Ander - Epilogue: Subchapter 4
4
Standing in the shade with his hands in pockets, James couldn't help but stare at the mountain for a while. It was so different in the summertime. No armour of frost and snow to cover its sheer peaks. No howling wind tearing through the cliffs. No abrupt transitions from blazing white to deepest black at every shelf and crag.
No, this mountain was something else. Naked teeth of stone rising out of the earth to pierce the sky, completely exposed. Feral claws the colour of rain clouds.
It was scary, but also beautiful, in its own way.
"Sort of like Nilia," James said, smiling. "You would like her, I think. She doesn't take any nonsense from anyone. Just like you, Emmy."
He tried to hide the shudder in his breath with a chuckle, a move that never would have fooled Emmy in a million years.
"She's going with Mateo, can you believe it? The same kid who used to go around town, pointing an imaginary crossbow at everyone, yelling, 'Pow! Pow!' _That_kid's got a Wolfess for a girlfriend." James shook his head and laughed. He just couldn't help it. "Most of the 'Glen can't figure out how those two get along so well. She's calm, quiet, sort of stoic. Always polite and respectful. And then you've got Mateo, who's, well... Mateo. Everyone keeps expecting them to have an apocalyptic fallout at any moment, and yet they only seem to grow closer and closer. The townsfolk can scratch their heads, but just between you and me, Emmy, I'm pretty sure I understand." A sycamore leaf landed upon her gravestone, and James absentmindedly brushed it away. "I saw them together at Michael's house the other day, out on the porch. The whole family, just talking, having a nice little visit. Nilia was trying her level best to sip tea from a cup that was so small she could barely get her fingers through the handle, and then, out of the blue, she gave out this great big yawn and casually rested her elbow on top of Mateo's head, like he was an end table or something." James sniggered like a child. Anyone seeing this would probably think him completely mad, laughing in the middle of a cemetery, but he didn't care. "You should have seen the look on his face, with his ears pushed down over his forehead, just glaring up at her is if to say, 'Um, do you mind?' Michael just about fell out of his chair laughing, and Sarah, she snorted into her tea so hard it spilled all over the saucer."
James sighed and wiped an errant tear from the corner of his eye. He knew he was getting sidetracked. He even knew, deep down, that he was probably doing it on purpose, trying to buy himself the time he needed to figure out how he was going to say what he really came here to say. Probably Emily knew it, too. But that was okay. If he needed a few extra minutes to get his thoughts straight, he was sure she wouldn't mind. She was always so patient with him, and that much hasn't changed, even now.
"They set off early this morning," he said, shifting his gaze to the south, where the mountains were completely different. Their slope was gradual, almost gentle, and unlike the Cora (as the Wolves called it), they were covered in lush, green forests almost all the way up to the rocky peaks. "Something about keeping a promise..."
*
The sun shone in through the misty canopy, throwing shards of light across the forest floor like fallen stars. They slid across the grasses and stones, warping in shape as the breeze blew through the leaves above.
Rather than tiring, Nilia felt her body becoming lighter with every step. This place was so quiet, but if she really listened, all manner of sounds revealed themselves. The whisper of the trees, the songs of unseen birds, squirrels dashing from branch to branch, the lazy buzzing of insects, even the babble of a secret stream somewhere up ahead.
And, of course, the panting of one headstrong Fox.
Nilia casually sauntered over and leaned a bit of her weight against him, trying not to laugh out loud at the funny way he had of holding his breath in an attempt to supress his grunts. "Do you need me to carry some of those heavy bags for you?" she asked, already knowing exactly what he would say.
"Pffffwhaaaat? These... little... things...?" Mateo said, his words interspersed with great big heaving gulps for air. And they really were gulps, Nilia was amused to find, like he was biting at the air and swallowing it with great difficulty rather than breathing it in like a normal person. "This... is nothing! I've sneezed... bigger... than this!"
"At least give me half?" In truth, she could easily have handled the entire burden, but some gentlemanly code of ethics compelled Mateo to always carry everything for her, which was nice, she supposed, but she really didn't want to be responsible for him snapping his knees.
"Please, Nilia... I grew up on a farm..." he said haughtily, his forehead absolutely dripping with sweat. "I was lugging foals around... on my shoulders... before I could even walk! Chopping down... redwoods... with my baby teeth! Incinerating... rampaging - Wait, what are you doing? Nilia, hey -"
Nilia had circled around and was now poking her head through the gap between his legs.
