Chapter 16 Luke
LUKE
Sneaking back into the cabin after cleaning up at the spring, giggling as they stumbled into things in the dark interior, had done absolutely nothing to subdue the suspicions that Inga’s friend Nita was clearly still harboring about them.
Inga took the bunk above Luke’s and was perfectly well-behaved all night, but in the morning, Nita gave them knowing looks all through breakfast.
They enjoyed a leisurely and slow morning. After they ate, Nita took Jo-Jo down to the shore to splash in the shallow water as a seal, while Inga played with the baby griffins and Luke helped her clean up the cabin and stow things away.
His decision had been made overnight, and when he finally said, “I’m coming with you, you know,” he only got a quick sideways smile.
“I’d hoped so,” Inga admitted. She took his hand quickly in hers, squeezed it and let it go.
Working together, they set the cabin to rights, packing up the bedding in vermin-proof containers and the remaining nonperishable food in tight, sealed cans.
Inga laid out fire-starting materials for the next resident, cleaned the stove, and capped off the chimney.
After climbing back down, she held out the hammer to Luke.
“You took the board off the window, so you can do the honors when we’re ready to leave.”
Luke stood back to gaze at the clean interior of the cabin. It looked as if they’d never been there at all. He was aware of a strange twinge in his chest, something akin to homesickness. This was the first place in a long time that he had felt safe.
Nita arrived with a mostly naked Jo-Jo in the crook of her arm, and a wet and sandy Rogue bouncing alongside.
“Are we ready to go? Just let me get her into a clean diaper before we finish packing up. Let me tell you, it’s a lot easier to change a diaper on a surface that’s not moving up and down.
That’s assuming she’ll stay in it for more than five minutes,” she added.
“They don’t make diapers that will stay on a seal. ”
When Nita had finished getting Jo-Jo into a clean diaper and tucked in the car-seat-style carrier that she’d brought with her, they finished clearing the last of their things out of the cabin. Luke nailed the board over the window, and Inga locked the door.
“What about them?” he asked, turning to the griffins.
“They’re staying here,” Inga said promptly. She sounded sad but resolute. “They’re wild animals. They’ve been doing just fine on their own, hunting small rodents and fish. There’s no point in relocating them to Westerly Cove again. In fact, the neighbors probably wouldn’t thank me if I do.”
She went over to say goodbye, petting the young ones, who were now trying their stubby wings in short, gliding flights.
As they started down the path to the boat, Luke glanced back and noticed one of the babies—he thought it might be Cinnamon—scampering after them. Inga had to stop, pick it up and carry it back up to the top of the path, putting it firmly with the others.
“Are you sure they’re going to let us leave them behind?” he asked, amused, when Inga rejoined them and bent to pick up the pack she was carrying for Nita.
“They’re wild animals. They’ll get over it.”
As they stowed their supplies in the boat, one of the parents, the raccoon mix they had designated Pepper, circled overhead. Rogue bounced around, getting underfoot, and barked.
“Sit down,” Luke ordered him, trying to hand a cooler from the rickety dock to Inga without being knocked into the water.
Rogue plunked his shaggy butt in the bottom of the boat, but kept looking up at Pepper. The griffin circled and landed on the skiff’s stern, hissing at them.
“I don’t think your decision to leave is at all popular,” Luke told Inga.
“They’ll be fine,” Inga retorted, lashing down supplies. “They’ll survive without a steady influx of dropped pancakes and bread crumbs. In fact, they’ll probably be better off. All that junk can’t be good for them.”
“Have you told them that?” Luke pointed to the hill, where it looked like all four of the little griffins were headed down the path to the dock, some of them running and others gliding in short hops.
“Oh, come on!”
Inga dropped the strap she was using to lash down supplies in the boat, and Luke gave her a hand up to the dock and then watched her run up the path.
The baby griffins went wild as soon as they saw her, jumping up and down, flapping their wings.
One started flapping so hard it actually managed to fly to her shoulder, then nearly fell off, clinging halfway down her back by its claws and looking baffled.
“Good luck!” Luke called.
“Get up here and help me!”
Nita was laughing so hard she had to sit down in the boat. “I think you’re on your own, my friend.”
Inga threw her hands in the air and gave up.
