Chapter Forty-four
~
At what I’d guess was the halfway point, I noticed I was suddenly sweatin’ a bit inside my parka, though emotionally I still felt cold. That sounded weird in my head. How can a hen feel emotionally cold. But I did shiver from time to time.
Lucaz—he’d introduced himself about fifteen feet into our descent, I think to induce me to think about somethin’ other than the fact the air was a few thousand digits below freezin’ and we hung like pinatas over granite boulders twenty miles below us—had continued a whispered conversation with me. Lucaz. I could hear Mama sayin’, “A good biblical name.” Wonder if Lucaz was one of our gods, or a prophet.
“Warmed up a bit,” Lucaz agreed. “Prolly in the nineties down there.” He hedged his head kinda toward his right shoulder. Of course he meant twenty miles below us. Prolly only ten miles now.
“Ya’re not havin’ to worry about ice now,” I agreed.
I worked to look over my shoulder at the ground below.
Lucaz snapped, “What’d we talk about?” After a sec he said in a soft tone, “Don’t go twistin’ me about.”
I apologized. “Lota folk down there.”
“Are there really?” Don’t think he was truly surprised by my assertion. “A couple ranchers checkin’ on their sheep?”
Closest thin’ to a joke he’d worked on in the last hour and a half. Considerin’ there were at least three helicopters and a dozen SUVs, prolly weren’t sheep herders. I told him I could stand gettin’ out of my parka. I’d already unzipped it as far as I could reach, and stuck that knitted hat out of the way.
“Yeah, no. Maybe ya don’t mind turnin’ into a mush pie, but I like all my organs where they are.” So no undressin’ on the face of a cliff.
My face was pretty much crammed against his dreads, but I managed a head-twist. Shoot. We were just a rock throw from the crowd, which sat in the jumble of mountain chunks leanin’ into the plain, watchin’ us like a championship basketball tourney.
The squelch from Lucaz’ radio was more words than static now. The team’s leader spoke to the ground crew with a status. Two needed immediate transport, he said, and my chest crimped. Hard. I’d been so preoccupied with my own pain—considerin’, more discomfort—and fear, I hadn’t been thinkin’ about Alex and Beky. Considerin’. Maybe they were lucky to be alive. I know enough to recognize organs shut down with severe hypothermia. And just a few minutes later my toes stabbed into rock, and Lucaz suggested I might be able to stand now. But my legs were kinda numb. Feet too. It wasn’t until he twisted a bit and unclamped himself from the pairs of ropes we had dangled from for the last two hours that I realized we were in the jumble of boulders lining the mountain edge, and EMTs were busy pullin’ Alex and Beky out of their harnesses.
I watched in awe as the various teams held gurneys still, slid patients into place, as IVs were started and vitals were reported over their radios. Two hundred feet away the rotors of a helo with the bright medical credential painted on the side began to wind and the jet engine roar grated at my ears.
Lucaz had been ratchetin’ me out of my harness, though I hadn’t noticed, and as he raised up one of my legs to retract straps, I leaned eastward and fell about ten feet, bouncin’ left and right against ten-ton boulders. Two seconds later fists were grippin’ me, holdin’ me fast. Questions bounced off my numb head. An ogre had her fingers pressed against my throat. Oh—heart rate. Flashed a stinkin’ sun-bright flashlight across my eyes. Ouch. She asked me to count backward from ten. Struggled with that for a moment. But think I aced it after.
“A little rest and a couple steaks, ya’ll be brand new,” the smilin’ EMT announced. I wasn’t so sure. I blinked, realized Beky and Alex were gone. Found their gurneys were gettin’ pressed into that air-ambulance.
“They gonna be okay?” I asked.
“Perfectly,” the ogre bull stated. Pretty sure that must be standard operatin’ procedure to keep the ignernt patient from worryin’.
Ham fists were grippin’ my parka now and liftin’ me heavenward. “Ya had us a tad worried,” my Uncle Jam hissed, as though I’d really messed up and it was all my fault. The stinkin’ troll bull pressed me into his chest as though tryin’ to ensure I’d never get air back in my lungs.
“Let her breathe. Let her breathe,” Mama hissed. She was pullin’ me out of Jam’s grip and pullin’ me to her. In the background Aunt Ezra was shoutin’ about trolls tryin’ to squeeze the life out of me. Stinkin’ trolls are a bit clingy. Demonstrative.
As Mama finally let me loose a bit, I looked about, which disoriented me some. I blinked against the dizziness.
“Watch out,” Uncle Jam screeched. “She’s teetering.” A ham fist had me by the front of my parka again.
“Will ya let me be?” I hissed. “Get me out of some layers. I’m dyin’ in this heat.”
~
Hale
~
I had to strongly fight the threatenin’, incomin’ episode, with a hundred or so EMTs checkin’ me over. Papa sat next to me the whole time, hissin’ at them to let me breathe.
When they finally decided my brain wasn’t fallin’ out, heart still pumped, they headed for the SUVs fifty yards below the mangle of granite, and a full five minutes later I realized I could get some air in my lungs again and the world wasn’t collapsin’ in on me.
