Last Chance Llama Ranch (13 page)

Step.

Ow.

Step.

Ow.

After a while the focus shifted from “not being left behind” to “not dying,” but Merry didn't stop. She
would
not
stop.

She wasn't pausing to admire the majestic trees flanking the trail, nor the clouds scudding across the achingly blue sky. She wasn't writing any odes to the chipmunks and Steller's jays that flicked in and out of her peripheral vision. Wheeler Peak was no more than a taunting mirage in the distance—glimpsed only in those few moments when she found the strength to glance up from the rock-strewn track—never seeming any closer than it had the last time she looked. She could hear Karl and Birgit's exclamations of awe and delight ahead of her like the twittering of birds—far away and hazy in some realm where people were having fun instead of suffering the torments of hell. Her heart was hammering somewhere at the base of her skull, and the thin air wheezed in and out of her laboring lungs. Worst of all, each breath, each desperate beat of her pulse sent a spiral of shame radiating through her mind.

How did I let myself get like this?

Mountains used to quiver beneath her feet. She'd been a freaking
Amazon
on the slopes. Over and over, Merry's agent had fielded requests for her to appear in magazines from
Sports Illustrated
to
Maxim
(though she'd politely turned down the latter's request to pose in just ski boots and a thong). She'd done countless interviews with top women's fitness magazines, had even been asked if she'd endorse some new exercise machine whose inventors had wanted to call the Merry-Go-Round. But now? Merry had to admit it wasn't just her injuries that had brought her to this nadir. It was the pathetic way she'd given up on any semblance of recovery, of ever being active again.

It's my own fault.

She'd gone through the required physical therapy after her accident. But once Merry was on her feet and it had become apparent that her skiing days were over, all motivation to keep fit had simply vanished. Her body had become a stranger, and a not-very-welcome one at that. Where once she'd been in peak condition, lifting weights, running, doing yoga to keep limber—and that was on top of the actual skiing, which occupied several hours out of each day—after the accident everything had changed.

So had the expectations.

That
fact had been made exquisitely clear when she'd been released from the final rehab center and, with help from her brother, finally headed home to the beautiful little condo she rented in Vail…

Only to find all her gear had vanished. From poles to goggles, boots to bindings, all of it was just…gone.

“Marcus, call the police!” Merry remembered telling her brother, as she'd crutched her way from the foyer to the living room. The hall closet, which had been bursting with skis, poles, and team jackets, was wide open and empty. The place on the wall above the mantel where she'd hung the set of skis that had taken her to a new record in last year's world championships—bare. The team jumpers, the sponsor-emblazoned clothes had all been removed from her drawers. And it wasn't just her equipment. Her medals were gone. Trophies, vanished.

“I can't believe this! I've been robbed!” Merry had hobbled all around the little condo, searching frantically, forgetting for the moment how much her injuries still hurt.
What the fuck?
Her iPod dock was still there. Her flat-screen TV, untouched. Jewelry—what little she wore—undisturbed in its box. Clothes, appliances, all good.

But every trace of her life as a skier had gone up in smoke.

“Why aren't you doing anything?! Jesus, Marcus, can't you see…”

But the look in Marcus's eyes had told her he saw more than she did. “No one robbed you, Sis,” he'd said quietly, fine gray eyes brimming with compassion. “Mom and Dad were here while you were still recovering, and they cleared everything out. They thought…I guess they thought it would hurt less if you didn't have to see reminders everywhere.”

The message had been clear.
You're not a winner anymore. You're nothing, just a hole where a winner used to be.

After that, Merry found herself hailing cabs instead of walking, going to movies rather than out for hikes. Working out, painful in its own right, was worse because it reminded her that she'd never compete again. So she'd stopped.

What's the point, when I can never hope to win?

Merry paused on the trail, both to let the hammering of her heart die down, and to have a huge fucking moment of revelation.

That's my mother's voice. Not mine
.

In her heart, Merry knew there was more to being a competitor than playing to win. And there was more to life than competition.
I mean, c'mon. What am I supposed to do now that I can't be the best? Crawl under a rock and die?
Gwendolyn Manning might not have objected—at least it would keep her daughter's shame out of the public eye—but, to Merry's surprise, she found
she
wasn't ready to give up quite yet.

