4 April 2013

Spring was coming to the aspen groves and patches of dark timber that ringed Bud and Susan’s mountainside home, snow beginning to disappear from the sunnier slopes and the remainder developing a hard crust every morning which allowed all but the largest and heaviest of animals to walk over its surface without so much as leaving a mark, except to the trained eye.  Einar, watching from a window that morning as Bud traveled almost effortlessly across the crust between garage and greenhouse, wished they, too, might take advantage of conditions to make their escape and return to the vast freedom of the high country.  It would work just fine down low, he knew, but once they got up into the timber up higher, snow would be a great deal less crusty, might very well still exist in a good many places as powder, and they’d leave tracks. 

Not worth the risk, especially if the house and surroundings were being watched.  Of course, if the place was being watched it would possibly eventually be raided and searched as well, at which point they would surely have been better off taking their chances up in the timber…  Einar shook his head, lowered himself so that he was sitting beneath the window, back braced against the wall.  Really shouldn’t be looking out the windows, anyway, on the chance that the place was being watched.  Not unless he’d first gone to some effort to disguise his appearance, which, apart from wearing a bulky and unbelievably warm olive green alpaca wool sweater over his elkskin vest after Susan’s repeated insistence that she wasn’t going to have any guest of hers freezing to death in her living room—which he’d had no intention of doing, but his continuous shivering and the purple hue to his face had told her otherwise—he had made no attempt to do.  Best be very careful then, with the windows.  Which made it difficult to properly watch the place, leaving him to rely far more heavily than he might have wished on Bud’s word that things were quiet outside, when he reported in after his frequent patrols.   

Only the knowledge that Kilgore was rather beyond competent at such tasks—had tracked him down, after all, and more than once—and also that he would be just as concerned about Susan’s safety as Einar was about that of his own family, allowed Einar to relax somewhat and let him take care of security.  This, though, was acceptable to Einar only because he saw himself as having little choice, and with every passing hour, he found himself wishing more strongly to be out of that situation, his restlessness growing.

The past night, at least, had been quieter than their first, Einar’s exhaustion overcoming, at last, a rather dedicated determination to stay awake and watchful.  When Liz, after feeding Will and getting him settled in for the night, had realized that her husband seemed little inclined to wake that night, she had left Will tucked cozily into the bed and joined him where he lay curled up on the floor, dragging a heavy quilt over the two of them and rejoicing when morning had come without any major disturbance.  Einar had been somewhat less joyful, hating the thought that he’d been sleeping on duty and scrambling up as soon as he did wake to make his rounds of the house, checking to be certain that they were still alone and finding, in the process, the spot where Kilgore had stashed his knife and rifle. 

Delighted at the recovery of the weapons and only slightly concerned that the tracker would again attempt their removal—the man, after all, had perhaps not been entirely unreasonable in having some concern; best remove a man’s means of resistance, after all, if you’re planning on sticking him with a bear dart and being around when he wakes—he had carried them with him, the entire situation seeming slightly less disturbing for their presence.

Still he paced uneasily about the place, stopping frequently to listen, to feel for vibrations that might be coming up through the ground and avoiding, as a rule, not only Susan with her frequent if gentle offers of food and drink, but his own family as well.  Didn’t like that last part, especially when Will crawled excitedly in his direction from time to time, anxious to tell him, in a stream of babble which was increasingly beginning to resemble words, about one fascinating discovery or another, only to reach the spot and find that his father had moved on, not wanting to be distracted from his watchfulness.  Not good.  Not the way he wanted to be with the little one, and when next Will headed his way, he made a point of keeping still, lowering himself to the ground and allowing the little one to climb up on his knee.

“What is it?  What’re you trying to tell me?  Want to see out the window, is that it?”

To which the child gave something that sounded most definitely like confirmation, reaching and straining for the windowsill so that he very nearly lost his balance.  Bracing himself against the wall so as to help maintain his own equilibrium, Einar lifted the child so he could see out.  Momentary contentment, and then Will was fumbling with the window latch, making clear attempts to get it open as he had seen Susan do earlier that day while dusting in the living room.  Einar chuckled, showed him how it worked.”

