Page 89 of Mazywood

Sharise gasped and stepped back, expecting the rifle to spontaneously fire. Imani slid the lever back into place with a clack, avoiding the trigger. Was that enough? Was it reloaded now?

“Now it’s ready,” Imani said.

“Imani, I’m scared,” Sharise said, sobbing. Her shoulders shook. Maybe all of her was shaking.

“That’s because you think Mom is dead,” Imani said. “If you thought we could save her, you wouldn’t be scared. You would just be thinking about her.”

“I’m thinking about you,” Sharise said. “Do you think Mom would want us to die out here? She would want to protect us. I want to go back to Dad. I can’t leave you, but I can’t be out here with that thing. Dad had the gun too—and you saw what happened to him—”

“Stop talking.” Sharise’s certainty that Mom was dead made the ground seem to shake. What if she was leading Sharise on this dangerous chase out of shock because reality was too horrible to imagine? What if her entire family died today, the born and the unborn?

Miraculously, Sharise listened to her and went quiet except for her whimpers. Now Imani was sorry that she had thought of her sister as a useless Barbra in the car, because that wasn’t fair. She was the one putting them in danger, not Sharise. It did sound crazy to believe that Mom was alive, and it definitely was crazy to be tracking this Beast by themselves—and Sharise was doing this for her, not to find Mom. Finding Mom might be so gruesome that the sight would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Imani knew that. Neither of them should be here… and yet…

Imani unbuckled one of her bootstraps and walked back toward Sharise with her snowboard crossways, keeping the downhill edge raised so she wouldn’t slide down before she was ready. Once she reached Sharise, Imani put her hand on her sister’s shoulder the way Mom would have.

“I have to do this,” Imani whispered to Sharise’s sweat-damp hair over her ear. “You can stay back here if you want—be ready to run like hell if something happens. But we’ve come this far… and I have to. If the trail is gone… and there’s no sign of Mom… I’ll go back with you.”

Sharise clung to Imani’s arm, pressing to the bone. “I can’t watch it happen again.”

“Don’t watch, then,” Imani said. “Just close your eyes.”

Sharise looked at her, wide-eyed and appalled. She let out a hysterical combined laugh and sob. “That won’t help!” she said, and Imani laughed softly with her. Laughter threatened to take control of Imani, trying to rise in her throat, but she fought laughter as much as she fought tears. Neither would help them now. Laughing or crying would curl her into a helpless ball.

Close her eyes—yeah, right. They didn’t dare close their eyes out here, so close to the Beast. Imani kept her eyes locked on the tree line ahead, looking for motion in the shadows. She expected the Beast to fly toward them from the snowdrifts propped against the thinner trees. The only motion was the broad wings and white crown of what looked like a bald eagle flying high overhead, a rare sight that would have delighted Imani on any other day. Today, she only envied the majestic bird’s wings. Could that eagle see where their mother was?

“Fine,” Sharise said. “I’ll go with you. But you promise to go back if it’s the end of the trail.” Absurdly, she held out her trembling hand to shake Imani’s like they were making a business deal. Sharise’s fingers were cold. Either she didn’t have her gloves, or she had forgotten to wear them. When they climbed into the rental car that morning, they hadn’t expected to need their gloves, like Mom hadn’t thought she would need her jacket. (Why hadn’t she insisted that Mom take her jacket anyway instead of that stupid robe? Mom really, really needed her jacket.)

“Promise,” Imani said, locking cold fingers with her sister’s. Instead of a formal handshake, they were hanging on to each other for their lives.

“Your hand is freezing,” Sharise said, surprised.

“Yours too.”

It was easier to notice her sister’s discomfort than her own, Imani realized. When she was on her snowboard, she barely felt anything. Clinging their hands together felt good even if they couldn’t give each other warmth. They hung on for a long time, like it was the last time. The tremors in Sharise’s fingers finally calmed as she gathered her nerves.

“Okay,” Sharise said, her nostrils still bubbling. “Let’s go. But slowly.”

The Beast’s tracks ran parallel to them, not downhill, so they unhooked their snowboards and walked in their boots. Sharise held out her hands to take Imani’s board so Imani could grasp the rifle with both hands, keeping it ready as they crept closer to the stand of thin mountain pines. Imani wanted to fire the rifle to see if it was loaded, but what if she used her last round? Besides, firing a test shot would only alert the Beast to their presence, if it didn’t already know.

As they got closer to the snowdrift, Imani noticed that some of the mound had crumbled away in the path of the tracks, leaving a dark opening in view. It took her under the snow, Imani thought. She had planned to advance slowly, but the idea of Mom buried under that snow made her start running, her mouth hanging open to suck at the air. Sharise ran to match her pace.

“Stay back,” Imani whispered. She charged at the snow mound and jabbed it with her rifle stock, and Sharise gasped behind her.

Impulse control again—she’d done it without thinking. Imani jumped back and readied her rifle nearly sending herself off balance in her worry that she had poked the Beast. The portion of the snowdrift she’d jabbed collapsed, hollow inside.

Silence. No slithering or hissing sounds.

Imani wondered why she couldn’t breathe, and she realized it was because her raucous heartbeat had cinched her lungs. The rifle was trembling so much in her hands that she would have missed anything she fired at anyway. She forced a long inhalation of the crisp air.

The mound stretched six or seven yards against the bases of two trees, so she poked at it from a few more angles to be sure nothing was hidden inside.

“It went under here…” she whispered. “I know it.”

But then where had it gone…?

Walking quickly again, Imani circled the mound to see if the trail emerged on the other side. Her heart fell. The snow was deep here, almost to her knees, but it was pristine except for a few fallen pine needles. Untouched. As if Mom had vanished.

Imani had thought she was braced for the worst—finding Mom’s mauled corpse, her eyes full of snow like the deer’s. But this nothing was far worse. She hadn’t imagined nothing.