Tala woke up to a loud chorus of birds. She had slept longer than intended. The early rays of the sun filtered through the green pine needles and heated her face and hands. She felt hot and clammy in her hooded sweatshirt. Last night’s problem she had pulling the tarp down came back to her. She glanced up and saw it was dangling sideways from a nearby branch a little ways from where she had placed it above the hammock.
Branches all around them and nearby plants appeared drenched, and large puddles had formed along the trail. The air smelled fresh and green as if all the plants and trees were giving thanks to the rain. She turned to check on Dason and the hammock started to rock; a cascade of cold leftover raindrops splashed down on his face. His eyes popped open and he sat up.
“Did it rain?” he said, touching his face.
“Guess so,” she shrugged. “I just remember a loud crash of thunder.”
The silky warm feeling she had felt on her fingers just before falling asleep came back to her, and she stretched her arm high to pull the tarp down. It had the usual dry plastic feel to it as she folded it.
“Funny how it’s not even wet,” she said. “The branches must’ve kept the rain out.”
“Where did that feather come from?” said Dason.
She turned to see him holding a long black feather that reached upwards from his waist to way past his head. She reached out to touch it and he pulled back. “Finders keepers,” he said, and springing out of the hammock, tipped it over, making Tala tumble out right smack into a large cold puddle beneath them.
“Nice going, brat,” she said, controlling her urge to take a swing at him before stepping onto drier ground. She scraped her mud-caked shoes on the grass and glanced around.
“Looks like it rained real hard everywhere else,” she said. “Strange, though, how we didn’t get wet.” She leaned back to peer up at the tree and saw the branches had wide gaps between them. The flat pine needles were nowhere dense enough to keep out much rain. Why didn’t the tarp at least get the tiniest bit wet? That silky feeling she had felt on her fingers came back to her again and she spun around to face Dason.
“Let me just feel that thing a minute,” she said, grazing the feather with the tips of her fingers. “That’s it. That’s what I touched before the thunder struck.”
She glanced up at the tree again. “But it couldn’t just be that one feather, it felt like a whole wall of them.”
“Maybe there was a bird up in the tree with us,” Dason said.
Tala stared at the feather. “That would be some monster bird.”
“Maybe it was the Culloo,” he said, stuffing the lower tip of the feather into his back pocket and flapping his arms around.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You know those things only exist in stories. In any case,” she said with a shrug. “It’d be too big to fit in the tree.”
“What if it stood on that ledge, right there behind us on top of the mountain opening?” he said, pointing behind the two pine trees. “Just one big wing could cover the whole tree.”
She paused to examine the feather again before heading to the pine tree to tug on the strings of the hammock.
“Help me untie this so we can get going,” she said. “No time to talk about feathers.”
To pleat the hammock back into its original folds required a lot of effort on her part as she glanced around and behind her all the time. Her thoughts raced like crazed rabbits caught in a thunderstorm. That arrow carved in the rock, the longest black feather ever and to top it off, Dason’s Culloo story. None of that made sense, yet something deep inside of her told her it might be true. All this talk of the Stone People and the Culloo gave her the jitters. She needed to keep her cool to find a way out of this mess; the sooner they were away from here, the better.
“Do you smell smoke?” Dason said.
At the exact moment she was just about to reach up the tree to pull down her knapsack is when she smelled it too. She spun around to face the trail. Tobacco smoke. Could be a hiker ignoring the no-smoking warnings, or worse, the poacher they had left behind. She stood poised, listening for the crunch of footsteps. All she could hear was a soft chirping close to the ground, like birds poking around for food. She turned back to reach up for her knapsack again; neither hers nor Dason’s were hanging where they had left them.
“Over here,” Dason said from behind the trees.
She grabbed the tarp and hammock before charging in his direction. A few feet past the two pine trees and a small area of tall reedy grass was the narrow opening in the mountain wall. Tala lowered her head to enter the small cave. The tobacco odour was much stronger inside, sweeter than ordinary cigarette smoke, and reminded Tala of Grandpa’s pipe when he sat in his rocking chair telling them stories.
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.