Chapter 12
12
JACQUES’S CABIN, SAINT-CHAMBéRY
It was still bitterly cold outside. When Jacques’s alarm had gone off at 5a.m. he had considered going for a run, but one look at the temperature and the face of his husky dog, Hunter, and he had opted for an indoor workout. Now, holding his form, balanced on the gymnastic rings, in this dojo/home gym he looked out through the window to the freezing landscape and focussed on keeping his form. Peace. A quiet mindset. No distractions. Strength in silence. Forgetting about the past . His core trembled as soon as his brain worked with the word ‘past’. He loathed that it did that. Yes, it would be easy to erase that line from his thinking when he did this combination of a workout for the mind as well as the body but if you didn’t ever even internally confront your demons then you were leaving no room for positivity to occupy that space.
Hunter whined and Jacques was immediately distracted, even more so when his dog got up from his blanket and headed towards the body of the main house. It was the move Hunter made when someone came within fifty feet of the house. Except no one came here, apart from reluctant delivery drivers or lost hikers and if hikers were out at this time of the morning, in these conditions, they were crazy. He refocussed, holding the rings tight, sucking in his abdomen, pulling taut…
Hunter barked once. Then two short sharp ones. It couldn’t be, could it? Jacques took one last long breath and then jumped down, grabbing his towel and wiping his torso.
‘What is it, boy?’ Jacques asked when he had reached his dog. Hunter was parading up and down by the window, stopping then starting all over again. He put his hand on the dog’s head, ruffled his fur, but Hunter didn’t flinch, didn’t acknowledge, didn’t turn to receive the affection. The animal was a lot more focussed than Jacques had been on the rings.
Hunter barked in the same rhythm as before and, being unable to see anything against the white of the snow on the ground nor the grey/white of the cloudy sky, Jacques reached for his binoculars.
As Hunter carried on barking in the same way, Jacques finally saw what his pet had sensed. There in the distance was a vehicle and it was definitely heading his way.
‘I can’t feel my face!’ Erin squealed.
‘You’re supposed to have the scarf around your face, Erin,’ Orla called back.
‘What?’
‘I said?—’
‘What? I can’t hear you with that scarf over your mouth!’
This was impossible! And it was cold like she had never experienced before. Why she and Erin were riding a tractor-type vehicle that seemed to be spraying up snow more than it was making headway to wherever they were going she didn’t know. But this was apparently Delphine’s mode of transport and they hadn’t had a lot of say in anything much this morning. Breakfast had been approximately eight minutes long with the coffee scalding the roof of Orla’s mouth as she rushed it down. And, as nice as the freshly baked croissants were, there hadn’t been a second to savour them before their host was telling them to dress in many layers, cover their faces and come outside.
Despite the extreme cold, the landscape was breathtaking. So far, Delphine had driven them through pine woodland and skirted a frozen lake but now they were heading up a steep incline that seemed never ending when the engine of this thing sounded like it was one noisy sputter away from a breakdown. But the thing nagging at Orla’s mind was the lack of research she had done before embarking on this trip. Research was her forte. She found out everything she could about what she was stepping into, from the terrain to the possibility of local tyranny. Except she hadn’t done any of that, and she was about to meet a mute man and a pregnant reindeer, neither of which she had any experience with. Unless you counted ghosting as being mute…
‘Oh my God! Is that a wolf?’
Next, Erin screamed. And the grip of acrylic nails through gloves her sister had been forced to put on pressed into Orla’s shoulders. She saw what Erin was talking about. It was furry, grey and white, with four legs, and it was running towards them at speed, barking. Did wolves bark? Why didn’t she know the answer to that? She did. She’d spent time with wolves in Russia. They were largely misunderstood animals who weren’t usually aggressive to humans. Where possible, they would avoid human interaction, not sprint towards them with what she could now see was a fierce look in its eyes.
‘We are very near to Wolf,’ Delphine shouted over the engine noise.
‘I know!’ Erin screamed. ‘I can see it! And it’s getting closer! I want to get off!’
