Читать книгу Footprints - Alex Archer - Страница 13

Dancing Deer looked at Annja closely. “Be careful. You are still learning to trust your instincts. At this point, it can be very dangerous to be too trusting or too little trusting. Do you understand?”

Annja frowned. “I…I guess I do.”

“You need only trust in the spirit that moves in all things. The Creator will guide you to what you seek.”

The sage smoke had ceased billowing from the bundle and all that remained were the blackened bits of the herb in the dish. But Annja could still smell the sweet scent in the air.

Joey got up and took the dish to the kitchen. Annja could hear him washing it before he once again returned to the living room. “You ready to go?”

Annja rose from the recliner, feeling as if she’d been asleep for hours. She stretched and heard her back creak a bit. “I guess so.” She smiled at Dancing Deer. “That is one comfortable chair you’ve got there.”

Dancing Deer grinned. “And as soon as you’re gone, I’m going to fall asleep in it.”

Joey gave his grandfather a hug. “Thanks for your help.”

Annja could see the pride in Dancing Deer’s eyes as he hugged his grandson. “Don’t be gone too long or I’ll worry.”

“You don’t need to,” Joey said.

“You’re all I have left. I don’t have a choice but to worry.”

Joey stepped back and nodded. Then he turned to Annja. “Let’s go.”

Outside, the night sky was filled with stars not overshadowed by the brilliance of the moon in the western sky. Annja picked out several constellations and marveled at how much she could see.

“Annja?”

She looked at Joey. “Sorry, it’s just so beautiful here.”

“We can look at it later.” Joey pointed. “We need to get going. Did you see the direction we need to head in?”

“Let’s start back at where you left Jenny. I was there and then I was taken away after I tuned into her…fear, I guess.”

Joey nodded. “Dancing Deer says that is one way to do it. By tuning into the emotions of the person you’re trying to track, it’s very easy to find them. Fear is one of the strongest. Rage and lust are others.”

“Lust?”

Joey shrugged. “I don’t know much about that one yet. But the things that people obsess over are stronger than just basic emotions. Pretty interesting stuff, huh?”

“Definitely.”

Joey led them back down the road and into the woods again. Annja laughed. I feel as if this is the third time I’ve traveled this route tonight. I’m almost getting tired of seeing it again.

Joey glanced back at her. “Old hat to you now, huh?”

“I was just thinking that.”

“Happened to me, too. The first time I did it.”

Annja frowned. “I thought you said you didn’t know how to do it. That’s why we went and saw your grandfather.”

“What I said was I wasn’t skilled enough at leading someone else on a spirit track. I knew it would have to be you.”

“You never mentioned that.”

“Would you have believed me?”

“Possibly.”

Joey chuckled. “I guess maybe you would have.”

They wound their way back down the trail. Annja’s legs knew the terrain by now and she was surprised at how relaxed she felt as she moved along. It was almost as if she was able to sense the flow of the land, to read it before she reached it and adjust her body accordingly. The result was she wasn’t nearly as exhausted this time.

Joey led them back to the hill where he’d left Jenny. “Okay. Now what?”

Annja glanced around. The last time she’d been there, she’d been out of her body and tuning into Jenny’s emotional state. But now, being there in the flesh, it didn’t seem possible to do what she’d done back at Dancing Deer’s home.

“I don’t know.”

“Annja.”

Annja shook her head. “It doesn’t look familiar. I don’t know if I can do this again.”

“Of course you can. You just need to stop thinking that it’s different now from how it was when you were in the chair. It’s not different. It’s the same. It’s all connected.”

Annja closed her eyes. She tried to remember how she’d felt when she reached this point. She could feel her heartbeat increase as the waves of fear gripped her insides again. She was Jenny. She was feeling the approach of some kind of unseen danger. And then she was swept up.

Running.

Running.

Through the trees and across the hills and the valleys. Branches whipped past her face. She could smell the wet pines, the dampness of the rain on the air. She could hear the breezes rustling the leaves and the deadfall. She could feel her feet on the slippery mud, but somehow kept her balance just the same.

And still she could feel Jenny’s fear. She knew it now like it was her own. And she saw the darkness that surrounded Jenny.

The cave.

Annja opened her eyes and nearly fell over.

She wasn’t by the pine boughs where Joey had left Jenny. She was somewhere else. Far away from where they’d been. Miles away, in fact.

Joey stood nearby. He was smiling. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself. Where the hell are we?”

