Chapter #11The Hunter's Lessons, Part 4 by: Nostrum   Jeff was dressed in rugged attire – heavy coat and pants, a wool beanie, and earmuffs – and Mireya's first thought on seeing him was to wonder at the sheer coincidence that he should be camping out in the same area that she and Marty were exploring. But the thought was fleeting, and was quickly crowded out by much more pressing questions, like Where did he come from? and Why didn't I see him?
He hadn't changed much since the last time she saw him. He was still slim and scruffy, with straw-like hair sticking out from under the beanie. If anything, he was even scruffier, with tangled hair covering his ears down to the lobes, and a patchy mustache and beard that had gone even longer without a trimming. But his eyes, she thought, were harder and more focused.
"Hey!" Marty barked at his brother. "I already told you! I wanted to see her hunt Bigfoot!"
"And I said that was stupid, Bobby!" Mireya couldn't help but notice him calling Marty by his middle name, something he did only when Marty was being a nuisance. "When are you gonna stop being such a dunce? I expected this outta you, you're still a kid! But I didn't expect it from her!" he added, shifting his furious gaze onto Mireya.
"I'm sorry, Jeff," Mireya said. "I'll explain. But not here. Place is still dangerous."
"Right." Despite the bravado behind his reply, Mireya saw nervousness in the glance he cast around the clearing. "Marty, help her up. I'll take the rifle."
--
They were quiet on the way back, with the boys helping Mireya with strong hands as she led them back to the cave where they had rested the night before. Not until Mireya had guided Jeff into cleaning and dressing her wounds with the first-aid kit on her backpack, did they start to talk. She began by asking if he had brought any gear, and with a thin smile Jeff left the cave. But he was back almost immediately with a heavy backpack topped with a bedroll and a water canteen. It left Mireya gaping again in wonder: How did I not spot all that sitting just outside the cave?
"Alright," Mireya told Jeff as he crouched next to her. "I do owe you an explanation. But you also owe me one."
"Why?" he said. "For what?"
"For following us. Don't tell me you just happened to be camping out in the same area."
"What were you doing with Marty along?" Jeff chucked his chin at his brother, who was glowering nearby.
"I thought it’d be a good learning experience." That was the truth, but after the near disaster in the glade, Mireya couldn't stop herself from squirming with guilt. "Let him see if he’d do well as an associate."
"But couldn’t you do it in a safer way?" Jeff demanded.
"Jeff, our job isn’t safe. We deal with the unknown, after all." She glanced at Marty. "And if it scared him too much, we would learn that sooner rather than later, and find other tasks for him."
"Hell no!" Marty exclaimed. "That was the coolest thing ever! You think I didn’t see you taking down that, uh--?" He fell silent under his brother's glower.
Jeff turned back to Mireya. "But you ended up scaring me instead! C’mon, Mireya! He’s the only one in my family I’ve got!"
"You have an uncle and aunt. Don’t you remember telling me about them?"
Jeff jumped to his feet. "That's not the same thing as a brother!"
"Jeff", Mireya said, trying to calm his nerves in the same way her mother tried to calm her patients. "I know you want to be close to your brother; I wish I could be close to my sister. It’s Christmas, you know. It’s been two years since Mami died, and it’s not the same, but... I wanted to be here because you need someone you can relate more than anything. We’re all missing someone, no?"
"Right."
"I could’ve just ignored this bounty. But I thought, ‘This’ll be easy; one day or two, and I can give Marty a training exercise.' And I also wanted him along because--" She paused, looking for the words.
"Because being away from family’s not easy to deal with," she said. "And this happens to all associates, to everyone that works for the Stellae. They become our families, sometimes, or even more than our families. And when we ourselves can't take care of our families, because we are busy with a task, the others of us take up the slack. What was Marty supposed to do at Christmas?"
"Help you hunt monsters," Marty said with a grin. "Seeing you take down that big, yellow hairy thing--"
"I was lucky, because that thing isn’t child’s play! That thing’s an ‘ettin’; it’s a very dangerous creature, and killing it won’t end its menace. You need to know how to deal with them completely." She grunted, and added, more to herself, "The job's still not done."
"Can I still help?" Marty asked.
"Do you want to?"
