She shot him a glance. “Yes. They were out snow hiking, looking for caves friends had told them about. Two college guys. It was suggested they might have gotten lost because they had smoked a copious amount of marijuana. Apparently, they reeked of it, but no one was very concerned about that, considering the circumstances. It’s surprising they got us back to t
own at all.”
That was a lot of words he didn’t know. He only understood half a language, he realized. Maybe less. His head ached.
“Anyway, they left a statement but didn’t know where they’d found me, or any other details. The authorities in the area formed a search party, mostly based on the roads my dad would have likely been driving, but without any landmarks, they didn’t really know where to specifically direct it. I was in the hospital for a long time and when I woke up, I could barely remember anything.”
“You were lucky,” was all he had to say to that long string of words.
She squinted into the faraway for a minute. “I guess I was.”
Lucas stopped and so did Harper. He dug in his bag, bringing out a piece of wrapped fish and handing it to her. “Hungry?”
She took it, though she looked unsure. “Starving. What is it?”
“Smoked red-throat fish.” He only ate smoked fish in the winter, because he’d found that that made it last longer and he could store it. He liked fresh, raw fish better, but he’d brought the smoked kind because he thought Harper might like that kind more.
She gave him a strange look but unwrapped it and broke off a piece, putting it in her mouth and chewing. Her eyes widened and she chewed some more, talking around the food. “This is good.”
He smiled, pride filling his chest. He liked the sight of her eating the food he’d caught, cleaned, and smoked. He liked the look of the pleasure in her eyes and the way the oil from the food made her lips look shiny. He thought about licking her lips, tasting the oily salt on her skin.
He thought about hunting and fishing for her, bringing her things to eat, and keeping her warm and safe. He thought about her looking to him to do those things. He liked the picture in his mind, but it confused him. She couldn’t live there.
“Ready?” he asked, dropping the rest of the wrapped food into his bag and turning away from her. She said something around another bite, and he heard her footsteps behind him.
As they moved, he took some fish out and ate it quickly, watching the sky as it changed from lonesome gray to blue, the fiery sun burning away the morning clouds, the mist in the treetops fading. Dripping sounds were all around them, the snow turning to water that would freeze again tonight, making silvery waterfalls of every size and shape, and long, sharp icicles.
“Trout,” she said.
“What?”
“The speckled fish with a red stripe on their throats. They’re called trout.”
“Trout,” he said, then repeated it so he’d remember. When he looked at her, her eyes were soft like the sky. “Thank you.” She nodded, a look on her face he didn’t know what to call.
They walked for a while longer, Harper falling behind as the ground got rougher.
“It’s there,” he said when the canyon came into view.
Harper joined him, looking down into the snow-filled canyon. “How in the world are we supposed to get down there?”
Lucas looked at her. “Climb. If you want to get down there, you’ll have to follow me.”
She paused for only a moment and then nodded.
Lucas placed his bag on the ground and walked to the place where a tree grew from the side of the cliff, its root buried deep inside the rock. He grabbed hold of it and swung down easily, a move he’d done many times, in every season. He went down the sloped rock, finding the places his foot could rest and leaving room for Harper to follow him. When he tipped his head to see her, she looked nervous, but only paused for a heartbeat before following behind him, doing the same thing he’d just done.
He moved slowly, far more slowly than he would have if he’d been on his own, but . . . he thought she did good. Like a baby racoon following its mother up a tree for the first time. Slow. Careful. But natural.
With each movement, her breath came faster like she might be having trouble catching it. But she hadn’t gotten breathless once during the walk, and he wondered about it but didn’t ask. Her parents were at the bottom, and he thought that was probably the reason why she couldn’t catch her breath.
His feet touched the ground first, cracking through the icy-topped snow and meeting the frozen ground below. It was colder down there—darker—hidden from the sun, and her breath made tiny clouds as she stepped down to meet him. The world around them shushed.
Their eyes met and Harper seemed different . . . scared, or heavier, or . . . something, her eyes jumping all over the area behind him. He moved toward where he knew the vehicle was. He brushed some snow aside, showing naked branches that covered the blue of the car with leaves during the other three seasons.
A bit of the blue paint was showing, light hitting the metal and shining off it. Harper took off one of her gloves and reached out slowly, touching it like she didn’t believe it was real. She pulled her hand back, and Lucas cleared some more branches, using his arm to brush the snow from the cracked and dirty car.
The skeletons were the same as when he’d first found them—one turned toward the back seat, and the other bent forward. His heart felt heavy. These people belonged to her.