Dason squatted in the center of the cave poking with a short branch at the remains of a small bonfire.
“What’s happening?” she said, glancing around her. Both their knapsacks lay in the far corner of the cave.
“Checking for bones,” he said.
“Bones?”
“Just checking out what Stone People eat.”
“Not that story again. I didn’t see you bring our knapsacks here.”
He looked up. “I thought you did.”
They stared at each other; if neither of them carried them here, who did? She sauntered to the corner of the cave, leaned down to put the tarp and hammock back into her knapsack, and spotted her little bark canoe on the ground.
“I told you not to play with this?” she said, inspecting it for damage.
“It’s isn’t me. I never touched any of your stuff.”
“No?” she said, stuffing it back into the zippered pocket. “Who, then?”
She glanced around once more, and this time got a proper view of the walls of the cave. A rainbow coloured mural of old Indian pictographs of animals, arrows, stars, moons, and people on horses or standing near mountains or tipis covered all the insides. She reached out to touch them, and as her fingers glided from one painting to the next, she began to sing one of the old songs, the same one her mother used to sing to her. Dason’s stubby fingers followed hers, tracing around the images and humming in tune to her song. The pictographs seemed to calm her and give her strength; for the first time since they left, she was convinced they’d find Tom.
Their fingers reached the opening of the cave, and she looked down to smile at Dason.
“So, smart guy, why do you think they moved our knapsacks here?” she said. He seemed so much more confident about these things than she was.
“Dunno,” he shrugged. “Maybe to keep them dry.”
“Like they’re looking out for us, you mean?” Tala paused for a moment. “What about my birch canoe? Why was it out of my bag?”
“Maybe so you won’t forget about it.”
Just then, a booming gunshot followed by the screeching of birds and loud flapping of wings. They hovered, holding their breath a moment, before grabbing the knapsacks and bolting out of the cave.
CHAPTER SEVEN
But the very moment after the long black feather sailed past her, her mind swung back to the gunshot they had just heard, and her stomach turned over at the thought of another bear being killed and sliced for parts. What if the gunshot was aimed at Tom instead? If Tom was shot dead, or bleeding to death, she should be by his side. How could she help him if she was running in the opposite direction from him?
If it was another bear that got shot, there was nothing she could do. It was her job to keep her little brother safe and coming face to face with a crazy gunman wasn’t going to do that. The more she tried to come up with a plan, the more her heart felt heavy.
The trail came to an unexpected end. Last night’s down pour had triggered a small mudslide; a rushing stream of mucky water and debris from the mountain brought them to a full stop. The trail still continued across the other side, but the stream was much too wide for them to jump across. They’d have to detour into the woods to try to find a spot where it was narrow enough for them to hop across the water. The woods were boggy and difficult to walk through; stopping to scrape the mud caked to the bottom of their shoes would make their hike slow and tiring.
Tala turned to signal Dason to follow her away from the trail, when he rushed right past her.
“Don’t be stupid. You’re going to fall in and I’ll be stuck trying to get you out,” she said.
It was too late; he was halfway across the muddy stream before she even finished her words. He sailed straight over the water, landed face first with a loud thud on dry land, and bounced right back up.
“It’s the feather. It’s the feather,” he said in a loud, excited voice.
This was unbelievable; her little brother had just leaped over an area that was three times her own height. There was no way, even in her dreams, that she could jump that far.
“Dason,” she said. “Are you O.K.?”
“It’s the feather,” he said. “Watch this.”
He took a few steps backwards, charged up to the edge of the water, and sprang back over to her side. Too stunned to move out of his way, he landed smack into her, dragging her down to the ground. He jumped right back up with a wide grin and tugged on her arm to help her up.
“What’s going on?” she said, trying to catch her breath.
“Told you,” he said. “It’s the feather.”
While she tried to push herself up, her forehead brushed the tip of the feather. It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on her head and she perked right up, snatching the feather out of his hand. A burst of energy flashed through her body and she stood up straight as a lamppost.
“Maybe I can jump across just like you,” she said.
“Come on,” he said, gripping the opposite end of the feather. “Let’s do it together.”
Both took three wide steps backwards, charged forward to the edge of the water, and leaped over the swampy stream holding on tight to their end of the long black feather. Tala landed flat on her feet, but Dason tumbled right in front of her; so she tripped over him and crashed to the ground. The feather flew out of their hands and glided onto the surface of the water. Tala shot up, grabbing it before it disappeared.
They sat cross-legged on a dry patch of grass eating the last of the granola bars. No matter how hard she tried to focus her mind on ordinary things, her mind always wandered back to the black feather. Dason’s idea of the Culloo protecting them while they slept might not be so silly after all. Why else did the feather land beside them in the hammock? Dason had understood all of this long before she had. Maybe it was easier for him to believe in the stories because he was still so young. She reached over to straighten his bandana and tucked in the loose strands of hair on his forehead.
