Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (68 page)

Meanwhile, she would go on this stupid quest and meet this dungaree guy, or whatever he was called, and why not? Anything would beat living in a cave for the rest of her life.

Jacqueline was hungry. Hungry like she had never been before. And she was cold.

Cinnamon was out trying to hunt up something to eat, and she couldn’t sleep any longer. Sleep had become her best friend of late. It took away the hunger pangs, and the torture of the never-ending chill that was now her life.

On a sudden impulse she stood and yelled down at the Wolves below her on the forest floor. “Hey, idiots!” she shouted. “I know you can hear me, and I know you can understand me. I’m talking to you. Answer me!”

Franklin, Stefen, Roly, and Dillon crowded together in an impromptu huddle. Snout to snout, they communicated in the way that only wolves can, by thoughts, so there would be no chance that the girl in the trees above would be able to hear them.

“Now
what do we do?” thought Dillon.

“Where’s Brutus? Why isn’t he back yet?” thought Stefen.

“He won’t be back for hours,” returned Franklin. “They’re out trying to get us something to
eat
, remember?”

All looked to Roly, who had guarded his thoughts to this point. “What? Oh, you want
me
to decide?”

“Somebody has to,” thought Stefen. “Beauty
and
brains, remember?” They were all way too hungry, or they would have chuckled in their minds at Stefen’s comment. “I say we ignore her. And the first chance we get, we eat her. This is not the girl. Not the one we all heard about so often growing up, anyway. She’s too young, I’m telling you, way too young.”

Jacqueline could see that they were bunched together and appeared to be talking quietly amongst themselves. “Hey!” she hollered. “Are you deaf as well as stupid? I said I’m talking to you!”

Stefen couldn’t take it any more. “We’re talking about how long it will be before you get so weak you fall out of the trees, and we get to have some
girl
for dinner. It’s been a while since we had any
girl
.”

“Ah-ha. You
can
hear me,” she said. “Now we can talk. Where are the others? Where’s Brutus?”

The rest exchanged meaningful looks. She had spoken to them, and they had spoken to her. And they had understood each other.
This
was straight out of Prophecy.

The Wolves hunched together again. “How did she know his name?” asked Stefen.

“She’s obviously been spying on us,” said Dillon. “Good for her. Were I her, I would do the same.”

“Smart
and
tasty,” said Roly, laughing loudly at his little play on words.

Cinnamon arrived back, dragging the carcass of a large bird resembling one of the Turkey Vultures that were prevalent in Salem, Connecticut. It was all she could do to drag it from limb to limb without dropping it. “Hey, a little help here,” she called out, pinching the bird against one of the limbs so that it wouldn’t fall, but unable to heft it over. “Now would be nice.”

Jacqueline scrambled over to her side, and together they hoisted the bird up and over the limb. Cinnamon was panting furiously. She was also bleeding from her scalp where the large bird had pecked her. It had clearly not been an easy fight. As she climbed up onto Jacqueline’s lap, she winced noticeably. “Cinnamon, you’re hurt!” cried Jacqueline, stopping her hand in mid-pat.

“I’ll be all right, child,” she said. “But thank you for noticing.” She glanced at the large bird with a look of satisfaction. “Not bad for an old lady, heh? Food for a week.”

Jacqueline carefully set her down and returned to the spot directly over the Wolves, who now appeared to be in a heated debate.

“Hey!” she yelled. “Cinnamon, my cat here, just brought us back a huge bird. If we give it to you, will you let us come down and talk to you?”

The Wolves all looked at each other, speechless for a moment.

“I say we let her throw down the bird, and when she comes down, we eat her and that skinny cat of hers,” said Stefen.

“Jacqueline, what are you
doing?
” her cat screeched.

Jacqueline crawled back to her. “Cinnamon,” she said, “I know you fought hard to get us that,” nodding towards the bird, “but we can’t go on like this. Yes, it will feed us for a while, but I’m afraid we’ll freeze to death before we ever get to finish it. Every day it’s getting colder. Making friends with the Wolves is our only chance. I’m sure of it. Let me try.”

“Stefen, I’m surprised at you. You would give your word and go back on it for the sake of a meal? We’ve gone a lot longer not eating than this. Your father was pack leader before he passed on. He would be furious if he heard you talking like this,” said Roly.

He looked at all three, glancing from one to the other. “I say we do it. We need to know more about this girl. Until now, I’m the only one who has seen the stone she wears, although I know for certain I saw it. At the very least, we could get her to show it to us. She might be the whole promise.”

The discussion went back and forth for a few minutes.

Cinnamon licked at her side. “Go ahead,” she finally sighed. “You’re probably right. Go on then.”

Jacqueline leaned over and kissed her gently on the top of her head. “Thanks,” she said.

On the way, she decided to lay all of her cards on the table. “Come on now,” she said, “I know you’re hungry. And we are too. But we can’t stay up here any more. We’ll freeze to death. Please let us come down. And no tricks.”

The Wolves conferred for a few more seconds. “All right,” said Roly. “Throw down the bird, and you can come down.”

