Felipe was awake, in the same position he’d been in since he lay down to sleep, his arm heavy across his forehead and his eyes staring wide at the winking stars.
He’d thought he’d collected every memory of his family.
He listened carefully to everyone’s stories of them, even the tiniest crumb of a mention—then carefully, lovingly, preserved them in the pages of his memory. After a time, there were no more new stories, no more crumbs, and he’d known, This is it; this is all that will ever be left of them.
But Franny, of all people, had given him a new one. Did she comprehend what she had done for him?
Perhaps she did. But Franny was never one to look back at the past. Whereas he sometimes felt as if he could see nothing but the past.
When she’d spoken of his mother, there was a warmth in her words that he recognized—the same warmth he himself felt.
As much as he’d loved his father and his sisters, his memories of his mother were his favorite. His father had been a steady, fair man who’d taught Felipe about the land and ranching; his sisters had been playmates and companions, sources of equal amounts of joy and irritation.
But his mother had been everything good, kind, and soft in his world. A woman so warmhearted as to comfort a little girl bent on running away from home.
When he awoke most nights afterward, sobbing into the darkness, it was her arms he wished for. When the grief weighed so heavy upon him it was a struggle to lift his head, it was her words he wanted for comfort.
Look at what Franny had done with his mother’s words! She’d taken them and run. There wasn’t a thing in this world Franny didn’t think she could do.
What had he done with his mother’s advice to him? Nothing.
Worse than nothing—he had forgotten it.
“You should be nice to Franny.”
He could hear the words clear and crisp in his mind now, as if Franny had taken a rag to a dusty, grimy bit of memory and let him see it clean and sparkling for the first time in ages.
Franny.
Nice was what he gave everyone else—the common human decency due to all.
Nice was not how he wanted to be with her.
Nice wasn’t the itch that set up under his skin when he saw her. Nice wasn’t the terror that took hold of him when she did something dangerous. Nice wasn’t the anger that seized him when she laughed at his concern.
Nice was too weak for what he wanted to do to her—he wanted to lock her up and throw away the key, certain she would be forever safe, forever secure.
It was all a muddle, this anger and unease and hurt pushing through him. He sighed and turned in the bedroll, letting his arm fall away as he attempted to get comfortable. His feelings for her didn’t mean anything; he wouldn’t let them. Even if when she turned that bright gaze of hers onto him, the warmth of it sank to the very marrow of his bones.
If those feelings didn’t matter, then he was safe from them. He’d lost enough loved ones for one lifetime—he was not adding Franny to that list.
He rose. Might as well go relieve himself. Perhaps that would be the key to falling asleep.
The darkness was a tangible thing, pressing against his limbs as he went quietly through the brush. The lantern in his hand couldn’t push back against that darkness. He made his way slowly out of camp, trying not to stumble and break his neck—or worse, awaken Franny. Although judging by the snores rising from her bedroll, he didn’t need to worry.
He stopped in a likely looking spot and undid his fastenings with one hand while holding the lantern high with the other. Out here, he didn’t want to surprise or be surprised by any creatures.
He looked this way and that, seeing nothing and hearing only the whip of the wind through the trees. Nothing to be concerned about.
He craned his head back to gaze at the stars, lowering the lantern.
Every bit of him—skin, organs, bones—went to stone.
There, crouched in the pine tree above him, was a golden-furred creature of lean sinew, its bright eyes trained right on him.
A mountain lion.
Its lip curled back to display long, curved fangs, while its tail twitched irritably.
For a brief moment his mind went completely clear, all thought, all memory gone. Only the image of the predator in front of him remained.
What the hell was he supposed to do now?
He knew better than to run.
Should he holler to try to scare it off, or simply stare it down and pray it slunk off on its own?
But no answer came—only those large, golden eyes staring back into his. The animal leaned back into the power of its hindquarters—it meant to leap for him.
There was nothing he could do.
After the sickness had taken his family, he had often wondered when and how death would take him and thereby reunite them. But he’d never thought it would be like this, with his pants unfastened, without his rifle, under the teeth and claws of a mountain lion.
It was a supremely stupid way to die.
Those strong legs sprung and then the lion was on him, carrying both of them to the bracken-covered ground. Felipe’s head snapped back and the breath squeezed from his lungs as he fell. He instinctively tensed every muscle, trying to curl in on himself to protect his belly. But he couldn’t. He could only wait for the slow burn of those claws and teeth sinking into his flesh.
The burn never came.
He lay there, stunned, the weight of the lion compressing his lungs. He fought for even the shallowest of breaths. Why couldn’t he feel those teeth, those claws, sinking into him? He panted as his heart raced, his arms uselessly pushing at the animal crushing him.
Slowly, slowly, the whirlwind his brain had become realized that the lion wasn’t trying to kill him.
It wasn’t even moving.
With a grunt and the sound of scrabbling feet, the body was shoved half off him. He freed the rest of himself with a kick and a push, his lungs prickling as air rushed into their depths.
Franny stood over him, all of her painted ivory by the moonlight. A ghostly thread of smoke curled from the barrel of the rifle in her hand.
His father’s rifle.
“I got it,” she whispered.
He rolled to his hands and knees, still fighting to draw breath, and swallowed down the supper trying to travel back up his throat.
“I got it,” she whispered again.
Felipe set his forehead in the crook of his elbow, as tiny earthquakes seized at his joints and rattled him like dead leaves in the wind. The tang of blood coated his tongue. Grit was buried deep into the back of his scalp. After several moments of shakiness, he slowly, stiffly, rose to his feet and looked at the lion.
It rested on its side, tawny paws curled in and white belly exposed, as if it were a house cat begging for a rub-down. A dark hole occupied the space where its left eye had once been, and a larger hole was behind its right ear.
A one-in-a-million shot.
She had made it while the cat was flying through the air.
She set a hand on his arm, and he turned to her. In the silver light, she was carved from alabaster, a terrifying hunter-goddess, her eyes sterling gray.
He found himself oddly thankful for the low light, since he had the strangest impression that were he able to see the spark in her eyes any more distinctly, it would blind him.
And then she said, clear enough to burn into his mind: “I saved you.”