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If you were going to go fishing, then Blair guessed it would be a good thing if there were fish. He was relaxed about the lack of trout, though; the great outdoors was great, hunting rituals were a bonus. Jim, however, had gone from irritability, to hang-dog disappointment, to deeply considered speculation as to why there weren't any trout when there should be. There had been trout yesterday, and now there were no trout today; and if anyone could be certain about the troutless state of what was supposed to be a sweet little river, then it was Jim. He'd spent a long time just standing by, and in, the water with his hand spread against the current; thinking, Blair presumed, about how there was no point to him casting the line of his extremely expensive rod.
Blair had tried turning the conversation to Jim's senses, always a subject of utter fascination, with only limited success. What could he feel in the water, was it sight or something else that confirmed that there were no fish? To be honest, Blair was growing bored with Jim's obsessive speculation about the lack of fish. Jim could be single-minded, but it was getting ridiculous. "So, what are you going to do, man? Go upstream and beard these trout in their lairs?"
Jim's face broke into a smile, his teeth reflecting very whitely in the flickering light of the campfire.
"That's not such a bad idea. Follow the stream, even if it's just to do some hiking. See some of the wilds."
Blair had his comfortable old boots with him, because Jim had warned him that he intended to head out at least somewhat further than was possible with the truck. "Where people can get in with their cars there's always some good old boys with loud car-stereos and more beer than sense." Still, Blair hadn't planned on a hiking trip instead of a fishing expedition.
"I don't know..."
Jim, damn him, played his ace. "It's not as if we're going to get lost, Chief. I might even let you run a few tests, since we're not trying to catch criminals."
Blair gaped - not too much, he'd already slathered on the insect repellent, without worrying about swallowing the critters. "Do my ears deceive me? Is James Ellison, grump extraordinaire, actually volunteering to be investigated?"
"Since we can't do that fishing I suggested - why not?" Jim's head turned, as if he were already looking up the river towards new horizons of aching muscles. Blair wondered, not for the first time, what exactly Jim saw when he did things like that. Not for the first time, he resigned himself to a vicarious experience.
The next morning Blair expected an aimless meander among the trees, but after they'd packed their gear Jim set out with seeming purpose, stepping through the woods with surety and a good sense for a path, which Blair was grateful for.
"Are we going somewhere in particular?" He had to repeat the question. "Hey, earth to Jim."
Jim's head turned, and his eyes refocused, looking at Blair as if he was surprised he was there. "No." He paused. "No, I thought we'd just see how far we can get." His face quirked into a grin. "Toughen up the office-dwelling anthropologist."
"I wasn't aware that I needed toughening up."
"You've got speed, Sandburg, I'll give you that, but some stamina is useful, too."
"I have stamina," Blair protested.
Jim's hand caught the brim of Blair's hat, and twisted it across his head, back and forth. "You have stubbornness. It's not the same thing."
Blair's hair felt all weird under the brim of his hat. Some of the hair that lay against his scalp lay the wrong way, and strands were now sticking to his already sweaty skin. He took the hat off, and scraped and smoothed at his hair with a long-suffering look that was lost on Jim, who again moved ahead of Blair, figuring out their route.
"How much of your Hiawatha act is sight, and how much is other senses?"
"What?" Jim asked.
Blair was starting to get not exactly concerned, but certainly confused. It wasn't like Jim to be out of it like this. Blair usually had no trouble at all getting his attention, unless you counted what happened when evil blonde sentinels came to town. Blair determinedly put that out of his mind. He and Jim were enjoying the great outdoors together, having a normal weekend getaway.
"Are you zoning or something?"
"No." Jim's voice was short, and not with lack of breath. "I'm reaching."
"For what?"
"I'll write you the report when we're done." Jim led Blair towards a steep slope, slippery and unsettled with leaf mulch. "This way is quicker. Come on."
Blair scrambled along behind Jim. 'This way is quicker,' Jim had said. Interesting, very interesting. Blair decided that something very particular was tickling his friend's senses, even if Jim didn't seem to register that fact. They'd given up any pretence of following the stream. Instead, they trudged up the slope, reaching for the handholds of spindly saplings when the footing became uncertain.
At the top, the trees grew bigger, and the light grew dimmer, for all that it was still full daylight. Blair's heart jumped at a loud 'smack' of sound. "What the hell was that?" he asked nervously.