She reached over her shoulder, got hold of the back end of the griffin and pulled it up—which had the incidental effect of yanking up her shirt and giving Luke a brief, tempting glimpse of her flexing, freckled back and a slash of pink underwear above the waistband of her jeans.
“Fine, you annoying, wretched creatures. Come on.”
She headed back down to the boat, with one of the “wretched creatures” on her shoulder and the others trooping behind her like rather ugly ducklings.
“If this causes any problems, I want you all to remember that you could have helped me and didn’t.” It was clear that Inga wasn’t truly angry; she had gone slightly pink, but her eyes were sparkling.
Luke helped her remove the griffin from her shoulder, Basil, and got nipped for his efforts.
They put the four babies in the bow, with a tarp arranged to shield them from the wind of the boat’s passage.
The parents both flew around during this process, squawking anxiously and getting Rogue riled up again, and finally swooped down to settle in with their offspring.
“This is starting to feel less like a boat and more like the circus clown car,” Nita laughed. “Are we ready to go?”
Inga scrambled up on the dock, which rocked wildly under her feet, and untied the mooring rope before climbing back into the bow. As she did, the part of the dock where she had been standing wobbled and gave way, the rotten boards collapsing into the water underneath.
Nita gave a cheer. “Nice timing!”
Inga pumped a fist in the air. Nita, at the steering console, began idling the boat slowly away from the remains of the dock.
“Guess we’re gonna have to fix that the next time we’re here,” Inga muttered.
As Nita steered the boat away from the shore, Luke noticed Inga gazing back at the dock and nudged her. “You okay?”
“Oh—yeah.” She tore her gaze away from it. “It’s not that important. I just wondered—oh, never mind.” She swiped her hair out of her face, the ends already curling and frizzy from salt spray. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
The ride was pleasant, the day cool but calm.
Luke wore a slicker that belonged to one of Nita’s relatives, slightly too small across the chest, with the hood up just in case the helicopter came back.
But they saw no sign of it. Nita handed off the driving duties to Inga, and she showed Luke how to steer.
The skiff’s handling was very simple, and although Luke had never piloted a boat before, he found himself enjoying it thoroughly.
“It’s a different experience when the sea is rough.” Nita was sitting in the stern seat with Jo-Jo. “You’d get a workout then. A little boat like this can easily flip over in high waves.”
She was bouncing Jo-Jo on her knee, while the baby looked around curiously.
Luke had expected Jo-Jo to be bored on the boat; he’d pictured a nightmare of all three adults having to constantly snatch her back from disaster.
But instead she seemed calmer and less overwhelmingly energetic than anywhere else.
The rolling of the waves really did seem to be soothing for her.
None of them were too worried about life vests, since they all had swimming shift forms that would handle a lot more capably in the water than a human encumbered by a flotation device.
Nita appeared confident that Jo-Jo would shift the minute she hit the water, if it came to that, but even if not, the baby was surrounded by aquatic adults.
The coast skimmed by, and all too soon, they approached the harbor.
For all his nervousness about going somewhere more public, Luke would never forget his first sight of Westerly Cove from the sea.
He had seen these pretty little coast towns before, or similar ones, but there was something utterly stunning about the view of the small many-colored houses as they motored into Westerly Cove’s horseshoe-shaped bay.
A picturesque red and white lighthouse stood on a point overlooking the cove.
Nita, at the helm again, motored deftly into the bay and turned off the engine as they approached the shore, allowing momentum to carry them forward until the hull ground gently on a long gravel beach with a number of other small boats. A larger set of docks accommodated commercial fishing boats.
Inga splashed into the edge of the water and pulled the boat further out.
She showed Luke how to tie the mooring rope, and gave him a nod of approval when he executed it on the first try.
Then she straightened and stretched, pressing her fists into her lower back in a way that made her breasts do truly unfair things under her sweater and windbreaker.
“The good thing is that my dad’s down the coast for a week or so with some fishing buddies. So we should have the house all to ours—”
“Inga!!” came a bellow down the beach.
“Oh no,” Inga said under her breath.
Seconds later, she was engulfed in a hug by an absolute bear of a man, wide and tall, silver-haired, pulling her close with such enthusiasm that Inga gave a faint “Oof!”