CHAPTER FOUR
By the time the gang had started up with practice in earnest, Staci had almost completely shaken off her unease. She simply didn’t have time to worry about it; when the four of them practiced, they practiced hard. By now she knew this wasn’t “normal.” Tim had given her access to books that described the normal “path of the apprentice.” Staci’s training, had she been the average apprentice, would have been much more structured, slow-paced. Making sure she had time to chew on the very precepts of magic, to know it in her bones before she even got near a dangerous spell. As it was, due to the circumstances, Tim—and Dylan before him—had given Staci a crash course on how to be effective, even deadly, with magic. They’d taught her to shoot from the hip before she’d ever seen target practice. It was all born of necessity; due to her elven-blood, and her involvement with the Fae, she was already marked. No matter what happened from now on, she would always have magic and fantastical beings in her life. She needed to be able to defend herself.
What really surprised her was how quickly Wanda and Seth had accepted the situation. Granted, they had seen elves and magic up close. But the fact they had stuck around, had wanted to keep helping, even though they couldn’t do magic themselves . . . it was insane. She loved them all the more for it, but she also worried about them. About how deep they would get into this, and if they could get back out again if they didn’t like how things were going. Staci was stuck, she knew that. What was more, she didn’t mind it; she had fallen in love with magic, and accepted that the danger was a part of the price for that gift. Wanda and Seth were still just . . . normal. Regular people, in over their heads.
“Staci, focus. Get back on task,” Tim said. Staci shook her head; she really must have been shaken up before, to let her mind wander like that. You’re here to work, so work.
The three of them were all doing exercises that played to their talents, today. Staci was working magic; Tim’s mnemonic trick was helping, but she still hadn’t quite pinned down what was causing her cyclone spell to come undone at the seams. She was determined that she would figure it out before they broke for the day. Seth was building traps; perfecting them and hiding them was his game. There were a lot of ugly and nasty things out in the world that were far too dangerous to go after head on; trapping them wasn’t just safer, it was smart. Wanda was the one that shone the most out of all of them, however; when it came to archery and knives, she had a true talent. She was perfecting her technique for firing on the move; if she did well enough today, she’d soon be graduating to moving targets.
Over all of them was Tim; surveying, appraising, critiquing. Staci felt like a god when she did magic; watching Tim, she felt like a mouse in the shadow of an elephant. She had only seen him at his full strength once, magically. It had been when he had rescued the entire gang from Blackthorne Manor. He had taken out several elves, with magic alone; the energy coming off him had been like a corona from the sun, and he had made it seem effortless. Only now, having seriously studied magic herself, did she realize how much self-discipline and concentration her mentor must possess. To get as good as Tim, I’m going to have to work a lot harder.
He tended to give them periodic breaks when it looked as if they were flagging, reminding them as he did so that “if we’re fighting for our lives, nobody’s going to give you a chance to rest, so get used to not having one.”
Today, however, he stopped and looked all three of them over carefully. “Wanda, Seth, I have the feeling that you consider yourselves to be the also-rans,” he said. “Or maybe the cannon fodder. That you think I’m indulging you by letting you help. I’m not. You two could end up being the front line the next time we face something.”
When that penetrated, both Wanda and Seth’s faces showed . . . shock. Then disbelief.
“I’m going to start handing you homework as well as Staci,” he continued. “History homework. Mages are rare. Always have been. Good ones are rarer. Great ones are unicorns. When humans have fought Fae and Dark creatures in the past, it’s been plain old ordinary people that did most of the work, and if they were lucky, there was one mage around, who might or might not have been any use, who backed them up. Half the time, the mage was just a healer, no combat abilities beyond the use of sword or bow. The people who protected their own homes and families and villages weren’t special. Sometimes they couldn’t even see what they were fighting against. But fought they did, and won they did, and Staci and I are damn lucky you’ve come along on this ride. We might as well have big fat targets pasted on us. Whatever comes next will come first after us. We need you far more than you need us.”
Staci could see that they were both filled with more than a little pride at that. Tim seemed to have a knack for knowing when to boost people up, and when to be hard on them. Most of the time, he was hard on all of them. Staci especially. She had gotten over being jealous or being hurt by it; she saw that it was for her own good, as it was for the others. They all needed to be strong in their own ways if they were going to be any good to each other in a fight.
