Flock (11 page)

Nor could I help thinking of the similarity between my dream and the classic “Hansel and Gretel” fairy tale. While it certainly had all the markings of a Stork dream, I wondered at the borrowed imagery — complete with evil witch — that was so recently suggested to me with our new “gingerbread” house. Despite this, I knew the children were essences, so where were the prospective mothers? And why the element of fear? Unfortunately, none of it put me any closer to helping out Jaelle. But it was, if nothing else, a lesson in that
patience
Hulda had so recently preached.

At school I dragged my two-ton limbs to first period, where I had a hard time keeping my head in an upright position. Thank God for educational videos, lowered lights and blinds, and head-in-laptop teachers.

In Design, my walking coma made Penny’s effervescence all the more crackling.

“You seem awfully chipper,” I said. “Even your hair is having a good day.”

It was. Her natural curls were normally just a kink or two away from frizzdom. Today, however, they seemed tamer, more gentle wave than churning foam.

“Thanks.” She fluffed her bangs.

“Did you use some kind of relaxing product?” I asked.

“No.”

And now that I was hawk-eyeing her head, the shade seemed brighter, too. I had always loved Penny’s hair color, all redheads for that matter. Today it was even more flaming, like something alive.

“Did you do something with the color?” I asked.

“No.” This time, with all my attention, she patted down her hair, which — come to think of it — seemed longer.

“Good morning.” Marik passed between us and eased into the desk behind Penny. I noticed she sat up straighter. Had her shoulders always been so angular? And her boobs, had they always been so perky?

From her backpack, Penny pulled a spiral binder and turned to hand it to Marik. “You left this in my car last night.”

Huh?

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll need that next period.”

I knew Marik was a quick study in the social game and that Penny was a willing subject, but it was the first I had heard of them spending time together without . . . me. I felt oddly strange about it. I trusted Penny more than I trusted anyone else in the school, myself included. Nonetheless, there was something that nettled about this new information. And exactly what was it? A study date? They had American History together. Or was it a
date
date? Penny would have told me about that; I would have thought so, anyway.

Abby arrived, making a point of walking down our aisle. She stopped to chat with Marik on her way to the back of the room. I could sense her disappointment that he had settled near Penny and me today. Unlike the rest of us, Marik was a floater, taking various desks around the room with no apparent rhyme, reason, or rotation. He hung just as easily with the stoners in the far right corner as he did with Abby and her social climbers as he did with the math-club types. I’d even witnessed Mean Dean, a guy who talked to no one and had — according to school lore — coined his own nickname, lend Marik his latest
Manga Club
magazine.

With Marik and Abby involved in a conversation, I took the opportunity to ambush Penny. I leaned across the aisle that separated our two desks and whispered, “So what’s up with you and Marik?”

She went cherry-pie red; even her freckles tinted with crimson. “I don’t know,” she said, keeping her voice low. “He could have his choice of any girl; still, I just can’t stop thinking about him. And it may sound weird, but”— she swiveled in her seat, bringing her head to within inches of my own and cupping her mouth with her right hand —“I feel like we have something.”

I snuck a glance backward to where Abby was perched on the edge of Marik’s desktop. She, from the looks of it, was working on her own
something,
and
it
involved her chest being right at his eye level.

Ms. Bryant walked in the room, bringing our conversation to an end and sending Abby back to her own seat.

While Ms. Bryant distributed a handout, I sat brooding. How could Penny not see that Marik had something with everyone? Even Mean Dean, for Pete’s sake. And I felt fairly confident that if the Pete of Pete’s sake walked in, he’d be Team Marik, too. I made a mental note to keep a close eye on her and Marik. The guy was already after my sister; no way was he getting my best friend, too.

“Can you feel it?” Jack asked. He stood rooted to the damp earthen path under the million-leaf canopy of the Alpenstock forest. The air thrummed with the ticks and clicks of living things, and the light, filtered through the prism of swaying greenery, cast an emerald sparkle over everything.

“Feel what?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

“Our loads lighten.”

I relaxed. He was in his element, a primordial forest on what was presumably once a glacial ice field. On an individual basis, Jack’s adjustments to his surroundings were minute: his eyes darkened a half shade, his voice rang an octave deeper, and his stride loped an inch, at most, longer. As a whole, however, it was like watching a salamander meld into a pebbled backdrop. His harmony with the environment seemed to suggest the restoration of a withheld sustenance. I thought about the way an indoor activity — shopping, for instance — dulled his eyes and slowed his pace, and I vowed to be more open to this off-the-grid passion of his.

When he pulled me in for a kiss so swift and as feral as our hinterland setting, my approval rating for our backcountry adventure climbed to the treetops.

“I feel lighter now,” I said into the steam of his still-nuzzling mouth, “but I don’t think it was the woods.”

“But it’s all — we’re all — interconnected,” he said, taking me by my shoulders. “I feel that here especially.”

I had to admit the place was teeming with energy, and as proof of Jack’s chain-of-life theory, a mosquito plunged his greedy proboscis into my calf. My swat at him and consequent stumble backward broke the intensity of the moment, but I took three things away from that instant in time: Jack’s rapport with this environment, the beautiful and mystical tapestry of life, and one big, honkin’ welt of a nasty skeeter bite.