"Beaver, probably."
"Oh, beaver," Blair said. "That's not so bad. Better than bears." After the crack of sound the woods were quiet, as if thunder had struck. Which was, Blair decided, stupid, but made him nervous anyway. "Did you know that the near extinction of the beaver is regarded as one of the great ecological disasters of the late nineteenth century? Because of the role they have in creating habitat?" There was no reply. "When Naomi was on one of her ecological kicks, she knew this pretty cool guy who knew all that sort of stuff." Silence. "Jim?"
"Yeah, I know about beavers, Chief. Did a science fair project on them once. Got second place."
Conversation. This was reassuring, and Blair decided to keep the ball rolling. "Things change, huh? You're doing school projects on beavers, and then comes adolescence and you start thinking about a different sort of beaver. You get lucky after the movies, and then you're hoping that you're not starring in your own production of Attack of the Monster Crabs."
If things hadn't changed, that would be Jim's cue to suggest that maybe Blair should have been less careless, or more discriminating, and had a one track mind to boot. And while it was irritating to be reminded that his love-life looked like a train wreck, especially by the man whose own relationships looked something like Chernobyl, that was less irritating than the abstracted grunt that Blair got.
It was cold under all these trees. "Hey, man, when are we making camp?"
"When we find the right place." They walked on without conversation, until the trees began to open out into a broad clearing. Blair's first impression was of dirty yellow light. It was just the effect of vegetation and slanting sun. There was a meadow, which gradually turned to bog, and a small pond stagnating behind an old, decaying beaver dam. Habitat creation in action; but Blair shuddered. Dave Newberry, Naomi's friend, had often told Blair that people's emotional reactions to the natural world were grounded in ethnocentric attitudes of what was useful and what was aesthetic. If Dave were there with Jim and Blair, he'd probably reproach Blair for his certainty that this place was ugly.
Don't let this be where Jim wants to stop, Blair thought. His heart sank as Jim shrugged his pack off his back and let it drop to the ground. He looked back over his shoulder at Blair and smiled. "This'll do. You know what good firewood looks like, Sandburg. We'll go get some."
Blair peeled off his snappiest salute, which received the reward of an eye-roll from Jim, and went looking for wood; but he stayed in sight of his friend all the time. Jim's wood collecting was desultory. He made several detours to stand at the edge of the small pond, his back straight, his air one of attention. Blair dumped an armful of wood by the gear before approaching Jim in one of these odd rest breaks.
"What is it?"
"Just smelling the air." The sentence was the limit of Jim's communicativeness.
Blair told himself that Jim was tired. He was just being Jim, especially the Jim of the last few weeks post-Alex. Post-Alex, post-mortem. Getting morbid there, Sandburg, Blair thought, since Jim still wasn't finding much to say.
"You're better at the woodcraft thing than I am. Wanna work your fire-starting mojo?"
"It's technique, not mojo." Jim frowned at the suggestion that there was anything magic about what he did. You kept your matches dry, and you built the base of your fire with care and dry kindling, and that was all the trick right there. Blair still liked watching Jim start fires; the deft hands pulling material into a pile, Jim's rapt attention to the tiny flicker that grew into comforting flames. He had a way of sheltering the pale light of the match. The dark grew on the day, until there was just Blair and Jim huddled around a core of heat and warmth.
"It's dark tonight."
Jim's voice was sleepy. "It's always dark at night, Sandburg."
"Different somehow." Jim didn't reply.
Blair woke to moonlight, and a dying fire that was no more than a few red spots in the grey of the world. He lay quietly for a moment, not sure why he'd woken. Turning in the cocoon of his sleeping-bag, he realised that Jim wasn't on the other side of the fire. Uncertainly, he sat up, not knowing why he felt anxious. Jim had wandered off to take a piss, that was all. Knowing that was all that was going on, knowing that if he called out, he'd hear an irate voice say, 'Jesus, Sandburg, can't a man empty his bladder in peace?'; knowing all that, still he called out Jim's name.
Silence; nothing but the night-time quiet of the woods, before the sound of something slapping hard against the surface of water made him scramble out of his sleeping-bag to stand, his spine as stiff as the hairs that rose on the back of his neck.
"Jim?" he called again.
