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20/08/2007
Four
Angel bounded into their campsite as Julie sliced winter carrots for supper. “I still can’t find Aard, Mom,” she said, coming alongside her mother.
Julie responded without looking up, “I don’t think you’re going to find him, honey.”
Daniel, who’d been patching the roof of their hut, looked down at them with sudden interest. Aard had disappeared the same time that Julie had for several hours and then she’d returned with bruises and cuts she’d unconvincingly explained. Something happened that she didn’t want to discuss and he wondered if it had to do with Aard’s mysterious absence.
“What do you mean?” Angel asked with a frown.
Julie turned to her daughter. “I mean when you checked his cabin on the hill, it looked like he’d taken things with him, right? Like for a trip?”
“Yeah, but not to go away.”
Daniel climbed down from the roof and joined the girls. “Maybe he went to Icaria after all,” he suggested. “It’s over four hundred kilometres away. And he’s usually gone for a month.”
“He would’ve told me,” Angel insisted.
Daniel watched Julie’s face and caught the expression, subtle but definitely there. Her mouth had tightened and he read a defensive look in her eyes. Did she know why Aard left? She might even have had something to do with it.
“What if he fell off the cliff or something?” Angel said, her voice rose to a pleading squeak. “I’ll go look ~”
“No!” Julie’s sharp voice startled Daniel. She gripped her daughter’s arms firmly and leaned her face close. “Don’t ever go there again. I told you, it’s dangerous. Don’t make me ground you.”
Angel stared at her mother, briefly dumbstruck by her vehemence. Then her eyes flashed with defiance, blue ice glaring into Julie’s forest-fire green. But the mother’s fire easily melted the daughter’s icy resolve and Angel lowered her eyes with a pout. “All right, mother.” She always called Julie mother when she wasn’t happy with her.
“Aard knows how to take care of himself, honey. He’s too cautious to get hurt.”
“Then where is he?” came the retort.
They’d come full circle, Daniel thought with a sigh. Julie glanced at him, her face bridling with anxiety. She returned his silent question by setting her mouth and went back to her vegetables. The subject was dropped.
~~~~
“We have to break camp,” Julie announced.
“What?” Daniel and Angel said in unison. They were doing math exercises on the outdoor table he’d built when Julie returned from her herb forage. “Why?” Angel asked the obvious question. She’d pushed out her lower lip and clenched her hands.
Daniel noticed that Julie was trying to hide a nervous distress. A glance at her satchel revealed that she hadn’t collected many herbs either. Her buckskin shorts and sleeveless faded blue shirt were smudged from scrambling along the glacial till slopes. Where’d she been exploring this time? She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.
“We can’t leave,” Angel insisted before Julie had time to explain why they had to leave. She leaped up from her chair. “Aard’s still missing!”
“I’m sorry, Angel. But it’s too dangerous here,” Julie said. “I saw some animal tracks and a den not far off on that ridge,” she pointed. “The cougar that almost ate you wasn’t a lone migrant.” Daniel knew she was lying. She never was good at it, he thought. But, then, what had she seen that had her spooked?
Angel exploded, “We can’t leave! It’s only five days since he disappeared!”
Julie laid her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “Listen, Angel, I know what Aard means to you. He’s our friend too. But we have to leave. Now.”
Daniel watched her in silent unease. There was no mistaking the urgency in her voice and body. Breaking up camp was not an activity he looked upon lightly. A lot of sweat and resources had gone into constructing these cabins, the garden and the fence around the compound. Both he and Julie had spent weeks finding, chopping down and hauling in the timber to build the houses. Daniel had spent many days further insulating the cabins by creating an additional wall and filling the gap with grass and leaves. Five years ago, with Aard’s help and his findings from an old abandoned town to the south, Daniel had even installed windows made of duraplast.
Angel turned to her father in desperation, “Daddy, make her stop. This isn’t fair. We can’t abandon Aard . . .”
Daniel threw a glance at Julie and found to his amazement that she remained unmoved by Angel’s reference to abandoning someone.
Angel wailed, “He might be hurt out there!”
“Or more likely he just left,” Julie responded.
Daniel stared along with Angel at his wife. Those were cruel words, and Julie knew it. Her face wore a complicated mix of expressions that Daniel found hard to read. “He’s a hermit, Angel,” Julie tried to reason with her daughter. “He just wandered into our lives six years ago and now he’s probably just wandered out. I know it’s tough on you, but hermits are like that ~”
“No!” Angel jerked out of her mother’s hands. “He’d never do that. He’d never leave and not tell me.”
Julie’s face, though it mirrored Angel’s pain, remained determined.
Angel glared at her mother. “What if he comes back and we’re gone. He’s my only friend. You don’t care if I’m happy. I hate you! You can’t keep me trapped this way forever. One day I’ll be all grown up and I won’t need you anymore. And you won’t be able to do anything about it!” Then she stormed out of the camp.
“Angel!” Julie ran her fingers through her chaotic hair and turned to Daniel with a desperate look.
He shrugged. “She’ll get over it ~ eventually. Now,” he said, giving her a stern look, “tell me the real reason why we have to go.”
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