Papa didn’t say nothin’. Sat, keepin’ his eyes off me, as though the curious sheep below circlin’ ’round the gatherin’ of vehicles and remainin’ helicopter was quite intriguin’. I mushed my butt around to get a bit more comfortable in between the three smaller boulders holdin’ me in place.
Papa said, “Don’t feel rushed. Take the time ya need.” I don’t know why his Trollish accent made me smile. Well—I prolly didn’t smile like a regular soul, but I sensed the hint of amusement in my chest. Papa’s never spoken anythin’ but Trollish to us. And he has no hint of an ogrish accent. Which has nothin’ to do with him fallin’ in love with and livin’ with a troll. Someone told me, don’t remember who, prolly Uncle Ike, that Papa had been that way for two decades. Definitely, it was Uncle Ike who explained Papa used to stutter somethin’ awful back in the day, when he spoke Ogrish. So there was a time he spoke Ogrish.
Did Bele know that? Pretty sure the conversation wasn’t shared with her. Think it was one of those stinkin’ early mornin’s Ike made me hike the hills with him as though it served a purpose. Wonder why hikin’ is such a religious thin’ to Uncle Ike.
I don’t hate it now. Like I used to. At TIT, I was known to even rise early for a solo hike before classes.
“Ya gonna live?” Papa asked.
I realized I’d been studyin’ him, and looked away. Hm. Those sheep weren’t all that rivetin’. But Papa continued to keep them in his sights. Mama, Aunt Ezra, and Uncle Jam were half-carryin’ Bele off the cairn. Mama looked at me hard for a moment, and I shared a nod with her. It raised a smile on her face. I don’t understand smiles, but I recognize the emotions they transmit from regular folk. Bele’s explained it to me a gazillion times.
“Don’t feel guilty about it,” Papa said softly.
Stinkin’ ogre might have been readin’ my mind like a witch I’m aware of. Beky had hardly left my mind.
“Spoke with her papa,” he said.
“Ya had a conversation on the phone, that wasn’t about a network or data farm?”
“Don’t be rude,” he said. “And ya don’t have to talk to me in Trollish, ya know.”
No. But it just always seemed right. I mean. I’d never heard him utter a word in Ogrish. “Musta been her step papa. What I understand, her real papa’s never been in the picture.”
“Now ya’re soundin’ stupid. The concern I sensed in his voice, that was as real a papa as comes around.”
I wrenched around to look at him. We held each others’ eye for maybe two seconds before both of us had to look away. “Ya sensed it?”
“Well, his goblin accent was clear, but so was the love.”
Neither of us spoke for a long moment.
“Sorry if it sounded like I was callin’ ya stupid,” Papa said softly.
That hint of humor thin’ that sometimes tickles my chest, rose up and rattled a bit. “Ya’ve called me worse.”
“Only that one time,” he said.
“When ya first saw me without dreads,” I offered.
He nodded. Both of us are emotional deserts, but if I can read subtle anger, I read it in his face again. “That ticked me off. More, embarrassed me.”
“Anyone, from the council, maybe, ever speak to ya about it?” I asked.
“They knew it was none of their business,” he said. “Maybe. Just glad ya wasn’t part of their brood.”
We let the moment hang. I wondered if we should join the folk down below. Most of the SUVs had already left.
“Back to Beky’s papa,” he said. “He told me to tell ya not to feel like it was yar fault. Evidently, the pup has a reputation for gettin’ herself into dangerous situations without a bull bein’ involved.”
Her story about almost dyin’ in that Northern desert came to mind.
“Let’s join the others,” he grumbled—as though, could he have been enjoyin’ our uncommon moment of conversation? “Yar mama prolly be dyin’ to hug ya like the world’s commin’ to an end.”
“She’s a bit emotional,” we both said together. It wasn’t an inside joke between us. Just the truth—for a troll.
Papa stood and extended his hand. Odd. Neither of us care much to touch anyone. Someone made a crude joke not perfectly in my presence, but in my hearin’, questionin’ how he and Mama ever managed to get close enough to bring a pair of descendants into the world.
I grasped his hand, let him pull me to my feet. He didn’t let go for a moment, which was good, ’cause I wobbled for several seconds. Whoa. No wonder they half carried Bele down to the grass below. The next dozen steps over the cairn was treacherous.
Hroli met us first. “Wasn’t my fault,” she half-shouted. “The stinkin’ weatherman didn’t imply any sort of killer storm. Not my fault. Not my fault.”
“The hen had been in tears,” Papa said, “when she met us at the airport.”
Bele once explained that a strategy for settlin’ folk down who felt they wronged ya, was to share a smile. I tried. Had no clue if the right muscles worked together in my face. Hroli dashed to me and wrapped me up in her arms, as sobs racked her shoulders. The orc hen pressed her face into into my hip. Seemed awkward, so I lifted her and cradled her a bit like Mama would a tyke.
“Hush, ya hen,” Papa said. “Ya’re gonna embarrass the bull.”
“Ya can shut up,” Hroli growled. “I almost killed all of ’em.”
“Ya didn’t do any such thin’,” Mama said, stridin’ up to us. “No more than either of them knowin’ly endangered their guests.”
That maybe summed thin’s up. Hopefully someone told Bele it wasn’t bad that she coerced Alder to follow us up to the shrine.
~
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