Twisted Heart (16 page)

‘You will walk in the wilderness and these are the voices you will hear,’ Amos promised us. ‘Respect them and pray that their hearts are at peace in this beautiful land.’

I listened to his voice in the cold grey morning and I was lifted out of time, out of place into another existence. Call it spiritual because I can think of no other word. It was a world where men and women were at one with the land they lived in, where ancestors lived on in the rocks, the trees and the water, and when the invaders came and took the land by force, it was a world of pain, of death, darkness and suffering.

Amos told us the simple truth of this. He lifted me above the small stuff, the details, and spoke to my heart.

I only came back down to earth when Ziegler approached. ‘Hey, Tania. We need to fix a rendezvous point for Tuesday.’

‘You’ll come and pick me up?’ I checked.

He nodded. ‘Name the time, the place.’

So I pulled out the map that Dad had given me and together we fixed on Spider Rock – a lookout point directly above the dam. From here you could see for miles – way down the valley as far as the point where Prayer River joined the Platte.

‘A good choice,’ Amos confirmed, looking over my shoulder at the map. ‘Spider Rock is a sacred place. It’s where a young boy of the White Water Sioux tribe would go to seek wisdom. He would fast there for many days and wait for a vision in the shape of a deer, a horse, an elk or an eagle – any animal spirit to guide him through life.’

Like my Zenaida, my spirit ally, my Weyekin, my good angel. She told me I would never be alone.

‘So what time will you meet me?’ I asked Ziegler. And we fixed on six in the evening – early enough for us to trek back down from Spider Rock to Ziegler’s Jeep and drive to New Dawn before the sun went down.

‘Are you comfortable with that?’ he asked, fixing me with his startling blue eyes. ‘It gives you three days and two nights in the wilderness.’

‘I’m cool,’ I replied. Actually, no. Scared to death of what lay ahead would be more accurate. But determined to do this, to hold a camera and shoot long shots of the spectacular scenery, plus close-ups of the inter-reactions between Jarrold, Kaylee and Ava. Maybe to discover more about my dark angel’s presence and eager at last to stop running and to stand up and fight. This is how it felt. It was a big moment for me.

‘So go,’ Aurelie told us, planting her striped and feathered staff firmly across the exit to the parking lot and raising it as each Explorer approached. ‘Open your heart to the Great Creator,’ she chanted as they passed through.

I was last to leave. ‘You are a Friend. You must open your heart,’ Aurelie murmured. The feathers hanging from her staff brushed my cheek.

A bitter wind blows. Ice freezes the tumbling, splashing creeks. Snow blinds me. Stink of wolf’s breath. Sweating, stinking wolf man in his winter lair, a dark place of thorns. His claws are bloodstained, his slack jaw hangs open. He pants
.

In that visionary second, it was as if my brain had split in two with the sound of an axe cleaving a log – the swish of the blade, the clunk as it met solid wood – then a blur as the two halves of my brain shunted back together and I was whole again. Reeling a little, I followed the three members of the River Stone band along the lakeside track.

This was it, the reality of wild walking.

Ahead lay snow-covered mountains and ice-covered Turner Lake, voices from the past, visions of a terrible future. I am not running, I am moving forward. And somewhere my dark angel hides.

From the beginning Jarrold led the way. He set a fast pace but Kaylee easily kept up, her red jacket vivid against the grey of the tree trunks. Twenty paces behind, Ava stumbled over tree roots and struggled with the weight of her backpack.

‘It’s OK, take your time,’ I told her as I caught up.

She turned her head away from me, tried to make out that she wasn’t having a hard time but soon gave up the pretence. ‘This sucks,’ she said as snow started to fall. ‘You have to be crazy to volunteer.’

‘Right,’ I agreed. I helped her shorten the straps of her pack and got it sitting more comfortably between her shoulder blades. ‘It doesn’t help that we’re being frogmarched out of here by Tarzan.’

Large snowflakes drifted down between the juniper branches and settled on the track so that already we could see the footprints of the two Explorers forging ahead.

‘Tarzan and Tarzan’s mate,’ Ava muttered sarcastically. ‘It was the same when we were the Black Crow band, actually. Only then I had Conner.’

The name brought on a cold tingle down my spine but I tried to keep things light. ‘Well, this time you’re stuck with me,’ I told her.

