Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

‘David?’

‘Please call me David.’ He smiled again, and Jennifer felt her already red face flush anew.

‘Oh, and you’re being nice to me,’ she said, shaking his hand, ‘and I’m sure I look like a madwoman standing here daydreaming.’

‘Don’t worry about it-’ David paused.

‘Jennifer.’

‘Jennifer – really. It’s no problem. I mean just last week I had a couple from Ohio out for a ski trip, and they stood and stared at the zucchini for almost twenty minutes. I think one of them lost a relative to a zucchini once, maybe back in Italy.’

Jennifer laughed, ‘Must have been a mob hit.’

‘Those overcooked side dishes can be lethal!’

They both laughed, and David asked, ‘Can I show you those peas?’

‘Really, Mr Johnson, we just met.’ Jennifer feigned offence, then, holding a straight face for another moment, she burst out laughing, finding the humour. It might be a long road, she thought, you ought to try and find some joy.

Now it was David’s turn to blush. ‘Right back here,’ he said, taking her gently by the arm. ‘Are you in town long?’

‘No, just a few days.’ That was a lie; she had no idea how long she might be staying.

‘Are you a skier?’

‘No. I come up from Denver to spend time with my brother and his wife. They’re the skiers.’

‘So what do you do during the day?’

I worry. That’s what I do most. I worry, and I miss my daughter, and I pray that she’s all right, and I sometimes plan ways to kill or at least dismember whoever has her or anyone who might have hurt her. I have all sorts of sordid thoughts about torture and death. Just recently I learned that she’s been transported somewhere, somewhere I can’t go, and so I sometimes stand around with the freezer door open staring at the frozen foods for eight, ten, whatever, even twelve minutes at a time. ‘Oh, I cook and read and write letters to friends. I love walking here. Some of the trails are gorgeous in the winter,’ she said.

‘The ones we plough anyway,’ David was running out of things to interest her, and the produce section was coming up fast.

Jennifer stole a glance at the store manager. In her embarrassment, she had not realised that he was actually quite attractive. No wedding ring, fifty, maybe, with salt-and-pepper hair, brown eyes, a lean, honest face, and a small paunch engaged in a friendly wrestling competition with his belt, just the softening midsection of a middle-aged man who appeared to have been active for most of his life.

‘I do, by the way,’ she said.

‘What’s that?’

‘I do like snow peas. I cook them all the time. My daughter loves them.’ Jennifer picked through a handful, discarding several and dropping the rest in a clear plastic bag.

‘Oh.’ David was surprised. ‘Is she here?’

‘No.’

‘Not a skier either?’

‘Not this season, no.’ Jennifer crammed two more handfuls of peas into the bag and tied a knot in it, suddenly in a hurry again.

David didn’t notice her sudden haste. ‘My kids either. They’re in school now.’

Jennifer was silent. She wanted to get back to Bryan and Meg’s condo, to consider her options and plan where she might go next. Tossing the bag of snow peas into the shopping cart, she said, ‘Well, thank you, David. I appreciate the help, and I’m really sorry about-you know, with the freezer.’

‘Please don’t worry about it, and come back anytime. I’m here every day.’

‘I will. Thanks,’ Jennifer murmured the normal courtesies, then looked into David’s eyes: he was gazing at her with calm, confident honesty. He was a nice man, and if he was attracted to her, he had picked just about the worst possible time in her life.

‘Or if you need a walking partner,’ he tried one last time.

‘That sounds nice.’ She wanted him to know that on any other occasion she would have been willing to stand here for the rest of the night, ice cream melting into a puddle of vanilla-soaked chocolate chips around her feet, to continue talking with him – but not tonight, and now perhaps not ever.

He smiled goodbye as she paid for her groceries, and watched as she pushed the trolley into the parking lot.

Outside, the afternoon had turned a muted ash-grey. Snow was falling above ten thousand feet; it would be in Silverthorn in a few minutes. Jennifer pushed the cart towards her car. She had bought enough groceries to last her at Bryan and Meg’s for a few days, long enough to figure out where to flee next, but not so long that the thing she had passed on Broadway and Lincoln might guess where she had taken the portal tapestry. Wind from the river carried the distinct smell of woodsmoke, and Jennifer promised herself a fire when she arrived.

She had not slept well the night before; the events of the previous day had been too fresh in her mind, the thought of finding Hannah too prickly and hot to put down. With two months to wait before opening the portal, she had to find a way to get some sleep, to enjoy some semblance of normalcy, to find some joy. Jennifer glanced back at the grocery store and was surprised to see David Johnson watching her through the plate-glass windows. Standing between a red-and-white placard advertising Paper Towels, $1.19 for 200 and a brightly coloured display hawking Frozen Pizzas, 2 for $9, she could see his smile across the parking lot. He waved, and turned back into the store.

Jennifer tilted her head slightly and furrowed her brow. ‘A sense of normalcy?’ she asked of the parking lot. ‘That would be anything but normal.’

By the time she’d unpacked her groceries it was snowing; she got a warm, comforting blaze burning as quickly as she could, then poured a glass of wine – never too early, particularly not these days – and opened an atlas she had thrown into her car. She ran a fingertip over the state map of Colorado.

Hannah Sorenson reined in to a dusty stop as Hoyt, Churn, and Alen rode ahead, unaware she had paused behind them. It had been six days since she had heard the legend of the forest of ghosts and Hannah was pretty sure that despite the others’ silence on the subject, their small company was drawing near. Anxiety chilled her as images chased through her mind: running away, fleeing south – even just dismounting and refusing to go any further – until thoughts of Steven and home, her mother and the Rocky Mountains gave her a little strength.

The chill lifted a bit and Hannah urged her horse on again. If the forest of ghosts was the only way, then that was that; she would just have to fight to maintain her composure in front of the three men. She would go where they went, face what they faced and come through the forest ready for Welstar Palace. It was not a comforting thought: out of the frying pan and directly into Hell, but the displaced law student forced thoughts of Welstar Palace and all its nightmares from her mind: that was for another day.

The sun rising caressed her face and she squinted into the early rays to make out the lengthening foothills stretching towards the Ravenian Sea. The hard, flat farming land they had passed through had softened into green and brown folds, bending the landscape into ridges and smooth swells as it climbed towards the still invisible Pragan peaks. It was morning, and Hannah thought that ought to mean something significant; she had survived another night. On the run in a foreign world, she had made it to another dawn.

Hannah was embarrassed at how much she had taken for granted, like sleeping beneath a down comforter, an expensive one, in her own bed, the most comfortable place in the world to sleep – certainly better than the stacked logs and overturned rocks she had been using for the past several months. And she had pillows, glorious pillows, three of them. Imagine that; three pillows for one person, what luxury. Would she get back and be able to fall asleep in her own bed again? And would she wake with the opportunity to ignore the dawn or, better yet, to sleep right through it and welcome the day a few hours later?