"Seriously, what are you - Nilia! Niliaaaoooohh my gods!"
She stood up, lifting Mateo up onto her shoulders like a parent with an exhausted child, holding onto his legs so he wouldn't slip off.
"Good gods woman what the heck!?" He floundered for purchase and wound up wrapping his arms around Nilia's head in a death grip, one of his thumbs accidentally going straight into her mouth and pushing against the inside of her cheek, giving her face a rather lopsided look.
"How yoo 'ooing up dere?"
"Are you _trying_to give me a heart attack?" Mateo yelled, then noticed the precarious position of his thumb. "Oh, sorry." He carefully pulled it out and immediately switched back to indignation mode. "Warn me next time you do stuff like that, geez!"
Nilia snorted. She could feel the laughter bubbling up inside of her, much like Mateo's imminent tirade.
"Shot straight up like a freakin' jackrabbit!"
She wanted to cover her mouth, but both hands were occupied, circleting Mateo's ankles.
"Think my stomach is still down there somewhere!"
Real laughter began to break through the snorts.
"Thought you were gonna launch me right over the mountain! Turn me into a giant red flying squirrel!"
That's what did it. The image of Mateo flying through the air with a giant floofy squirrel tail sent Nilia careening over the edge, and she just threw her head back and laughed. She laughed and laughed until tears stood out in her eyes. After a minute, she finally calmed down enough to say: "I don't know what you're so peeved about. You're still carrying everything, which means you haven't broken your code of manliness, right?"
"I'd _hardly_call this manly!" Mateo huffed, trying to sound grumpy, but he couldn't fool her. She didn't even need to look up to know he was smiling.
"Yeah yeah yeah, how much further till we get to this amazing hunting spot of yours?"
"Not much further." He pointed to a grassy trail zigzagging its way up a very_steep, _very treacherous-looking hunk of stone sticking out of the slope like a giant rocky wart. "Just over that ridge there. It flattens out at the top."
"And you were going to wheeze your way up there like a crippled tortoise? That the plan?"
"Excuse me, but I'll have you know I was planning on prancing my way up there with all the effortless grace of the majestic mountain goat, thank you very much."
"Oh I'll show you some grace, Mr. Fox. Just hang on tight."
"Hang on to whaaaaaa!!?"
Nilia took off at a sprint, deftly jumping from rock to rock and crag to crag, picking out the quickest route while Mateo clung on for dear life, his claws digging into her scalp and his legs wrapped around her neck like a scarf, screaming bloody murder.
"Niliaaaaa! I told you to warn me about this kind of stuuuuuff!!"
Nilia could barely hear him over the pounding of her own heart. It felt like she could run forever.
"You're gonna get us both killed!"
The soft babbling of the stream was getting louder the higher they climbed, until it sounded like it was flowing all around them. She could see the top of the ridge just above her head, so tantalisingly close.
"Nilia, don't you dare!" Mateo said, reading her thoughts. "Don't you freakin'-!"
Nilia leapt straight up. Pots and pans and other assorted equipment banged together inside his backpack as her fingers curled around the top of the ridge. Before any momentum could be lost, she kicked off the rocky wall and pulled herself up in one fluid motion... revealing the hunting spot Mateo had first promised to her on that quiet, snowy morning so long ago... when neither of them knew if they would survive to share this day.
"Oh... I..."
She literally had no idea what to say.
It was like a wedge cut out of the mountainside, a large flat area curving around in a sickle shape. Giant pines and spruces dotted the area, whispering excitedly to each other in the breeze and throwing shifting clouds of shadow upon the grass. But the most striking feature of this place was the small mountain spring pouring out of the rugged cliff face, creating thousands and thousands of tiny waterfalls, trickling down the smooth, black rocks like silver ribbons, singing an eternal song before finally terminating in a small pond at the base, crystal clear and cold as ice, just big enough for two on a sweltering summer afternoon.
"Mateo..." Nilia was very surprised to find that she was almost on the verge of tears. "I didn't..."
"Turn around."
"What?"
"Turn around," he said, smirking his signature 'Mateo smirk'. "This is only half the view."
Nilia turned around, and for the second time in a span of ten seconds, her breath was blown away.
Pines and spruces, so tall and yet so far below, stretching out like an ocean of green. And beyond them the entire valley, farms and vineyards spread out like a patchwork quilt, the Farmer's river winding through the whole thing like a giant blue snake, bouncing silver shots of light back into her eyes, almost dazzling in its brightness.