If you'd asked Blair any other time, he'd have told you that he liked moonlight, liked the subtle, silver sheen it cast over the world. But now, all he saw, and he saw quite well, was a pale, leached land, and the gibbous sphere of the moon reflected in a broad mirror of water. Unbelievingly, Blair stepped forward, feeling cold, damp dirt and stones stab against his soles. Instead of a marshy wetland and small pond backed up behind a derelict beaver lodge, there was a solid dam, and a wide lake.
"Oh, no, oh no, so not happening." He was standing out in the middle of a Washington State forest, but his incredulous voice sounded muffled, constrained. His heart beat furiously.
"Jim!" he called again, practically screaming it. "Jim! Where are you?" There was no answer, and then Blair heard a small, watery noise. Somebody - swimming? "You have got to be fucking kidding me," he muttered, and strode forward, ignoring the rough frigidity that hurt his feet.
He stopped well before he reached the water. Yes. Some thirty feet out now (and how the hell did there get to be a lake here?) he could see the quiet ripples of Jim's movement in the water, see Jim's head above the surface.
"Jim, are you nuts?" he shouted. He was scared by Jim's silence, more than he wanted to admit. "You have had your full quota of sentinel weird stuff for about the next decade, man," he said to himself, before shouting again, "Jim!" The figure in the water might have turned to him - it was hard to tell.
Then, shockingly, it was gone. Jim was gone, but the shape of his splayed, reaching hand, just before it too disappeared beneath the water, was burned into Blair's sight and memory.
"No!" For one frozen moment, Blair stared out at the water, frightened beyond measure, terrified for Jim, facing the sick certainty that he did not want so much as a droplet of that lake water on him. 'Coward' he accused himself, before he splashed his way forward, desperately striking out to where he'd seen Jim go under. One of his arms cramped in the frigid water, and Blair bit his lip, ignored it and stretched it hard, flailing his way through the water to where he thought he'd last seen Jim.
Taking a deep, whooping breath, Blair dove, forcing himself down as far as he could, his hands groping, reaching, but finding nothing. He stayed under, ignoring his burning chest for as long as he could, before he surfaced, took in a few desperate gasps of sweet, sweet air, and submerged himself in the dark once more. His heart leaped in relief when his fingers brushed hair waving in the water, before he realised in horror that what he touched wasn't Jim's hair, but fur, thick and long, and covering something far bigger than any creature had a right to be. Something clubbed hard against Blair's side, sending him tumbling and choking through the water. This he remembered - the fear, the killing touch of water, the panicked seeking for air. His head broke water, and he wheezed and struggled on the surface, and finally kicked out to grab at the sticks of the dam, until he could breathe more often than he was coughing.
Everything was grey under the ugly moonlight - grey sky, grey water, grey sticks in the dam. No, not sticks. The dam was made of bones as much as wood. They tangled and wove together, high and solid. A horrified, revolted noise fled from Blair's mouth as he shoved himself back through the water, away from the charnel pile. He floundered, cold and tired, unable to feel ground beneath his feet. His chest was a drum, empty and hollow, and his heart felt as if it might burst out between his ribs. Despite that, he flailed again towards where he thought he saw Jim go under. A sharp smacking noise resounded again, even though he couldn't see anything. But then he could see; the v-shaped ripple of something moving through water. He pushed himself backwards with his arms with panicky speed, the small splashes and burbles of his movement loud in his ears. The ripples of the threatening movement stilled, the tiny wavelets dissipating into the water's surface.
Blair stared and, with great caution and a heart thumping in fear, began a slow crawl forward through the water. Immediately, the water rippled again, and the air was full of harsh exhalation: huh-huh-huh. Warning or gloating, Blair didn't know, but the meaning was clear. Stay away. Mine. He could almost feel that thick, fine pelt under his fingers again. He turned, and set out for the shore, feeling feeble and lethargic, half expecting to be pulled under as well, and half not caring. But his kicking legs found silty, sticky ground, and Blair hauled his soaking, water-weighted body to the last embers of the campfire.
There were things that he knew he could do to make the fire - better, more comforting; he could warm himself at it. That was what fires were for. But he could see no point to it. Instead, kneeling, he crouched over, his arms wrapped around his gut, and wept in grief and rage; let the fire turn as grey as the land lying under the sickly moonlight. Time passed, and the night grew darker, while Blair lay curled in a shuddering ball, until grey returned again, before gradually colour came back to the world. Dawn. Daylight. The night's lake was gone, and so was the dam of bones. There was only a marshy patch of land, and a small pond, and the dilapidated, half-wrecked pile of branches.