“Hands aren’t strong enough yet to do it on your own, I’m guessing, but you tuck that bit of information away in your head, and it’ll be there later when you need it.  Always good to have more than one way out of a place, isn’t it?  Yep, never too early to learn that one.”

Will wasn’t listening, though.  He’d watched with rapt attention Einar’s demonstration of window latch mechanics, had given it a try himself, but now his focus had been drawn to something outside, but when Einar looked, he could see nothing out of the ordinary.  It was, he suspected, the outdoors itself which was drawing him, the newness and fascination of the house having worn off somewhat and the child wanting to be out and in contact with a world which was the only one he’d ever known in his brief life, so far.

“Don’t blame you, kid.  Rough on us wild critters to be confined like this, isn’t it?  Don’t worry.  We’re gonna get out of here sooner or later, and back to what we know.  Just waiting on a snowstorm, that’s all.  Waiting for the weather to change.”

And, thought Liz, who had been listening in from the next room, hopefully waiting on a few other things, too...

3 April 2013

Thank you all for reading.  I don't have a chapter for tonight, but will tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is the view from the high country today:


Lingering clouds...

White faces...

Still lots of snow up high...

It's good to be alive.   :)

1 April 2013

Nearly half the town, it seemed, packed the firehouse that evening to bid farewell to Juniper Melton, who while not native to the area, had made quite an impression over the course of the few short years she’d spent in and around Culver Falls.  Bud Kilgore, who hadn’t really wanted to speak but had known at the same time that he’d be unwise to refuse when asked by the head of Mountain Rescue to do so, remembered her to the crowd as one of his brightest and most able students, a young woman who loved the wild country and had devoted a great deal of time and energy to becoming familiar with its ways, just as she had done with her chosen field of journalism.

When later in the evening her parents began questioning him as to what he might know of the details of her final moments, he used the firm, steady manner and attendant quiet persuasion that had got him into—and out of—so many places over the years to assure them that yes, it had been quick, that slide and its aftermath, and no, she hadn’t misjudged when deciding to go out across the slope; even the most experienced can make mistakes, and sometimes, the mountains are simply unpredictable.  Just like life.

Einar did not particularly want to answer Susan’s question, found it intrusive, prying, perhaps even a trap of one sort or another, but something in her mannerism and the way she asked—patient and knowing, if not necessarily understanding—left him a good deal less inclined than he might otherwise have been to turn away and keep silent.  Susan wasn’t leaving, repeated her question, rephrased it.

“Surely you know you’re not being too realistic in thinking that by continuing to avoid getting food, water, rest, that you’re doing the best thing you can to help yourself get stronger.  Those things may have their place, I know they do, and maybe more for you than for some people, but right now, they’re just slowing you down and easing you closer to the edge.  You see that, don’t you?  How close you are to not being here anymore, and how most of the things you’re doing right now are only making it worse…”

He shrugged, figuring he had little to lose in attempting an answer.  “Sure.  Sometimes I see it.  Saw it in the mirror yesterday, and whenever I try to move quickly, and find that things aren’t responding the way they should.  But always seem to convince myself I was mistaken, that the real problem is my allowing myself to get weak—mind, not body—and give in…  And then I’m back to it again, with more resolve than ever.”

“That’s how it looks to me, too.  That’s why I asked if it was really about thinking the deprivation will make your mind and body strong, at all.  At this point.  Because I don’t think it is.  You can’t really believe that the things you’re doing make any sense at all for a man who’s trying to regain his health and strength so he can look after his family.  Looks to me like that supposed weakness you mentioned, that ‘giving in,’ that’s what’s really behind a lot of your decisions right now.  Wanting to avoid that.  And you’ve come to see eating, resting, doing the very things you know you’ve got to do in order to have any chance of staying alive, as a compromise.  As giving in.  Haven’t you?”

Quiet, then.  Not liking how close she’d come, wanting to be angry but finding, when he looked, nothing but sincerity in her eyes.  No deception, no evil intent.

