by Angela Hunt
“Enough.” I dropped my head into my hands. “You’re giving me a headache.”
We sat for a moment in silence, then Chad stood and stretched. “You gals can stay here and rest up if you want, but the big lug and I should go out and get some camping equipment. Andi, be a sweetheart and reserve our car. Do we want to leave this afternoon or tomorrow?”
I bristled at his be a sweetheart comment, but decided to ignore it . . . because he was still under the influence.
“Tomorrow,” I said, looking at Brenda to see if she agreed. “I think we need to do a little more planning.”
“And we’re chargin’ batteries,” Brenda added. “We’re chargin’ our phones, our iPads, the camera, the bug zappers, and anything else you guys buy. I’m not headin’ into the woods without a full supply of energized gadgets.”
“Good idea,” I said. “So you guys go shopping and I’ll reserve a car for tomorrow morning.”
Ready or not, fairies and goblins, we were on our way.
Chapter 5
By the time our hired car arrived at the hotel the next morning, we looked like a group of city slickers heading out for an overpriced wilderness adventure. Chad and Tank had gone a little overboard collecting supplies. They not only bought a tent, they also purchased cots, mosquito netting, butterfly nets (the perfect thing for catching fairies, Tank said), a Coleman stove, three Coleman lanterns, rain ponchos, a tarp, a folding table (with seats, Chad pointed out), a portable toilet, a bug zapper, toilet paper, a privacy screen, a six pack of flashlights, five sleeping bags, a cooler, and enough water, soft drinks, and groceries to supply us for a week.
Naturally, half of what they brought wouldn’t fit into the rented vehicle.
The driver stood outside the hotel shaking his head. “Esta materia no cabrá.”
“We can make it work,” Chad said. “It’s all a matter of design. If we arrange the items geometrically—”
“Not gonna work,” Tank said. “You have to shove the stuff in. If we push it all in the back, it’ll fit.”
I stood in the driveway and looked at the load, then at the space in the large SUV. Add in five passengers, our luggage and personal belongings—
“It won’t work,” I said firmly. “So here’s what you’re going to leave behind. The portable table—”
“But—” Chad protested.
“It’s too big, and we can sit in the tent. Leave out the toilet and the privacy screen.”
Brenda snorted. “You planning on holding it for twenty-four hours?”
“A tree will work fine, and the toilet paper goes with us. But not the giant pack. Two or three rolls, tops.”
Chad grinned. “I love it when she plays wilderness woman.”
I ignored him. He seemed sharp again, but his eyes were a bit watery and I’d already heard him sneeze three times.
“We take enough food for two meals—and water for two days,” I said. “No more. We don’t need the stove. We only need one lantern. If we keep the tent zipped, we won’t need mosquito netting. You can bring one butterfly net. Ditch the cots, we can sleep on the ground. If there’s room, you can bring the sleeping bags, but make sure they’re rolled tightly.”
Tank peered at me, his eyes narrow. “Were you a Girl Scout?”
“I’m practical. Anyone can see that you guys bought too much.”
Thirty minutes later, we had packed the car and pulled away from the hotel, leaving a neat pile of camping gear beneath a sign that read: ¡Gratis! Si te gusta acampar.
An hour later, I straightened in the front passenger seat and showed my phone and its map app to the driver. “We’re close,” I said, trying to remember the Spanish words. “Estamos cerca. Maneja lento.”
He gave me an uncertain look, but slowed the car so we could search for signs along the road. We had driven about ten miles into the national park when the app indicated that we had reached our destination. Frantic, I looked out the window and spotted a barely visible dirt road snaking through the trees. “¡Aqui! I mean, Por ahí!”
The driver turned. As the SUV rumbled over the road, jostling our equipment and rattling our teeth, the driver muttered Spanish expletives under his breath. Finally we pulled up in front of a modest house surrounded by several outbuildings. A skinny dog ran over to the car, barking as if there were no tomorrow, but the animal shied away when I opened my door.