Blair stood up, shivering with cold and the last bitter ravages of shock. It was the same campsite that it had been last night. The packs and gear that he and Jim had carried into the woods were as they'd been. Everything was normal, except that Jim was gone. Blair stumbled down the small slope to where the ground grew damp, and glared at the pond that lay against the dam. Then resolutely he stepped forward into the water. His clothes had never really dried, and he could not get any colder. He was cold through to his bones, through to his heart, and if he didn't attempt this last search, he knew that he'd be cold forever. He groped with his feet against the pond floor. He never needed to swim; the water never went above his chest. There was nothing to be found. No heavy corpse, no decaying wildlife, no fish or frogs to skitter out from under his feet or between his legs, just mud and pond scum, nothing more.
Blair returned to dry land and listened to his teeth chatter as he did what he hadn't done last night. He made up the fire, took a match to the small beginnings, fed it like it was a child - small twigs and dry matter first, before he added larger sticks, even the logs which he and Jim had gathered the evening before. He ate something, tasteless, unidentifiable, just food to give him strength. Then he turned to look at the land again, grasses and marsh, the fringe of hemlocks, and wanted Jim sitting next to the fire with everything that was in him.
Maybe he should gather up his gear, try and go back to the fishing site and get help from there. But even if he could find his way back without any trail (without Jim) Blair still felt as if he'd be abandoning his friend. With frozen fingers, he dragged on socks and boots and then he stood, and examined the lay of the land, the lair of the enemy.
"You didn't want me, did you? Just called to him, and I came along for the ride." The food he'd eaten sat leadenly in his stomach, but Blair's mind was alight with an idea. "Where'd you put him, you fucker? Where is he?"
He broke into a jog and clambered up onto the mess of the nearly broken dam, trying to ignore the dry-bone snap of the wood beneath his weight. He walked out across the line of abandoned dam, looking for the point where it rose highest, the place where once, long ago, there might have been a beaver lodge. His feet kept sinking, getting caught in the branches. His ankles grew sore from being scraped and twisted as wood gave way beneath his feet; one knee throbbed where he fell. He shouted in anger when a pointed stick thrust up under the skin of his left calf. He had to stop, but not for too long.
"I'm on the right track, aren't I?" There was a muted slap of sound; it didn't come from the pond, but maybe further away. "Not so strong in the daylight, are you?" The stick had torn its way perhaps two inches upwards into his leg, hopefully more between the skin and muscle than directly into the leg. Blair considered his options. Whichever he chose was going to hurt. Gritting his teeth, he tried to pull his leg up and away from the branch. It only broke, leaving an ugly raised line caught in his flesh. Blair mopped at the running blood with his hands and the sleeve of his shirt, wiped it on his pants and the front of his shirt. "You don't get anything that I'm willing to give," he muttered, hardly even aware of what he was saying. "And that includes Jim."
He struggled forward to the highest mound of the dam and dragged wood away and dropped it to one side or another with a splash or a thud. Some of the wood remained covered with ancient, rugged bark, some was smooth as switches or bone. Blair thought that he saw a flash of red - Jim had worn a red thermal undershirt - and he went back to demolishing the pile of wood with renewed fury, ignoring the pains of his body, the scrapes and cuts on his hands. When he saw one pale, long-fingered hand protruding from a red sleeve, he made a triumphant noise. "Gotcha, gotcha now, you don't get to keep him." Even if Jim was dead, whatever Blair found under the wood, he would take him away from this place if he had to tie Jim to his back and crawl.
He pulled and picked away at the dam for what felt like hours, for what was hours because he was aware at last that he was hot, that the sun was high in the sky. Jim lay revealed, pretty much uncovered, and unspeaking, his eyes shut and unseeing. Blair knew he was alive, had reached several times to touch pulse points, with hands that trembled so badly he could hardly tell whether there was movement beneath Jim's skin. But he'd found the heartbeat, slow, reasonably strong, but so slow. Blair's voice was hoarse from talking to Jim. He ignored their adversary now. The bastard knew he'd lost, because Blair would get Jim out of here, somehow, despite the burning pain in his calf, and his exhaustion, and Jim's utter unhelpful stillness amongst debris that Blair chose to not look at too carefully.
