Two October 15, 2023
ON THE trail up the mountain, Elsie can’t keep up with Zander.
He’s got the build of a jogger, muscular calves under khaki shorts.
She finds herself continually glancing at his glutes and forces herself to look away.
Elsie used to consider herself fit, but she hasn’t been out hiking regularly since Marcus broke things off, or even before.
As a GIS analyst, she’s been glued to a chair in front of two screens all day for almost five years. “Can you hold up?” she calls out.
Zander glances over his shoulder and stops.
The raven that has been following them, flitting from arbutus lower on the trail to the Douglas fir above, lands on a tree over his head and peers down at them.
Raindrops still fall from branches, showering them both, though the morning rain ended shortly after they began their ascent.
They both dressed for wet weather, in rain gear.
Under his jacket, Zander’s T-shirt reads, Approach with caution. I’m going through a Saturn Return.
On reaching him, Elsie stops, panting, hands on knees.
“You okay?” he asks, grinning. He really has the most amazing smile, one that forms dimples in his cheeks.
She lifts her hand and wheezes for several breaths. “I’m good.” When the wheezing continues, she pulls out her inhaler, sucks in a puff.
“Maybe we should stop for an early lunch?”
“God, yes.” She collapses to the damp ground.
“I could use a break myself.” He rubs the back of his shin. “Cramps.”
So far, they’ve found four caches on this trail, each holding clues they used to work out the coordinates of the next.
Elsie traded trinket for trinket at each one, having come prepared: a travel-sized sunscreen for an equally small bottle of insect repellent.
One of her father’s promotional USB flash drives for a maple-leaf keychain.
An empty PEZ dispenser for a plastic horse.
Zander drops down beside her and begins to unload the contents of his backpack.
She was grateful when he offered to pack a picnic.
It seemed as serendipitous as his acceptance of her invitation, like he really wanted to spend time with her.
But now, as he lays the items on a large white fabric napkin, she sees they’re all rich and expensive specialty foods that Elsie would never eat even if she could afford to. Mostly cheese. Cheese.
He cuts a chunk of crumbling Gorgonzola, offers it to her. “Thanks,” she says, taking it from him, but then doesn’t eat it.
Zander pops his piece into his mouth. “Why does Bailey call you ‘Lizard’?” He’s got amber eyes, the oddest coloured irises she’s ever seen. They nearly match his ginger hair, his mustard-coloured jacket.
Elsie grunts as she considers her molding chunk of cheese. “Bailey just had to tell you that, didn’t she?”
Zander chews, grins.
“A riff off my name,” she says. “Elizabeth. E-lizard-breath. Bailey called me that when we were kids. And she won’t stop, even though I’ve asked her not to.” Multiple times.
“Your name’s Elizabeth?”
“Elsie for short.” (At least that’s what she currently calls herself.
Her mom called her Ellie, but after her mother’s death, she couldn’t bear to hear anyone else call her that.
Her dad is the only one who calls her Elizabeth, and mostly when he’s frustrated with her.
In high school and university, she tried on other variations of her name, hoping to find the right fit.
Eliza. Beth. Lizzy. Marcus called her Ziz.)
Zander opens a box of whole wheat crackers, offers it to her.
She takes a few, and when he turns away to pull out a bag of quartered oranges, Elsie chucks her bit of cheese down the trail.
A squirrel immediately bounces out of hiding to nab it, which makes Elsie wonder what other creatures might be watching them.
“Zander is short for Alexander, I guess,” she says.
He chooses a piece of orange before adding the bag to his lunch spread. “I never liked the name Alex.”
They eat. A comfortable silence stretches between them. It’s good to be out in the forest again. Elsie breathes in the woodland smells, moss and leaf litter, the earthy scent of the morning’s rain. All around, fall field crickets rub their wings together to attract mates.
Zander reaches into the cracker box. “Great news about Travis and Bailey, eh?” he says. “The wedding.”
“Bailey said you worked up a—what is it called? A synastry chart for them.” She pauses to take a drink of water from her bottle and puts the lid back on. “What did it suggest, for their future?”
Zander breaks off another piece of cheese. “I can’t say much. You know, privacy. But Travis and Bailey are a good match, compatible.”
It seems he’s right. Bailey’s never been happier.
But when Bailey and Travis first got together, Elsie couldn’t see it.
