Fairest (13 page)

“Path? What path?” Tears of pain and frustration burned at the corner of her eyes. She blinked them away, and when she opened her eyes, Jared was gone.

She spun in a circle to look for him, but he had vanished. There was no evidence of footsteps, sounds or bushes being disturbed. He just disappeared. Mina called his name, but no one answered except for the echo of her voice off of the valley. Dejected and alone, she sat down in the dirt and rain and stared out over the forest.

How could she have ever trusted him? He was, she decided, the absolutely worst kind of Fae. She didn’t think that they were capable of disappearing like that, but obviously they did it and did it a lot. He probably was in league with the Story against her. He was being the evil Step-parent figure leading her out into the forest and abandoning her.

She turned to look angrily across the forest and saw what Jared had seen. A path. It seemed to be a few miles off.  But if she got moving, she could get there by nightfall.
 

She took Jared’s moss advice hoping it was accurate, and started walking in an easterly route. It took her two hours to reach the dirt access road. 

The dirt road came to a fork, and Mina wasn’t sure which one to take. They both traveled in somewhat the same route. She chose the path that went right. After another hour, she was sure she’d chosen the wrong path. But wasn’t it better to keep going on the same path, instead of backtracking?

Mina’s feet were dragging, and she slipped on a muddy rock and twisted her ankle. Crying out in pain, she crumpled to the ground. Biting her lip, she tried to stand up and continue walking, but as soon as she put weight on her ankle, she fell to the ground again. Tears of pain and frustration rained down Mina’s face as she half crawled, half dragged herself along the road.

If she’d been one to curse, she knew she’d be calling Jared all kinds of nasty names. But instead she envisioned all of the terrible things she was going to do to him, if he ever dared to show his face to her again.

A crack of thunder made Mina jump, and she looked up as the clouds turned ugly and let out their fury in a downpour of rain. Wasn’t this just like her luck?

She half dragged, half crawled her way to the side of the road to take shelter under a tree. Her skin felt like ice, but her hatred of Jared kept her warm. Just when she was about to give up hope of ever being found, a light in the distance pierced the darkness.

She tried to yell, but her voice felt hoarse. The light grew bigger, drew closer, and became two lights. They were headlights. Mina used the tree for support and pulled herself up into a standing position so she could be better seen from the road. She could just make out a black Jeep coming her way. Mina began calling out and waving her hands through the darkness and rain, hoping the car wouldn’t drive past her. It wasn’t slowing down.

Panicking, Mina began hopping on one leg toward the road in an attempt to intercept the moving car. Just when she was almost there, she slipped and fell into the road, right in the direct path of the speeding vehicle.  Looking up, she could see her death coming as the driver of the Jeep, hit the brakes. It spun out of control in the mud and began to fish tail, heading right for her!

Crack! A large tree fell on the road in between Mina and the out-of-control Jeep. Mina screamed as the branches pinned her to the ground. She gritted her teeth as the Jeep spun sideways into the downed tree sending the tree and Mina sliding down the road in the mud. Thankfully, the trunk of the tree took the force of the car’s impact. The vehicle had sideswiped the large tree and looked to be in worse condition than the evergreen.

She heard a car door slam.

“Hello! Are you there?”

“I’m here!” Mina tried to yell back through the storm. She could barely see as broken branches and pine needles covered most of her body. She held up her hand in the air and someone began to clear branches off of her body.  Laying there in the mud, during a storm, Mina couldn’t help but be thankful that she was alive. She really thought that she was a goner. Strong hands gripped her and helped pull her to a sitting position.

“Are you hurt anywhere?” the man asked. He looked shaken from the accident, but otherwise fine.

“My ankle, I twisted it,” Mina answered.

The man stopped and stilled. “What’s your name?” he asked.

Mina looked closely at her rescuer.  He was of medium build, olive toned skin, with brown eyes and slightly curly hair. She didn’t recognize him. But a whisper of a voice told her to lie and do it well. “Nan Taylor.”

She watched as he ran back to the Jeep and called in to someone on his c.b. radio. She couldn’t hear the answer coming from the radio, but it was obvious that he was out searching for someone. Help had come. But what kind?

The man came back to Mina and helped pull her to her feet, being careful of her injured leg. He introduced himself as Karl, and helped Mina wobble to his car. He grabbed a rain poncho and flashlight from the back of the vehicle and walked around it, checking under the hood and under the rear of the vehicle.

Mina used the time to look around at the inside of the all-terrain vehicle, which seemed to belong to a survivalist. She could see a tent, coolers, and various large black bags. A feeling of unease came over her at the sight of the barrel of a gun sticking out of a bag, but Mina decided to push the feelings aside. After all, this man did save her, and he didn’t look to be carrying a weapon. Maybe he was a hunter and this was the off season. After a few minutes, he jumped into the car and clicked off the flashlight.

“I’ve got good news and bad news. The engine is fine, but we have a broken rear wheel axel, so we won’t be going anywhere fast, but at least we will be dry until help arrives.”

“Is help coming?” Mina asked hopefully. Her whole body was shaking, partially from shock and the other from cold.

“We will be fine.” Karl turned the key in the ignition and flipped the heaters on full blast. He reached into the backseat and pulled out a foil blanket that looked too thin to do any good. “Here, it’s a thermal blanket; it will use your own body heat to keep you warm. It looks like you’ve been out there a while.” He switched blankets with Mina and then threw the wool one on top of her lap.