Finally, Jim lay sufficiently uncovered that Blair could think about how he was going to move him. Moving his own body was going to be a problem too. His leg hurt badly. Blair didn't dare stop moving because he suspected that once he stopped he wouldn't be able to start again. He limped his way back to the campsite, took his sleeping bag into his hands and fully unzipped it. He could tilt and lean Jim onto it, slide his friend down and along the ground. He'd have a decent grip, and the bag would slightly cushion Jim. The only problem with Blair's grand plan was that Jim was a big man and a dead weight, and there was blood trickling into the top of Blair's socks and boots before he had finished and slowly, with a great deal of panting, hauled Jim back to less boggy ground, resting on a sodden sleeping bag.
Jim lay by the fire, which had again died to embers. The sun blazed, and Blair took his friend's hand in his own, and chafed it, envisaging the flow of blood through Jim's body. He bent his head to listen to Jim's breath, laid his cheek against the solid chest. It rose and fell, but Jim didn't wake. Blair took to alternating between rubbing his hands up and down his own chilled self, and continuing his efforts with Jim.
"Okay, okay," he muttered. "Next stage of the plan." Blair stood, and then nearly fell again. The time he'd spent sitting with Jim had left his leg stiff, and the raw feel of the foreign body under his skin nauseated him. He looped an outstretched arm through the strap of his pack and dragged it closer rather than trying to move, and started rummaging through its contents, considering his resources.
"Travois, Sherpa style, something will work." The sun beat on his head, but his body was cold. "Come on, man, think. Time to be moseying on. Just so long as you take Jim with you."
Noise broke into his thoughts, a rough, hacking sound that turned to the rasping croak of someone throwing up. Blair scrambled back to Jim, who was leaning on an elbow, coughing and choking, and bringing up what looked like pints of water. Surely it couldn't be so much. Jim had been breathing; he couldn't have had that much fluid in his lungs.
"Jim? Jim?" There was no answer, just gulps and pants, before Jim flopped onto his back, and with a hurt sound raised his arm across his eyes for refuge from the sun's glare.
"Sandburg?" The enquiry was low, barely audible.
Blair nearly whooped in idiot glee. "Oh, yeah, it's me." He leaned over, trying to block the sun from Jim's face with his body. "Am I glad to hear your voice, man. I mean, god..." He paused to struggle with his breath. "Really glad to hear your voice. How are you? Are you okay?"
Jim rolled to his side. He was pale, and sweaty after the exertion of vomiting. He must have swallowed all that water, Blair thought. He put a hand on Jim's shoulder, and Jim smiled, before he offered the comfort of insult.
"You're a mess, Chief."
Blair's lips drew back in a grin. "You see this?" He waved an index finger in front of his face. "This is my 'I don't give a shit' expression." The muscles of his smile wavered into trembling. "God, I..."
He tumbled forward to lean his head on Jim's shoulder. Jim's hand patted awkwardly at the back of his head. "Hey, it's okay." There was a quick, hard shake against Blair's own shoulder. "Come on, Sandburg, you want to tell me what the hell happened?"
"You won't believe me. You don't remember any of it?" Blair swiped his eyes and his nose, and then bit back a pained noise at the way his leg hurt. Jim's face focused into attention. Blair could hear him sniff before Jim struggled up onto his knees and ran his hands over Blair's calf.
"What have you done to yourself?"
Jim's hands were gentle, but the very gentleness emphasised the sickly, burning sensation.
"Just as well I got a tetanus booster early in our association." Blair grinned weakly.
"This complicates walking out of here, Chief."
Blair waved a dismissive hand. "You'll be surprised. I am completely motivated, cross my heart and hope to die, poke a needle in my eye." He looked up the sun, already past its zenith. "And the sooner we do get out of here, the better."
"Why? What happened?"
"You went for a swim, Jim." Blair giggled. "Which was a bad plan, Stan."
"Sandburg..." It was a growl.
"Scary, supernatural crap happened, which is increasingly becoming a default position of ours, and I'm not sure that I'm entirely down with that." Blair swept his hand across his forehead, scraping his hair back. "If I get a stick the right size, I can use it like a cane, that'll be fine."
"Supernatural crap?" Jim's voice turned uncertain.
