She rolled her eyes, another little mode of communication I was regretting teaching her, and said, “Only heat water.”
“Oh…”
We ended up packing the bottle with snow and placing it on a flat rock in the midst of smoldering coals. After a couple of minutes, the snow had melted; after 30 minutes, it was hot enough where you wouldn’t want to stick your finger in it. I knew because I stuck my finger in it and immediately regretted it.
At the same time, she had placed coals over a depression in a rock in the middle of the cave. It was sort of a natural basin.
The coals were to heat the rock up so it wouldn’t immediately cool the water down. Once the water was ready, she brushed the dying coals away with another rock, then blew off the remaining ashes. There was a bit of schmutz remaining, but we weren’t exactly creating leather for Louis Vuitton here.
Then she poured the water into the basin and added the brain, smooshing it up with her hands until it was… more or less dissolved.
I’ll spare you the specifics.
Then she set to work smearing the inside of the hide with the goop.
After she was finished, she hung the hide back up on the frame over the fire and smoked it for another 24 hours so the solution could set.
It was not a fun night in the cave, let me tell you.
When a smell kills your ability to get a boner next to a hot naked blue chick, you know it’s bad.
It didn’t help that her hands were still greasy.
No jokes about lube, please.
Yeah.
Not feelin’ it.
Anyway, at the end of the process, I had a hide with fur on it that was both pliable and water-resistant.
I immediately started carving it into strips with my knife. Into strings, really – quarter-inch-wide strips of hide that were three to four feet long.
When Lelia saw what I was doing with all her hard work, she was not happy.
“WHAT?!” was her verbatim response.
“Relax,” I said. “Trust me.”
And I proceeded to create the strips that I would use as the lashings on our snowshoes. Strong, flexible, and water-resistant.
All was forgiven after I beat her in the 100-yard snowshoe dash.
Once the snowshoes were ready, we had to practice using them.
Then we had to practice getting up the trees while wearing the snowshoes.
That actually proved next to impossible. Our average time went from 33 seconds to 1 minute, 27 seconds.
We would have been wolf chow. Or at least I would have.
So we practiced undoing the bindings, getting out of the snowshoes, and going up the trees.
In a real situation, I would have just slashed the bindings with my knife – but we only had a certain number of spare strips of hide, and I didn’t want to burn through them in practice runs, so we tied the bindings loosely, walked ten feet, then wriggled out of the bindings as soon as we started the clock.
It added an extra 15 seconds to our average time, for a total of 48.
Like I said, in a real situation I would have used the knife to just slash the bindings, so I think we would have come in lower than 48.
I figured 48 seconds was enough to get away from wolves.
Or at least I hoped.
Nine days after we began our preparations, we were ready to go.
We had enough jerky to supplement our foraging.
We had snowshoes to help us travel.
And we had practiced climbing into trees until we were a well-oiled machine.
Not only that, but we’d kept up our archery practice for two hours a day until we were pretty damn good.
All that was left was to gather the resolve to leave.
We lay in the cave one night after making love. Shadows cast by the firelight played over Lelia’s skin.
“I think we’re ready to go find your tribe,” I said quietly.
She propped herself up on her elbow. “Yes?” she asked, hope and fear both in her voice.
“Yes.”
“…tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” I agreed.
She took a long look around the cave. Sadness filled her face.
“I like it here,” she whispered.
“I like it, too. A lot of good memories.”
“Memories?”
“Things that happened that I will think about later, after we’re gone.”
“Like what?”
“Like seeing your face for the first time.”
She smiled. “And?”
“And… when I first started teaching you my language.”
Her hand drifted below my waist and began to caress me. “…and?”
I grinned at her as I cupped her breast in my palm. “And every time we made love.”
She smiled wider. “Those are good memories.”
“Mm-hm,” I agreed as I kissed her.
“Jack?”
“Yes?”
“Let us make one last memory,” she whispered as she opened her legs to me.
She didn’t have to ask twice.
18
We set out the next morning.
After I dressed, I packed all my belongings into the backpack – everything that I had come into this world with. Ropes, carabiners, flare gun, headlamp, cannister of matches… even my six useless bullets. I also took along the rest of the dried-out bird nests to use as tinder in case we needed it, along with an emergency stash of dry branches for kindling. Never know when you’re going to have to start a fire, and in what sort of conditions.
Lelia wrapped herself up in her furs, then put the climbing harness on over that.
After Lelia rappelled down from the cave to the ground below, I pulled up the rope and packed it up with all my other belongings.
Then I took one last, long look around the cave… smiled… said a silent prayer of thanks to whoever or whatever it was that had sent me here after the avalanche… and climbed down the cliff with my crampons and ice axes.
Once I was on the ground, we got ready.
I carried my quiver full of arrows lashed to my backpack. I carried my bow slung over my left shoulder for easy access, and I carried my ‘hammer throw’ rope coiled around my right.
Likewise, Lelia had her quiver on her
