See How She Runs (11 page)

I meandered through the woods a bit, but not
so far as to get lost. I looked up to the great canopy of trees.
Their height spoke of an unimaginable passing of time. I looked
down at the fallen giants littering the forest floor and wondered
about the countless days those trees bore witness to before their
lives ended.

I began to wonder if Kennan ever felt like
those mighty giants, watching the world pass by and the days fade
away. I was so immersed in my reverie that I failed to hear the
frantic yells until they were all but on top of me.

“IZZY! WHERE ARE YOU?" The panic bellowed
out of my Guardian. I slowly walked back towards the clearing, only
to be engulfed in the arms of Kennan as he breathed in my hair,
panic radiating from him.

“What the hell were you thinking? I thought
they had found you." He released me, the look of fear replaced by
one of anger.

“I am sorry, I just wanted to get some fresh
air. I feel like I have been cooped up for the past week, and I
just needed to breathe a little. I didn’t mean to scare you."
Hoping that my sincerity was evident in my voice, but fearing the
next words he might say.

“Don’t go anywhere without me, ever again.
Do you understand me? I can’t protect you if I don’t know where you
are. You left the protections of the cabin, the shields, and he
could have found you if you weren’t careful."

Anger started to rise up in me once
more.

“I refuse to be your prisoner, Kennan. I
can’t live the rest of my life like some psychotic K.O. worshiper,
following two steps behind you. I need to breathe, I need to have
some semblance of freedom, or I might as well just turn myself over
to the Corporation." Angry tears gathered at the corners of my eyes
threatening to fall. Kennan closed the distance between us with two
smooth steps and tilted my chin up toward his face.

“I am sorry. I don’t want you to feel like a
prisoner. I just made a promise to your dad and I am doing my very
best to keep that promise. I can’t do that if I don’t know where
you are. Of course you have freedom. But I have to know where you
are. You can’t just leave, sometimes you have to prepare before
going out into the world. There are mental protections I can put in
place when I have enough time. I can shield you from Xavier’s
prying."

“Listen, I get that you are just trying to
protect me. You are trying to keep a promise or whatever. But you
have to understand that a week ago my life was normal. I was just a
bike messenger, living in Chicago, going about my day to day life.
Now I am some sort of prophet, Seer-person on the run. I am
terrified, and being cooped up with no freedom is making me feel
trapped. You have to cut me a little slack." At the end of my
tirade I sat down on a fallen log, not caring that my behind might
be soaked through in about two seconds.

“Fine,” he said brusquely, “I have something
that will help with your sanity and serve practical purposes as
well." The way he taunted my sanity made me want to throat punch
him. But if this idea of his allowed me to escape the confines of
the cabin for a while, I was game.

“Alright, what do you have in mind?" I asked
hesitantly. Lord only knew what practical purposes he was referring
to.

“Well, you want to be out of the cabin for a
while, and I need you to know how to escape from here if you need
to. So we are going to do some hiking," he said with a look of
finality in his eyes.

“Hiking, okay, that sounds like something I
can handle," I said.

“I am going to head in and grab the pack you
would take if you were on the run. That way you can get used to the
weight of it while hiking." With that he headed back toward the
cabin, not waiting to see if I would follow.

Sometime between last night and today
something had shifted in his countenance. The easy discourse we had
shared the night before seemingly gone, only to be replaced by a
distant man I barely recognized. Not knowing if it was what had
transpired between us the night before or my having scared him
today that had changed his behavior was unnerving. So, back to
repression I would go. If I repressed it all, then I could just
move forward and not deal with it. I did not possess the energy to
try and fix whatever had broken between us. Not today.

I headed in after him, reaching around to
dust the moss off of my bottom as I went. Yup, one wet hiney. Oh
well, I supposed it would dry while I was hiking to wherever Kennan
thought I should be going.