Blair experimented with a method of movement that would get him upright, even if he suspected he was going to cry with the pain at some point. Humiliating, but he'd get over it. "Give me a hand, and find me a stick, damn it. We're wasting time."
"I'll pack the gear first." At Blair's incredulous look, Jim said, "We'll be slower going back out than we were coming in. We'll need the supplies."
"We need to get out of here! Vamoose, amscray, all the usual. Fuck, did you cough your brains out along with all that water?"
"Equipment," was Jim's reply, as he stood. He swayed for a moment, as Blair looked up like a lumberjack preparing to shout 'timber!', then he steadied and with grim efficiency dumped some items from his pack, and transferred others from Blair's to his. "You won't be up to carrying much, Chief," he said.
"And you are?"
"I'd better be." He stood, his face carved into haggard lines by the bright sunlight. "We'll find you that stick."
Blair well knew that you never thought about how difficult something might be. If you did that, then you never started anything. You simply divided a task into small steps and then you did whatever came next. Whatever came next was more and more 'put that foot in front of the other.' Just one step and he could rest, although he never did. Just one step, with his hands and shoulders sore from putting his weight on the stick, and his leg burning like the wood he and Jim had put on their campfire the night before. One of Jim's hands was locked across Blair's upper arm, and his breath was harsh as they stumbled their way back towards their original campsite.
"Should have brought the cellphone," Jim muttered.
"Can't get away from it all if you take it all with you, man. You know that." Blair's face felt flushed. All that heat in his leg was racing through the rest of his body, but he didn't plan on resting.
"What happened, Sandburg? Exactly what happened?" Blair told him, an unadorned but complete version of the night's happenings - the moonlight lake, Jim disappearing under the water, Blair's search in the water, the something in the lake, the daylight's discovery. Blair was hoarse and thirsty and sick when he was finished.
Jim made no comment, asked no disbelieving questions, but let Blair talk. "I don't remember," he said eventually. "I remember walking up here but nothing else....until I woke up puking. Damn it! Do you and I have a sign over our heads? 'Dump your weird shit here'?"
"Dunno." Blair could hear the effort in his voice, and it was so much easier to droop his head; too much work to lift it.
"Blair, thanks. For not giving up on me."
The awkward gratitude energised Blair briefly, made it possible to look up and smile. "Hey. You didn't give up on me."
There was no reply from Jim. Blair hadn't expected one. He'd worry later if Jim's lack of memory was a merciful blanking or Ellison defences harder at work than usual. He felt a terrible ambivalence about that. It was good that Jim didn't remember how it felt to struggle to find air and only find water. It was a good thing. "How long have we been walking, do you think?"
"Not that long." Jim's hand continued to hold Blair steady as they walked, but the relentless grip was starting to hurt the way that Blair's hands and shoulders and back and everything else hurt. The body out of whack was a pitiful thing.
"Okay." So keep putting those feet one in front of the other, Sandburg. No spineless goobers here, no way. But when, after a hazed but painful trek, Blair saw that the night was coming, he felt panic in his gut. They were still far too close to the dam. Damn dam. He laughed, but maybe it didn't sound like that to Jim, who stopped walking. The two of them swayed together.
"Sandburg, this is stupid. We should stay put, let you rest instead of screwing your leg up even worse. I can go and get help, or we can wait together. They'll send searchers out when we don't show up home."
"No. No, no, no, no, no way. We need to keep going."
"It's getting dark."
"You're a sentinel."
"You're not, and you have an injured leg."
Blair decided, in a rush of scared rage, that it was not a good thing that Jim didn't remember going under the lake surface.
"So we're just going to sit down," Blair disgustedly indicated back the way they'd come, "and wait for whatever's lurking up there to start singing 'When I'm calling you' and convince you to come back for another little dip? Because I don't think that it was your bright idea to go wandering up here, and even if I could chase you on this gimpy leg, I am not going back in that water for you, man, I am so not." The anger wound down into restless irritation. "No more water."
Jim's voice was very gentle. "Okay, Chief, no more water."
"Don't humour me," Blair snapped, ashamed of the moment of weakness.
Jim's face had a lost expression, that changed to wry amusement. "Wouldn't dream of it. Stubborn little shit, aren't you?"
"What, instead of the stubborn big shit that you are?"