Neither, fortunately, was Severus Snape.

Over the painful thrumming of her pulse, Merry could hear Snape's regular exhalations, feel them snorting softly against her be-slobbered neck. Having been so lost in her own misery, she was surprised now to find the llama had moved up beside her, crowding close to her left side instead of poking at her back. She tried to push him away, but when he wouldn't give ground, she looked at him—
really
looked at him.

Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought the llama bore a look of compassion. His ears were cocked forward, eyes liquid black and heavy-lidded. He twitched his lips, cocked his head, and shook his forelock. And then, tongue darting out, he gave her cheek a
sluuuurp!

What the hell, I'm coated in black death anyway
, Merry thought. “You're trying to help, aren't you, boy?”

Severus hummed, an inquisitive sound like a kitten assessing its welcome in a new environment.

“Blink once for ‘You're crazy, lady.' Blink twice for ‘Yes, I'm making nice.'”

Severus blinked slowly…once…twice.

Merry's eyes welled. She told herself it was just the exhaustion, the pain from her worn-out leg. She wasn't softening toward the spitty beast. She
wasn't
. But this time, when the llama leaned in to nibble her hat, she just snuffled a watery laugh and plopped the battered bit of felt atop Snape's head. She'd have to cut holes for his ears when she got a chance. “You win, my friend. Take it. Now, how about you give me a hand up this bastard mountain?”

By the time the switchbacks petered out and the gradient leveled out a bit above the tree line, Merry and Snape were old chums. They'd been through “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and moved on to “The Banana Boat Song,” Miley Cyrus's latest cry for attention, and even a little ditty she'd made up in her own fevered brain. By now Karl and Birgit had gotten so far ahead of her—curse their healthy Germanic hides—they couldn't have heard her even if she hadn't been singing in a half-delirious mumble. Sam, she assumed, must be up there with them, but she couldn't spare the energy to find out where.

Suddenly, Snape lollopped to a halt. Merry looked up, and her heart stopped. Snape flicked his ears back and forth, as if waiting for her to catch up mentally as well as physically.
Well, we're here
, he seemed to be saying.

And
here
was a glorious place.

How long had it been since she'd stood at the top of a mountain?
Duh, two years, dummy
, she thought. Once they'd been everything to her—from her first trip to the Alps with her family as a small child to the years she'd spent skiing the most extreme slopes her sport had to offer. High altitude was like a drug to her, the feeling of being above it all, able to see—just
see
everything, unimpeded—a fix she could not resist. It might be cheesy, but yeah,
hell yeah
, she felt like the queen of the world when she was up high. She'd talked about taking up mountain climbing when her skiing career ended—until it had ended the way it had. And
during
that career she'd tried every kind of skiing there was, from off-trail and out-of-bounds to heli-skiing, and not just because she liked the rush. She'd liked the scenery too.

Scenery like this.

Merry came to a halt at an outcropping of lichen-speckled granite. The Germans had gone on a ways, moving from one viewpoint to another to snap photos and exclaim over each new sight. Sam was helping them get a picture together at a likely looking rock ledge. But Merry was mesmerized right where she stood.

The world dropped away beneath her boots; the topsides of clouds were hers to explore. Wind—much colder up here than at the base of the trail—whipped about her and tried to tease her hair out of its braid. It stole moisture from her eyes, blurring her vision, but Merry blinked fiercely. She wanted to
see
this. In the distance, the sharp daggerlike edges of the smaller peaks in the Sangre de Cristo chain were blunted with a blanket of snow. The nearby slopes were a jumbled moonscape of barren stone challenged by hardy green tundra grasses, while the valleys, forests, and farmland of the surrounding area stretched out to the horizon like a banquet.

Her banquet.

“Fuck,” she said softly.

And she started to cry.

Merry was not a dainty weeper. But now, standing at the summit of Wheeler Peak, was not the time for ladylike sniffles. Fortunately, she had a very absorbent friend. Severus stood stoutly at her flank, shoring up her weaker left side as she buried her face in his crusty wool and bawled.