The trail, damp and slippery with last night’s rain, buzzing with swarms of hungry mosquitoes, promised to be more difficult than she had expected.
“Let’s each hold one end of it,” he said, bouncing up.
“Not so fast,” she said, reaching up and pulling him back down beside her. “We have to give thanks to the Culloo for sharing some of its energy.”
He nodded and closed his eyes. This wasn’t new to him; Tom always made sure to thank Mother Nature for sharing her beauty with them each time they went hiking. Tala held his hand, closing her eyes too. She sang the comforting words of Anjij’s old song, confident, even though she wasn’t sure of their meaning, that they were the right words, feeling their warmth as they radiated straight from her heart and flowed out like a soft ray of white light to touch everything around her. When she opened her eyes again, all the colours that greeted her: the different shades of blue in the sky, all the tints of green in the plants and the leaves, the rainbow pigments of all the flowers, and the grey-brown hues of the trees and the soil, appeared bright and sparkling.
They slipped their knapsack back on and off they went. Both held on
to one end of the long black feather, running in unison, dodging puddles, leaping over fallen branches and huge rocks. They worked with one mind, their movements synchronized, linked together by the length of the long black feather. Their feet, it seemed to Tala, just grazed the ground and the scenery changed at such a great pace that trees, bushes, and plants became a continuous blur of green.
Soon the mountain area was behind them. They were on flatter ground sloping down to the high cliffs along the rocky shores of the river. The forest of tall evergreens, birches and poplars was thinner here and cut by deep ravines leading away from the mountain. Some of these were dried up and lined with a crisscross of fallen trees.
Tala released her grip on the feather as she skidded to a stop beside Dason. She knew by the low position of the sun that they had covered the mountain trail in no time at all. If she believed Dason, she’d even say they’d flown here. It was time to figure out what to do next. Her stomach felt queasy again. She had hoped to catch up to Tom by this time; everything would’ve been all right again. She realized it was all up to her with nobody telling her what to do, although she wouldn’t have minded at this point. Having someone else take charge would’ve made things way easier. The last time she had felt so scared was when Anjij died. Please, she looked up at the black birds soaring overhead, please let him be safe.
“What are we going to do now?” Dason said. He had slipped the feather behind him in a belt loop of his pants and looked up at her, convinced she had a plan.
She turned and caught a glimpse of the blue water through the trees and shrugged. As much as she had felt light and energetic while running with the feather, standing now with her feet on firm ground, she felt the tears begin to rise. It was her job to keep her little brother safe, yet she didn’t even know how to cross that river in front of them and bring him back home. The culloo feather wouldn’t help them cross that great of a distance. They were out of culloo territory and on their own. To retrace their steps wasn’t an option, there still might be poachers lurking around. They couldn’t hide out too long with three apples and a couple of water bottles left between the two of them. She had failed both her father and her brother; she should never have brought Dason along. She reached out to touch the feather, just in case, but no burst of energy this time, they had used it all up.
“Something’s moving back there?” Dason said, pointing to a thick stand of wild raspberries a few feet away from them.
She turned. A stumpy shape disappeared behind a tangle of thorny stems and broad green leaves.
“Must be some kind of fat bird,” she said, squinting; though she could swear she had caught a glimpse of coloured beads around its feet. She took a closer look at the different shades of reds and greens of the ripening fruit. It could’ve been berries she had seen. “The birds here are a little different than the ones we see back home.”
She climbed a large rock to get a better view of the wide Cascapedia River below; across the water was Indian land where her Nannie lived. She wished she were in her kitchen stirring a heaping teaspoon of instant coffee into a cup of boiling water for her. Nannie loved it strong and black, always in the old chipped mug Tom had bought her with his allowance money when he was ten years old. Although Uncle Lou always claimed it was him who had bought it, not Tom.
“That’s no bird, it’s waving at us,” Dason said, darting after it.
Tala made a lunge for his arm but he dodged her and sprang forward.
“Don’t go getting lost,” she said.
He disappeared behind the raspberry bushes and she stormed after him. That’s all she needed, chasing after her brother’s imaginary friend. “Get back here this minute.”
He wasn’t behind the bushes, but a quick movement beside a nearby clump of high grass caught her eye and she darted in that direction. No one there either, then the abrupt swaying of the lower branches of a large pine tree attracted her, and she switched direction again. She bolted towards anything that moved until she started feeling all sweaty and light-headed, convinced she had been running in circles all along. She glanced around in a panic, not remembering from which direction she had started, and in which one Dason had headed to. She was lost, and she’d lost track of her little brother. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath; she had to remain calm, try hard to think this through, and get her bearings back.
