Freefall (2 page)

Sense returned. If Gentry was out there, he couldn’t reach her. He’d never pull through the falls. He’d be smashed down again onto the rocks. And if she tried to reach him?

“No. Please, God.” Cut and bleeding, pain escalating, he groaned. Her only chance—and his—was for her to get out, to get help. The trail, hardly more than a wild boar path over roots and rocks and clay, was so remote there was no telling how long until anyone might pass by. And it led to the top of the falls. People weren’t supposed to go over.

He dropped his head back and expelled his breath. What had happened? Gentry was an experienced hiker, strong and surefooted. But he’d read enough survivor stories—and stories that didn’t turn out as well—to know things could simply go wrong.

He closed his eyes. He needed to garner what energy he had, recover from the shock, rest. His bleeding had slowed, the wounds coagulating. The break in his bone could be bleeding into his leg, but he couldn’t help that. At this point, he couldn’t help anything. He drew a staggered breath and prayed.

Clouds puffed past overhead, carried swiftly through the sky, but heat blanketed the deep-cut valley where the winds didn’t penetrate. Moisture rose from the water and joined the graying gauze that erupted in showers, then passed.

Too woozy to think, she dragged herself ashore. She wanted to stay there, but an indistinct urgency moved her on. Following the water, she pressed her way through the palms and bushes, groping over tangled roots and rocks. She missed her footing and slid back into the river, then scraped her palms and bruised her hip climbing out. Her mind felt like sludge.

The cataract fanned out, plunging abruptly through jagged ridges, the nearest a rocky channel too steep and slippery to attempt. She splashed over and let herself down beside the next channel. Equally steep, the rocky edges of this one were possibly navigable—though not before resting. She drank from the water pack on her back and tried to stop shaking.

After less time than she’d have liked, she started down, turning almost immediately to work down the face like a rugged irregular ladder. Tucking her fingers into a crevice, she was startled by a sharpfaced chameleon-type lizard that skittered over her hand and into the vines that cloaked the ridge on her left. A short way down dangled a large black-and-yellow spider, whose legs went out in diagonal pairs. Again she heard the birds. Around her life teemed, but she felt unutterably alone.

Her arms shook as she stretched down for a hold. The cliff dropped away below. The water broke loose and fell, casting her in mist and slickening the rocks she clung to. Her breath came sharp and shallow as waves of dizziness took hold. She pressed herself to the wall, letting it pass, making it. Maybe there was a different way down, but she didn’t have the strength to climb back up and find it.

She inched her foot down, dug in the toe of the hiker, then forced her other foot to release. The bad stretch wasn’t too long. She could make it. She had to. She moved her hand, clawed a jut in the rock, then eased down. A slender white bird winged over the falls with a dipping motion that rolled her stomach.

She pressed her face to the stone and waited it out. Clouds parted and the sun caressed her. With her thigh quivering, she groped for a foothold, found a good-sized step, and lowered herself. She could do it. She would.

She reached level ground, staggered into a small clearing beside the stream, and dropped to her knees beside a boulder. Her head felt as though someone had opened it up and filled it with sand. She laid it on her arms. Maybe she’d just … rest….

A sudden burst of birdsong penetrated her stupor. She drew in the scent of earth and water and rank foliage. Opening her eyes produced a grinding headache. She reached up and felt the top of her scalp, swollen, tender, and crusted under the hair. What…?

Green folds of land rose steeply all around her, leaves and blooms just tinged with dawning light. She turned slowly, holding her head between her hands, and found the source of the mist wafting over her. A lacy spread of falls tumbled down a jagged cliff, forming streams that flowed past the rock where she’d hunched … all night?

In addition to scrapes and bruises, welts on her arms raised up and itched where something had fed on her. She groped up from her knees, brushed the wet, reddish brown leaves off her pants, and stood. Dizzy, she waited for the hazy vision to pass—or not. She rubbed her temples. Where was she? Why had she spent the night in a jungle?

Her parched throat grated. Automatically she reached for the water tube that dangled beside her cheek and took a cool drink. She squeezed the clasps and unfastened the straps across her chest and waist, then, grimacing, worked the pack off her shoulders. Every muscle griped.

She sat down on the rock and laid the pack across her legs. The main pocket held a stick of turkey jerky, a PowerBar, and a trail mix of mostly raw nuts and seeds with enough M&Ms to make it worth it. She found a packet of medicated Band-Aids in the small zippered pouch, and she used them on her left elbow and wrist and applied a layer of sunscreen to her arms and face from the tube in the side pocket. Whatever she was doing, she’d come prepared. But by the throbbing in her head, something had gone wrong.

She tore open the PowerBar and bit into the stiff, semisweet staple. Chewing made her temples throb and killed her hunger. She wanted to lie back down on the damp ground, but something told her she had to keep moving. She didn’t know how long or how far. Or which direction for that matter.

She searched the steep slopes to the tops of their ridges, then dropped her gaze back to the valley floor, where the river’s voice reminded her: Follow the water. Water runs down. Water leads out.

She slipped the pack back on, fitting it snugly enough to her back that in her daze she’d hardly noticed it was there. With the thinstalked palms higher than her head, she decided to walk in the shallow edge of the stream. Her canvas hikers were made for water, but the going was slow on the slippery rocks. She gave it up and pressed through where the shorter, thigh-high ferns had taken over beneath the overarching branches of trees.