“Jesus—Merry, are you alright?” A hand touched her back, and Merry jumped, spinning around and stumbling away from Sam. She knuckled her eyes, grateful once again that llamas were hypoallergenic.

“Give me a minute, would you?” she mumbled.

Understanding lit in Sam's eyes, and his gaze softened. “I had a similar reaction the first time I came up here.” He fumbled in the pocket of his overalls and fished out a threadbare old bandana. “Here,” he said almost shyly, proffering the cloth. “Catch up when you're ready. I'll get Karl and Birgit settled with some snacks meanwhile.”

“I should help—” Merry started, even as she accepted the hankie.

Sam's hand curled over hers, patting. “Stay. It's just brownies and coffee. I can manage.”

If he'd said one more kind word, Merry thought she might have dissolved into a puddle. Fortunately, Sam Cassidy had a rather limited stock of compassion. “Don't worry, Wookiee,” he added. “I'll save you a brownie. Big girl like you needs to keep up your strength.”

And he padded away on silent bare feet, leaving Merry unsure which she wanted more—to shove him over the cliff, or thank him profusely. Because, whether he knew it or not, Surly Sam had just given her back a piece of herself Merry had thought was lost forever.

True, things would never be the way they'd been BT (Before Tree). She'd never carve virgin powder at eighty miles an hour, or leave her competition spitting snow while she sliced the ribbon at the finish line. But she'd made it to the top of the tallest mountain in New Mexico under her own steam, damn it, and that was more than she'd ever expected to do again. (Well, Snape had helped.) Maybe she'd never own the slopes. Maybe she'd never stand atop a podium and listen while “The Star-Spangled Banner” played and gold was placed around her neck.

But I'm alive. I'm here. And I'm grateful.

“Let's go get some brownies, Snape,” she said. “I think we've earned it.”

H
ey, Lady Hobbit. How was the trail?” Needlepoint Bob, sitting on a stool behind the host station, greeted Merry with a wide smile. In his surprisingly elegant hands, he held a canvas-stretched hoop and a needle dangling colored thread.

Merry didn't have time to check out the design he was creating, or even answer his question. Other matters were more pressing.

“Washroom. Stat.” The words came out as a croak.

Bob chuckled, pointed down the hall with the hand holding the needle. “Help yourself.”

At the communal trough that served as a sink outside the toilets, Merry washed. And scrubbed. Scrubbed again. But there was only so much she could rinse away of this day. Gunk, yes, until the water ran gray down the drain. Emotional hangover? Not so much. She was still quivering from the intensity of the moment when she'd stood atop that mountain, feeling all the loss she'd spent the last two years trying to bury, run from, and ignore. Reeling with the knowledge that it was time to let go and move on.

And speaking of quivering…every muscle in her body was quaking like Jell-O. She stood clutching the lip of the sink, breathing hard, sweat popping on her brow as her legs threatened to give way underneath her.
We're the
Millennium Falcon,
remember?
she told her bad leg.
You. Will. Hold. Together.
She scrabbled in her satchel for her Advil. Percocet—or perhaps a keg full of Fentanyl—would have helped more, but Merry had broken with such medications the minute she'd been released from the hospital, determined not to descend into a habit that would take her even further down the rabbit hole than she'd already fallen.
The last of my self-preservation
instinct, I guess
, she thought, running a brush through her hair and rebraiding it, then washing her hands once more after touching her dusty locks. She couldn't help acknowledging that Sam had actually done a better job of tidying her recalcitrant mane, though wind, llama love bites, and tree branches had since made a mockery of his ungentle ministrations.

Whereas his lips had made a mockery of her sangfroid.

For good measure, she gargled and spat before heading back into the dining area.

Taking the same booth she'd occupied the night before, Merry fetched out her cell phone and, seeing it had died the long, slow death of roaming disease, plugged it into the outlet she was happy to discover under her table.
Definitely gonna make this my regular booth.
She eased her laptop out of her bag and fired it up, plugging that in too. She figured she had just enough stamina to update her column before she lapsed into a catatonic state and Bob was forced to peel her out of the seat with a spatula to send her back to the ranch. She decided checking her email and reading the comments from yesterday's post could wait—right now it was more important to get the new stuff down while it was still fresh in her mind.

