Chapter 13 Arden
ARDEN
Arden liked Lexie in general, but she had never resented anyone like she resented Lexie in that moment.
Baz had been right there, warm and supportive—his hand almost touching hers, his voice low and serious, about to answer all her questions.
Arden was dying to know what he was about to say to her.
Since Lexie didn’t look like she was going away anytime soon, Arden jumped off the bunk and went to take the water off the fire.
“Why is this an emergency?” Arden asked. Sometimes it seemed to her that everyone treated Fern as if she was somehow simpleminded. “Fern is an adult. I think she knows the town better than any of you, because she’s always out exploring. That’s probably what she’s doing right now.”
“I know it sounds like I’m worrying over nothing.
Uh, can I come in?” Lexie hesitated just long enough for Arden’s reluctant nod, then ducked through the door, dripping all over the floorboards.
“You’re right that she’s probably fine. But she was supposed to meet up with me and Declan at his place because she wanted to charge some devices while the generator was running.
When she didn’t, I went over to her house and she’s not there.
If you don’t know where she is either, she might have gotten into some kind of trouble. ”
“Actually, I’m with Arden on this one, Lex,” Baz said, and Arden looked at him in surprise.
She had fully expected Baz to side with his cousin.
“Fern can take care of herself, and she really does know the town better than any of us. Even in the rain, she might have lost track of time picking flowers. You know what she’s like. ”
“I do know what she’s like, and I wouldn’t worry so much if the town wasn’t flooding.”
That did get Arden’s attention, and Baz’s too. “Flooding?” he asked. “Worse than before?”
“Okay, not badly, but when I was walking around looking for her, I noticed the low areas around Silver Creek are already underwater. It’s really high. And you must have noticed there’s water flowing down the middle of Main Street.”
“There’s what?” Arden asked. She looked at her floor, halfway expecting to see water welling up between the floorboards.
“That’s not flooding, that’s just because there’s no gutter and nowhere else for the water to go.”
“What do you think causes flooding? If Fern was somewhere on the other side of the creek before the rain started, she might not be able to get back. And we know the wild clans are out there, and we also know they don’t like us being here.”
Baz nodded. He turned to Arden and placed his hand on her arm. His touch was light, strong, and warm. “I’m sorry. I need to figure out where my cousin’s gone. I’ll be back for that cocoa afterwards.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m coming with you.” Arden reached for her rain poncho. “Fern is my friend too.” In fact, she didn’t add, Fern was probably the only real friend she had here, other than Baz. The idea of Fern being in trouble made her heart hurt.
Baz grabbed his jacket from beside the stove. “Show me where you’ve already searched, Lex.”
Arden followed them out into the rain, settling her pink-flowered rain poncho over her inside clothes. She couldn’t help noticing that out of all of them, she was the only one who seemed to have rainwear at all, though her shoes were immediately soaked as soon as she stepped outside.
She realized once she was out of the cabin that she could hear a strange new sound, a deep roar, distant but somehow ominous.
“Is that the creek?” she asked in disbelief.
“I’m afraid so,” Lexie said. Her freckled face was as serious as Arden had ever seen it. “I wouldn’t try wading it right now. I don’t think it’s too deep, but it’s really muddy and fast.”
“Stay with me,” Baz told Arden. She didn’t need to be told twice. She could tell this was no weather to go wandering off in. What had Fern been thinking?
But Arden could guess. The weather had been much nicer earlier, and although it had been evident that it was going to start raining at some point, there had been no warning of anything like this.
They turned the corner onto the main street, and Arden gasped aloud when she saw that the entire width of it was a shallow muddy flow of water.
“It wasn’t this bad earlier!” Baz exclaimed. They picked their way through puddles and mud to the boardwalk. “Where is this all coming from?”
“We’re on a mountain,” Lexie pointed out.
“It’s probably all channeled this way if it doesn’t run off in one of those little ravines.
It must be going somewhere, and the fact that the whole town isn’t washed away means that it probably doesn’t get too bad.
But we’re gonna have to think about drainage. ”
“I was already thinking about it earlier,” Baz said. “I just didn’t realize it was this urgent.”
A dark shape appeared from between two houses. Arden jumped, then realized it was Declan with a hood over his head. He was wearing a camo rain jacket—apparently the one person in the group who had thought to bring one.