“We don’t want to scare this farmer,” I said, realizing that the sight of a big, black SUV might alarm anyone. “So let me go speak to him. The rest of you can get out and stretch your legs, but don’t snoop. And don’t wander off.”
“Why don’t you let me go talk to him?” Chad said, unbuckling his seat belt. “After all, I can read his mind. I could--”
He sneezed so explosively that Brenda’s dreads swayed in the resulting breeze.
“Thought you couldn’t read a mind that thought in Spanish,” Brenda said.
“Yeah, but I can still sense things. Fear. Deception. Irritation.”
“You’re staying in the car,” I told him, feeling irritated myself. “I speak more Spanish than you do, and I’m a woman. Women are less threatening.”
“But—”
“No buts, newbie. I can handle this. And by the way--” I exhaled in resignation. “Take another one of those antihistamines. We’ll never see a fairy if you scare them off with all that sneezing.”
Chad tossed me a mock salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
I blew out a breath. I had felt a certain amount of tension between us over the past few days—almost as if Chad expected to be anointed team leader and thought I was usurping his position. But our team didn’t actually have a leader, so he shouldn’t be getting his nose out of joint if I did my best to keep things organized.
I got out and slowly approached the house. The farm might be considered poor by American standards, but it looked pretty prosperous to me. A large water tank sat on the flat roof, and someone had painted the stucco exterior bright blue with coral accents on the door and windowsills. A chicken coop sat behind the house, and a couple of other buildings stood beyond the henhouse. In the distance, a couple of acres had been planted with something that grew lush and green in the hot sun.
“¡Hola!” I called. “¿Alguien en casa?”
A moment later a man appeared behind the screen door. He wore dark pants and a sleeveless undershirt, and he regarded me with a wary gaze. Behind him, just over his shoulder, I saw a young teenager, probably thirteen or fourteen.
“Hola!” I smiled and waved in an effort to appear friendly. “¿Hablan ustedes Inglés?”
The father looked at me, then gestured to the kid, who stepped out from behind him. “My father doesn’t speak English,” the boy said, “but I can translate.”
“Good.” I smiled in relief. “My name is Andi, and my friends and I are from the United States. Yesterday we spoke to Señor Prospero from the TV station. He gave us your address.”
The boy nodded. “Si.”
“We’d like to talk to you about the creature you found. And we’d like to see the place—where you found him, that is.”
The boy looked at his father and explained in a flood of Spanish. The older man scratched his chin, then looked at me and responded. I didn’t catch a word.
“My father,” the kid said, “wants me to tell you I found it lying in a ditch. I was riding my bicycle and stopped—” he looked down—“to make water, and that’s when I saw it.”
I nodded, slowly understanding. So the kid stopped to obey the call of nature. Happens to everyone.
“Was the creature dead when you found it?”
“Si—yes.”
“Had you ever seen anything like that before?”
The boy glanced at his father, who nodded.
“Si. Sometimes at night, we see them flying. Once we saw one come out of a tree.”
I blinked. “It was in the tree? Up in the branches?”
The boy shook his head. “It was—¿como dice que?—
it came out of a hole in the tree.”
“Ah.” I considered his answer, then asked, “Why did you take the creature to Señor Prospero?”
The kid looked at his father, repeated the question in Spanish, and listened to his father’s reply.
“Papa said Señor Prospero always takes questions from the audience and gets answers. But we have not had an answer yet. Señor Prospero has not even talked about the creature.”
“Not yet.” I glanced back at the others, who appeared to be waiting patiently. “I’m sorry, I forgot to ask your name.”
The boy gave me a shy smile. “Tomas.”
“Tomas, could you take us to the place where you found the fairy? We would like to spend the night in that spot so we can help Señor Prospero find some answers.”
The boy’s eyes widened, then he translated for his father. The elder Rodriguez eyed me for a long moment, then nodded and pointed to a bicycle propped against a tree.
“Papa says I am to lead you there and then come home,” Tomas said. “I will be ready in a minute.”
