A Grimm Legacy (Grimm Tales) (6 page)

It took several minutes for her to hear the voice. At first it sounded like the constant chatter of a chickadee dogging their footsteps, which Andi was accustomed to and Quinn hadn't seemed to notice. When she stopped and concentrated, though, the high-pitched whistle and staccato laugh seemed to have syllables in them, even words.

That couldn’t be possible.

A long forgotten memory emerged. The shock on her mother's face when she found Andi portioning out her lunch in the backyard to a row of birds sitting like stones on the fence. Robins, blackbirds, sparrows, and finches would open their beaks at her two-year-old command and Andi would pass them breadcrumbs one by one down the row.             

High on a branch, the bird hopped in place like something was urgent. It flew to the path in front of her and repeated its song over and over.

"Help?” Andi whispered. She bent down and stared intently at the bird. The little chickadee doubled its bouncing and flew straight at her, landing at her feet to repeat the song again.

"Help, help, help. Up, up, here?" Andi repeated, uncertain.

The tiny bird gave one short, shrill whistle and flew several yards to a tree. It trilled again. Andi turned to find Quinn a frozen mud statue with her eyes wide and mouth slightly agape. Andi felt she’d been trying to get her attention for several minutes and finally just stood speechless to watch.

"Were you…talking to the—to the bird?" Quinn shoved the last word out and it didn’t really
sound like much of a question.

"Possibly." Andi wasn't as weirded out as she should ha
ve been. Was that a good thing? All she knew was that she felt a burning curiosity and vague satisfaction. "Feel like a detour? Especially since we didn't know where we’re headed to begin with?"

Quinn raised a heavy eyebrow and dry swallowed several times. "What did it say?"

Andi got the distinct impression Quinn was just playing along. That was okay, Andi hardly believed it herself.

"Someone needs help, I think,” Andi said, the bird urgently hopping up ahead.

Quinn nodded at Andi, and kept nodding, as if trying to convince herself of something. "Lead the way."

They set off chasing down the bird, only to have it flutter almost out of sight to the next tree.

“We can't leave him up there and we don't exactly have phones to call for help.”

Quinn noticed the silence of their guide only when Andi grabbed her arm and forced her to a halt.

Creaking and groaning floated down from the trees. Normally, Quinn would attribute it to the wind shoving at the tops of the pines, but the woods were unnaturally calm. Pacing deliberately in the direction of the sound, a flash of red caught her eye, showing unnaturally bright against the dark greens and browns of the trees. It was some kind of cloth caught on a tree branch, stopping about four feet above their heads.

"What is it?" Andi tipped her head back as she circled the tree, trying not to fall over anything.

"It’s the material tents are made of, but the color isn't right and it's way too big,” Quinn said, adopting Andi’s posture.

Another moan and scrape combination hit Quinn, followed by a muffled curse. Catching Andi’s eye, she continued toward the sound. Following it up into the trees, Andi gasped and Quinn shook her head beside her.

"This is absurd. How many more people are we going to find
in these woods?" Quinn huffed.

Maybe she really could talk to birds.

What was left of a balloon basket was lodged precariously high between two pines. The remaining corner of the basket created a hammock where a boy clutched to the shambles of the wicker, trying not to move.

"Hey!” Andi cupped her hands and yelled. "You all right?"

"Not so much," drifted down a tight male voice. From Quinn’s angle, she could only make out the top of his head and a heavy boot hanging from the edge of the torn basket.

"What are we going to do? We can't leave him up there, and we don't exactly have phones to call for help,” Andi said.

Gingerly reaching a filthy hand into her back pocket, Quinn lifted her phone out between two fingers. Quinn didn’t even bother flipping open the ruined phone, watching as muddy water dripped slowly from it. She lobbed it into the bushes and startled a squirrel that bolted up a tree and scolded her from a safe distance.

“I’m pretty sure mine’s sitting on my desk at home,” Andi apologized.

Squinting up at the basket, Quinn studied it intently. They were just going to have to get him down themselves. She called up, "Is there any rope?"

"No." The basket shifted in its perch, crumbling wicker down on her head. "It fell out when the envelope tore free of the uprights,” he called, his voice stretching out in some kind of southern accent.

She waited a second for a further explanation. When none came, Quinn raised an eyebrow at Andi and she shrugged in response. What was he was talking about?

“What?” Quinn called up.

They heard a faint sigh and an overly patient drawl drifted down, “When the balloon ripped away from the basket.”

“Why didn’t he just say that?” Andi grumbled, too low for him to hear.
             

"We'll be back!” Quinn called up to the boy. She ran back to where they had seen what was now obviously the hot air balloon caught in the trees.

Andi set her shoes carefully at the base of the tree and scrambled after her. "Don't move," she called.

When Quinn reached the balloon, she quickly scanned the ground. Andi joined her and clarified. "We're looking for rope, right?"

"Yeah, maybe in some kind of canvas bag."

"What if it’s not on the ground?" Andi considered the depressing banner in the trees. "What if it's up there?"

Pausing in her search, Quinn’s worried eyes found Andi’s. "Let's hope it's not."

Quinn passed over the same bit of ground for the third time, circling the tree in wider and wider rings with Andi doing the same thing nearby, when she heard her call out, "No rope, but I did find this." Andi held out a wooden toggle with a piece of basket still attached.

Quinn stopped, sighed, and tried to run her hand through her hair. When she found it still bound, she pulled it free of its braid and finished the gesture, realizing too late her hands were still filthy. She focused on the toggle in Andi's hand.

"Where did you pick it up?" Quinn asked.

"That way," Andi said, pointing several hundred yards away from the balloon.

"Show me."