"Yeah, I love you too." Jim eased Blair down into a sit, and despite Blair's startled protest, he didn't have either the strength or leverage to resist. "You know that you can't walk much longer. And," Jim's eyes looked elsewhere, "maybe you're right about it not being my idea to come this way." The distant gaze sharpened to look at Blair. "But forewarned is forearmed. It got me unaware. I know now. We'll find somewhere and we'll wait. I can feed us one way or another, we can jury-rig something to drag you out if it looks like nobody else is coming."
"It's going to be pissed, Jim."
"I'm not a happy man, myself, Sandburg."
There was comfort in the tone of grim determination. Jim was forewarned. Jim was on guard now. Jim hated the mystic shit, but at least he was aware it was happening, now.
"Okay, so we're going to stop? Okay." Blair ought not to be so relieved. They were still in trouble, but, god, his leg did hurt, and he was pretty sure that it was infected. Was it normal for that to happen so quickly? He didn't know, didn't want to know right now. He didn't have to walk any more, and that was good news.
Jim looked around in the deepening gloom, cocked his head to listen. "Yeah, we can stop. This'll do." Blair was moved, a brief but painful procedure, to be propped against a tree, and watched while Jim made a rough but efficient camp.
It was a long night; a slivered, waxing moon showed through a gap in the trees, not the wan circle that Blair had seen reflected in the water of that night-dam. Neither of them was talkative, and Blair strained his ears and his nerves listening for anything that might mean danger: the sound of a slap; James Ellison sneaking off somewhere; but there was nothing. He slept fitfully, as did Jim. Blair was too hot, he was too cold. Once Jim started upright to say loudly, "It was all bones." That detail was one that Blair hadn't mentioned when he summarised the previous night's interesting events. Jim didn't answer Blair's anxious questions, but lay down again with one hand heavy across Blair's feet, apparently asleep again. He was silent enough the rest of the night, except for occasional fits of coughing.
Jim's grip and the shuddering coughs jarred Blair's aching body but he accepted the contact with fortitude. "I'm not the one who went wandering," he muttered, before sinking back into an uncomfortable doze that was filled with unpleasant dreams of his own. The morning came, pale and cold, and Blair heartily wished for indoors, with all the comforts of indoors, like plumbing and electricity and hot food that had travelled all the wasteful journey of processing and packaging and retail.
Jim woke, later than Blair. His face was disreputable with its beard, and Blair spared a thought for his own itchy jaw. "Sleeping Beauty, you are not, man." Jim glared sourly at this pleasantry, before he stood, and stretched.
"Let's take a look at that leg." Such first-aid gear as they had with them had been used on Blair, and Jim unwrapped bandages with quick, careful hands. The expression of distaste on his face told Blair everything that he hadn't already figured out from the sickly, throbbing sensation, and the increasingly stained and sticky state of the dressings revealed as Jim lifted them in his inspection.
"You can't walk on that."
"Try me."
"You may be stupid and stubborn enough to try, but you shouldn't."
"Jim. I'm not staying here. We aren't due back for another day or two, so nobody will look for us until then, and maybe you're all ready to resist evil influences, but I'd feel happier far away from here. Which means that we have to, you know, move." Despite his words, Blair could only feel a sinking fear at the thought of getting up and struggling on. Jim looked up from his attention to Blair's bandages, and nodded thoughtfully.
"I knew you weren't that stupid, Chief."
"Besides complimenting my intelligence," Blair said coldly, "what other bright ideas do you have?"
"I'll think of something," Jim said. "You rest."
The something turned out to be some sort of litter. "Is that going to work?" Blair enquired. He didn't sound grateful and he didn't care. He wanted the two of them well away from here, especially Jim, and his irritation about the delay buzzed in his head nearly as feverishly as the pain in his body.
Jim was doing something complicated with his hands and sticks and sacrificed gear. "If I thought I could hoist you over my shoulder and walk the whole way, I would. But I'm out of training, and you'd probably puke down my back anyway." Jim coughed, and Blair shut his eyes, and wondered what the hell would happen next. Jim had been chesty ever since he coughed up all that water. The coughing was growing worse.
He waited in a febrile haze of impatience for Jim to be satisfied with his work, before he dozed again, tired out by emotion and discomfort. He opened his eyes, disturbed by a spike of pain, and a parched mouth, to see no sign of Jim.