“Finish up with what you’re working on. Let’s give it fifteen minutes. Then we’re going to try something fun . . . with a prize at the end.” The three teens grinned at each other when Tim finished talking, redoubling their efforts with their current tasks. Tim’s prizes tended to be books—wonderful, amazing books that were not part of their homework, things he had discovered over a lifetime of reading. Leather-bound, first editions, limited printings; always the sort of stuff you wouldn’t be able to find at the local big box store. Somehow he was always able to pick out something that turned out to be the filet mignon of books. It wasn’t a great surprise, his knack for finding choice volumes; he was a bookstore owner, and a magician to boot. But it still pleased the trio every time he came up with something new. They would all, of course, share whatever the prize was. The real treat was being the first to read whatever the book was that they received. Staci had always been a reader, but since coming to Silence—and especially since becoming an apprentice mage—she had become voracious in her reading habits. Possibly that had something to do with being cut off from the internet for so long. Fighting off boredom wasn’t a matter of following crappy clickbait anymore.
Well, she still wasn’t able to get the cyclone spell to work, but at least it wasn’t blowing up in her face, it was just starting to spin up, then spinning down again before it got anywhere. Seth and Wanda were obviously having a lot more success than she was today. She closed everything down and erased all traces of having done any magical work, less with a feeling of defeat than of . . . well, it wasn’t resignation, and it wasn’t exactly determination. More like a combination of the two. Like this is going to be harder than I thought, combined with but I’ll get this like I’ve gotten everything else Tim has thrown at me. She noticed that the others were already on their way to see Tim, and hurried to join them.
Tim waited until the three of them had assembled in front of him. “We’ll do a breakdown on the afternoon after we get back to the bookstore. Before that, however, I have something new for all of you. We’re going to be doing a scavenger hunt . . . of sorts.” Tim held up a piece of paper; it was folded into a triangle. “This is your list. Not everything on here is going to be obvious. It’s all going to be in the forest . . . and you’re going to need to work together to find it all. You have one hour to get all of the items on the list. I’ll be watching you as you work . . . so try not to embarrass yourselves.” He sat down on the log he had been standing on, then placed the tip of the folded piece of paper on his knee. With a flick of his finger, he sent the list spinning at the group; Wanda was the one who caught it out of the air, sticking her tongue out at the others. When the three of them looked back, Tim was gone.
“Now . . . go!” Staci had been half-expecting it, but she still jumped when Tim’s disembodied voice called out to them. She was the first one to regain her composure and start running, after elbowing Wanda and Seth simultaneously, of course. It had been a couple of weeks since they had done a learning game like this. They definitely needed the break, and Tim had no doubt sensed it.
“Where are you off to, you dingus! I’ve got the list!” Wanda and Seth chased after Staci anyways; the desire to run and blow off a little bit of steam was too great for any of them to stop. They finally regrouped at the edge of the treeline, breathing hard and smiling. Wanda elbowed Staci back. “Going to be hard to find anything without this.” She waved the paper football in front of Staci’s nose, prompting Staci to swipe at it.
“Open it up! Let’s get cracking on this.”
Wanda unfolded the paper, then began reading the note. “We need to find a pin oak leaf, a lone mistletoe berry, a seashell where it shouldn’t belong, and a movie ticket stub. At the bottom, it says, ‘WORK TOGETHER.’ Gee, you think we ought to help each other out?”
“Well, first of all, obviously it isn’t going to be just any leaf or mistletoe berry or shell, or ticket stub. So . . . ” Staci thought. “There’s going to be something special about where these things are. Which means we have to look for clues that say ‘this is different,’ and since Tim just gave us that big talk about how magic isn’t all-that, some or even all of those clues probably aren’t going to be magic. What else does it say?”
“Um . . . get jogging. I wonder . . . Oh! They’ll probably all be along the running trail we use,” Wanda deduced.
Seth pointed. “There’s the trailhead. Let’s get moving. I want to be claiming our prize over burgers by dinner time.”
They kept jogging along the path for about five minutes before Seth called out for them to stop.
“Getting tired already? Must be from the way you overeat—”
“No, look!” He pointed up; nestled in where two branches met in an old oak tree was a mistletoe plant.
Staci closed her eyes a moment and concentrated on the spell that allowed her to see magic. When she opened them again, the entire plant was glowing. “That’s the one,” she confirmed.
“The note says one berry. I bet we have to get a particular one down without getting the whole plant down.”
“They’re all lighting up,” said Staci. “I guess the deal might be that we are going to have to be really careful. Maybe if we bring down too much of the plant, the magic dies on the berries.”
