The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (63 page)

Anthony stooped to speak
to the cat. “What do you see, Cat Face?” he asked in a low voice,
using one of his nicknames for his former pet, a thing so ordinary
neither of them reacted. He strained to see through the throng of
white, but couldn’t make out anything beyond twenty feet or
so.

“
I see a human female,
hugging a smaller human, a child, to her side. She is rocking it
back and forth as if she were trying to calm it down,” he whispered
huskily. His eyes were darting so fast in his head, Anthony
couldn’t follow their every move.

“
Do you
see any… of the
others
?”

“
I do not, Tony-Boy. The
way is clear.”

Anthony stood up,
thinking. Then: “Good, the other boys and I will approach them to
see if we can help them. You and the other animals should stay
back. I am fairly certain, if they took one look at you guys,
they’d both be screaming their heads off.” Anthony spun on his heel
and made his way toward Kenai, who hadn’t moved a
muscle.

Garfield just lay down in
the snow, watching intently, not even turning his head to follow
Anthony as he walked away.

“
Kenai,” Anthony began
when he came next to her, still whispering. He motioned for Joaquin
to come to them, but for Mr. Patas to stay precisely where he was.
“It seems as though Garfield made a slight error in his earlier
assessment of the situation.”

“
Oh,” replied the
bear-dog, one eyebrow slightly raised in surprise.

“
Yeah,
he says it is a woman comforting a child and not some large
thing
hurting a child,”
he explained quietly.

Joaquin came up just has
he finished talking, a questioning look upon his face. “What’s up?”
he inquired taking Anthony’s queue, keeping his voice
down.

Anthony nodded toward him.
“You, Jason, and I are going to have a look and see if we can help
a woman and her child sitting by a tree about ten yards
ahead.”

Joaquin’s eyebrows rose at
the news, but Anthony forged on.

“
The animals will hang
back, because they might frighten them. We’ll introduce them after
we’ve told them what’s going on and who – and what – is on our
side.”

Joaquin nodded back and
gave a quick look at Jason, who was frowning with concern, but
nodded back just as fast, the conviction in eyes plain to see. The
three of them went off toward the sound of a child quietly weeping
in the middle of the near blizzard conditions. None of them was
sure what was going to happen next.

*****

They didn’t have to go
very far, when, out of the falling snow, emerged two huddled forms
leaning back against a large pine tree. The soft, encouraging
feminine tones reaching their ears over the ice cold, yet mellow
gusts of the wind.

“
It’s ok, Louis. I promise
everything will be all right. I promise. We will find your parents
and your dog. We will find everything else you lost when the world
turned on its head, ok? We’ll look everywhere if we have to, did
you hear that, everywhere? We won’t leave no stone unturned. We
will look all over the place, and we won’t give up. I promise, ok?
I promise!”

As they came closer,
Anthony could see the larger of the two was indeed female. She not
the woman Garfield had thought he’d seen through the obscurity of
the billowing precipitation still falling in quantity about them.
She was a teenager just like the rest of them, wearing a great,
bright pink parka and matching gloves. He couldn’t make out what
she wore on her legs because of her jacket, but he could see the
child next to her was male, a boy, about Elena’s age. He wore a
bulky jacket as well and mittens that looked like the old-fashion,
knitted sort, and not the nylon type seen in abundance nowadays. He
was sitting next her, his head nestled in her arm pit as she had
place one her arms around him, hugging him. Her other hand was
cupping his chin. She was staring at him, directly in the eyes,
promising him just about everything she could possibly promise, so
he would calm down and stop crying. Even from where he stood,
Anthony could see the boy’s chest was heaving. He was constantly
wiping at his eyes.

“
Uh, hello…?” interrupted
Anthony tentatively, not sure how much longer she was going to talk
to the kid. He pitched his voice with volume, so it would carry
across the wintry meadow to them.

The girl cut off her
litany in an instant. Her head whipped around, gazing at Anthony,
clearly startled. She didn’t utter a word, but moved with alacrity,
placing herself protectively before the boy, scrambling on her
knees in the snow. She looked from side to side as if she was
looking for a means of escape. Then she saw Joaquin and Jason a
step or two behind Anthony, silent, watching her. Her eyes bulged a
little and fear crept into her eyes.

It was the ugly sort of
fright, the type Anthony loathed to see upon the face of any
female. It was clear what she thought of three, big teenage boys
coming out of the forest, virtually out of thin air. He could tell
hers were not pleasant thoughts. The apprehension and dread filled
her face immediately. He could easily guess at the gist of them
too. He knew full well what must have crossed her mind in that
initial instant. Her, a girl alone in the woods with a small boy;
they, three boys full in the flush of puberty, only one thing on
their minds…

Anthony would’ve said
something, at this point, if he were capable. But at that moment,
he could do nothing more than stare. The girl, kneeling in the snow
- though her face was a cast of pure fright - she was quite
possibly the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his
life.

He peered through the snow
intently, his eyes gazing over her hair. It was so unique, he was
certain he’d never seen its’ shade before. It was platinum blonde,
her hair so blonde it was almost white!

She was Caucasian with a
face neither too narrow nor too wide. It was framed by prominent
cheekbones, tapering to a delicate chin. Her skin so white it
almost matched her hair, a glossy paleness offset with cheeks made
pink by the cold and a pair of large, strikingly blue eyes. Her
lips were thin and shimmered with pale pink lipstick, when she
spoke.

“
Please, don’t hurt us,”
she said in a regurgitation of words, ending in a strangled cry.
Even then, her voice was melodic, pleasant to hear. Being under
extreme stress made no difference.