Up to that point, Bailey had dated suits: a lawyer, a real estate agent, an accountant, even a funeral director.
Travis is a logger’s son, more comfortable in the bush than in their father’s office.
He heads one of their dad’s field crews, hiking the forests with a GPS unit in hand. He still owns spike-soled caulk boots.
“So, what’s that about?” she asks, pointing at Zander’s T-shirt. Saturn and its rings. Approach with caution.
Zander wedges the cheese between two crackers.
“Saturn takes between twenty-seven and thirty years to return to the point in your chart where it was when you were born. Every time it does—in your late twenties, then again in your mid to late fifties and eighties—it brings with it a time of change as you move into a new stage in your life.” He puts together another cracker sandwich.
“We all face a lot of change during our Saturn return. I certainly am. But in your case, as I recall, it’s next level.
When I worked up your chart last year, I remember thinking it was crazy, like everything is going to happen all at once. ”
Great. “I’m entering a new stage? What kind of new stage?”
“Full adulthood.”
Right.
Elsie takes a slice of orange out of the bag. The pinkish flesh. A Cara Cara orange, then. “Do you really believe in that stuff?” she asks, pointing at his Saturn T-shirt.
Zander bites down on his little sandwich. “What? Astrology?” He chews for a moment. “I pretty much have to, don’t I? It’s how I make my living.”
“But astrology is just another kind of fortune-telling, right?”
She’s genuinely curious, but Zander laughs at the bluntness of her question. “You don’t have any trouble speaking your mind, do you?”
She feels a familiar twinge of hurt, guilt. “Sometimes things just pop out of my mouth,” she says. She’s trying to learn how to keep her thoughts to herself, but it’s often like trying to hold back a sneeze. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“No, I like it,” he says. “It’s refreshing.”
He likes it. She takes a bite of the orange. The sweet, surprising zing of flavour. He finds her refreshing.
Zander wipes the crumbs from his hands. “For me, astrology isn’t a matter of belief. It’s just a recognition of the connection we all have to the universe around us.”
“How so?”
He looks up at the patch of cloudy sky visible through the trees above them.
“On the most basic level, we go to sleep when it’s dark, wake when it’s light.
That’s a connection we have to the sun and to the earth, spinning on its axis.
As for our connection to the moon, research is now finding that there really is a link between lunar and manic-depressive cycles.
” He takes a sip of his water. “In any case, I use astrology to help my clients understand their lives, to gain perspective, to see that what happens to them isn’t just a series of random events, but part of something much bigger: the world, the solar system, the universe. ”
He looks so earnest. Endearingly so.
Elsie leans forward. “Yes, but isn’t it a stretch to think the position of the planets within the stars dictate our personality or influence the course of lives?”
Zander studies her face for a moment, then he points at the food. “You done?”
Elsie watches him pack up their lunch, waiting for him to say more.
But he doesn’t. The day-old stubble on his square chin, the flip of his ginger bangs.
His fingers are long, his nails clean and clipped square.
He has the hands of an artist or pianist. But there’s a slight tremble in his left hand. Is he nervous? Angry?
“I really didn’t mean to offend you,” she says.
“You didn’t.” He gathers the bags of food into his backpack. “I’ve just given up trying to explain astrology to those who aren’t into it.”
“I am interested,” Elsie says. (She’s interested in the way she’s curious about most things.)
He stands and shoulders his pack. “Maybe we’ll talk about it another time.”
She stands with him. “I understand there may be an increase in heart attacks, strokes and suicides associated with solar flares,” she says, trying to restart the conversation.
She points up at the raven now circling low overhead.
“And, of course, birds navigate using the earth’s magnetic field.
Coral spawns right after a full moon, and oysters open around a new moon.
And the first calendars were likely made by women who were keeping track of their menstruation cycles, which are generally the same length as the moon’s cycle. And—”
Zander laughs.
Elsie leans against the tree behind her. “Sorry,” she says. Bailey is always telling her she talks too much.
“No. Keep going. I like it.”
That’s something no one has ever said to Elsie. She stops talking anyway, not wanting to push her luck.
“What do you think?” he asks. “You want to keep going?” He holds up his phone, the geocache app they’ve been using. “We’re almost there.” The last cache on the hunt. “It is pretty steep, though. You up for it?”
“I kind of have to be,” she says, brushing off her backside and finding the stick of pitch there. “It’s the fifth anniversary of my mother’s death.”