Reconnaissance #3
The plants about them began to rustle with her rage, and she consciously quelled them, tucking her anger back inside, though she allowed it to simmer there as she sank into the earth. She traveled swiftly through the sand until she reached her inadequate barrier.
So he thought he was clever, did he? Well, she was more so. She would ensure he could not steal any more of Tristan’s memorial, this big-handed man who was the wrong shape and the wrong size and wrong in every possible way.
She started with the prickly pears he had eased his way between before, feeding them with energy until their paddles crossed so thickly he could not possibly move through them without breaking them.
He could break them, said a voice deep inside her. He could chop them down and create a pathway.
But he had walked with respect for the integrity of the soil.
Taken care not to damage plants as he passed.
He had created his clever trick not to damage the cacti in the first place.
Even his research samples, the purloined flowers, had been collected so gently she hadn’t realized.
And she pictured him kneeling before her, offering her water, moving away in response to her distress.
He won’t break them, she reassured herself confidently. This will be enough to stop him.
She moved along the line, drawing energy from the earth and the plants themselves to make them taller and wider.
Her ring of cacti went all around the hill; she moved swiftly so that she could be sure her barrier had no weaknesses.
By the time the sun had reached its zenith and begun to sink, she had closed the barrier so completely that even she could not pass through it; she had to travel through the earth to get from one side to the other.
Ethan Jacobson would never be able to reach her memorial garden again. He would just have to find another place to conduct his research.
Mara traveled back to his campsite, anticipation of his defeat bubbling in her breast.
She’d finished her preparations just in time. When she emerged invisibly from the sand of her hill, he had already reassembled his fool’s armor and was loading equipment into his backpack. She laughed silently as he picked up his now-useless boards and started up her hill.
He headed unerringly for the place where he’d crossed over before but halted in his tracks when he saw the enhanced barrier.
“That’s weird,” he said, bending down to investigate the entwined prickly pears. “You can’t have grown that much in just a few hours.”
He tried to insert the boards even so, but after a few minutes’ wiggling and shifting them, he withdrew.
Mara followed him as he proceeded along the barrier, testing a few other gaps to no avail.
It took him most of the afternoon to traverse the entire ring, and Mara stayed with him the entire time, gleefully watching failed attempt after failed attempt.
When he returned to where he’d started, he set his boards aside and gazed wistfully up the hill.
The sun was low behind him, casting his long shadow onto the hill.
“Well,” he said heavily. “This is going to be harder than I thought.”
It’s going to be impossible, Mara vowed. You will never sully my haven with your footsteps again.
And it was as if he’d heard her, because he trudged back to his campsite, methodically packed everything back into his Jeep, folded the tent into a case strapped to the roof, and drove away. Other than his tire tracks, the desert hill looked as if he’d never been there.
As a final act of spite, Mara called on the sand where he’d passed to quiver, then resettle. Now there was no hint he had ever been there.
Mara laughed aloud then, letting her triumph echo through the hills before hastening up the hill to her garden. She swiftly found the cactus whose flower had been stolen, used the last of her flagging energy to encourage a new flower to grow in the vacant space.
And everything was right in the world again.
She made her way to the center of her garden, the grove she’d called forth as her private shelter, choosing the tallest of her trees to sleep beneath.
She’d exhausted herself again, but the tree would give energy back to her, as would the sand, and she would be refreshed in the morning.
Refreshed and alone once more, ready to return to her task.
Ready to think only of Tristan again, not the huge blond brute of a man who had disturbed her peace.
She smiled again as she sank into the sand’s embrace, remembering Ethan’s expression as he’d understood he’d been bested.
If she didn’t despise him so much, she’d almost feel sorry for him.
He had looked so very disappointed, recognition of his loss burning in his blue-gray eyes as he prepared to leave.
Perhaps she should add some more subtle fortifications to the landscape to ensure no future traveler considered her domain for their explorations, but for now, she could take comfort in her victory.
Mara had won. Her hill was hers again, safe and private and unsullied. And that man, that Ethan, was gone, never to return.
By tomorrow, she would already have forgotten his name.