Warmth slowly started to creep into her hands, but her feet and toes still felt frozen to the bone. “You sure are prepared for everything” Mina stuttered out. She looked at the car radio and the time read 10:30pm. Did it really take her all day to make it across the valley?

Karl pulled out a granola bar and a silver thermos, handing the granola bar to Mina. Her hands were shaking, and she gave up trying to open the package. She was so tired; all she wanted to do was sleep. She leaned against the window pane and watched the rain splatter against the glass, gather into large pools, and then slide down.

He got the thermos open and poured a cupful of coffee into the lid, handing it to her. Mina sipped the coffee and tried to listen to what Karl was saying. Her eyes were becoming increasingly heavy, and it was hard to concentrate in the warm vehicle.

“You must be the luckiest girl in the world. You know that, don’t you?” His lips pressed together. He studied her under heavy lidded eyes.

Mina wasn’t so sure it was luck. She made sure to take a good look at the trunk of the tree as Karl helped her into the car. The tree wasn’t hit by lighting. There was no evidence, of charring or it being cracked or split. The hundred foot tree was uprooted, but most of the trees roots were still buried deep in the ground. Something of extreme force hit the tree, causing it to fall into the road. Mina was almost positive it was Jared, but why?

The car felt like it was on fire and burning her up. She tried to move her hand toward the heater to turn it down, but Karl mistook her actions for wanting more heat. He turned the knob up and, Mina’s hand felt heavy and it dropped uselessly on her lap. She was having problems even controlling her own limbs. The intense heat emanating from the car’s heaters made it almost impossible for her to breath and she started to shiver again but this time from a fever.

She heard Karl speak to her, but she couldn’t respond, couldn’t move. She heard a chuckle and felt his hand touch her cheek and forehead. She felt the seat move and heard the sound of something being opened in the backseat. She passed out and awoke a few moments later to the sound of a siren.

Karl cursed out loud and picked up the radio again and he mumbled something into it about being “too late to be sure.”

Another vehicle pulled up beside them. More people piled out of the other vehicle. Her door opened, and she was moving through the air.

She opened her eyes to see she had been moved onto a stretcher and someone was taking her blood pressure. She blinked, or at least she thought she did and the next time she opened her eyes, she squinted in pain because she was in a hospital. Doctors, nurses and a familiar voice spoke in hushed tones. Her fever raged on most of the night and into the next day, sometime the next night it broke.

“Mom?” Mina spoke quietly and a hand encompassed her own and squeezed gently. She heard her mother’s voice whisper to her that she was going to be all right. Mina relaxed and drifted back to sleep.

***

Something was touching her nose! Mina’s eyes flew open to stare at an offending feather assailing her face. Her eyes followed the large white goose feather to the small hand clutching it and up the sleeve to the perpetrator. She should have known it was her younger brother.

“Charlie!” Mina whined and tried to swat the feather away. “Do you know how many diseases that feather is probably carrying, and you brought it into a hospital?”

Charlie just grinned wider and nodded his head. The eight-year-old proceeded to climb up onto Mina’s hospital bed with an old pencil box. It usually housed his favorite possessions like an old Matchbox car, a broken piece of quartz, silver bottle caps, a whistle, and a few old election pins.  But currently these items weren’t in the box but carefully placed around Mina’s body on the hospital bed.

“Charlie, what are you doing?” she picked up the bottle cap that was closest to her hand and handed it back to her silent brother, who put it away in the box.

“He was worried about you,” a warm voice answered from out in the hallway.

Mina’s head spun toward the sound, and she almost cried in relief when she saw her mother standing there. Sara started crying, crossed to the hospital bed, and pulled her daughter and son into an embrace.

“Mom, I’m sorry. I never meant to make you worry.” Mina sniffled.

“Shh, shh. It’s okay,” Sara intoned softly. “Well, no, it’s not okay, but we will get to that later.” She pulled away and brushed Mina’s hair out of her face. “What happened? What were you thinking? When you didn’t come home from school, I called Nan. She said you got a ride, but then when you didn’t come home at all, I panicked.  I was so scared, and I didn’t know what to do.  I thought maybe the Story had gotten involved and you were in the middle of a quest.”

“Mom, it wasn’t the Story, not exactly.”

“I hate that you have to be a part of this. If there was any way that I could protect you from the Grimm curse you know I would, right?”

“You protected me for sixteen years from the curse and the Story. It’s okay Mom, now it’s my turn to protect Charlie and you.” Mina tried to sound strong, but her words only made her mom tear up more.

“Oh, sweetheart. I can’t tell you how helpless I felt not knowing what was going on. The police wouldn’t understand our circumstances… how could I call for help and tell them that I thought a fairy tale had come and kidnapped my daughter or worse, killed her? I knew something had happened, but I couldn’t do anything. I ended up calling the police, but they said you hadn’t been missing for forty-eight hours.” Sara stood up and paced the room, waving her hands wildly about.

“Mom!” Mina tried to distract her mother, knowing she was about to lose it.

“I mean, really! Forty-eight hours? Do they not have kids? Forty-eight hours to a scared parent might as well be forty-eight days.” She stopped pacing, and Charlie jumped off the bed and began to put his knickknacks back in the box, obviously satisfied that they had served their purpose.

“Thanks, Charlie.” Mina patted his head.

Charlie grinned and pointed his finger into his open palm.

Mina raised her eyebrow in disbelief. “I owe you? Why do I owe you?” she laughed.

Charlie started signing, and Mina watched carefully. “Because you protected me?”