“Jack?”
“Go away!” I yelled over my shoulder.
“Jack?”
“I’m peeing – go away!”
Ignoring me, she cut through the snow right next to me and peered down.
“HEY!” I yelled.
She got a gander, and immediately her eyebrows raised and her face broke out into a huge smile.
“Oh, Jack,” she said happily. She pointed at my crotch. “What’s this?”
“Go away!”
“Go away,” she said, and angled around to see more. “Lelia like go away.”
“No – go AWAY!” I yelled at her, waving her way from me.
She pouted playfully, though she was still smiling. “Show me!”
“NO! Now let me take a piss in peace!”
She just giggled and retraced her steps.
I stood there muttering and cursing under my breath.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had a hot chick really want to see your johnson – and then grin like a fool as soon as she saw it – but it had a hell of an effect on me.
I basically had to wait two minutes for it to go down enough for me to pee.
After it was all over, I trudged back through the path in the snow and scowled at her.
She just smirked and kept looking at my crotch.
“Bad Lelia,” I scolded her.
“Mmmm… good Jack,” she purred, and I basically had to readjust myself through my pants all over again.
11
We made our way back to the base of the cave. I took out my crampons and strapped the first one to my right boot. “Okay, we need to figure out a way for you to climb up there so – ”
“Jack?” a voice said above me.
I looked up to see her scaling the wall beneath the cave by climbing the rope and walking up the rock cliff at the same time.
Think those cheesy old Batman TV shows from the 1960s, when Batman and Robin would ‘walk’ vertically up a building.
Lelia did it largely by using the rope to support herself, then pushing up with her feet against the cracks and toeholds. Her spear was strapped to her back with some sort of fur binding.
I just stared up at her in awe.
The rope was so small in diameter – just the grip strength needed to actually do that – !
I guess once her ankle had healed, she could do a hell of a lot more than I thought.
“Jack?” she called down to me as he went up the rope, hand over hand, step by step.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be up in a minute,” I called up to her.
I watched as she got to the opening of the cave and pulled herself through.
Jesus, she wasn’t just Wolverine, she was Spider-man, too.
“Jack?”
“Hold on,” I called out.
I took the rope she had just climbed and tied it to the hardwood sapling – the one I had cut down to make an archery bow – and yelled, “Pull it up!”
Her head appeared over the edge of the cave entrance. “What?”
I grabbed the rope and pantomimed hauling it up. “Pull the rope up!”
She immediately understood and hauled the sapling up the side of the mountain.
“Okay, now untie the rope and throw it down!”
“…untie…?”
I pantomimed untying a knot. “Untie rope!”
“Ohhh,” she said, and her head disappeared back inside the cave. Ten seconds later she reappeared holding the end of the rope in one blue hand. “Untie rope.”
“Good – throw it down!”
“Throw it down?”
I swung my arm like I was tossing something at my feet. “Throw – ”
Then I pointed at what she held. “Rope – ”
Then I swiped my hand through the air towards the ground. “Down!”
“Throw rope down!” she called out, and tossed the slack through the air towards me.
I grabbed it and tied it to the backpack full of firewood. She hauled it up easily.
“Throw rope down?” she called out after she had it up in the cave.
“Yes!”
She tossed the rope down again, and I tied it to the hardwood branches she’d found – the ones I would carve into arrow shafts – and she hauled them up as well.
“Throw rope down?” she called once she’d gotten the sticks inside the cave.
“No, I’m climbing up.”
“What?”
“Just wait.”
“Whoa?” she called out, apparently asking if she should stop where she was.
“Yes, whoa!”
I finished putting on my crampons, got out my ice axes, and climbed up the side of the mountain to the cave.
Once I was inside, I pulled off my jacket and gloves, and she took off her bindings.
I got another gander at her long, shapely legs, and had to turn away before I started getting hard again.
She set about rebuilding the fire as I sat down with my knife and began whittling away at the sapling.
“Jack?” Lelia asked from beside the fire, frowning in confusion at what I was doing.
“I’m making a bow.”
“Bow?”
“Yes.”
I pantomimed holding a bow, drawing back an arrow, and letting it fly.
She just sat there by the fire looking at me like I was insane.
I realized that it was quite possible that she might never have seen a bow and arrow before. After all, the most sophisticated thing she owned was her spear. She didn’t own anything metal, and had been fascinated by my steel water bottle. If her people were basically at the same level as the human stone age, it’s quite possible that they hadn’t yet figured out archery yet.
“You’ll see,” I told her.
“You’ll see?”
“No, I meant – wait.”
“Wait?”
“Later.”
“Later?”
“Oh my God,” I said in exasperation.
“Oh my God,” she repeated, mimicking my exasperation perfectly.
It was pretty fuckin’ funny.
I laughed, and she laughed to. I pointed at her and the fire.
“You cook the meat so we can eat, okay?”
She nodded, then went to get one of the frozen slabs of venison.
I worked on the sapling, carving away the bark and tapering the ends. I routinely tested the wood for springiness, and it kept bending without any sign of cracking.
Not bad.
Lelia spitted the meat and set it to roasting. Then she did something unusual: she took the flat rock we’d used for grilling, placed it in the embers, and scattered a handful of berries across the surface. Across them