“Fern wasn’t with Baz,” Lexie called. “Any luck?”
“Nope.” Declan strode swiftly across the water in the street, and Arden saw that it wasn’t deep enough to completely submerge his low-topped boots, but it was very muddy.
By the time he reached their side and stepped out on the wet boardwalk, his boots were caked with mud.
“I didn’t see any sign of her. One thing I do know, she’s been trying to find the wishing well everyone keeps going on about.
And it’s supposedly over by Silver Creek somewhere. ”
Baz cursed quietly. “I was afraid of that. Okay, everybody spread out. Lexie, you go upstream, Declan downstream, and Arden and I will take the middle section by the town. If anyone finds her, yell or something. Damn it, we gotta get cell service in this town soon.”
Lexie and Declan both stood looking at him.
“If you want to go somewhere else, do that,” Baz snapped. “I don’t care. Let’s just decide what quadrant of the creek we’re searching and get to it.”
Declan shrugged and went upstream, rather than downstream as instructed.
“We’ll meet at Fern’s place!” Baz called after him. To Lexie, he said, “Look, someone’s gotta be in charge.”
“I know,” Lexie said. She frowned at him. “Me, him, or you. We gotta hammer it out sooner or later. See you at Fern’s.”
With that, she slogged off through the mud and rain, headed downstream.
Baz groaned. “Like herding cats,” he said. He gave Arden a little jerk of his head and began walking. “You can go somewhere else if you like; you don’t have to stay with me. But I think it’s better for us to stay together.”
“Why not them?” Arden asked defensively. She wrapped her arms around herself. Even in the poncho, she was cold. She couldn’t imagine how Baz and his group were putting up with it; they were all soaked to the skin.
“Because you’re a human,” Baz said simply. “We can shift. If we get washed off our feet, our animals are strong swimmers.”
“Oh.” In truth, she had nearly forgotten that shifting came with some pretty big physical advantages. “What about Fern? Can’t she do that too? Or can she not shift? She told me she was a bear.”
“She can shift.” Baz jammed his hands into his pockets and looked at her through the rain. “You were right earlier when you pointed out that Fern is an adult and she can take care of herself. Probably a lot better than most people, because most people can’t shift into a grizzly bear.”
“Understatement,” Arden muttered. She tried to suppress a little shiver that snaked down her spine. She was safe with them, she reminded herself. Shifters were just regular people who turned into animals, not anything weird and scary and different.
“But Fern is ... Fern,” Baz went on. “I guess every friend group has the baby of the group, and Fern was always ours, even though technically, Declan and Maida are a few months younger. There’s just always been something kind of different about her.
We all have wanted to protect her ever since we were little kids. ”
“You know, that might be why she goes off on her own every chance she gets,” Arden said. “Maybe she doesn’t like that. Maybe she wants to figure out who she is without a bunch of big brothers and sisters hovering over her.”
It was the opposite of her own problem. But in some sense, it was related.
She didn’t really know who she was yet, because she had nearly been crushed by the weight of other people’s expectations.
In Fern’s case, it was more benign; they just wanted to protect her, not mold her into some sort of obedient knockoff version of themselves.
But it was similar.
“Maybe,” Baz began. Then he stopped walking with a low whistle. “Hoo-eee. Look at the creek!”
As they walked and chatted, Arden had been vaguely aware of the roar growing louder.
Now they stood facing an expanse of rushing brown water that was at least thirty or forty feet across.
The creek had completely filled the meadow surrounding it.
Somewhere under there was the original streambed and the bathing pool where Arden had enjoyed her refreshing dips.
But it was invisible beneath the roiling surface. The air smelled like rain and mud.
“You’re right,” Arden said. She had to pitch her voice louder to be heard over the floodwaters. “If Fern is on the other side, she couldn’t possibly get back.”
“You’re right too,” Baz pointed out. “As a grizzly bear, she could. But she might not try. If she went downstream, there’s a culvert at the road. She might cross there.”
“Lexie is searching downstream. In that case, they’ll find each other, maybe.” She looked at Baz curiously. “Do you have like ... extra sharp shifter senses? A sense of smell or something? Can you track her?”