“Yes, seems I have.”

“And that prospect—of giving in—is worse to you than the thought of death, even.  Must be, because you have to know that’s where your current course will lead, sooner or later…”

A long silence.  “Maybe.”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe, to both.”

“Yes.  Do you think that’s reasonable?  This fear of ‘giving in?’  And the power you allow it to have in your life?”

“I’m not afraid.  And yes, it is entirely reasonable.”

“Why?”

A silent snarl, Einar glancing away so Susan would know it wasn’t entirely directed at her, but he needn’t have worried, for she already knew.  Not talking about why.  None of her business why, but it wasn’t any good, for apparently she already knew that, too, and wasn’t going to let him get off so easy.  Wasn’t done.

“It’s because of the path you’ve walked through this life, isn’t it?  Life teaches us things, and yours has taught you that one of the most important things is to resist, to not “give in,” as you put it.  That you’ll be lost if you do that.  Am I anywhere close to right?”

“Too close.”

“I know, not something you really want to talk about.  But your little boy needs you to do it.  He needs his father to teach him all about these mountains, about life, all sorts of things.  And unless you can somehow untangle things in your head pretty quick here, he’s not going to have that, because what you’ve got going right now just isn’t compatible with life, in the long run.  You’re going to have to pick one or the other pretty quickly, or you may not end up being the one who gets to do the picking.  And no, I’m not talking about Bud and his darts, there…  I know you’ve heard all of this before, but maybe now you can take the time to really stop and think about it, since you’re here and will be staying for a little while.  Will you give that a try?”

Einar shrugged, shook his head, agreed in principle, but did not know how to do what she was asking.

Christ is Risen!

I hope everyone has a blessed and joyous day, as we celebrate the Resurrection and the completion of our ransom from death!

There won't be a chapter today, but I'll be back tomorrow with another.

Thank you all for reading.

29 March 2013

With Einar seeming content to remain where he was so long as Will slept and Kilgore keeping silent guard over the situation from his post on a stool by the counter, Liz felt free to join Susan in the kitchen, where the two of them worked to put the finishing touches on a casserole she was preparing for supper.

Since his most recent waking, one had said anything about Einar’s missing weapons, including Einar himself, who was far too thoroughly occupied to go and look, nearly the entirety of his attention being devoted to keeping himself upright so as to avoid spilling the sleeping Will.  He did not especially care for the situation, wanted instead to be watching out one window or another, if he could not be outside, but as he saw that both Kilgore and the raven were doing this, the situation proved to be at least marginally tolerable.  As for weapons, he was certain a variety of knives were to be found in the kitchen, and both Susan and Liz had pistols.  Would have greatly preferred to have something on his person, but at least it was a start, should things turn serious.  Again.  The rest, he would solve at the first opportunity, but so long as Will lay sleeping on his lap, he had no plans to go anywhere.

Bud, on the other hand, had places to go, and knew he must, despite a great reluctance, be leaving before too long.  They were holding a memorial service for Juni down at the firehouse that evening, everyone who had been involved in the search, and as the one who had officially “found” and retrieved her, he could hardly skip the event without arousing a good deal of unwanted suspicion.  And besides, the family wanted to talk with him.  He’d talked to a lot of families over the years, been to a fair number of similar remembrances even after leaving active duty, guys who’d made it back from one conflict or another only to be taken far too soon—from the human perspective, at least—by one thing or another.  Cancer, all too often, or guys perishing at their own hand, and though in both cases everyone more or less knew why, the matter was seldom spoken of, at least amongst Bud’s peers.  Simply another life to be remembered, another flag, another name that really should, in the end, have been on the Wall.

Einar had not gone to many such memorials, had been traveling the world with one job or another for years as the men he’d served with left this life, and later he’d been living out in the hills without much human contact at all, where more often than not he’d never even known until years later that people were gone…  A few times he had sat vigil with those who were leaving, including several months spent with a friend during the last stages of a long struggle with cancer, helping him when he wanted it and fading off into the hills when he wished instead to be alone, and when the end came, making sure his final wishes were carried out.  Which included covertly burying him on a remote corner of his own land early one morning, facing east to watch the rising sun and, as the man had put it, to await the glorious return of his Savior.  A difficult time, to be sure, but not a bad one, for either of them.