Ragged clouds overhead dropped misty rain, filling her nostrils with an ozone-rich scent. She kept moving, driven by a need beyond thought. Her vision grew wavy, her balance askew. She stumbled on, the water’s voice her only constant. When fatigue demanded, she rested but moved again when she was able.

The sun came out and warmed the air to a mild sauna and brought a fresh chorus of birdsong. She tore a yellowish fruit from a branch, ripped open the peel and sucked out the juice and pulp. She nibbled from her pack. Sometime in the afternoon, she threw up.

The sun was setting when she staggered into a wide, lush, verdant-smelling expanse. She stumbled onto the level ground as at the unexpected end of a staircase. Thorns and branches had torn through her lightweight pants; scrapes and scratches stung her arms and legs. None of that mattered if this valley was what it looked like.

Righting herself, she started across ground patched with watery plots of a broad-leafed, red-stemmed plant. The paths between the paddies were raised and dry, but by the time she’d traversed the plots she was more crawling than walking. As twilight deepened, she staggered into a yard and grabbed hold of a low stone bench.

With the culmination of effort, she slumped to her knees. Her joints felt near to separating. She was aware of her skin. Fatigue weighted her head until it rested on the edge of the bench. Her ears thrummed like a hive, and she thought she might faint.

Then a golden light spread over the fragrant yard. The sound of a door opening. Footsteps on the soft, mossy ground and a voice, not unlike the birds whose conversations had filled the hidden spaces of the forest throughout the day. “Hello?”

No strength to answer.

“Hey.” The hand on her shoulder was gentle. “Are you all right?”

Her sand-filled head refused to nod.

“Here, sit.” The woman helped her onto the bench. “I’m Monica.”

Raising her eyes, she searched Monica’s heart-shaped face, looked into the dove gray eyes and registered nothing familiar.

“Can you tell me your name?”

Soaked and shaking, she parted her lips. Her mind groped, but with panic rising in her throat, she whispered, “I don’t know.”

TWO

Okelani held her hands inches from the
stranger’s face as though parting the air over her and stroking it down and away. “Plenny fear.”

Monica swallowed. She’d recognized confusion, disorientation. But fear? The young woman lay unmoving in the daybed on fresh sheets hung just that day on the lines in the carport. They still smelled of the valley mist and the garden’s blooms. She had probably lost her way on one of the trails through the preserved areas of the island. By the bruising on her limbs and head, it was clear she’d taken at least one fall. Okelani would provide something to treat the scratches and cuts, but beyond that, what should be done?

The old woman’s sensitive hands glided over the air above the woman’s throat and collarbone, breasts, and abdomen. “Malice,” she murmured, “but it nevah start here.” With thigh-length black hair streaked with gray, eyes nearly white with film, Okelani floated her hands down the woman’s torso. She could have the cataracts removed, artificial lenses implanted to restore her sight, but she believed that as God clouded her eyes, he deepened her inner vision, gave her understanding she had been too distracted to attend before.

Monica watched in silence as Okelani listened with her hands. She loved the old woman. She trusted her. But through a tight throat, she asked, “Should I take her to a doctor?”

Okelani lowered her hands to her sides and turned, her body still graceful. “Doctor? Huh. Den why she come for you?”

That was the question she’d been trying to avoid. Of all the yards for this person to stumble into, why had this woman’s feet brought her here? “What should I do?”

“What you always do. A pillow for her head. Shelter from da storm.”

“Do you sense a storm?”

The old woman turned slowly. “Da Lord my light and my salvation. Who I ’fraid of?”

Monica knew the words like her own skin, but fear took many forms, and she knew that equally well. She trembled for this stranger, and for herself. She did not have the strength to go through it again. Okelani was telling her the woman had come for a reason. But then, they all did.

A rooster’s crow woke her with a vague sense of unease. Before opening her eyes, she tried to gauge the sensation, to name it. Fear? Too strong. Urgency? Yes. But for what?

She opened her eyes to a preponderance of cacti, one like a heap of bristling snakes, another with folded, cabbage gray leaves like rippled brain tissue. Interspersed were pots and pots of delicate orchids; white, magenta, red speckled. Ferns dangled from the rafters, so that her next thought was of the tropical forest.

The room was the one she’d stumbled into the night before. She must have fallen asleep at once, because she recalled nothing after lying down on the rattan daybed and breathing the scent of freshly laundered sheets. She rose to one elbow. The bed was the color of milk caramel, the sheets frothy cream.

Outside the wide sliding doors, a sheet of gray mist passed. She shuddered. The sense of something pending intensified—but what?

A tap came at the door. The woman from the garden peeked in.

“You’re awake.” Her eyes were almost the exact color of the rain outside. “Did you sleep well?”

The disconnect indicated sleep wasn’t a problem. She nodded and winced. Verbal responses would hurt less.

“Last night you couldn’t tell me what happened. Or even your name.”

Her name … How could she not know? She pressed up to sit. “I must have hit my head.”

“You still don’t remember?”

Fear stirred. But was the fear that of not knowing? “I remember yours. It’s Monica.” She clung to that piece of information.

“Call me Nica.” The women sat down on the edge of the daybed, concern etched on her face. “Maybe you should see a doctor. Okelani thinks you have a concussion.”

“Okelani?”

“She examined you last night.”