Her fingers—practically the only part of her that didn't ache—flew across the keys, and the rest of the world disappeared.

…Back at the truck, we thanked our beasts of burden with a hearty helping of grain. (I fed Severus out of the hat he'd formed such an attachment to, figuring that would be the best of both worlds for him.) Karl and Birgit departed with many enthusiastic words of praise, a handsome tip for each of us (I gave mine to Sam as I'm really just a freeloader), and promises of positive reviews on TripAdvisor. As for my own review? Yes, emphatically, you should try it. Live a little. Llama lot.

'Til next time, I'll be…

On My Merry Way.

Merry scanned her last paragraph, nodded with satisfaction, and hit “Enter” to send the article out into the world. She found herself smiling, her memories of the day's outing the rosier for the retelling.
I'm happy
, she thought, more than a little surprised.
Actually pretty happy!
Then she uncrossed her legs and tried to recross them in the other direction.

Lightning shot up her left leg, and she bit her lip to keep the bolt from shooting out of her mouth. The diner was nearly deserted at this hour of the afternoon, but the few folk who sat nursing cups of coffee or toying with slices of pie probably wouldn't appreciate a banshee wailing in their midst.

“I
hate
Germans,” Merry groaned.

Bob, setting a steaming cup down in front of Merry, raised a brow as he settled his comfortable bulk opposite her, needlework at his side. “I'll admit some of their philosophical texts are a bit dense, and World War Two wasn't exactly their finest hour, but what brings this particular distaste on today?”

Merry's lips twitched as she saw the cup's contents—he'd etched a fair rendition of
The Scream
into the foam of her latte. “I should qualify that…I've known any number of Germans I liked quite a lot. I lived for months at a time in the Alps while I was in training, and my hosts were never anything but gracious. It's just these particular Germans
today
I resent.”

Bob waited.

“Hansel and Gretel basically lapped me all the way up Wheeler Peak and back. They had to be about a hundred and sixty between the two of them, but those oldies could
hoof
it.” Cautiously, she stretched her legs out, wincing as she rubbed the left one. “Even the llamas were winded before the end.”

“It's true, Germans are the hardiest hikers. They come in here all the time, asking if we have any
hard
trails.”

“From what I saw, they're
all
hard.”

Bob smiled. “All a matter of what you're conditioned for, I guess.”

“You hike?”

“Do I look like I hike?” He jiggled his Santa-style paunch, enrobed in a tee shirt that had once been black. Some wag had dyed the words
I Like Bleach
—in what was obviously bleach—across the front.

“I bet you hold your own,” Merry said. Bob probably floated to the top of the local mountains on a magic carpet. She wouldn't be surprised if people flocked to him for wisdom once he got there. Merry sipped her latte, let out a moan of appreciation. If anything, it was even tastier than last night's. “Anyway, you'd think those two were reenacting the Teutonic invasion of Poland, the way they hustled. We were done an hour earlier than Sam usually finishes, he said.”

“I saw him drop you off out front,” Bob said.

You mean when he flung open the truck door and practically rolled me out while it was still moving?
Merry grimaced. Sam hadn't said much after he'd handed her the hankie, though whether he was giving her space or disgusted by her display of emotion she couldn't say. Or maybe it was just lingering awkwardness from their accidental lip-whack. (She
refused
to call it a kiss.) In any case, he'd saved his conversation for the Muellers on the way down to the trailhead, and after they'd departed with many
danke, auf wiedersehens!
he'd said nothing, merely giving her a ride to town on his way back to the ranch. Merry had been grateful for the silence. She'd needed the time to process the shift that had taken place within her.

“Yeah, he told me he could finish up without me. I had a lot of work to do for the magazine, and I really can't put it off or my readers will get impatient.”

Bob grunted understanding. “Speaking of which, I think your column is already having an effect on the local economy. Callie over at the motel told me she'd gotten a couple bookings through the Internet. Flustered her so much, I had to show her how to process them. And
I
actually had a call this morning asking if we took reservations.” He grinned. “I think you're putting Aguas Milagros on the map.”

Merry was absurdly pleased to hear it.
At least I'm doing
something
right.
“I hope that's cool with you,” she said. “It can be a bit weird for small-business owners when they suddenly get noticed.”