Seth eyed the trunk. “We’re not getting up that without some help.”
“Well, in the South they hunt mistletoe with a shotgun,” Wanda observed. “And I spy a cluster with only one berry on it.” She pointed. They all looked. Sure enough there was what had been a cluster of berries that was now bare, with one single berry on the end. “I can take that,” she said.
The others nodded. “Go for it,” said Staci. Wanda considered her bow a moment, then took out a throwing knife.
“I think I’ve got the range. If I don’t, I can try the arrow,” she said, and threw. Staci held her breath as the knife flew end over end towards the mistletoe. The knife passed close to the plant, but it looked like it had missed. “Ha!” Wanda ran forward, catching something out of the air. When Staci and Seth caught up to her, Wanda opened her hand while smiling triumphantly; in her palm was a single mistletoe berry.
“That was incredible; I didn’t even see it fall. You must have clipped it right at the stem.” Seth’s eyes were wide in amazement.
“What can I say? I’m just naturally amazing. Here,” she said, tossing the berry to Seth. “Don’t eat it.”
“Har har. Let’s keep moving. I’m getting hungry enough that I might actually eat it.” He stuck a hand in his backpack and came up with an empty plastic container for breath mints. They all saved those, because they were so handy for storing small things. He popped the berry into it for safekeeping.
“Well, you wouldn’t be hungry any more,” Staci added. “They’re poisonous.”
The trio continued on; it didn’t take them long to find the second item. A gigantic spider web was spread across the running trail. At least a couple dozen leaves were stuck in the web, all of them different.
“Now what?” Wanda put her fists on her hips out of frustration, huffing. “I hate spider webs; they always show up on black clothing.”
“Which one is it? We can’t take them all, can we?” Seth had walked up to the web, examining the individual leaves.
“That one,” Staci said, pointing to a leaf that was near the top of the web, far out of reach for any of them. “I’ve been studying a lot of local plants and things like that; you never know when you’ll need to find spell components on the fly. That’s a pin oak leaf. The rest are all red oak. One of these things is not like the other,” she added in a sing-song voice.
Wanda and Seth both took several steps back, craning their necks to see the leaf. “No way I can get that with a knife or an arrow; it’ll take the whole thing out. Plus, it looks really dried out, like it might crumble.”
“I’ve got a couple of spells that might work . . . but I’m not really practiced at them. It’d be just as bad as throwing a rock at it and hoping.” Flying was not something that Staci could do; she didn’t even know if it was possible with magic, though she had secretly hoped it was ever since she became an apprentice.
“Step back, ladies. I can handle this.” Seth gently brushed passed Wanda and Staci as he walked back up to the web.
“Whatever you say, Peter Parker. Just don’t cry to me when a spider jumps on your face.” Wanda repressed a shiver, rubbing her arms.
Seth reached into his jacket, producing what looked like a silver loop. He untwisted something on it, and suddenly the loop unfurled. “It’s a car aerial I got off of a junker at the scrap yard. I use it for a trap probe; plus it hurts like hell if you whap someone with it.” Carefully, he positioned the end of the thin metal wire near the leaf; it gave him just enough reach. He took his time, using the tip to gather up bits of web on both sides of the leaf, sort of wrapping it in the sticky threads. After a few minutes of effort, the leaf fell free from the web, which now had a gaping hole. It landed on the ground, but remained intact due to the bits of web holding it together. “Here; get out some notebook paper; we’ll sandwich it in that and then put it in one of my books, make sure that it doesn’t get crushed.”
Once they had safely tucked the leaf away where it wouldn’t get damaged, they started off again. They were halfway done; the sooner they finished, the sooner they would be able to get some grub . . . and their prize, whatever it was. Further on down, the trail they were on had a bend that came close to a man-made firebreak; just a simple dirt road with contoured sides. The road itself was just below eye level for the gang due to the sloped sides. Staci, jogging along with the others, almost missed their next clue; out of the corner of her eye as they rounded the bend she saw the glint of magic.
“Hey! Something back over by the road.” The gang came to a stop, then followed Staci as she led them up the bank of the road. The road itself was meant to be a gap in the vegetation in case a fire happened, and as a way for wilderness management crews to get around. In reality, it was often used by locals for hunting, ATVs, mudding, and finding places for underage drinking where they were less likely to get busted. As a result, the road had a fair bit of trash on it and around it. The twinkle of magic that Staci had seen was coming from one of the trash piles. As they got closer, the magic became stronger and brighter; it was focused on a movie ticket stub. “It’s the ticket,” she said, pointing at it. “Looks like it’s for that dumb teen vampire movie that came out last year.”