Joey shrugged. “I don’t really know. This isn’t a part of the woods that I’ve explored before.”

“I thought you knew everywhere.”

“Nope. This is a lot of land. Parts of this place are almost inaccessible. Frankly, when you took off running, I was a bit concerned I’d lose you. If you’d kept up with me like that earlier, we might have found Jenny even faster.”

“Funny guy. I don’t even remember moving.”

Joey nodded. “Yeah, well, when you suddenly forget about keeping your body, mind and spirit together, crazy things can happen.”

“I guess.”

Joey glanced around. “This is some pretty steep terrain. You think Jenny’s around here somewhere?”

“A cave,” Annja said. She could see the darkness. “I think she’s in a cave somewhere above us.”

“We’re almost above the treeline as it is,” Joey said. “But these mountains and hills are packed with isolated areas that are almost impossible to get through. She could be in any one of them. Can you narrow it down some before we start poking our noses into every cave we come across?”

“How would I do that?”

Joey shrugged. “Close your eyes again.”

“Okay.”

“One thing.”

Annja opened her eyes. “What?”

“This time, try to consciously move a little slower, would you? You almost had me tired out back there.”

Annja grinned. “All right.”

She closed her eyes and tried to focus on the darkness. If Jenny was in a cave, they would need to know where it was.

But instead of feeling like she could see the darkness, Annja found that she couldn’t concentrate on the pitch-black interior any longer. For some reason, it didn’t feel right.

She opened her eyes.

“Something wrong?”

“I don’t know. I closed my eyes and tried to tune into Jenny again, but I don’t see any darkness. I’m trying to see the cave, but it’s not working for some reason.”

“Weird,” Joey said.

“Maybe I’m not doing it right?”

“Maybe, but a lot of this stuff is just done by gut instinct. If something feels wrong, that usually means it is.”

“So you think I’m doing it wrong.”

“I didn’t say that. I just said if it feels wrong, then perhaps something has changed that we can’t see just yet.”

“Like what?”

Joey shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe Jenny’s not in a cave anymore.”

“You think they moved her?”

Joey frowned. “Did you say anything to her when you were spirit tracking?”

“I called her name a couple of times.”

“Yeah, anything else?”

Annja frowned. “As a matter of fact, I think I told her to find a way out of the cave and that we’d find her.”

“There ya go. She’s probably making her way back down to us even as we stand here.”

Annja looked around. “Really?”

“Why not?”

“Well, I didn’t think she heard me.”

“She probably didn’t hear you in the way that you would if we were speaking normally. But subconsciously she might have suddenly gotten the idea to leave the cave and then done so.”

Annja looked at him. “Is that how you contacted Dancing Deer when we were on our way to see him?”

“Something like that.”

“Pretty incredible.”

“Nah, not really. That’s another problem with this stuff. When people find out, they always want to mumbo jumbo it up. Turn it into something mystical or magical when it’s anything but that. The most incredible things are inherent in everyone. It’s just that we forget about them or don’t use them enough so that, over time, the edges get dull. And eventually we forget we have them at all. It’s kind of sad, really, when you see the majority of people sort of sleepwalking through their lives. The reality of waking up to the truth is always so much more amazing than you’d think.”

“Through the looking glass, right?”

Joey frowned. “Huh?”

“Never mind. So where would you suggest we look for Jenny, then? She could be anywhere.”

Joey shook his head. “I say we stay right here and that she’ll probably be along shortly.”

“Of all the places in these woods, you think she’s just going to wander down in front of us?”

“Why not?”

Annja smiled. “Methinks you’ve got a lot of faith.”

“Just a confidence in the way the Creator works, that’s all. If that’s faith, then so be it. But I don’t get all religious about it. Just appreciative.”

“Thankful.”

“Exactly.”

Joey hunkered down on a nearby log and started studying the ground. Annja watched him as he ran his hands over the dirt. “Any tracks?”

Joey shrugged. “Not sure, actually. I see some depressions, but I can’t tell what made them.”

“Really?”

He looked up. “Well, like I said before, I’m still studying. I can’t get out here every single day when school’s in session. I still have to do homework.”

“Sorry.”

“Forget it.”

Joey went back to studying the ground. “Funny thing, though, whatever made this was pretty large.”

“Meaning?”

“Nothing, I guess. I’d sure like to know what track this is. There are no real impressions, just a displacement of dirt. It’s weird.”

“Why are you guys looking at the ground?”

Annja glanced up. Coming out of the trees in front of them was Jenny Chu.