Ahead of us, Jarrold and Kaylee had reached a creek that ran down into the lake and they were figuring out the best way to cross it. It involved stepping on to a flat rock and leaping, praying that you made a safe landing on the far side. And I’m talking smooth granite covered in ice and snow.

‘I see a better way,’ I told Ava, heading off the trail to a spot where the creek narrowed and allowed us to step safely across.

‘You and Conner,’ I began as I waited for Ava to cross. ‘Were you like Kaylee and Jarrold – a couple?’

There was a long pause, a flicker of pain in her huge eyes. I held out my hand and she took it.

‘You loved him but you couldn’t go public with it?’

Ava sighed then nodded. ‘Not until after we left this place. You know – Conner was the first guy I’ve ever met who didn’t treat me like a kid. He made me feel grown up and good – he didn’t care what I’d done.’

‘So what did you do?’ I asked her as we hiked on through the trees. ‘How come you’re here?’

‘Talk to my parents,’ she replied bitterly. ‘This was so not my choice.’

I totally got that. It was obvious that skinny, fragile Ava wasn’t cut out for wild-walking.

‘How come I end up freezing to death by a lake?’ She hesitated then decided that she’d shared plenty already and she might as well continue. ‘The cops caught me walking out of a store with a jacket I didn’t pay for.’

I didn’t register any reaction though secretly I was surprised. It wasn’t the kind of offence that I expected intense, vulnerable Ava to commit. ‘Was it a cool jacket?’

She shrugged. ‘Plus a pair of shoes and a purse. All on-trend, designer goods but no way worth all this.’

‘So your parents decided on tough love – they sent you here?’

A nod this time instead of a shrug. ‘They took me out of dance school.’

‘Which you loved?’

‘Right. I had a major role in a new ballet. I was principal dancer in my year.’

So why risk all that for a designer jacket, I wondered. ‘So yeah, this sucks,’ I agreed out loud. We’d got into our stride and were walking more quickly, starting to catch up with Jarrold and Kaylee.

‘I told them I wouldn’t come. I swore I’d stop eating again, starve myself if they sent me to New Dawn.’

‘You’ve done that before?’ No surprise here. Ava was like a tiny bird with big dark eyes, thin wrists and slender, tapering fingers. A gust of wind could blow her over.

‘Yeah, and the stealing. It’s a compulsion. I guess I have a problem, huh?’

‘I’m not a psychologist so I have no clue. You’d have to ask my friend Grace. But you don’t want to stop eating. What good would it do? You’re here now and you have to get through it, go back to school.’

‘Easy to say,’ she sighed. ‘But my dad won’t pay any more fees, so that door is slammed right in my face.’

‘Maybe he’ll change his mind.’

‘You don’t know him,’ she said, lowering her head and walking on in silence.

I had Ava’s story – maybe not the whole of it but at least enough for me to begin slotting together the pieces of the jigsaw.

We were still walking by the shore of the lake where the ground was five centimetres deep in snow. We’d stopped for Jarrold to take a pee behind a rock and Kaylee was pointing the camera at me.

‘So, Tania, what do you want out of this?’ she challenged. ‘Are you seriously looking for the Great Creator?’

‘The way you say it, it sounds like you don’t believe.’

‘Oh, I believe,’ she assured me. ‘From heart at war to heart at peace. I love it out here, every freaking, freezing second.’

‘She sounds like she’s kidding but she’s serious,’ Ava confirmed miserably.

Kaylee lowered the camera and grinned. ‘I’d live like this twenty-four/seven if they let me. But we want to hear from you, Tania. What’s that gold heart and the cross you wear around your neck?’

I touched them with my cold fingers. ‘The cross is Romanian,’ I told her. ‘It belonged to my grandmother.’

‘You have a boyfriend? He gave you the heart?’ Kaylee quizzed, raising the camera again.

I nodded. ‘Orlando. He’s in Dallas.’

‘So why aren’t you there with him?’

I didn’t like this. I was supposed to be the one asking the questions. ‘Here comes Jarrold,’ I told her and Ava. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

By mid-afternoon it got to be my turn with the camera. I shot footage of the island in the middle of the lake, lost behind flurries of snow. Then I caught up with Jarrold and turned the lens on him.

‘It’s OK, I won’t hassle you right now – I know you can’t talk,’ I said. ‘Not officially.’

He stuck up a finger to the lens then strode away, cutting off the track and up the hillside.