During combat, there had been no time to say goodbye, to stop and think about any of it, you just stopped the bleeding best as you could, loaded them up on choppers for the risky evac. and often as not never even knew if they’d made it, and those who you knew didn’t make it because you had been there to see it happen…well, you didn’t really have time to say goodbye to them, either, because most of the time you were still in the thick of things, or would be again the following night, or the day after, and could not afford to allow yourself to think about such things.  To be distracted.  Bogged down.  It would have led to your destruction, and to that of those around you, which was the last thing you wanted…  So they were gone, and you went on, and that was it.  Might think about it later, years later, when the nights were unbearably quiet, still, and you were alone with your mind and your memories, or when something reminded you, took you back, body and soul, to some forsaken jungle hillside, the distant rumble of a helicopter, the boom and blast of fireworks as civilization celebrated one thing or another…but even then, it was probably better not to.  Not if you could help it.  So in most cases he hadn’t, but a person cannot always help it, and sometimes late at night those faces would come to him, those moments in time, lives that in many cases had really never even properly got their start before they’d been ended.  These were the things that filled Einar’s mind as he watched Kilgore prepare to head down to the hill to Juni’s memorial.

Tracker heading for the door, Einar intercepted him, pressed into his hand a wolverine claw taken from the pouch around his neck, a perfect match, but for the missing loop of home-tanned buckskin, to the one worn around his own neck, Liz’s and the child’s.  “She earned this.  Leave it for her.”

Kilgore nodded.  He’d find a way.  Left, silent, not bothering to admonish Einar as to the necessity of proper behavior during his absence.  Could see in the man’s eyes that he was at the moment wholly present, thinking, not likely to do anything too rash or irrevocable.  Hoped things would stay that way, at least until he could make his return.

Bud gone and Will once more up exploring the house, Einar took the opportunity to once more make his way several times up and down the stairs, hoping the activity might help him burn off whatever remained of the dart-poison so he could be sure of his thinking once more, and hoping also to start seeing some improvement in his injured hip, which as the influence of the dart continued to decline, was making its presence ever more noticeably felt.  Didn’t seem to be helping too much, in either regard.  But he kept it up, repeating the circuit so many times that Liz eventually became concerned he might be about to fall down the stairs—not too far from the truth, though he hardly wanted to admit the fact to himself—took him by the arm and guided him to a seat on the couch.  No way he’d stay there, she knew, not unless… 

Will was happy to oblige in his mother’s plot to keep Einar seated for a time, but only when she’d provided him with a suitable incentive, which in this case took the form of a bowlful of thinly sliced strawberries.  Knowing Will would make a dreadful mess if simply handed the bowl, she tasked Einar with feeding him, standing back and nearly laughing at the scene that ensued, Will delighted if impatient, and Einar’s brow furrowed in concentration at the effort required to get the berry slices into the little one’s mouth, instead of all over the furniture  Perched above them and looming large as he watched with keen black eyes, the raven kept guard.

Liz’s plan worked for a while, kept Einar still so he could get a bit of rest and entertained Will, but eventually all the strawberries were gone, Will full—and full of energy—taking off to harass the cat and do a bit more exploring.  Einar might have hauled himself up then to begin again his endless circuit of the stairs, but he’d stiffened up with the prolonged stillness, started, despite the reasonable warmth of the room, to grow terribly cold so that instead of immediately rising, he simply sat there staring out the window and shivering.  Susan saw, tried to give him a blanket, but he shook his head.

“Fine like this.  Best this way.”

“Why do you have to do this?  Stay cold all the time?”

“Being warm makes me sleepy.  And lazy.  Got to be awake, ready.  Never know what might be coming, down this close to…”

“To civilization?  Yes, this must be very different for you, I can imagine.  But there’s nothing lazy about being sleepy when you’re all worn out.  You can sleep.”