Anthony marveled for a
moment or two. Then the import of her words sundered his train of
thought. He realized he’d been gawking over her for much longer
than what was appropriate.
She probably
thinks were a bunch of crazies
, he thought
as he said aloud, hoping he sounded sincere. “We aren’t going to
hurt you. We just came to see if you guys were ok, and not being
hurt by… Well, you know, by some of the real nasty things we’ve
been encountering around the area today.

“
I promise, we mean you no
harm.”

She frowned and gave
Anthony a look of misunderstanding. “You guys just stay back. Stay
where you are, ok?” she demanded, looking scared.

Anthony put out his hands,
before him, palms facing outward in hopes of placating her fears,
his voice steady. “I promise, we have no intention of hurting you,
either of you. We were just checking to see if you guys were ok. We
heard the boy crying. We were concerned for him.”

Her eyes darted between
the three of them, bulging slightly when she realized the size and
potential strength of Joaquin. She was clearly wary of any
“feminine” effect she might be having on them.

Anthony was going to have
to do something to make her realize they had no intention of
assaulting her. He had to make her believe it was the very last
thing any of them had on their minds. “Ok, ok,” he said, his hands
bobbing up and down before him. “Look, I know you’re weirded out. I
know you’re probably having the worst day of your life, and believe
me, we are too. But, you’re not alone in this mess.” He waved
around at the forest and at the storm above. “We’re involved too.
Although, we really don’t know the reason why yet, but I can tell
you we do know is this,
all of
this
,” he spun around in place, his arms
wide, “was done on purpose. So, if you’re wondering why this
happened to you, or where everybody and everything went, well…
we’re in the same boat with the same nagging questions. We want to
find the answers to those questions just as much as you do.
Okay?

“
Because of that fact, you
can rest as ease. We mean you no harm.”

She looked at each of them
intently once more. The uncertainty of continuing to keep up her
guard or relax it a bit was written across her countenance. He
could tell she didn’t want to trust them. Compounded with all of
the misgivings of the day, she appeared too suspicious to let them
anywhere near her.

I gotta deflect her from
thinking we’re going to jump her any second now
, Anthony thought frantically to himself.
She’s gonna lose it soon…

“
Is the boy,
ok?”

This seemed to shake her
from her thoughts a little. “W-what?” she stammered.

“
The boy, is he hurt?”
queried Anthony, pointing at the boy she had pinned behind her,
between her backward-stretched arms.

She glanced back at the
boy quickly, then wildly turned to peer back at them twice as fast.
She was afraid they would’ve moved toward her when she’d looked
away.

They hadn’t. They were all
rooted in place.

Her body relaxed slightly.
“N-no, he’s not hurt, he’s… he’s… just frightened and a little lost
right now, that’s all.”

“
I bet. I bet you’re
feeling pretty much the same right now, huh?” he commented, keeping
his tone even and calm.

The pretty girl nodded
quickly. Her eyes welled up. The tension and the stress her fear
had held in check bubbled forth with her admission.

She is going to lose it…
shit!
thought Anthony, hoping she could
hold on just long enough, so he could explain their intentions were
benign.

“
You ok?” he ventured
lightly.

She shook her head
prettily in the negative.

“
Well, if it’s any
consolation, we’ve had a pretty bad day ourselves, so don’t think
you’re alone in all of the madness. You’re not,” Anthony went on,
in a lighter tone, trying to diffuse the tenseness of the
situation.

She smiled crookedly, a
single tear escaping, running down her cheek before she wiped at it
quickly, and obviously trying to keep her vision clear. She didn’t
want any of them to see her as weak.

“
You think it’ll be ok, if
we came closer, so I don’t have to talk so loud? I don’t want to
attract any more undue attention than I absolutely have too, if you
catch my drift,” he asked of her. Again, he placing his hands
before in the universal physical gesture of peace. “We are not here
to harm you, I promise… we promise, right guys?”

“
Right!”, “Absolutely!”,
said the other teenage boys almost at the same time.

She bit down on her lower
lips and glanced from side to side, contemplating her options. A
tenth of a minute passed, her gaze returned to Anthony. At the same
time, she released a shuddering breath that had nothing to do with
the cold.

Anthony couldn’t help but
think, though she was so afraid and so unsure, she looked quite
beautiful, all the same.

“
Y-you promise, you won’t…
hurt us?”

“
We promise,” replied
Anthony at once.

“
Cross our hearts and hope
to die,” announced Jason out of left field.

“
Dude!” exclaimed
Joaquin.

“
What?” was Jason’s
answering exclamation.

“
We’re trying to make them
feel comfortable and trust us, and you go all third-grade on us and
shit. Jesus Christ, she’s gonna think we’re freakin’ retards or
something, you bonehead!”

To Anthony, Joaquin
sounded completely flabbergasted, but he couldn’t know for certain,
because his eyes remained on the girl before him.

Jason remained
silent.

The brief banter between
the boys seemed to inject a degree of normalcy into the situation
and the girl relaxed a tiny bit more.

Anthony was suddenly glad
for Jason’s weird outbursts. “Can I come closer?” Anthony had seen
a small crack in her defenses and hoped to take advantage of it, in
the friendliest manner possible, of course.

She looked like she was
going to say something else, but the tension in her shoulders
evaporated and she exhaled again, giving Anthony a minuscule nod.
It was ok to approach.

“
Please, don’t make me
regret this…”

“
You won’t,” he mumbled as
he took a few slow, speculative steps toward them, his hands still
raised to either side of his chest.

Behind him, he heard Jason
finally respond. “I was only trying to help.”

“
Well,
you didn’t,” judged Joaquin. Jason must’ve been on the verge of
replying when Joaquin uttered quickly. “Just drop it and come to
grips with the fact that you
are
a retard.”