Erin’s last words had Orla panicking. Although their ride wasn’t going anywhere close to street-race speeds, Erin jumping from it to the snow wasn’t wise. And her brain was firing off all kinds of flight versus fight scenarios in this moment.
‘You can see Wolf?’ Delphine shouted again. ‘Your eyes must be very good!’
‘It’s right there!’ Erin screamed, leaning back into Orla. ‘Looking savage!’
Delphine laughed and the engine of the tractor idled, quietening and slowing, the wolf bearing down on them.
‘Orla! It’s going to come and bite me! I don’t want blood loss and I definitely don’t want a scar!’
‘You think the dog is Wolf?’ Delphine said, the tractor stopping completely.
‘It looks like one! An angry one! Orla!’
‘Delphine, could you please reassure us that we aren’t about to be attacked?’ Orla said as calmly as possible.
‘Attacked?’ Delphine asked, getting off the vehicle. ‘I do not understand this English word.’
The animal sped the final few metres and then it leapt into the air and landed on Orla’s lap. Erin let out a scream that echoed down the valley and Orla just froze, a weighty four-legged beast mounted on her. She looked into its eyes and it looked into hers while it panted, tongue lolling, and, as her heart hammered against her chest, she wondered which one of them was going to make their next move. Apparently, it was neither of them. A loud piercing whistle hit the air and the wolf/dog sat stiller than she was, mouth closed up, breath now inaudible. A second whistle, this time in a different tone and rhythm, and the dog leapt off, down to the snowy ground where it sat, paws elevated like it was begging.
‘Aww, Hunter, you want some treats? I have biscuits in my pocket.’
Orla watched as Delphine pulled off her gloves and dipped a hand into the pocket of her coat.
Another whistle blasted and this one was so severe, Erin rocked on the tractor and toppled off into the snow.
‘Are you OK?’ Orla asked, quickly getting off and going to her sister.
‘No! I’m in the snow! And now everything is wet!’
‘Here, Hunter, but do not look obvious,’ Delphine carried on. Orla watched Delphine scatter the biscuits on the ground, but her actions seemed to be earning more whistling and it was so sharp Orla wanted to reach for her ears.
‘Make it stop!’ Erin groaned, wiping snow from her jacket.
Delphine shouted in French, gesticulating to ahead a little. It was then that Orla saw a dark figure standing out against the bright white mountain backdrop. Tall, wide, slightly ominous? She watched the figure move his arm and then there was another whistle blast. This one set the dog off and it jumped up, turned tail and began sprinting back across the snow.
‘That is Wolf,’ Delphine said.
‘I thought you said it was a dog!’ Erin exclaimed, teeth chattering.
‘Not the dog,’ Delphine said. ‘The man! Là-bas ! There!’
Orla looked again at the figure. This was the person she was going to be interviewing. He looked formidable even from this distance and there was an instant disturbance in Orla’s gut that her ill preparation was going to come back and bite her harder than any dog might…
‘Is that how he has learned to communicate? With the whistle?’
‘ Comment cela ? What do you mean?’
‘The man. He does not speak? That was what I was told,’ Orla attempted to clarify.
‘Oh… well… yes… he is a man of very few words but… loud whistles, they can speak too, no?’ Delphine said.
Was it Orla’s imagination or did Delphine sound slightly tense?
‘What are we doing now?’ Erin asked. ‘Apart from turning into ice?’
‘We must walk,’ Delphine announced. ‘The tractor will not go up the hill without missing gears so…’
The ‘so’ was left hanging with no more being offered. Orla waited for Erin to start complaining about the lack of transport but when she looked to her sister she was already making moves forward. Orla felt out of control and that was something she never liked to be. Not only was she here when surely a more junior reporter could have managed what seemed like a fluff piece on paper, but she had a vulnerable teen with her too. It could all so easily go pear shaped. But with Erin striding ahead, there was no more time for contemplation. It seemed Orla had no other option but to follow her.