“Take your time,” I said, grateful that the family wanted to cooperate. “We’ll follow you.”
The boy disappeared into the house, leaving me with Señor Rodriguez. I smiled, then remembered my manners. “Gracias, señor. Muchas gracias.”
He nodded, then went back into the house, leaving me to wait for his son.
“So Tomas is going to take us to the spot,” I told the others, “and we can set up camp there.”
“This is a national park,” Tank pointed out. “Aren’t there rules against camping in a national park?”
“You’re confused,” Chad said, his voice sharp and cynical. “Everybody camps in the national parks. The rules prohibit littering.”
I looked at Brenda, who shrugged. “It’s not like we’re plannin’ to live there,” she pointed out. “We’ll actually only be there a few hours, and we’ll clean up. Nonexistent footprint and all that.”
“Right.” I sighed. “As long as we don’t get arrested.”
Being jailed in Mexico wasn’t my idea of fun, but we hadn’t seen any signs that prohibited camping. In fact, since entering the Parque Nacional El Tepozteco, we hadn’t seen any signs or any forest rangers. In any case, the Rodriguez family lived within the park boundaries, so how strict could the rules be?
A few moments later Tomas appeared, wearing a button-up shirt, jeans, and sneakers. He picked up his bike and smiled. “Ready?”
“Lead the way, Tomas.” I hopped back in the car along with the others. The driver did a three-point turn and we followed Tomas back to the paved two-lane road.
We drove a couple of miles down the serpentine highway, then Thomas turned onto another dirt road, this one much less-traveled that the one that led to his house. Our driver complained again, but he kept driving, moving slowly over the ruts and maneuvering around fallen trees and branches. Finally the shrubbery and trees at the side of the road opened up to reveal a ditch running along a barren field. The boy stopped and swung his leg over his bike.
Our driver braked to a halt.
“Aquí.” Tomas pointed to the ditch. “The fairy was in the ditch.”
We piled out of our vehicle. The ditch was nothing extraordinary—only a foot deep, with weeds growing on the banks and a trickle of muddy brown water at the bottom. The field beyond had probably been planted at some point, but now resembled nothing except dry, brown earth. Trees to the right and left provided a curtain of shade for the rutted road, effectively concealing it from overhead planes or helicopters or Google Earth cameras.
Chad stepped closer. “Has it occurred to you—” he scratched his chin—“that this might be the perfect place to grow wacky tabacky?”
“What?”
“Marijuana.” He lowered his voice. “Secluded spot, mostly covered from above, no traffic or prying eyes—”
“We’re not the DEA,” I told him. “We’re here to investigate a scientific anomaly.”
“But maybe we should consider an illegal drug operation as a reason for the creature,” he said, whispering out of the side of his mouth. “Maybe the family made up the story to scare people away from this part of the forest. Maybe some drug lord paid big bucks for a sophisticated fake fairy, and this is all a cover-up—”
“If they wanted to scare people away, they’ve done a poor job of it,” I reminded him. “Did you check the Internet? I did. There was a plastic Tinkerbell that folks in some small Mexican village are charging people to view, and another fake in an unspecified location. But there’s been nothing about this story. That’s nada in Spanish.”
Chad grinned. “You are so cute when you’re ticked off. How do you manage it?”
I curled my hands into fists until the urge to slap him had passed.
Moving toward Tomas, I pulled out my phone and showed him a copy of the creature’s X-ray. “Does this look like the creature you gave Señor Prospero?”
The boy’s eyes widened. “Si. Claro. But . . . it looks different.”
“This is an X-ray,” I said. “The thick parts look white, and the thinner parts are darker.” I pointed to one of the strange white spots on the creature’s body. “Do you have any idea what those white spots could be?”
He looked closer, then his eyes widened and his expression twisted. He glanced away, then bit his lip and looked at me, guilt written all over his face.
“Tomas—do you know what those spots are?”
He kept his mouth clamped shut as he looked from left to right.
