life.”
“Ah. I see your point.” He again looked up. “And if we are lucky, it will begin to snow.”
Katharina looked up. “Those are snow clouds?”
Vincenzo nodded. “They are predicting snow, but not much. A few, um, how you say …”
“Flurries?”
“Yes, flurries.” He smiled. “I hope they are big flurries. That will look spectacular, and I will do this scene from here very wide.” He framed the clearing with his hands. “Yes. It will be intimate. You will be a small person in a large space.”
Say what? “You mean ‘impersonal,’ not ‘intimate,’ right?”
“Um … yes. That is what I mean. English is such a precise language, yes? Um, I will start wide to capture your isolation, then come close to capture your determination.” He shrugged slightly. “What do you think?”
For all his sheer weirdness, Sly is all right. “Okay.” She looked at the rocks in her hands. “I wonder which one of these rocks will spark.” She reached into her pocket for the large black rock. “Maybe this one?”
“Probably not, but do not stress. Hit it a few times. If it sparks, it sparks. If it doesn’t, we can add the spark later.”
Katharina shook her head. “Nah. I’m going to do this right.” She walked to the brush and took ten steps forward. “I’ll put my fire pit here.” She dropped her rocks. “I need to get some big rocks.” She smiled. “I saw some at the stream.”
“Now she’s thinking,” Walt said. “This is good. Is there any flint in these woods?”
“Hell if
I know,” Fish said. “But that is one serious knife. Pietro picked it out from his personal collection. You should see all the weaponry he has. The dude is Rambo.”
“And Vincenzo is Sly,” Walt said.
“Go figure.” Fish rolled his eyes. “It must be an Italian thing.”
* * *
With Vincenzo filming through some brush at the top of the bank, Katharina searched the edge of the stream for large stones, lifting them from the muck and taking them to form the circle for her fire pit. She tossed several smaller stones into another pile. Once she had her fire pit arranged, she took pieces of dead twigs and branches from the brush pile and laid them in the center. Hunched over these twigs and branches, she took her knife and picked up the first rock, striking the rock at an angle.
“Wrong rocks,” Fish said. “They have to be.”
“And wrong technique,” Walt said. “She should be striking the rock against the knife.”
“Really?”
“Hey, I was a Boy Scout for a few weeks,” Walt said.
Fish rolled to another computer screen and typed “flint” into a search engine. “‘Flint … is found in limestone formations, and limestone formations … are usually found near water.’”
“She needs to go back to the stream.”
Fish smiled. “More splashing! More mud! More skin!”
“Okay, now you’re leaning toward sick.”
Fish laughed. “You say the nicest things.”
Katharina struck every rock in her pile several times and from different angles until she became frustrated, her hands hurting, sweat dripping onto the twigs and branches.
“Cut!” Vincenzo yelled. “Miss Katharina, really it is not necessary. We can use the lighter and continue.”
Katharina kept striking rocks.
“Katharina, you will dull your knife,” Vincenzo said. “We can add the spark later.”
Katharina tried the large black rock again, striking it, the knife vibrating in her grip.
Pietro sneaked down the hill and came up behind her, snatching the knife from her hand.
“Hey!” she yelled.
Pietro picked her up, his hands under both armpits.
“I told you that if you ever touched me again—”
Pietro held a rock in front of her nose.
Katharina focused on the dark black rock, which almost looked like a lump of coal. “Is that flint?”
Pietro nodded.
“Where did you find it?”
Pietro pointed to the stream. “But not knife on rock.” He tapped the rock against Katharina’s knife. “Rock on knife.”
Katharina reached for the flint.
Pietro held it high in the air, turned, and threw it into the stream.
“You … you son of a bitch!” she cried.
“Sì,” Pietro said. “You find. Sly film.”
Katharina took several deep breaths, her blue-green eyes fierce. “I’m ready, Sly. You ready?”
“Ready when you are, Miss Katharina,” Vincenzo said. “Whenever you are ready.”
Katharina swept by Pietro to the creek, Vincenzo following and filming. She saw the large lump several feet from shore. She first tried to use a fallen branch to bring it closer, gave up, and splashed in after it, reaching down and pulling it to the surface.
“Such a clear view,” Walt said.
“A perfect shot,” Fish said. “Angle’s right, too. No reflection except for the clouds rolling by above.”
“Those are snow clouds, Fish.”
“Yes!” Fish pumped his hand several times. “C’mon, snow. Just pour down on her, give her some ice-cold dandruff.”
Walt blinked. “I have no words for you right now.”
* * *
I have now soaked myself all the way to my titties, Katharina thought painfully. My poor nipples are going to chafe completely off! Think warm thoughts, think warm thoughts …
Katharina waded back, climbed up the bank, carried the flint to the circle, and hunched down once again. She brought the flint to the knife with a jerk.
A spark.
She smiled, moving the knife closer to the twigs and stems. She struck the knife again with the flint.
Another spark, but no smoke, flame, or fire resulted. She tried different angles, saw lots of sparks, and even hit the twigs dead-on with sparks—still nothing.