An hour or so later, when we circled back to the park entrance, I noticed an area with a visitors’ center and what looked to be tepees and other simple structures; one, in particular, caught my eye.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“An interpretive center. School groups come here by the busloads. If I remember from my own fifth-grade field trip, this was once the site of a super-old — like prehistoric or something — Native American settlement. They’ve recreated what the site may have looked like.”

“Can we take a quick look?”

“Sure,” he said. “I love stuff like this.”

It was late afternoon; only an elderly couple and one park ranger remained. Fearing vistors’ hours were coming to an end, I made a bee
line
for what looked like a giant bee
hive.

“Leave it to you to head for the source of heat,” Jack said.

Though it wasn’t in use, I could see that the small bark-covered structure was, in fact, a working sauna. Its low profile and domed shape was similar to the
savusauna
I’d visited at Jinky’s grandmother’s place. A pile of rocks and logs and the remains of a fire were consistent with a hot-rock process of generating steam.

“Sorry, folks.” The ranger came up behind us, almost tumbling me out of my Timberlands. “We’re closing up for the day.”

“Do you use this for demonstrations?” I asked him.

“We have a staff member of Ojibwa descent who, on occasion, leads select researchers and small groups through a sweat lodge ceremony.”

“Cool,” I said.

“Actually, it’s pretty darn hot,” the ranger said, laughing at his own joke.

“It’d kill me,” Jack whispered into my ear with a shudder.

A few minutes later, as Jack and I pulled out of the parking lot, I cast a glance backward toward the sweat lodge.
See you soon,
I thought.

Operation Vision Quest, OVQ, was a four-phase plan: breakout, stakeout, abduction, and break-in. I wore an all-black ensemble, as would be expected.

The breakout was from my own home, of course, and the easiest of the four. Having parked my car down the street earlier and claiming homework and aching muscles from the afternoon hike, I said an early good night to my mom and Stanley, who barely glanced up from their
Masterpiece Mystery
and shared popcorn bowl. It also helped that my mom was, in general, a respecter of the closed door.

Phases two and three were necessitated by the fact that Jinky didn’t have a cell phone, something to do with an exorbitant international plan. Nor did her host family have Internet or a listed phone number. Besides, I feared that any overt contact — a call to the house or knock on the door — would alert a meddlesome Marik. I’d had no choice, therefore, but to insert steps two and three. It was a delicious irony that they would be payback for a similar adventure last year in Iceland, one in which I was the victim, not the mastermind.

The stakeout wasn’t too difficult, either. In singling out Jinky’s window, I’d caught an eyeful of a shirtless Marik and a teeth-removing old man. Jinky’s, I therefore surmised, was the one with the closed curtains. A few stone throws — and dang if my aim and velocity weren’t dead on — and two flashlight pulses to the dark bob of hair in the window, and OVQ was moving on to phase three.

OK, so abduction may have been a bit of an overstatement. It wasn’t like I threw a bag over Jinky’s head or anything. But it was me at the wheel and with all the answers as we drove out to Alpenstock.

“And Jack said it was the site of a prehistoric settlement?” Jinky asked.

“Yes.”

“And the rocks, logs, and even the prayer bundles were all there?”

“Yes.”

“Good and good, but we’ll need to stop at the store.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Cigarettes.”

“Cigarettes! What? No way. We don’t have time. Besides, there’s no smoking in my car.”

“I’m not going to smoke in your car. But it’s a nonnegotiable point. We need to stop.”

I pulled into the next gas station and flicked my fingers against the bottom of the steering wheel as Jinky clomped into the convenience store. It pinched that my captive had “nonnegotiable demands,” but at least I was still in the driver’s seat.

I parked on an access road some distance away from the front entrance. It necessitated a small hike but would call far less attention to our presence. I cut the engine and lights and was more than a little surprised to be on the receiving end of instructions.

“Once we’re over that fence, I do all the talking,” Jinky said. “You got that?”

Uh, no.
It was
my
mission, after all.

“I hardly think —”

“Exactly,” Jinky interrupted. “And what do you know about the hilly terrain in front of us and respect for spirit ancestors?” She didn’t even let me guess before continuing. “We’re about to set foot upon sacred land. Those look to be burial mounds. We will make our disruptions few and with a pureness of thought and action. And you will follow my lead in all things, OK?”

“OK,” I said, after which I clamped my mouth shut and breathed bull-like through my nose. The pureness of thought didn’t start until we were over the fence, which we weren’t yet. And I couldn’t wait to get on with the vision quest, phase four of
my
operation, because, besides hopefully providing some valuable information in saving Leira, an out-of-body experience would be preferable to stumbling behind Jinky in the black of night and abiding by
her
gag order.

Once over the fence, I did embrace a pureness of thought. I would have, anyway. From this approach, the place was
om
ing with energy. Jinky took a zigzag course to the site, remaining at the lowest points of the terrain and never once stepping across or onto any of the hills.

At the recreated village, she set to work building a fire and, eventually, heating a few select melon-size rocks. It took a long time. As much as I was willing to assist, I didn’t know what to do, so I sat nearby thinking of my purpose in pursuing another vision quest. Of course, I wanted to protect Leira from Queen Safira. I also wanted to know if Brigid of Niflheim was a true threat. And, last, I sought to make sense of the brief message I’d relayed: “From the goddess Frigg, one seeks forgiveness and another offers life. Within them lies a solution.”