They all made a face at that. Wanda, for all the Goth that she was, hated that movie especially; she had had enough catcalls and the like directed her way by folks that took exception to her style.
“Well, that was easy,” Seth said, bending to pick it up. Staci’s hand shot out, grabbing him by the wrist. “Hey, what gives?”
“You said it; ‘easy.’ Since when does Tim do ‘easy’? There’s something more to this.” Staci concentrated, letting her eyes unfocus a little bit, blurring everything at the edges. She saw that the magic, while concentrated on the ticket stub, also had tendrils that extended down into the trash pile, rooting themselves in the ground. She held out her hand, drawing a few strands of the magic towards her to “taste” them. The ticket stub wasn’t the true source of the magic; it was a beacon, meant to attract attention. The magic was coming from somewhere else . . . and it was fueling a trap spell.
“Trap?”
“Trap. I think . . . ” She paused as she studied the patterns of the magical energy, cross-referencing it with what she knew. “. . . I think it’s a fire spell of some kind. Something small. If we trigger it, it’ll burn everything up; the trash and the ticket. Snatching the ticket won’t work; it’s the shiny that is supposed to catch our attention, but it’s also the spring for the trap, I think.”
“Well what can you do?” Seth asked. “How complicated is it?”
“Fiendishly,” Staci replied and chewed on her lower lip, thinking. “The thing is, Tim always says to go with Occam’s Razor in magic.”
Wanda made a face, but Seth got it immediately. “The simplest answer is usually the right one,” he replied. “So . . . um . . . this is about fire. The Fire Triangle is Fuel, Air and Heat. Take one away and you don’t have a fire. So?”
“Can’t take the fuel without setting the trap off. Can’t take the heat away because that’s the fiendishly complicated trap. I suppose I could try counter Fire with Cold, but the ticket’s about the most flammable thing in the pile and might go up first. That leaves air.” She chewed on her lip a little more. “Okay, let me give this a try.”
She flexed her fingers a little and created a sort of force-dome, a shield that was, in fact, in some ways the very opposite of the shields she was used to setting up. This one would let anything in or out. Except air. Then with a snap of her fingers, she removed the air.
The other two couldn’t see anything at all of course. Only someone who could see magic in action could see the little dome over the mound of trash. She reached in, snatched the ticket, and felt the trap go off—but nothing happened, and she handed Seth the ticket. “Back up,” she said, and all three of them moved away from the trash pile. Then she dispelled the dome.
As soon as the dome was gone, the entire trash pile lit up; for a half-second, it looked like a regular fire. Then it sprang into a conflagration as tall as the teens were, the fire so intense that all of them could feel it on their skin even from a distance. Just as suddenly, the fire collapsed back in on itself . . . and the moldering pile of trash exploded, sending bits of gunk, mud, and ash in all direction. The three teens were just far enough away not to be completely covered with the mess, though they did get pelted with a few small rocks.
“Yeah . . . thanks for stopping me from picking it up. I kind of want my eyebrows to stay on my face.”
Wanda laughed. “Aw . . . I could have painted some new ones on you. You’d be just dawlin’, Seth.” Seth lightly shoved her shoulder with his, and Wanda smiled at his touch. Those two are so cute I could vomit, sometimes, Staci thought.
“Flirt later; we’re almost done.” Wanda and Seth both blushed at that, and the trio started down the trail. There wasn’t much of it left; they would be back at the beach soon enough. “Do you think we missed the last thing?”
“It’s a seashell that’s out of place. I haven’t seen anything that would’ve fit that. I mean, we could take the other trail, the one that leads farther in.” Wanda thrust her chin towards a cairn that marked where they were. They had reached the one fork in the trail; the path they always took led back to the beach, where they had started. The other would take them deeper into the forest in another big loop; they generally didn’t use that trail, since it took so long to actually follow. They were on a time limit, anyways; it wouldn’t have made sense for Tim to put the last item too far away for them to actually reach, would it?
“Anyone notice anything different about the trail?” Both Staci and Wanda started looking around, trying to find something out of place; Staci was the first to pick up on it.
“The cairn. It’s in a new spot, isn’t it?”