She must have stared for a long, long time. Long enough for Mateo to start fidgeting on her shoulders.
"So, um... do you like it?" he asked, uncharacteristically sheepy for one so outspoken.
"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. All of it."
"Ah, okay..." he said with an audible sigh of relief. "So... If it's not too much trouble, do you think you could maybe, oh, I dunno, put me down now?"
"Put you down?" Nilia said, slowly backing away from the edge, a smirk of her own now spreading across her face. "Are you sure about that?" She reached up, grabbed him around the waist, and before he could utter any objections or even figure out what was about to happen, she fell to the ground, pulling him down with her, right there in the middle of the crescent. They collapsed into a laughing pile of fur, their limbs entangled, not only with each other, but by a myriad of leather straps and belts, bags of salted meats, several bottles of wine (a gift from the twins) and one very floppy tent now covered in dirt.
After about a minute of needlessly complicated struggling (filled with many an 'accidental' pinch) Nilia finally extricated herself from the chaos and collapsed onto her back, breathing heavily and staring straight up at the sky. The trees weren't quite as thick here, and she could see the clouds rolling by, bordered on two sides by the swaying green canopy.
A sky sandwich... she thought and burst out laughing. It was something she did more and more often these days and she loved it.
Mateo turned his head and looked at her like she had gone crazy. That, by itself, she could have handled without a problem, but then he had to go and cock his eyebrow and that got her going all over again, laughing so hard her stomach muscles began to ache.
"You all right there, Nilia?"
She nodded, unable to speak. Yes. She was all right. She was more than all right.
She had never been this happy in her entire life.
After her outburst died down to giggles, she spread out her arms and just lay there with her hair in the dirt, staring up at the swatch of sky above their heads. That odd sensation was stealing over her again, like she was lighter than her body was supposed to be, lighter than the wind, lighter than the clouds.
"I feel like I can lie here forever..." she whispered.
Mateo found her hand and their fingers closed around each other almost automatically. "Me too."
They both knew that was impossible, of course, but that didn't stop them from trying. They lay together and watched the clouds pass from one side of their little strip of sky to the next, not talking about anything important, just the useless things, the boring things, the good things, the best things, and time slowly melted away.
"You still harvesting rocks for your father?"
"Almost done with the whole field. You finished building that training dummy?"
"Nearly. I just need a good face to go along with it. Maybe I'll ask Ander to carve yours in there."
"Ha ha. Speaking of Ander, have you seen Kiana lately? The girl's as big as a barn now."
"Well what do you expect? She's nine months pregnant."
"If she goes into labour right now, I bet you anything we'll hear her screaming all the way up here."
"Mateo, you're awful."
"Heh heh."
They lay in comfortable silence for a while longer, watching the spots of sunlight slowly creeping over their bodies. Then...
"Hey, Mat?"
"Yeah?"
"How long do you think we can stay up here before people get worried?"
"Well, let's see..." Mateo propped himself up on his elbow and began to count the days on his fingers. "I told my folks we'd be gone at least three days. So... four, maybe? I've been gone longer."
"Four days, huh?" Nilia felt a mischievous smile begin to creep across her face. "Do you think they'll send out a search party if we still haven't made it back after five?"
"Nilia, you're grinning like a bear in a honey bath."
"Or what about six? Surely six days is nothing to get all wound up about, right?"
Mateo was starting to wear an equally bearish grin himself. "Hell, if we're gonna do six, we might as well make it a whole week."
"A whole week, just the two of us."
"A whole week of hunting, hiking and mountain climbing."
"Or we could just stay here, get trashed on cheap wine, rip off all our clothes and relax in yonder pool for seven days."
Mateo jumped to his feet and brushed the dirt off his clothes. "I'll get the firewood!"
"I'll get some water."
"Right!" He bounded off like the aforementioned mountain goat, bending over and picking up old dead pieces of wood at a frantic pace.
Nilia got up and gathered all the empty waterskins, but didn't make for the pool right away. She stood there for a while, quietly watching as Mateo filled up his arms to the point where he could barely see where he was going.
_I really do love that jackass..._she thought, not for the first time, and certainly not the last.