**********

After Kennan packed everything he thought I
might need, he called me over. He had me stand perfectly still and
placed his hands on either side of my head. I suppressed the urge
to curl into him. He held me in place and chanted something in a
language I did not understand. Suddenly my head felt lighter, like
the strain of the past few days had been lifted.

“What did you do to me, Kennan?" I asked,
not upset, but curious as to what had happened.

“I severed your connection to the outside
for now. You won’t have any visions while we are out. You also
won’t be susceptible to Xavier or anyone else getting into your
head. I can reverse it when we get back to the cabin. But for now
it is necessary. At least until you can learn to block on your
own." He picked up his pack and looked over his shoulder at me with
no hint of a smile. “Grab your gear, we are losing daylight.”

I grabbed my bag and headed out behind him.
I was determined to return his coldness and not show how much his
change had upset me. Instead I resolved myself to follow all of his
instructions and just keep to myself. My mental guard was enough of
a comfort to carry me through the rest of the day.

“Alright, where are we headed?" I asked as
he handed me a map and a compass like I was supposed to know how to
use them. Seriously, outdoorsman I was not. I have only ever been
camping twice in my life. One of those times, we had to go home
early because I sprained my ankle walking across a flat meadow. The
prospect of navigating this uneven and foreign terrain was a bit
daunting. But hey, if I could figure out city maps, maybe I could
handle this.

“I have the different exit strategies mapped
out here. Choose one for today and we will start there. In the next
couple of weeks, we will do all of them. Once I feel you have the
necessary skills to do it, you will do a practice run on each in
which you do them solo. I will be close, but you won’t see me. So
pick one, we will start with that and get you acclimated to reading
the map and figuring out your coordinates. As we go along, I will
try and teach you anything that might be vital to your survival. I
may not always be there to protect you, so I need to know that you
can take care of yourself if necessary.”

Quite frankly, the prospect of hiking out
here on my own scared the bejeezus out of me. I tried to suppress
my shudder, and looked down at the map. I was surprised at how
close the cabin was to several major roadways. Looking at it now, I
realized we could not possibly be as far from where we left the car
as I thought. Slightly annoyed, I took a second to ask Kennan.

“How far are we exactly from where we left
the car the first day?”

“About a forty minute hike. I needed to know
that you would not try and run, so I took you the long way."

He said it so matter-of-factly that I once
again was filled with the urge to punch him right in his stupid
throat. Okay, maybe I probably could not reach high enough to do
it, but the visualization was cathartic. I looked back at the map
and chose what seemed to be the longest of the routes. If he was
determined to act as though I had peed in his cornflakes, then I
was going to make the day harder on him. Take that Kennan
O’stupidhead.

He looked at the route and nodded his head.
“You need to orient yourself in the direction that the path leads.
Show me how you would do that.”

I looked at the map and the compass and
turned myself away from the cabin in the direction I thought I
might need to head. Kennan moved behind me and turned me about
forty-five degrees to the right. I looked back at the map and
compass and figured out how to match the two sets of information. I
had always been a quick learner, and I was determined to learn this
as quickly as possible. It was my escape plan after all. I might as
well learn how to save my own neck if necessary.

I started hiking into the woods, checking
the map every few feet to make sure I was still heading in the
right direction. From the looks of it, the map had me heading
toward the Hoh River. After looking more closely at the map, I
realized I chose the most mountainous of the escape routes. I guess
the joke was on me after all. Whatever! In for a dime… and all
that.

We trudged on in silence for about three
hours with me stopping every few minutes to check my orientation.
The only words that passed between us were those concerning our
trek. We climbed up for what seemed an eternity before heading
downward toward the river itself. The daylight was starting to fade
and I was wondering if we would be heading back in the dark, or if
we would be staying the night out in the wilderness.

My fear of the dark was only second to my
fear of small spaces. I was hoping that somewhere in my pack was
some sort of lantern or something that might keep the dark at bay
for a while. Ready to stop, I broke the silence between us.