That got a little half smile but no answer, and Susan could sense the futility of pressing the matter further.

“Getting some rest and a little more to eat, helping your body to be stronger and your mind quicker—won’t that do more to get you ready to defend your family than almost anything, when you really think about it?”

“Deprivation of various kinds does make my body stronger and my mind quicker.  Works better than anything.”

“Not anymore, it doesn’t.  You passed that point a good while back.  That’s not what this is about anymore, is it, even if it once was…?”

26 March 2013

Einar had heard it, all of it, though in strange, distorted snatches which left him filling in the blanks as he struggled to wake, sure that Kilgore was about to stick him with an IV full of poison that would paralyze him all over again and leave him unable to resist whatever was to come next.  At least Liz, his own dear Liz had objected, refused to go along with whatever nefarious plot the tracker was now attempting to implement; he’d heard her do it, loved her for that, wished he could wake up and tell her so—and stay awake, too, lest while she wasn’t looking, Kilgore should sneak up and stick him with a needle of some sort.  Gave it all his strength then, the effort to wake, to rise, succeeding only in partially swinging one leg off the couch and painfully wrenching his already injured hip.  Good.  Progress.  Sure not going to sleep again with things hurting like that, and he didn’t, but had not counted on the effect brought upon him by the effort of raising his head.  World went black, one fleeting glimpse all allowed him between first getting his eyes open and the darkness swallowing him once more.  Fighting it all the way down he struggled to hang onto just one thing, the sound of Will babbling and playing in the background, hoping this might help keep him in the present, allow him a quicker return to wakefulness, but eventually it, too, faded, world silent as well as dark.

Waking, knowing something was wrong, not entirely remembering what, but he was pretty sure it had to do with the guards, and the fact that they would soon be returning.  Had to keep still.  Make sure they didn’t know he was awake, preserve the element of surprise, for in it lay his only hope, and a slight one at that.  Would probably be more than one of them, and even if he succeeded at taking the first one out, the second would have him.  Unless he could seize the first man’s pistol.  That might give him a chance, though it would also attract unwanted and potentially unaffordable attention.  Well.  No good option, must take the one before him, wherever it led.  And soon, too, for he heard the approach of footsteps, slow, measured, sounding strangely soft, muffled, and with them was no swish and splash of water, as he had grown accustomed to hearing.  Nearing.  Almost time.  Silently, keeping still, he gathered himself.  Ready to make his move….

When the raven stretched out his wings and began sounding his rasping alarm, he tended to make quite an imposing figure, and this is exactly what he did as Susan approached the couch where Einar lay, the bird taking some objection to her sudden presence and making his voice heard quite clearly there in the confines of the house.  Several things then happened simultaneously, Susan backing off so as to stop alarming the bird, Liz hurrying towards the source of the commotion and Einar surprising everyone by quite literally leaping to his feet, making a sudden and startlingly agile dive across the living room, rolling and ending up flat on his stomach behind a chair.  After this nobody moved for a moment, Kilgore watching attentively as both women, one youngster and a raven stared at Einar, the latter blinking, shaking his head and quickly suppressing the incongruous hint of a grin that began creeping across his face at sight of the bird.  Moving cautiously as if more than half expecting one or more of the other humans in the room to rush him at any moment, he slowly got to his feet, limping over and holding out an arm to the raven. 

Chortling a soft greeting the bird hopped heavily onto Einar’s outstretched arm where he would have easily knocked the man over, had he not been ready.

Fighting to catch his breath after the sudden exertion of waking at a dead run as he had done, Einar grinned at the bird, shaking his head.  “Where’ve you been, you old vulture?  Could have used you here, you know?  Stick around for a while, why don’t you?”  The raven, sensing Einar’s unbalance and the fact that he was not far from falling even before the man recognized the trouble, took a quick hop back over onto the top of the couch, chortling happily as Einar sank down and sat.  The family was whole and entire again, everything right with his world.