She started towards the rockpool and its thousand waterfalls of inches, swinging the waterskins by their straps, smiling without even realising it. In her old life, smiling had taken great effort. It was something that required constant thought to maintain, something that only flitted across her face on the most special of occasions. But now it was an automatic process, almost a default state of being. It had reached the point where she felt weird when she _wasn't_smiling. And the reason for that was simplicity itself. She was happy now. She was constantly happy. Even when she was grumpy, even when she was tired, even when she felt like bopping Mat a good one on the noggin for any of a hundred different reasons, she was happy, always happy, so happy she sometimes worried that her happiness would somehow burn itself out, that it shouldn't be possible for someone to be so happy all the time without irreparably damaging some vital part of the brain, but that never happened. If anything, it only became easier with every passing day, easier for her to allow herself to feel happy, easier for her to accept it, to believe everything Mateo kept telling her, that she really did deserve everything that was happening to her, that she really did deserve all the happiness in her heart and soul, that she should just embrace it and enjoy it.
"Oh crud, Nilia!" Mateo's voice suddenly burst of the woods, scaring several birds into flight.
"What?"
"There's ants getting into the meat!"
"Well that's what you get for throwing it on the ground like that!" Nilia shouted back.
"Excuse me!? You're the one who wanted to wrestle like some savage barbarian!"
"Just brush them off, it'll be fine."
"My hands are full with firewood!"
"So put down the firewood, idiot!"
"Why's it taking you so long just to refill a couple of skins? Maybe if you didn't spend all your time lollygagging we wouldn't be in this - OW! Son of a bitch, the little bastards are biting me! Oh gods, they're everywhere!"
Laughing softly to herself and shaking her head, Nilia dropped to her hands and knees on the edge of the rockpool, staring down at her own reflection, distorted by the rippling waters. Sometimes the face that stared back seemed to be smiling, and sometimes it seemed to be crying.
She made to wipe her arm across her face, and that's when her bear claw necklace slipped free and dangled a few inches above the water, a black crescent swinging back and forth.
When your mother told you to be strong, it was her way of telling you to be happy. They sacrificed themselves because they loved you so much, and when you love someone, you want them to be happy, no matter what.
The tear she would have wiped away grew heavy and finally broke free from the corner of her eye. It fell through the air and struck the point of the swaying bear claw, shattering into a dozen drops of flashing silver before finally meeting the water's surface, disappearing into a series of tiny, overlapping ripples that vanished almost immediately.
When she asked you to make that promise, she wasn't asking you to lock yourself away. She was asking you to survive, to live, to be happy. I'm sure that was the most important thing to them, because if their daughter could be happy, then they would be happy, no matter what.
She took the bear claw in her hands, feeling the smooth, hard texture of it between her fingers. "Mother... Father... You don't have to worry about your turtledove anymore. I want to thank you for everything you did for me, and I've learned that the best way to do that, the best way to let you know how grateful I am, is to keep the promise I made to you. I'm going to be strong, not by locking myself away or hiding my tears, but by being as happy as I can possibly be, every day, for the rest of my life. Thank you so, so much..."
"Oh gods!" Mateo's voice tore through the woods, uncharacteristically shrill and womanish for one who's always trying to act so manly. "Niliaaaah!! I unpacked the provisions, but now it's attracting wasps! Oh gods, they're as big as my head! Oh gooods!!"
"So not very big at all, then?" Nilia shouted back.
"This is no laughing matter, woman! They're gonna lay eggs in my brain!"
"All right, all right, I'll be right there. Try not to become a parasitic host in the meantime."
"Oh gods! One of them hissed at me! Niliaaaah!"
Smiling (and taking her sweet time), Nilia dunked the skins into the pool one by one, holding them down until the bubbles stopped. The water was freezing and felt absolutely wonderful flowing through her fingers.
"They're forming some kind of unholy vortex!"
This is what my life is going to be like from now on, she thought, watching her reflection's smile grow a little wider. A week all to ourselves... camping under the stars...
Being happy.
"Back, foul demons! Back, I say! Or taste the wrath of my pointy stick!"
Nilia straightened up, capped the skins, and slung them over her shoulder.
And when we make it back to Grovenglen, we'll stop by Mateo's house, drop off any game we may (or may not) have bothered to catch up here, and then set out to find a brand new hunting spot and do the whole thing over again. We'll camp, we'll hunt, we'll lie under the stars and listen to the fire and fall asleep in each other's arms. And when all our promises are done and kept, we'll make new promises to each other. And that's the way we'll live our lives, constantly searching for new ways to make each other happy.
"Nilia! The wrath of my pointy stick isn't enough! Oh gods, they're trying to carry me away! Niliaaaaah!!"
"All right, I'm coming! Sheesh!" Nilia shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Jackass..."