68

Of Raptors and Revelations

Lottica and Nick knew they should turn around and try to find their way back to the cabin. Each had the unsettling sense they’d gone too far, though neither would venture to say it.

For an hour they had hiked to the rim of the rocky bowl where the cabin sat beside the small lake. The exertion warmed them, and beyond the rim, the sight of the "hands" of Mount Breima urged them on farther than they should've gone. Now, resting on a cluster of loose boulders, each waited for the other to break the spell and state the obvious. They were lost.

Lottica stared toward the west where the spires of stones constituting Mount Breima's "hands" reddened as the sun settled. It was comfortably warm on the boulders which had absorbed the autumn sunshine all day. Her eyes began to droop closed, but she knew that to sleep was foolish, so she sat up straighter, refocusing her attention on any possible clues that Beilla had brought their parents this way.

She surveyed the almost unbroken expanse of exposed rock bereft of footprints, and turned to Nick. "Not even a breadcrumb."

Nick followed her gaze over the stony surface, here and there broken by patches of a dark heather-like ground cover. "Yeah, Gretel, and no gingerbread houses in sight, either"

"So much for youthful bravado," she admitted, inwardly cringing to think of how young and out of her element she really felt. "We're at a crossroads here, big brother, and I think we’d better consider going back before it gets dark. We probably only have an hour of daylight left."

"We have flashlights," he suggested.

She shot him a look. "Nick, do you really want to be wandering around up here at night? It's going to get cold. And what if there's a storm like last night?"

"I know. I was just hoping we'd find some sign of Mom and Dad. A little dead-parent story luck."

Lottica punched his arm. It broke the spell.

"Okay, little sister, let's head back, take our medicine for running off, and try to be better team players tomorrow."

Lottica stood up. "Lead on Hansel."

As she tightened the straps on her backpack, a shriek from above froze her in place. Her eyes darted warily up towards the noise. High above where the vivid blue darkened to the indigo of evening, she made out a solitary shape circling as if in orbit around a star as yet unseen.

"Can you tell what it is, Nick?"

"Hard to say. Who knows if Lebreima has eagles or condors. It’s probably some kind of raptor. Maybe a falcon or hawk. Looks like it's on the hunt. See, it's circling lower."

They watched as the bird spiraled down to within a few hundred feet, then without a hint of its intentions, its wings swept back, and it dropped like a comet. As it did, they saw a movement on the rocky ground a hundred feet ahead of them. A small grey chipmunk with black striping on its tail scurried across the rocks. It sensed the danger and veered for a clump of the dark heather while Nick and Lottica stood transfixed.

Just as the creature reached the imagined safety of the vegetation, the talons of the raptor struck the spongy patch of heather, which exploded upward as the bird rebounded from the earth with a tangle of plant and a limp chipmunk.

"Wow!" exclaimed Nick. "Nature up front and personal!"

But Lottica wasn't listening to him. She was moving towards the spot of the kill. She stopped at the strike point and knelt on the heather-like carpet of plants.

Nick hurried after her. "It's okay, Lottie. It's just nature. You know, that ‘circle of life’ stuff."

She glanced at him grimly. "That's from The Lion King. Another dead-parent story."

"So what's the big deal? It was only a chipmunk. I think it was a hawk that got it."

"It has nothing to do with the chipmunk. Open your eyes science guy. Something strange is happening here. Our dead-parent-story luck may be stronger than you think."

She pointed to the patch of heather, which just moments before had been a nondescript mat of dark tangled filaments and tiny seed pods. Right before their eyes, the buds were opening in an effervescent puffs of white. All around the stony surface area, wherever the plant had established a small island of existence, a flash frost of tiny flowers appeared.

"Very cool," Nick admitted.

Then they saw it. A footprint right in front of them. A dark shoe-crushed patch of buds in the heather that neither of them knew was called hawksbreath. Lottica quickly rose and ran to the next patch of hawksbreath. Sure enough, she found another footprint in the midst of the late opening buds. Gazing ahead, she could see a clear trail of footprints in the patches of hawksbreath, leading directly towards the towering "hands" of Mount Breima.

Off in the distance, Nick and Lottica heard the victorious call of the hawk echoing through the mountaintops.

Nick turned to his sister. "I hate to be the one to say it, but Hawk knows."

"Yup. I just hope Hawk knows...” she began, but paused

"Knows what?" Nick pried.

"That we're not chipmunks," she warned as set they off on the hawksbreath trail leading to the hidden heart of Mount Breima.