Page 154 of Mazywood

And he kissed Tasha.

It took them more than twenty minutes to help Tasha hop to the cavern’s entrance, another five to help her navigate the unstable ascent to climb outside. The elation of their reunion was shredded by her agony when she accidentally bumped her foot against the rocks. She didn’t feel like she was crying, but her eyes watered the whole way.

Crawling over the rocks with her left foot raised helped her make it up to the gap, but she’d still managed to hit her foot at the end, when she shifted too fast in her eagerness to climb out. Outside, the cold air froze her tears as soon as it touched her. The cavern had felt cold, but it was at least ten degrees colder outside, with a slight wind because of their height. It might not even be thirty degrees out here. She would need that emergency blanket from Imani again.

Tasha scooted as far as she dared to the rim of the ledge, and the distance down made her swoon. She felt nearly as endangered here as she had in the cavern. She scanned the snowy landscape: the creek, the open snow, the single dead tree barely visible inside the mist. More distant pine stands. She didn’t recognize anything. She’d expected to see the lodge somewhere in the distance, but this was wilderness.

In the snow below, a solitary pair of boot prints showed where Sharise had walked on her journey back toward home. It would not be a small journey. Please let her be okay.

“How far did you chase me?” Tasha asked.

Imani shrugged. “A mile?”

“More than that,” Johnny said. “Closer to a couple.”

The beauty of the snowscape couldn’t keep Tasha’s hands from shaking. Isolated images of the day winked in her memories. And the pain! Her foot was screaming. To fight the pain, she tried to remember everything she was grateful for.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” she said. “Or anyone. I thought I would lose the baby. I thought I would never see the sky again. I thought I would disappear.”

Johnny squeezed her hands with palms colder than hers. “Not on our watch.” He slid his hand to her stomach, and she pressed her hands over his. Their baby was safe. He had survived. They both felt the same gratitude, too big for words. But no words were necessary.

“How long should we wait?” Imani asked, tossing a stone over the cliff.

“We have to give her a couple hours,” Johnny said. “She might not be at the lodge yet. I can try to find another way down… but I think it’s best to wait. For now. I could have broken my neck climbing up here.”

Seeing how high he had climbed to find her and Imani, Tasha felt such a wave of love for Johnny that she could only squeeze his hands to the rhythm of her heart.

“I can get wood from inside and build a fire,” Imani said.

“I know you can,” Johnny said, “but let’s stay out here. We’ll play it safe from now on.”

Tasha permitted Johnny to look at her injury, but only if Imani promised to keep her face turned. When he pulled the last of the sweater away from her foot, it felt like he lifted her skin up with it. She shrieked while he clucked and soothed her.

“Imani, hand me that kit,” Johnny said. “And… some water.”

Johnny and Imani shared another look. Tasha understood Imani’s sharply disapproving eyes as she handed her father a bottle of water from her backpack. She remembered where that water had come from.

“Is it bad?” Tasha asked.

“It’s not too bad,” he said, but he was a damn liar. He looked sick to his stomach.

Tasha screamed while he washed her wound. The alcohol was an inferno. Her foot kept wailing after he had wrapped it. No relief. She swallowed two more pills from Imani’s kit, not sure how much she had taken, or even what. She wanted to swallow them all.

She and Imani would have a long talk about Not A Bear one day soon. Johnny too. They would never forget the pain, but they couldn’t pretend away the rest. Johnny’s family already had too much history of pretending.

“I wonder what it was.” Imani was the first to say it, but she didn’t look in Johnny’s direction. The confrontation had sounded chaotic from a distance, but Tasha had heard her daughter beg for the creature’s life.

Johnny’s head sagged. He didn’t answer.

“I don’t know,” Tasha said. “They’ll have to study it.”

“I wonder if it killed a lot of people,” Imani said.

“At least a few,” Johnny said. “My uncle was in there. I recognized this on his hat.”

He unzipped his jacket pocket and pulled out a tarnished silver buckle he’d saved from his uncle’s remains. The bear’s head. Imani held out her hand, so Johnny let her run her fingers over the grooves of the bear’s sharp teeth.

“Baby, I’m so sorry,” Tasha told Johnny. “I know you always wondered about him.”