Voracious - Alice Henderson [14]
“What?” she asked, turning to follow his gaze.
Noah continued to stare in that direction. “Nothing. I thought I saw someone.”
“Out here?”
“Well,” he straightened up and looked back at her. “I’m traveling with someone else. He left camp this morning to go to a site higher up on the mountain. He’s a photographer—wanted to go get some sunset pictures. We’re supposed to meet back here in two days.”
She turned to regard the river, suddenly feeling scared and a long way from home. She thought about the icy water that had brought her there, shuddering at the memory. “I had just gone over Swiftcurrent Pass. The river just flooded so fast!” she said aloud. “I’d never seen anything like that before.” She watched it churn past now, overflowing its usual banks with roaring white turbulence.
“I know! I heard the boom and then bam! All this water and logs come tumbling down the mountainside. I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s a glacial lake up there,” he said, pointing at the snow-laden peak. “I think all this heat must have caused it to melt completely and break through its ice barrier.”
Madeline studied the glaciers on the peaks around her, their deep blue ice cracked in some places from the weight of accumulated layers. She loved glaciers, loved to see the deep black crevasses in the ice perched high on a precipice. But now she was afraid. Her brow knitted.
Noah saw it immediately. “Hey, don’t worry,” he said gently. “I’ve got plenty of food, plenty of water, and we’re going to hike out of here together.”
“Thank you for helping me,” she said.
His gaze was warm and genuine. “Of course,” he said. “I’m a knight, remember?”
“That’s right. Thank you.”
“Great. And if I’d just let you wander off, I’d never know how everything turned out. It’d be too much of a cliff-hanger.”
“Cliff-hanger?”
“Yeah,” he went on. “Something really serious happens and then cut! Straight to commercials, and they make you sit through all those cleaning supply ads with talking bathtubs and animated bald men appearing suddenly in your floor. I don’t know about you, but if my toilet suddenly grew eyes and started talking, I’d freak out!”
Madeline laughed out loud. “Well, no cliff-hanger here. I’d love your help.”
“Terrific,” he said. “Hungry?”
“Waterlogged.”
“Of course. Well, I’m going to make some pasta. Maybe the smell of it will entice you to eat. Freeze-dried backcountry food certainly does that to me. Yum! C’mon,” he added, gesturing over a little hill. “My camp’s just on the other side.”
At his camp stood a little purple and burgundy tent, a tremendous backpack with a cup and pan hanging off it, and a little Therm-a-Rest chair. Next to it lay a bear-safe food canister.
“Nice tent,” she said, though she was looking at the chair.
“Have a seat,” he offered, noticing her attention. “You must be beat.”
“I am,” she responded, went straight for the chair, and sat down. She always thought Therm-a-Rest chairs were the best, lightweight and compact—just two great cushions, really, with straps holding them together. And they were comfortable as anything. Self-inflating, too. She’d had one in her pack, a lovely blue one. The kind that doubled as a sleeping pad.
“I’ll probably never see mine again.”
He sat down on a boulder near her and began filling his tin cup with filtered water from one of his bottles. She looked at it questioningly, wondering if she could even get it down.
“How about some dry clothes?” he asked.
She looked at him appreciatively. “Can you spare any?”
“Certainly.” He went to his backpack and pulled out a bundle of clothes, a small towel, and a pair of Teva sandals. “You can change in the tent,” he offered.
She placed her water on the ground and stood up, taking the clothes from him. “This is great,” she said.
The tiny tent, a one-person backpacker’s tent, was so small she couldn’t even kneel but had to lie down to change. She peeled off her soaked clothes, toweled off with the little back-packer’s towel, and put on a warm, dry turtleneck. Fleece pants,