“Tomas, if you help us, we may be able to find answers. Your father would like an answer, right?”
The boy nodded.
“So if you know anything at all—”
“He shot it.” The words tripped off his tongue. “The night before I found it, we were outside and we saw them. They came close to the house, and we saw the face. Mama screamed, so Papa got his escopeta and shot it.”
A dozen thoughts tumbled through my mind. If Señor Rodriguez shot the creature, it should have been blasted to smithereens. But perhaps that depended on what an escopeta was.
“Tomas—¿que es una escopeta?”
He squinched up his face, then lifted an imaginary gun—or maybe a crossbow—to his face and shoulder, then pulled the trigger.
So . . . rifle? Bow? I didn’t know much about weapons.
I walked over to speak to our driver. “Escopeta, por favor,” I asked. “¿Que is escopeta?”
He gave me a blank look, then pulled a language dictionary from his pocket. After a moment, he looked up. “Shotgun.”
I looked at Tank, who had followed me over. “Buckshot.” His smile broadened into a grin. “And, by golly, if those dots aren’t the perfect size for buckshot. The thing must have been too quick to get the full blast, but it still got hit by six or seven pellets.”
I heard an almost-audible click as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
“This is the spot,” I told the driver. “We’re going to unload here. If you could pick us up here at this time tomorrow, we’ll pay double the charge and give you the extra as a gratuity.”
In that moment, the man had no problem understanding my English. He hopped out of the car and opened the back hatch. “Okay,” he said, grabbing the closest suitcase. “Okey-dokey.”
Chapter 6
An hour later the five of us sat around a pile of logs that was supposed to be a campfire. I couldn’t believe it, but though we had purchased everything we could think of to camp successfully, we hadn’t bothered to learn how to light a fire.
“A bunch of stupid city slickers, that’s what we are,” Brenda said, slapping at a bug buzzing her ankles. “Nobody ever told me I’d need to know how to start a fire.”
“I can’t believe we didn’t bring matches,” Chad complained for the fourth time. “I assumed one of you ladies would carry them in your purse.”
“Nobody smokes anymore,” I said. “Lung cancer isn’t glamorous.”
> Chad looked at Tank. “Didn’t you learn how to rub two sticks together back there in Podunkville where you grew up?”
Tank glared back. “I haven’t seen you creating any sparks. I’ve seen you tryin’ to get somethin’ goin’, but it ain’t gonna happen—”
“Guys!” I shouted, aware that they weren’t talking about the fire any more.
Sighing, I crossed my legs and looked toward the western horizon, where the sun was about to disappear behind a wall of trees. “Maybe we don’t need a fire. We still have a lantern, right?”
Chad grinned. “Yeah . . . and it has ignomatic autonition.” He laughed. “I mean automatic ignition.”
“His medicine just kicked in,” Brenda said, shaking her head.
He opened a box, pulled out the lantern and struggled to read the instructions in the fading light. Fortunately, the lantern blazed into light just as the sun disappeared and the sky turned from blue to blue-black.
“Ouch!” Brenda slapped at her bare arm, then looked at the tent. “Maybe we should get inside before the kamikaze mosquitos come out. I don’t want Daniel gettin’ a thousand bites.”
“Sounds good to me.” I picked up my stuff and moved inside the tent, where earlier Brenda and Daniel had rolled out five sleeping bags and covered nearly all the floor. The tent had several windows, and the guys had rolled up the canvas coverings so we could keep watch from behind the screens.
“Come on, Daniel,” Brenda said, practically lifting him from the spot where he’d been playing his hand-held video game. “You’re about to wear out the batteries on that thing.”
“Yowie!” Tank slapped at his arm, then Chad hit his neck. “Man! Let’s get inside!”
The guys followed us into the tent. As Tank zipped up the entrance and Chad powered on the bug zapper, Brenda and I sat before one of the front windows, watching for anything unusual in the air, the trees, or the weeds.
“These things glow, right?” Tank said.