"Of course! That rifle’s awesome. Can you teach me to use it?"
Jeff whistled through his teeth. "Hey! No one's hunting anything--"
Mireya ignored him. "Sure, I can teach you," she told Marty. "You should learn gun safety anyway, and there's nothing dangerous about target practice." When she saw Marty's expression fall, she added. "You won't need a rifle for the next part of the job. But weren’t you worried about me, back there?"
"Well, sure." Marty seemed taken aback by Mireya’s question. "But the way you handled that thing? And you didn’t even flinch when a friggin’ bear was on top of you! Mireya, I don’t wanna be a scaredy-cat that can’t do anything! I’ll learn how to be a hunter like you are!"
"Hell, no, Marty!" Jeff barked at him. "Are you serious!? I thought being with John, doing all those experiments and stuff--"
"Why can't I do both?"
"‘Cos it’s dangerous!"
"Yeah, but if someone told you they found Mom, or--!" Marty abruptly stopped talking as Jeff turned a ferocious frown onto him.
"Jeff," Mireya said, "I've explained myself now. As for your brother, I’m sorry that I placed him in danger. You’re right in being angry. But his place in the society, that's something to talk about later, and it's something others will have to talk about, like Charles. Now, can you answer some of my questions? Like how you got here, what you're doing out here?"
Jeff made a face. "I followed you out."
"Why? And why didn't you tell us you were out here with us? We could have all joined up."
Jeff kicked at the ground.
"It was a training exercise of my own," he said. "Sort of. I heard you were taking Marty out here," he continued in a rush, "and I didn't like the sound of it, but Charles told me to let you go. But he also said if I wanted to make sure everything was okay, I should follow. You know, if it would make me feel better." He sighed.
"So why didn't you join us? Why did you--?"
"--spy on us?" Marty finished for her. He was giving his brother a very dark look.
Jeff, Mireya thought, looked like he wanted to sink into the ground.
"He said this was your business. Yours and Marty's," he told Mireya. "But he said I could try tracking you. That way I'd get some practice, and also see that--" He swallowed. "That I could trust you with my brother."
"You did a very good job," Mireya told him in a firm but gentle tone. "Would you mind telling me how you did it? How did you know where to find us?"
"Hitched a ride."
"Isn’t that dangerous?"
"Done it before."
There was something very evasive about this reply. There was more to it, but Mireya decided to let that pass. "We were in the deep woods," she said, "and you don't have the training to track a party that's ahead of you. You were right behind us the whole way, weren't you?" Jeff shrugged. "How did you do that without me noticing?"
"I guess I'm that good," Jeff brashly declared.
"Jeff, I have to be on alert at all moments. But I watched everywhere, and I never saw you. You couldn’t appear there just by magic."
She didn't mean it as a real statement. But when Jeff paled, she had the sudden feeling her stray shot had hit a mark. "Jeff," she said, "there’s something you haven’t told us, right?"
"Bro," Marty said, his voice sinking low with anger. "You didn't steal some magic spell or--"
"No!"
"Then how did--?"
"Marty," Mireya reprimanded him, and he shut up. "Jeff," she said, "how did you do it?"
Jeff bit down hard on his lip, and avoided her eye. "Call it a prodigy?" he murmured, almost in an undertone.
Mireya sucked in a hard breath. "What do you mean by that?"
He finally looked her directly in the eye. "I mean exactly what I said. Talk to Charles if you doubt me."
Mireya groped for a reply. Jeff was being very cagey, and from the way he had turned his back on Marty, she could guess why. Marty, for his part, looked bewildered, suspicious, and angry.
"When did--?" Then Mireya wiped her own question away with the wave of her hand. "Which ones?"
"Which ones what?"
"Which planets?"
"Oh." Jeff cast a quick glance back at Marty. "Pluto and the Moon."
Mireya's astonished gaze was locked onto Jeff, but she couldn't miss the look of realization that was slowly dawning on Marty's face. I need to shut down this conversation, she thought. But she was struggling too with the shock of what Jeff had just told her.
He isn't just an associate, she thought. He's an actual Stellae!
And not just any Stellae. The Moon? That's Sulva!
How the fuck do I deal with a Sulva!? You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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