Einar sat silently, surveying the room, looking suspicious.  Liz knew he had heard, feared for a moment what he might do should he be able to make his way over to the chair where Kilgore now sat over beside the kitchen island, but she need not have been terribly concerned, for the raven made his move before Einar could gather the strength to make one of his own, hopping onto his shoulder and chortling in his ear.  Einar smiled, slouched a bit and leaned back, looking more relaxed than he had done since arriving at the house.  Everyone—other, perhaps, than the tracker, who had never been particularly worried in the first place—breathed a sigh of relief, trouble averted at least for the moment, and when Susan brought Einar a cup of water, he took it and, after a brief but thorough inspection, drained it in one big gulp.

“Good stuff.  Thanks.”

“There’s more…”

“Later.  Right now need to…just need to get up and try to…”

On his feet again, moving a bit unsteadily about the room, Einar headed for the spiral staircase, climbing it as quickly as he was able before heading down to do it all over again.  Five times he repeated this exercise, more determined than ever to work off whatever remained in his system of the dart-poison, wanting to eliminate it before Kilgore could hit him with anything else.  Wanted to try for a sixth ascent, but at the bottom of number five found himself so dizzy and out of breath that it was very nearly more than he could manage to lower himself quickly and unceremoniously to the floor at the bottom of the stairs, narrowly avoiding a fall.  Will, having given up for the moment his quest to remove one by one the tail feathers of the raven, hurriedly crawled over to his father, using him as a support as he pulled himself to his feet.

“Walking better than I am, aren’t you, little one?  Funny thing this life is.  What do you think?  Lots to explore here in this new place, isn’t there?  Especially for a fella like you, who’s never seem most of this stuff before.  Long way from our basin, aren’t we?  Not where I really want to be right now, but until it storms real good so we can move on without leaving too many tracks…well, you might as well settle in best as you can and enjoy it, because it looks like we’re gonna be here for a little while.  Yep.  Might as well try and be patient, you and me.  And the bird.  Got a deal?”

Will did not answer, having climbed onto his father’s lap and settled in for a nap, worn out by the excitement of so much exploration and discovery, and Einar watched him in wonder for a moment before laying a reluctant hand on the sleeping child’s head, his own eyes distant.

24 March 2013

Muninn the raven had been watching the place for the better part of two days, having located it not long after Einar and Liz got settled in, but reluctant to approach, being, after all, a wild creature and not entirely used to human habitations.  This day though, watching as Kilgore left the house and recognizing the man, something compelled him to go in for a closer look.  This is how he came to be perched on the deck railing when Susan went out to collect a pot full of snow from the deck.  Liz had wanted to do it, arguing that she could then truthfully tell Einar that she, and only she had been involved with the gathering and melting of the stuff, thus presumably making him a bit more likely to feel safe drinking it, but Susan had insisted that it would be unwise for Liz to show herself outside, for that reason or any other.  She had no real reason to suspect that they were being kept under surveillance at all times, but with no way to prove the contrary and a history of the searchers keeping an eye on the place, it seemed far better that the matter of their having guests remain unknown to all.

The raven recognized Susan, tilting his head and letting out a soft rasping call which she could not help but take as a question.

“Yes, they’re in there, if that’s what you were asking.  I was wondering when you were going to show up.  Didn’t expect you’d have had any real trouble following them here, but it’s a different place, isn’t it?  An unfamiliar one, especially to you who’ve spent your entire life up in the high country…”

The bird took a cautious hop closer, but did not answer.  “Well, are you coming in?  Don’t know if you’ll be able to put up with something so different as a house, but you know all of us.  We’re not going to do you any harm.  And just maybe your being there will in some way help your human to realize the same thing, because he’s having a little trouble with that, right now.  What do you think?”

Muninn was thinking, alright, wanting into the house where he knew Einar, Liz and the little one must be—had heard the latter numerous times, and despite lack of recent audible confirmation of Einar’s presence and an inability to see inside due to drawn curtains on most of the windows, sensed that the man was in there as well—but remaining cautious, the entire thing looking rather like a potential trap to his ever-cautious raven brain.  It was Will who finally convinced him, letting out a squeal of delight as he galloped past the door on hands and knees, chasing Susan’s big tortoiseshell cat.  That voice he knew, and having come to consider himself a protector and guardian over the smallest Asmundson, it seemed only right that he ought to go inside when Susan opened the door.