“Cut!” Vincenzo yelled. “Everything is too wet, Katharina, and you are dripping on your wood. You will be making sparks for hours to no effect.”
Pietro swept into the clearing, his hands full of moss, several slivers of birch bark, and some dry brown grass. He opened his hands under Katharina’s nose.
She blinked. “All that?”
Pietro nodded. “Tinder.”
Katharina reached for his hands.
Pietro pulled his hands back. “No touch. I call polizia.”
Katharina almost smiled. There’s more to this Fonzi than meets the eye, she thought. But I still hate his ass. She pulled her hands back to her lap. “No touch.”
Pietro put his hands out in front of her eyes this time. “Take picture.”
Katharina tried to memorize what she saw. She recognized the moss and the birch bark, but she had no idea where he had found dry grass. I ought to go get the rest of that cereal, she thought. I’ve seen that bark on trees all over the place, and the moss grows on the rocks just up the hill. “Okay.” She stood.
Pietro dropped the contents of his hands into the fire pit.
Katharina stooped and picked them up. “Here,” she said, giving them to Pietro. “I have to find them.” She nodded at Vincenzo. “Ready?”
“Yes,” Vincenzo said, swinging the camera to his shoulder.
“And we’re rolling,” Fish said, watching Katharina racing through the forest collecting moss and birch bark.
“Pietro almost has her trained on the second day,” Walt said. “Did you see her almost smile just then?”
“‘I call polizia,’“Fish said. “Katharina Minola isn’t trained. She can’t be tamed.”
“It’s happening,” Walt said. “I can feel it.”
“Nah,” Fish said. “Hell hasn’t frozen over yet.”
Walt smiled. “The temperature is dropping outside …”
Katharina collected the “correct” items to start her fire, ripping several small strips of birch bark off trees, scraping dry moss from rocks into her hands. She returned to her fire pit and aimed her spark at the bark.
Nothing happened.
She changed her angle and struck the flint against the knife.
More nothing happened.
“Cut!” Vincenzo yelled. “Miss Katharina, we do not have to do it this way.”
Katharina kept throwing sparks onto the bark. “I have to do it this way. What am I doing wrong?” She looked up at Pietro. “Tell me.”
Pietro squatted and picked up the bark, feeling it between his thumb and index finger. “Wet.”
Katharina held out her hand. “Let me see that.”
Pietro placed the bark in her hand.
Katharina rubbed the bark with her fingers. “It looks just like what you had.”
Pietro shook his head. “Bark on ground dry most of time. Bark on tree stay on tree. You take.” He pantomimed ripping the bark off a tree. “Make scar on tree.”
“Oh.” She looked at Vincenzo. “Let’s try this again, shall we?”
Vincenzo nodded.
Katharina flew through the woods with her eyes to the ground, finding bits of birch bark here and there, feeling each piece for dryness before putting it in her pocket. She returned again to the clearing, made a small pile of bark and moss, and struck the flint against the knife.
The spark hit the bark, and a thin whisper of smoke rose into the air.
Yes! Katharina thought. Smoke! I am officially a fire starter. But wheri’s the fire? She resisted the impulse to look for Pietro, thereby ruining the shot. She sent several more sparks onto the bark and added moss to
wherever it smoked. What do they freaking do in the movies?
I’m glad I didn’t say that out loud, she thought. Oh yeah!
She flattened herself onto the ground and blew softly on the bark and soon saw a glow, then a single wisp of a flame, and then she heard a crackle. She added more moss, more bark, several twigs, a larger branch, and a real live fire grew in front of her. She slid a large branch into the mix and watched it smoke—
What the hell just happened? Where are the flames? She panicked and blew some more, but all she accomplished was a severe case of hyperventilation.
“Cut!” Vincenzo yelled.
Pietro stepped behind Katharina, crouched, and whispered, “Poco, poco. Molto lento.”
Katharina looked at Vincenzo for the translation. “What’s he saying?”
“He means a little at a time very slowly,” Vincenzo said.
“Poco molto lento,” my ass, Katharina thought. I knew that. This stupid wood is just too wet. She pulled off the offending branch, threw sparks on another piece of bark, blew gently, and had another fire crackling in less than a minute.
Then it started to rain, a fine haze spitting down on her.
She tried to shield her fire with her hands while adding more twigs and sticks, eventually breaking the wet branch into several pieces before adding one piece at a time. Eventually, she had a small blaze going despite the rain, but she worried the rain would douse it unless she did something drastic.
Katharina stood, hitched up her dress, and stood over her fire.
Fish tilted his head. “That’s not something you see every day.”
“She could set her dress on fire!” Walt shouted.
“Nah, it’s too wet to burn,” Fish said with a smile. “But what if it did? We’d get another stream scene for sure. Marilyn Monroe, eat your heart out.”
The rain abating slightly, Katharina stepped back and sighed. I built a fire and it’s still burning. My dress even feels drier. Yes! Did they pump their fists back then? I better not.
“Cut!” Pietro yelled, striding toward Katharina.
“Who’s the director here?” Katharina whined. “He’s in my shot, Sly. Get him out of here.”