Then she smelled it, that same sweet tobacco odour that had filled the small cave earlier. She took another long deep inhalation to make sure, and sprinted in that direction, thrashing through bushes of tall brambly plants, past more scrub, around an ancient weeping willow, and right smack into Dason. By the wild look in his eyes, she knew something dead serious was up.
Before she had a chance to say anything, he grabbed her hand tugging her in the direction he had just come from.
“Hurry,” he said, almost in tears. “But no talking—no noise.” He disappeared through a thick growth of goldenrod.
She raced after him, determined not to let him out of her sight, leaping over puddles and dodging boulders and dead branches. She had no idea where he was headed; from the downward slope of the ground, she knew they were at least going back towards the riverside.
Dason kept on looking back over his shoulder to make sure she was right behind. He didn’t slow down, confident of where he was going. She wanted to yell at him to stop and tell her what was happening; but knew from the mad gleam in his eyes, there was no slowing him down.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dason barreled through a patch of tall grass before hopping down into a shallow dried-up ravine. Lined by tall spruce trees, many of them broken or leaning into each other, it narrowed and then disappeared into a stand of white birch trees a little further away from them. Tala felt her heart beat a little faster. The same four white birches whose branches intertwined to form a low arch. One birch for each of us, Anjij had said with that beautiful smile of hers. The black spruce trees beside the ravine had been dead or broken even then. Past the birches was the small clearing where Anjij pitched their tent, not far from the rocky pathway that lead down to the shore where Tom tied up his fishing boat.
But Dason had been a toddler, too young to remember this. How did he know how to get here? Why was he leading her here? If he had seen Tom, he wouldn’t have come back so scared. Tala’s chest tightened. Unless—unless—Tom was hurt. Why was he so afraid someone might hear them talk? It could only be the hunter that spooked him like that. But why would Dason lead her to danger? By then Tala’s stomach was knotted up tight. She had just figured out two sure things: their father was hurt, and the hunter had found him.
Tala quickened her pace. She needed to stop Dason before they went any further. There had to be a way he could fill her in on what was happening without having to talk. She glanced a head of him to see how close they were getting to the birch trees. It was then that she saw it. Dason was heading straight towards one of those tree portals Tom always warned them against. Don’t touch them, they’ll tumble down and make compost out of you.
A huge poplar, broken and striped bare of its bark, leaned at a downwards angle against two straight spruce trees, each of them bordering opposite sides of the ravine. A little higher was another fallen tree clinging to the branches of the poplar. If the poplar fell, the other tree would crash down too. Had he figured out the danger of what even the tiniest bump against that poplar could do? She had to catch up to him before—
He came to an abrupt stop, pointed up at the tree, and continued running, clearing the tree like a leaf in the wind. She let out a deep breath and thanked the Spirit of the Tree for protecting her brother—and for helping him be a little smarter than she figured.
She made sure to stoop down low enough to avoid touching any part of the portal, but her foot slipped sideways on a rock. Her knapsack slammed into the side of the tree. A jolt of vibrations went through her as the poplar slid down a notch and dug deeper into the spruce tree. The spruce sprayed a citrusy-sweet odour into the air. She
dared not move. Her heart was thumping so hard she felt it about to burst through her skin.
Dason’s mud-coated running shoes appeared in front of her and she looked up. He was in a big frenzy, pointing to his knapsack, slipping it off, shrugging it back on, and starting all over again. How could he act so crazy when the slightest move on her part could crush her to death?
Then it hit her. He was trying to tell her to slip out of her knapsack. She inched her head backwards to check and saw part of her bag was trapped where the poplar had rammed into the spruce. If not for the bag, she would’ve been bleeding into the ground right now.
One false move and the poplar would come crashing down on her. She’d have to try to slip her arms out without making any abrupt movements. Her legs were shaking from leaning over so long but she’d have to duck even lower to get at the release buckle on the straps. The lower she stooped her head, the more her stomach felt like heaving. Then after what seemed like the longest time, her fingers touched the smooth plastic buckles on the side of her bag and she clicked, releasing them both at once. She felt the straps slip from her arms and she sprang forward falling face down in the middle of the ravine. She lay there shaking, inhaling the damp soil and soft grass, until she felt Dason’s hand tugging hers. She pushed herself up, wiped the dirt and sweat from her face with the back of her hand and off they went.
The arch in the birch trees was a short distance away. Dason beckoned her to hurry. They scrambled out of the ravine and jogged on higher ground till they reached a clump of blackberry bushes just behind the trees. A loud gruff voice, the same they had heard yesterday near Tom’s pickup broke their silence. They both dove down to the ground and peered through the tangled lower branches of the birches.