12. Ash #2
Kael’s laugh snaps my flashlight toward him. He’s standing beside a short rock pedestal, his canvas and paint box on the ground next to two rotting wagon wheels.
“They’ve left you a poem,” he says, reading from the brass plaque:
Still grasping in their fingers old
The tools that dug the earth for gold;
Still hoping for that great reward
For which they toiled long and hard
No woman’s loving smile is there
To cheer them in their long despair,
It is the tale so often told—
They’ve thrown away their lives for gold.
“Very funny,” I say, hand on my hip.
“Creepy.”
My jaw aches from clenching, but it’s the only thing I can do to keep my teeth from chattering. I’m wearing a few T-shirts, one long-sleeve, and my jacket. That’s it.
I’m tired, freezing, and though my phone’s at a hundred percent from charging in my bag, I’m at maybe twenty.
“We’re barely halfway,” I mutter, as Kael steadies his light over the graves. “And it’s freezing. I think—”
“Shh.” He bumps me with his blanket mound. “I heard something.”
“It’s probably—”
Snap. A crack knifes through the dark where he’s pointing, and my whole freezing body goes stiff.
“We’re scaring ourselves,” I say. “It’s just a squirrel. Checking out a cemetery at night is probably not a good idea. Come on.”
A high-pitched wail erupts, and we jump. Kael yelps and flings the blanket over my head, turning us into a panicked two-person tent before I can see what made the noise.
“Oh Jesus,” he says. “Oh Jesus.”
Our flashlights paint each other’s darting eyes under the blanket, the wail even louder in here. Then a chorus of dings cuts through it, and I start laughing.
“Cell service,” I say.
“What? What?”
I angle my screen toward him as the wildfire alert gives way to messages piling in. Under a blanket, in a graveyard, in the middle of nowhere, we tip our phones down to check the latest updates.
The fire isn’t contained, but it hasn’t crossed Philbrook Lake yet. It’s pushing west toward Jonesville instead, a valley now between us.
Kael doesn’t shove me out of his blanket shield, and I’m in no rush to leave. The fabric hangs to our calves, so my ankles are ten degrees colder than the rest of me.
Under it, Kael smells… good. Like me, there’s sweat and smoke and exhaustion, but underneath that, something brighter. Sun-warmed skin, pine, cold air, and the raw, electric musk of someone working hard to survive. It hits like a jolt, and makes me want to move, to explore, to take a risk.
Our legs press together, tangled in a shivering Y. We lean out just enough to scroll, and my waist and stomach burn where they’re lined up against his. Too lined up.
I shift back a few inches, not out of the blanket’s warmth, just out of Kael’s immediate orbit. Far enough that nothing… problematic is going to press against him.
“I’ll call Jenny,” I say, my voice wobbling.
He nods, eyes still locked on his phone.
There’s half a ring before Jenny’s voice cuts in. “Thank God. Where have you been?”
“We lost service,” I say. “We’re at Inskip Pioneer Cemetery. What’s going on?”
“Inskip Cemetery,” she repeats, slow and focused. “Okay. About seven hours from Paradise. Not bad.”
So we’re still doing this.
“Fire’s not coming your way. Yet,” she adds.
“And the rescue team?” I ask, letting sarcasm soak through.
“All the roads are closed,” she says. “I called every shop and number I could find, left messages, but they’ve probably evacuated. A few are volunteer firefighting or—”
“It’s fine,” I cut in. “It’s freezing, pitch dark, and fire notwithstanding, I’m not sure we should be off-road hiking. Any chance hunkering down makes more sense than stumbling through the woods?”
Kael nods furiously, whispering, “Lots of love on social… no SEAL Team Six.”
“I won’t sleep a wink,” Jenny says. “If we can find you a spot with reception, I can warn you if things turn.”
“Hold up, putting you on speaker,” I say, catching Kael watching me instead of his phone. “You said if we hunker down somewhere with reception, you’ll ping us if things get worse?”
“Right.”
“Godsend, Jenny!” Kael beams.
“Nice to meet you, Kael,” Jenny says. “Take care of my friend, okay? He might look tough, but he is not outdoorsy.”
“All pocketknife and map duties have fallen to me,” Kael reports. “But I’m not sure I’ve met this ‘tough guy’ you’re talking about.”
Jenny guffaws.
“Hey,” I protest, imagining her garage where Kael could be a podcast guest instead of the guy I’m freezing to death with. “Any chance there’s a bed and breakfast three steps from us? All I see is darkness.”
“Normally, being this pasty white would make me a human lighthouse,” Kael mutters, teeth practically chattering against my shoulder.
“But right now, I’m too cold to provide much of a steady glow.
What about the… Inskip Inn?” he asks, showing me a pin on his screen about thirty minutes away.
“No phone number, and it doesn’t exactly scream ‘open for business,’ but… ”
“Looks like the only thing around,” Jenny says.
“Will you stay on the phone with us?” Kael asks. “It’d be nice to talk to someone who isn’t a spreadsheet in human form.”
“Kael’s afraid of the dark,” I say.