“Kennan, can we stop for a while? I am
getting really tired. I know we have not made it out yet, but the
sun is setting and I don’t think there is any way I can do it in
the dark," I sighed looking out at the river. I was stunned by its
beauty. Even in the waning light, its magnificence was
undeniable.

“We can stop here for the night. You need to
look for a clearing to set up camp. You should look for something
close to the water so that fire containment won’t be such an issue.
Then you need to go and look for some dry wood to make a fire."

I looked at him like he had grown a second
head. Just what in the hay was he going to be doing while I was
busting my bottom?

“Okay." I drew the word out so that my
irritation was evident.

Well, at least it was evident to me. I
looked around and found a level piece of ground that was nestled
against the rocky shore of the river. I headed in that direction,
checking the clearing for critters that might crawl out of a hole
and eat me while I slept. Satisfied with my choice, I set my bag
down and headed out in search of firewood.

Finding dry wood on the Olympic Peninsula
turned out to be more daunting than I had anticipated. With some
work, I was able to find four passable pieces of wood. I carried
them back to the site and noticed that Kennan was out in the water
with his shirt off. That water must be freezing. But seeing as
Kennan was now being a stupid head, I did not care if he got
hypothermia. On second thought, I would be stuck in the wilderness
alone for the rest of my short days if he died on me.

“Kennan, you are going to catch your death.
What are you doing out there?" I asked as dispassionately as I
could. He would not catch me caring, no siree Bob. Two could play
this game.

“Catching dinner," was all he replied before
reaching into the river and pulling out a fish. So, he was part
bear as well. That was good to know. Maybe they didn’t have fishing
poles back when he was born. I snickered to myself, imagining the
first dude that invented a fishing pole and Kennan being all, "Nah
I got this."

I stacked the wood and dug through my pack
looking for something to light the fire with. I found a lighter
buried underneath several sets of clothing. Pulling from all of the
survival shows I had watched, I lit a small ball of tinder. I
prayed the wood was not too damp to catch. With a little luck, and
a light head from blowing on the embers, the wood finally caught. I
looked up to see Kennan heading my way with several fish. He pulled
a grate out of his pack on his way to the fire. After getting the
fish situated, he headed back to his pack and pulled on a
hoodie.

I headed over to my pack and decided to
figure out what I was going to sleep on before the light faded. I
saw a mat that resembled my yoga mat from back home rolled up
underneath. I took the straps off and unfurled it, thankful that it
was not as thin as my mat back home. I shuffled through the giant
pack in search of a sleeping bag. I pulled it out of its small
pouch, surprised that something so large could collapse to be so
compact. Kennan spared no expense on his kidnapping supplies it
would seem.

I lay it all out between the river and the
fire. My logic being that no big bad critters would want to cross
the fire to eat me. Well, that was my hope at any rate. I wondered
if Bigfoot was afraid of fires. I dug around in my pack in search
of something warmer to put on. I found a fleece jacket and pulled
it on and followed it up with a fleece hat. I refused to die of a
little thing like exposure. It may have only been forty something
degrees, I was still cold.

I walked back toward the fire, the aroma of
fish drawing me in. I suddenly realized I was famished. Kennan was
dishing up the food as I arrived. I sat down as he handed me a
plate, the silence unnerving me. I dug in, the food gone entirely
too quickly. I looked at Kennan as he rifled through his pack. He
tossed something my way. I looked down in my hands and saw that he
had given me a Power Bar. Nothing to top a dinner off like a fine
sundae, I mean protein bar. Alas, beggars cannot be choosers. The
strawberry cake of the previous evening conjured itself in my
memories like a traitorous lech. I ate the bar in silence, trying
to be grateful for a full belly.

I got up and headed to the river to rinse my
plate, when I returned I placed it close to the fire. I looked at
Kennan and noticed that he was staring at me, a thousand emotions
dancing in his eyes like the flames they reflected. I sighed,
steeling my resolve. I was not going to try and mend whatever
bridge seemed to have burned between us. To my knowledge, I had
done nothing to deserve his change.