“Wait, you’re right,” Wanda said. “It used to be at the foot of that tree, but now it’s off to the left by a few feet.” There wasn’t a blank spot missing vegetation where the cairn had been; Tim must have used a spell to cover up the area, make it look natural. Or else he was so good at camouflaging things that he simply blended in the spot where the cairn had been with trash and leaves and things.
They all got closer to it, looking at it from multiple angles after Seth had checked the area to make sure there weren’t any physical traps. “It’s dead on magic, too,” noted Staci. She wasn’t even getting a flash of magical energy from it, just ambient stuff.
“I have the feeling we are going to have to do this the hard and tedious way,” Wanda said, with a heavy sigh. “This is another of Tim’s little lessons on why we don’t rush through things, I bet.”
Staci groaned; the pile of rocks was about shoulder height, and some of those stones looked heavy. “Might as well get started, if we want to make it back in time. Remember, we’re looking for a seashell; let’s try not to turn it to powder with one of the rocks.” The trio started to dismantle the cairn; Wanda and Staci took the stones off, one at a time, while Seth organized them according to size, shape, even color. It took them about fifteen minutes to completely dismantle the cairn, and all of them were sweating and covered with dirt and smudges of moss.
“Okay. It’s a shell, and since we aren’t in the tropics it can’t be all that big and it’s probably a clam,” said Seth. “So . . . ” He indicated a place in the line of stones with his hand. “From here back, we can eliminate. I’ll take this third—” he drew a line in the dirt. “Staci, you take this third, and Wanda, you take the last third.”
Picking up the rocks one a time and examining them closely was tedious, but not all that hard, since none of them were bigger than her hand. But the moment Staci got the right one in her hand, it was obvious it was a shell and not a rock when she turned it over. The underside was concave, and you could see the smooth shell and some tinges of purple that told her it was a quahog clam.
“You were right, Seth. I think this is it!”
“Great! Do we put the cairn back together?” The pile of stones had taken a good chunk of time to unstack; it’d take even longer to get them sitting on top of each other properly.
“We don’t have the time. I imagine Tim will have us come back and put it back together, maybe tomorrow.” Wanda turned her right wrist up to reveal her watch; wearing it on her left got in the way of using her bow. “Right now, we’ve gotta go.”
They ran all the way back to the beach. Tim was waiting, a backpack beside him that looked promisingly full. They carefully displayed their finds to him, waiting with anticipation while he looked them over carefully. When he got to Staci’s clam-shell he finally nodded.
“I have good news and bad news. The good news is you found all the objects in the time limit. The bad news is that I am pretty sure that you left that cairn scattered all over the trail, so I want you to rebuild it in the original spot.”
They all groaned, but nodded. Tim didn’t tell them why he needed it rebuilt; they didn’t ask. That had been another lesson—sometimes you don’t get all the information; just do what you are asked and you’ll be told later. It might be something as simple as the fact that the cairn was something historical. Or maybe some people were using it in a navigation game; there were a couple of those out there, and why spoil people’s fun? Staci had looked into them, and thought she might like to try . . . someday . . . when she wasn’t running around having to learn so much.
“And the good news again. You’ve won four books.” He pulled them out of his backpack, four hardbacks with dust-covers that looked like heavy-metal albums. A series. The Secret World Chronicle. Wanda grabbed the last one and leafed through it. “Hey!” she said indignantly. “It’s a five book series, and there are only four here!”
“The fifth one isn’t out yet,” said Tim with a smirk. “When it is I will let you know so you can buy it from me. While some places may be able to run on dreams and well-wishes, my shop is still a business. Got to make money to help support my free-loader students.” He took the books back, replacing them in the backpack. “I’ll have these for you at the bookstore, once you’re done. I’ll go ahead and clean up the area here and start heading back. Stick together, and I’ll see you in town. Now, get!”
“I have the feeling I’ll have to get copies of my own,” Seth mourned. “Oh well. More of Tim’s free coffee, fewer sodas I guess.”
“You shouldn’t be drinking any soda,” Wanda scolded. “All that—”
Seth held up a hand. “No lectures. I’ve heard them all before. If I don’t get my neon-green fix once in a while I’ll have to turn in my geek card. And don’t get started on cheesy puffs.”