After a cursory inspection of the place—big, strange, but it smelled of food and was basically to his liking—Muninn took wing and came to rest on the couch above Einar, chortling softly and reaching down to twist a bit of the unconscious man’s hair before settling in as sentry until he should wake.  Susan allowed him to stay, only scooting him to the side long enough to slip a towel beneath him, unsure of the bird’s habits when in a house but not wanting to lose furniture to the creature, should he prove to be less well-mannered than she might hope. 

Will, spotting the raven, gave up his chase of the cat—a large, mild-mannered beast who having gone through the toddler years of all five of Susan’s grandchildren, knew very well how to manage herself around grasping little hands—and made straight for the bird, fascinated as always with the ever-changing iridescence of his feathers.  Before either Susan or Liz could move to stop him, the little one had hoisted himself up and was shuffling his way along the couch, trying for a closer position to those wonderfully tempting feathers and ending up behind the piece of furniture, in a spot very close to the one in which his father had previously hidden himself to sleep.  The resulting chaos of squeals, rasps and finally a loud protest from the bird when Will came away with a prized tail feather ought surely to have wakened Einar, had he been capable of waking, but it did not.

While Liz and Susan had been concerned about the results should Einar wake before Bud’s return and go back to demanding his missing weapons, it soon became apparent that they might have more to fear in the opposite—his not waking at all.  Certainly he was showing no sign of it, and when Bud returned, the tracker’s voice failing, like everything else, to get a response, they all began to worry just a bit.  The main concern was that the dart might have had some unfortunate, long-lasting impact upon his ability to remain awake, interfered somehow with the functioning of his brain or with his breathing, perhaps, but he seemed to be breathing fairly regularly at the moment, if slowly and seldom.  Which, according to Liz, was not at all out of the ordinary for recent weeks.  Bud had his own ideas.

“He’s gonna be just fine, you know, once he’s slept this thing off.  I didn’t give him enough of the dart to have done this.  He’s already been awake after that, was starting to come out of it.  This is just straight-up exhaustion, and the longer he can sleep, the better, I figure.  Unless he’s out so long that he starts drying up and blowing away in the breeze, which wouldn’t take one heck of a long time just now, from the looks of him, and if that starts to happen we may have to try and remedy the situation, one way or another.  We can do that, you know.”  He turned his attention to Liz.  “With your permission.  Sue and I are all equipped to run IVs, the works, and we’ve both got the training, too.  Might be a real good idea to go ahead and do that while he’s out, since we all know there’s not one chance in a million he’d let any of it happen while he’s awake…  Could even put something in there to help make sure he wouldn’t be waking up too thoroughly before it’d had a chance to do him some real good.”

Liz was quick to shake her head, suppressing the hasty voice that urged her to do it, go for it, may be his only chance…  “No, I can’t give permission for that.  He trusts me, and I know it isn’t what he would want, under these circumstances, or just about any others.  He was drinking.  He’ll be alright, so long as he keeps that up.  And starts eating.”

“Right.”  No more comment from Bud, but Liz could see what he was thinking.

“He was asking about his rifle and knife a while ago.  Do you know what happened to them?”

“Yeah, I know what happened.  He’s not getting them back, that’s what.  Not in my house, he’s not.  Not just now.”

“It’s our house…”  Susan gently reminded him.

“Not in our house, then.  No way.  Up at the cabin it was different, his own territory, but with this place being unfamiliar and him eight thousand miles away most of the time…nope.  I got you guys to think about, all of you, and until he’s been awake for a while, and himself, this is the way it’s got to be.  Rough, I know, especially when the threat is real and he’s gonna have that on his mind, but I don’t see any way around it.  Don’t worry.  If there’s explaining to do, I’ll be the one to do it.”

Which appeared very soon to be necessary, Einar beginning to stir beneath his blankets, struggling to open his eyes