“Weird,” said Bob, “is right in my comfort zone. And I don't think I'm in much danger of becoming overrun by—what's that you call them? Hipsters? Though come to think of it, it might be nice to talk Nietzsche with the younger set.”

Merry smiled. “I'll have a muse-off with you one of these nights, Bob. Though I'm a bit rusty on my nihilist philosophers these days. I was always more partial to the French existentialists.”

“Good deal.” He swiped his needlework off the table and rose to his feet. “I don't want to keep you from your adoring public. Can I get you something to eat before I take my leave, Lady Hobbit?” Bob asked. “'Licia was going to shut down the kitchen for a few hours and catch a siesta but I think she's still back there.”

“Oh, no thanks. I'm still stuffed on Dolly's picnic lunch.” Besides, her body was wound so tight with pain she actually felt nauseated.

“Dolly's cooking
is
one of the finer pleasures of life,” Bob acknowledged, “or so I recall from the days I was still welcome at her table.” He put on what she was beginning to think of as his notable-quotable voice. “‘If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.'”

“Martha Stewart?” Merry hazarded.

“J. R. R. Tolkien. I'd have thought you'd know that one,” Bob teased.

“I'm not at the top of my game just now.” Merry sighed, scrubbing her hands down her face. “And I've still got a lot of correspondence to catch up on. Hopefully I can finish before my forehead makes forcible contact with my keyboard.”

“Well, if you're full up with food but still out of gas, how about a shot of whiskey in your coffee?” Bob was looking at her with an all-too-perceptive expression, and more sympathy in his eyes than Merry could handle right now without breaking down.

A shot of whiskey would certainly jumpstart her coma, but Merry needed her wits about her for a while yet—after she finished here, she still had to check back with Dolly and see if her hostess had any final chores for her to do this evening. “Another time, and thanks.”

“I'll leave you to it then.” Bob picked up his needlework—which looked to be a bust of Homer—and went back to his post up front.

No sense putting off the inevitable.
It was time to find out if she still had a job.

Merry opened a Skype window and dialed up her boss.

It was Sunday at three p.m. his time, so naturally Joel picked up halfway through the first electronic bleep. His face was unshaven, hair flattened on one side, and he appeared to be wearing his wife's (or possibly his mother's) pink-and-yellow flowered bathrobe, but his eyes were as alert as ever.

“Kid! What's the news from lla-lla land?” (Merry knew he'd thrown the pun in there because of the way he stretched out the l's, and because she knew Joel couldn't resist a good pun. Or a bad pun. Or, really, any pun at all.

“Hey, Joel, got time to talk? I hope I'm not dragging you away from anything.”

“Nah,” he said. “Just catching up on
Call of Duty
.” Behind him, Merry could see what had to be at least sixty acres of flat-screen television. The image frozen on it was a cartoonishly muscled supersoldier blasting something that looked like a glowing-eyed ghost with a weapon hardly smaller than himself. “What's the haps out west?” Joel leaned into the screen, giving Merry a magnified view of his stubbly cheeks as he peered more closely into the webcam, as if that would bridge the distance between them. “You look tired, kid. The farm folk treating you alright?”

Merry glanced around, but there was no one to overhear her except Bob, and he seemed completely engrossed in his stitchery. But it shouldn't matter; she really had nothing negative to say about her time in Aguas Milagros so far. “Oh, for sure,” she told her boss. “It's amazing here. The animals, the scenery, the people…you can't believe it. I only hope I'm doing a good job capturing it for the column.” Merry was fishing for compliments, but she didn't care.

“Have you seen your comments, kiddo?”

“No, I haven't had time to look yet.”

“Well, look. I'll wait.” Bob had already turned back to his video game, and the sound of machine-gun fire came faintly to Merry's ears from his living room. Merry switched browser windows to check out her column from yesterday, which was hosted on her own dedicated page on
Pulse
. A surprisingly strong feeling of pride hit her when she saw her first DDWID entries from “lla-lla land” in black and white, etched into the Internet forevermore. She scrolled down to the bottom.

Her eyes widened. There were
four hundred and eighty-seven
comments on her column. Her eyes scanned the most recent.