“No more talk of food. I’m about ready to start gnawing on one of you. Let’s finish up, then fooood.” Since they weren’t in a rush, the trio took their time to get back to the location of the cairn, talking about school, the new books and who would get to read them first, and what movies were coming out. It had been a good day so far for Staci, despite the weirdness on the beach and not quite getting the hang of her cyclone spell. That could wait for another day. They kept talking as they restacked the stones; it took them a couple of tries, as the stones fell over twice when they weren’t paying attention to the order they were placing them. Seth finally got everything in order, with Wanda and Staci playing helpers and lugging the stones into their spots. Once they were done, it looked much as it had before; Staci liked it better, now, because the three of them had worked on it. It had a little of them in it, and would until someone else restacked it, if ever.
“Done as it’s going to be,” Wanda said. She turned to the cairn, then held her hands up placatingly. “Now . . . stay.”
“Where are we going to eat?” As if on cue, Seth’s stomach growled, eliciting laughter from all three of them.
Something caught Staci’s eye as Wanda and Seth debated the various food options in town. Down the path that branched off deeper into the forest was a tree trunk. It must have been there before, but something stood out about it this time. She started walking down the path almost unbidden, drawn by the downed tree. It was only part of a much larger tree, she saw immediately. The upper part of it was still green, so it wasn’t a deadfall tree. About fifteen feet from the top branches it looked . . . odd. The bark of the tree twisted in a spiral pattern, like a corkscrew. At the base of the trunk the twisting became much more violent; it looked like the bark had split and exploded, leaving jagged peaks and valleys in the living wood.
“Hey!” Staci started as a hand came down on her shoulder; she had been engrossed in the sight of the ruined tree trunk. She realized that Seth and Wanda had been talking to her; she hadn’t even heard them. “What’s going on, space cadet?”
“Get a look at this. Have you ever seen a tree that looked like that?” The others finally noticed the tree trunk, and stood by Staci while they examined it.
“That’s freaky. Maybe a bear or something? Or a storm?” Wanda nudged some of the chunks of broken tree with her boot’s toe.
“If it was a storm, it wouldn’t be the only one. And I’ve seen plenty of trees used like scratching posts by bears. This is something else entirely . . . it isn’t rotted. It’s like . . . ” Seth stopped short. “It’s like something grabbed this tree in the middle, and twisted it off like a bottle cap.”
Staci’s eyes followed what looked like a trail of some kind; something had moved through the woods, and wasn’t particularly stealthy about it. “Let’s follow that. See where this came from.”
“You’re mental, right? The last thing we need is to run into a bear.”
“I’m telling you, it wasn’t a bear—”
“Whatever. Besides, we’re all starving. Poor Seth is going to expire if we don’t get some food into him soon.”
“It’ll just take a minute,” Staci said, already starting to walk. “Come on; Tim told us to stick together, right?”
“Argh!” Wanda threw up her hands, then followed Staci. “Let’s go, Seth; someone needs to be the brains to Staci’s . . . whatever.”
The trail was easy to follow. There weren’t any footprints, but there were enough busted plants and branches that Staci could have tracked it in her sleep. When they found the origin of the trail, there was a collective intake of breath as they all came up short.
“Holy. Shit.”
There was a small clearing. It clearly didn’t used to be one. It looked like a small tornado had set down right in the middle of the trees, and ripped about a dozen of them to pieces. That was how many tree stumps Staci counted, though she couldn’t be sure. Many of them looked like they could have been the other half of the trunk she had seen on the trail; others looked like their top halves had been busted off by a wrecking ball.
“Seth,” Wanda said slowly, almost in a whisper. “Tell me that there’s some natural phenomena that explains this. Like a beaver’s union that was on strike, or something.”
“I got nothing,” Seth replied. “This is spooky as hell.”
“Staci, this is your idea. What are we doing here?” There was an edge of nervousness in Wanda’s voice. That sealed it for Staci.
“Getting the hell out of here and back to town. I’m too hungry, too tired and too sweaty to deal with this right now. This is a mystery we can leave for another day.” She surveyed the entire area; there wasn’t another trail leading away from the violent clearing. Whatever did this didn’t leave a trace as to where it went. Seth was right; spooky as hell. “If ever,” she added under her breath.
“I knew there was something I liked about you; you’re not as dumb as you look, sometimes.”
“Har har. Did you and Seth figure out where we’re eating, or do I have to pick again?” Staci was already following the trail back out to the main path, heading towards the beach. She would have to tell Tim about this; maybe it was another trick of his? Something they were supposed to find and mess around with? He had told them to go and restack the cairn; it would make sense that he’d have something extra to mess with their heads, get them thinking around another problem. Even if that were the case, she figured it would hold; they had bigger problems. Like starvation.