‘Thanks for reminding him, Tania.’ This was Kaylee, walking into shot, the hood of her red jacket pulled tight around her face. She stuck out her tongue to show a silver stud right through the tip.

In the background, out of sight, I heard Ava asking when we could stop and build a shelter.

‘Wait here. I’ll go ask Jarrold.’ Kaylee took a couple of steps then came back close to the camera. ‘Obviously I’ll ask him in sign language,’ she grinned sarcastically. ‘No actual words will be spoken!’

And off she went. She mimed out the whole situation for Jarrold – made gestures to show that the snow wasn’t letting up and we had to build a shelter.

‘So funny!’ Ava said in a hollow voice. ‘Like, she’s following the rules –
not
!’

Sighing, I switched off the camera. At least this way Kaylee could cut out the play-acting. ‘How serious is Kaylee about Jarrold?’ I asked Ava, meaning, was it more than the obvious lust factor?

‘Like I said before, she’s one hundred per cent committed to the heartless shit.’

‘You can tell?’

‘Look at the body language.’

Following Ava’s advice, I saw Kaylee talking and laughing with Jarrold now that the camera wasn’t running. She was sharing a joke, glancing our way, actually full-on flirting as much as was possible for a girl dressed for a snowstorm in padded jacket, scarf and hood. I watched Jarrold shake his head then turn away and start searching under the nearby trees for shelter materials.

‘I’m a newbie but it took me less than twenty-four hours to figure out that everyone here – all the girls – think Jarrold’s hot,’ Ava explained. ‘Channing comes a close second but Jarrold is definitely number one.’

‘And Power Ranger Jarrold knows it,’ I guessed.

‘He leads them on then pushes them away, just like he’s doing now. No one knows much about him, not really. He keeps up a wall.’

‘That’s what he did with me – he promised to tell me his whole story, acted like he wanted me to join the River Stone band.’ I was getting to like Ava, to feel that I could trust her.

Trust no one. My good angel’s voice echoes inside my head
.

Ava laughed. ‘You believed him?’

‘Not really. I’m here for other reasons.’ On the verge of sharing my precarious spiritual situation with Ava, with the words ‘dark angel’ on the tip of my tongue, I suddenly switched topics. ‘So what
do
we know about Jarrold?’

‘He lived in Denver. His parents were super-rich, but both big-time alcoholics. He’s lived with his grandfather since he was a little kid.’

‘Wow, that’s not how I figured it.’

‘Six months ago he was busted for stealing the old man’s credit card and running up thirty thousand dollars’ worth of debt.’

‘Ouch.’

‘He told the judge he did it because he was bored. It was all over the Denver newspapers – you can google it and read the whole thing.’

‘Again, ouch.’

By this time, Kaylee was yelling at us to quit talking and help with the shelter.

‘Unless you want to die in the snow like the Hawk Above Our Heads band!’

Straight away I ran up the hill to join her. ‘Why, what did you hear?’

‘Jean-Luc told Jarrold the Hawk band had to come down from Carlsbad, the snow was so bad.’

‘Yeah, I know – they built a shelter on Shaman Overlook.’

‘Which is still there,’ Kaylee told me, pointing across the lake and handing me the field glasses that hung around her neck. ‘Find the peak of Black Rock and focus directly under there, just above the tree line. See the shelter they built on the ledge?’

Following her directions, I managed to zoom in on a rough shelter built from brushwood and plastic sheeting.

‘Do you see anyone?’ Kaylee prompted.

The plastic roof of the shelter flapped, wind had blown the snow into deep drifts against the wooden sides. ‘No,’ I confirmed.

‘So either they went back down the mountain and headed for home, which is against guiding principle number three, or else they froze during the night and the corpses are still in there.’

Gasping, I appealed to Jarrold, who was gathering pine branches left on the ground by forestry workers. ‘She’s kidding!’

‘You hope,’ he mumbled. ‘With Kaylee you never can tell.’

‘We ought to go over and take a look, make sure they’re safe.’

‘What’s with the “we”?’ Kaylee scoffed. ‘You go if you want to, Tania, but I’m staying right here to build a shelter.’

Jarrold agreed. ‘We’d never make it to the overlook before nightfall.’

‘Anyway, I was joking.’ Kaylee gathered more branches and followed Jarrold as he carried his load to a thicket of aspens, where they set them down. ‘The Hawk band probably spent the night on the overlook, left the shelter in place and moved on. The snow got worse today so I guess they came lower, towards the lake.’