"Oh, shit," he murmured, before he opened his dry mouth to shout as loudly as he could, "Jim! Jim!"
There was no reply, and he staggered to his feet, and shouted again. "Oh shit, oh shit, no, no, I do not need this crap..."
"Sandburg! It's okay!" No sight of Jim, but Blair leaned against a tree, dizzy with relief. He waited impatiently, until Jim made his appearance.
"Do not do that to me. I nearly died of fright, man, bad thing, definitely a bad thing."
"Shut up, Chief. I heard someone further down the trail."
"Someone? As in people? As in help?"
Jim grinned in relief. Blair could see the weight lifting off him. "As in help. You reckoned you could walk for a while. It only has to be a while, until we can get close enough I can get their attention. You up for it?"
"People. Yeah, I can walk. I think. But only if my head doesn't pop."
Some of the weight dropped back onto Jim. "Do you think your head's going to pop any time soon?"
Blair gave his answer serious consideration. "I dunno, man."
Jim looped an arm across Blair's back, taking weight and strain. "Come on, Sandburg. Let's go."
Blair nearly changed his mind about the walking thing when he tried it; it was a case of one foot in front of the other and avoid all thinking and anticipation because who was it who told him that the anticipation of pain was as bad as the thing itself anyway? New Age bullshit, that was. He hurt, and Jim was breathing way too heavily even for a man who might as well have hoisted Blair over his shoulder because Blair was sure that Jim was doing more than his fair share of the work. Jim's body was far too hot against Blair's but when Jim let him down to sprawl on the ground he was so cold he shivered.
Then Jim was gone, saying something that Blair didn't catch, and he shouted for a while, until his mouth was too dry. It was - confused - after that. But Blair thought that Jim came back, which was a good thing, no, a great thing; and then there were men, other men, and somewhere in time he was strapped down and lifted and carried away, like some ancient king on his litter, only without the silks and jewels. One of his bearers looked down on him, the lines and colours of his face marking him as First People. It seemed rude to Blair not to talk to the guy. He was being nice enough to carry Blair out of the woods, and Blair made a couple of guesses as to tribe, until Ed (that was his name) confirmed that he was mainly of Nooksack descent.
"That's great," Blair enthused. "Hey, Ed, did you know that the near extinction of the beavers is regarded as one of the great nineteenth century ecological disasters?" Ed concurred gravely with this assessment. "Bet you guys know all about this area, huh?" Ed nodded, leaving Blair feeling like a humoured child. Or maybe he was talking too much. He knew he talked too much when he was drunk or nervous, and maybe weird stuff and infections had the same effect.
Blair was sure he talked lots more to Ed, and he talked to Jim sometimes, too, and he was pretty sure that Jim spoke to Ed, with an interrogative cop's tone to his voice; but his memory was hazy about most of the journey out. He did remember the blessed numbness when they attended to his leg in the ER, even though the tugging and prodding made him vaguely sick. Instead of haze, everything sharply impressed itself on him: the lights of the room, its square whiteness; the sound of Jim coughing somewhere nearby.
Finally, the nasty work was done and the nurse turned to Blair with something in a bowl. "Do you like to keep souvenirs, Mr Sandburg? This one might be worth it, it's not too often that we take animal bones out of people's calf muscles."
"It was the end of a branch." He remembered it very clearly, remembered the drag and snap as he tried to pull himself free. That wasn't at all hazy.
"Oh, no. It's a bone, pretty distinctive when you work in my business."
Blair gestured - 'show it to me'. He must have looked as nauseated as he felt even before he looked into the stainless steel basin at the narrow, sharp-edged, bloody bone, because an emesis bowl appeared more or less in time.
"Sandburg?" Jim's voice, Jim blocking the door. Must have spiked big time with my heartbeat or something there, Blair thought, and looked up miserably from the disgusting watery mess in front of him, which was far less disgusting than the bone sitting discarded on the bench.
"Mr Sandburg's fine, Detective. Please go and rest and wait."
Jim ignored this order. Instead he took one step towards the steel basin, pausing like a cat uncertain of its footing. He turned back to Blair, softly speaking his name. Blair winced and averted his eyes, because shaking his head would be a very bad idea.
"You burn this sort of waste, don't you?" Jim asked. "Just get rid of it." He looked at Blair. Just get rid of it and forget.
Only, they'd both carried something back from that dirty water deep in the woods.