Following her to the spot, Quinn turned, looked at the tree draped with the balloon, and then straight ahead again. "Stay to my right about 20 yards and try to keep in a straight line. Yell if you find anything."

With her head ducked, she scanned the ground as fast as she could without the risk of missing something. She spied something on top of a low shrub. Hope bubbled up in her. It was a dull red canvas bag about the size of a small backpack. She flopped it onto the ground, i
t was heavier than she expected.

"Andi!" she called, excited. Struggling to open the cinched top, she wiggled her fingers into the small hole in the top and spread them, forcing the neck open. Neatly coiled thick, nylon cord lay inside and she let out sigh of relief as Andi looked over her shoulder. "We have to hurry,” Quinn said.

Clutching the bag to her chest, Quinn jogged with Andi back to the crash site. She assumed they weren't too late—she would have heard the basket fall—but she didn’t know what kind of time she had left. Andi gasped for air, but Quinn was only slightly out of breath when they skidded to a stop at the base of the tree.

"We're here. We're coming," Andi called up.

Dumping the bag on the ground, Quinn shouted at Andi, "Cloak off."

Andi quickly undid the clasp and threw it on top of her shoes as Quinn practically tackled her with the end of the cord. "You're going to belay me. Hold still and don't let me fall."

Quinn wound the rope around Andi’s waist and through her legs. When she tried to help and made Quinn fumble the rope twice, Andi decided to just stand still with her arms out of the way.

"Why
am I the belayer?" Andi asked.

Almost smiling at her slightly petulant tone, Quinn paused long enough to ask, "Do you know how to climb?"

Andi, realizing her weight was not the issue, shook her head.

"Then you're the belayer."

Checking the final knot at Andi's waist, Quinn yanked the shorter girl forward several inches. Quinn tossed her an elastic and pulled another out of her pocket. "Tie your hair back."

She grabbed the cord now tied to Andi and heaved it in the direction of the lowest branch of the tree, a good fifteen feet off the ground. It bounced off the side of the tree and fell back toward her. Quinn quickly wound it up a second time and, with a grunt, tossed again. This time, the rope sailed over the branch before tumbling back down.

Placing both of Andi's hands on the rope now stretching skyward from her waist, Quinn instructed, "Lean into my weight.” She hoped she wasn’t making a monumental mistake trusting herself to someone who’d probably never belayed a climber before and couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. She didn’t feel comfortable climbing with an inexperienced belayer, but what choice did she have?

Hands on the rope and bare feet on the trunk, she hauled herself hand over hand, inching up the tree. Quinn felt her line give and she slid down the tree a foot before Andi scrambled backward and figured out how to keep them balanced. Quinn looked down and saw Andi staring back intently, her knuckles white and her eyes wide.

"You're doing fine,” Quinn called.

Andi being inexperienced and terrified wasn’t a good combination.  She tried to concentrate on the climb. Her mind still tumbled with everything that happened over the last hour, but she filed it away for later.

The boy in the basket was silent the entire time.

Those first few feet felt like the longest Quinn had ever climbed. When the lowest tree branch was in arm’s length, she curled her fingers over it. She scrabbled with her feet a few times before she hooked one arm over, and then the other, creating deep gouges in her skin in the process. Pausing a moment to catch her breath, Quinn kicked and leveraged herself up, her whole body suspended
fifteen feet above the ground.

The tree branch roughed against her nose and the disbelief she’d climbed this far flooded Quinn. It was a little late to freak out now, considering she was already up in the tree. The overpowering sting of pine filled her nose and throat as her body tried to calm itself. Sitting up, she could feel the branch sucking at her body and realized she was covered in sap and would be tacky for days.

She called down to Andi, "Untie the rope."

Struggling to keep her balance on the narrow branch, she coiled the cord in a large loop. When she reached the free end, she placed the entire coil over her head and across her body to keep her hands free. Quinn looked up to plan her route. She scooted as close as she could to the trunk. Hopefully there were enough branches this high up she wouldn’t need the rope. The basket was still 30 feet higher in the tree, so she quit worrying about falling and climbed.

The tree was more like a cliff than Quinn would have guessed. She dodged and wound her way in zigzags and spirals around the trunk as she tried to find the best path up. Digging her sticky, blackened feet into the bark for foot holds, pieces of tree pulled away and clung to her hands as she dodged pine cones as big as her head and needles that threatened to impale her. She stopped once, then twice. She was getting tired, but she was almost there. Quinn glanced down and tried to find Andi through the tangle of branches. She was glad to see she’d moved out of the projected descent of the basket.

"Hey!" she called to the boy, only five feet above her head now. "You still with us?"

"Just hanging out." The voice was drained, as if he’d done all the climbing.

“Funny.” Quinn pulled herself up parallel to the basket and kept going until she was slightly higher. "Almost there."

This high up in the tree the branches were thinner, more supple, and her added weight made the basket shift in an alarming manner.

Finally able to peer into the ruined basket, Quinn found not the young boy she had been expecting, but someone sixteen or seventeen, close to her age. Bundled in winter gear—a heavy coat, gloves, and boots—he turned his head, careful to distribute his weigh
t evenly in the unsteady basket.

"Sorry,” he said, the southern accent heavy in his speech, his eyes finding hers. "I tried climbing onto the tree a few times but I was afraid the basket would dump me..."

"No worries," Quinn said, finding it difficult to immediately break away from his serious green eyes. "I'll get you out. Here." Quinn unwound a few yards of her line and tossed it on top of him. "Tie that around your waist. It won't be pleasant if the basket drops, but you won't fall." She pulled the slack out of her rope and wound it several times around the trunk of the tree, hanging on to the free end.