“Do you promise you won’t hurt us?” she asked.

“We promise.”

“I need each of you to say it out loud,” she said.

Franklin, Stefen, Dillon, and Roly each promised out loud, so Jacqueline went back to where Cinnamon was sitting and tossed the bird down, which landed with a whumpf on the forest floor.

“Are you
insane
?” she cried. “You’re actually thinking of staying with these Gnomes? In case you forgot, we’re trying to track down our child, Blake. Our child. For all we know, she’s dead. I’m sorry, but you have totally lost it.”

She buried her face in her hands, rubbing furiously at her brow. When she let her hands fall, the look of rage was fearsome. “Well, you can stay with your new found friends as long as you like, but I’m going to search this whole country on foot, alone if necessary, to find her.”

Blake stood patiently and waited for the tirade to end, or continue. It didn’t matter. He knew he was right, and sooner or later it would end. She had been ranting at him for about ten minutes now and seemed to be running out of gas.

“May I speak now?” he asked.

“Go ahead!” she snapped. “Tell me again how you intend to winter here with the Gnomes until the weather is warm enough for them to travel. Look, this war, this subjugation of the Gnomes, this entire mess means
nothing
to me. Do you hear me?
Nothing.
It has nothing to do with us. It’s their problem, not ours. Our problem is finding Stephanie and somehow getting away from this place. That’s it. End of discussion.”

“I agree,” he said. “I agree that the problems of this world are not ours. And I also agree that the only thing that matters, the absolute bottom line, is locating Stephanie and somehow figuring a way off of this world and back to ours. But the way I see it … ”

“Never mind the way you see it. The way you see it is wrong. We’re leaving, as soon as the sun comes up. Well, I’m leaving anyway. No question. You do what you want.”

Blake cleared his throat. “How many times have I heard you tell the kids that emotions are not problem solving tools?” he asked. “A million maybe? So right now, I think it would serve us best if you stuck to your own rule. Jessica, this is a serious problem we have here. First of all, we have absolutely no idea where she is. None. And this is not a state park. This is an entire planet. And second, the world is at war! War, remember? We are two tiny fleas on the back of an elephant. We leave the company of the Gnomes, and we won’t last more than a few days. The Trolls are hunting down the Humans, Elves, and Dwarves like rabbits and exterminating them on sight. We have
no chance
of finding her with the split-at-dawn approach. Could you and I alone survive in the wilds if we eliminated the war situation? No question. But the entire point of what we do now has to be in the interests of locating the whereabouts of Stephanie. Now, Captain Pilrick … ”

“Captain Pilrick!” she shouted. “Captain Pilrick and his whole squad can go to Hades for all I care! If you had not operated on his eye and kept him from losing it,
which he would have,
and most likely died, by the way, we would have been cooked and eaten in a couple of days. Like we were stew meat. Can you believe that? Intelligent creatures torturing and eating other intelligent creatures … ” Her voice trailed off. All of the arguing was wearing her out.

“Captain Pilrick says he will
help
us to locate Stephanie. We can travel with them under the guise of being their prisoners. This is
their
world, Jess. Do you really think we can just up and leave and search an entire planet in the middle of a war, where we are public enemy number one, and find her? We would be Troll-food in a matter of days. Come on now. Think about it. It’s not your intelligence that is talking here. It’s your frustration at our not being able to accomplish the goal, and all of your yelling comes down to one simple thought: You love our child, and the yelling is all about the fact that you can’t do anything about finding her right now.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute.

“I’m going to check on the Gnomes,” he said. “We absolutely must keep the fire going.”

He pulled back the flap of the tent, and a bitter winter wind blasted him in the face as soon as he stepped outside. The sleet stung like being bitten by a hundred bees as he lowered his face against the icy assault. He crossed over to the crude cabin he and Jessica had erected for their captors. Knowing there was no way they would survive the winter with only tents protecting them, they had constructed a twelve by twelve cabin, complete with a slant roof and, most importantly, a fireplace. For insulation they had had to use a mud and leaf concoction that needed tending several times a day to prevent the air leaks and the subsequent invasion of the cold.

In spite of their massive efforts on behalf of the ones that would have been perfectly content to turn them over to the Trolls for dinner, the Gnomes were all in a state of near-hibernation. Being cold-blooded, their muscles stopped working when it got as cold as this, and their minds went into a semi-stuporous state. Without the shelter built by the Strongs they would have been dead days ago.

Blake threw open the door and entered the cabin. The Gnomes were exactly as he had left them hours ago. None had moved an inch. His “discussion” with Jessica had taken far longer than he had wanted, and he knew if he didn’t get the fire back up soon, someone was going to die. He added some kindling and fanned the coals to flame. Then he added several larger pieces and continued to fan it until it was roaring. The temperature in the crude structure came up quickly, and the Gnomes began to stir.

“Can Gall help?” he asked Blake.

“Yes, you can,” he said. “You can keep the fire going. Let it burn down for a little while and then add pieces of wood about this size, four or five of them. Then add two or three big ones. Now don’t get too close, or you’ll get burned.”