When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [47]
Not a hawk. Not a turkey buzzard.
It was something, all right.
The girl with wings!
She was soaring high above us, like a majestic eagle, only better.
“Oh God,” Kit couldn’t stop repeating as he watched her fly in slow, wide circles above us. “She’s for real.”
Chapter 47
KIT WAS ALREADY in shock, and flat-out awe, and maybe even in denial at what he had seen. He and Frannie started after her—a young girl, who looked normal in almost every way, except that she had wings and she could fly.
She was flying, and she was up about five hundred feet above them.
They climbed the hills after her.
They crawled up rocky inclines at times.
And they quickly found out that the shortest distance between any two points is—to fly.
Kit stared up at the sheer face of the cliff and wondered how Frannie was able to find usable toeholds when he saw nothing but slick rock and possible death, or at least major broken bones. He had put his T-shirt back on, as if that would protect him if he fell.
He was no Neanderthal. It didn’t bother him when a woman did things better than he did, but this was getting a little ridiculous. Frannie wasn’t just in good shape—she was in great shape. She was nearly Olympic-quality at this climbing hill-and-dale-and-mountain thing.
He appreciated that she wasn’t rubbing it in too much. Actually, she was helpful and encouraging most of the time.
“Don’t look down,” she said to him. “Look at me.”
“I can do that,” he said. “I like doing that. Thanks for the tip. That actually helps some. Look at Frannie. Do as Frannie does. See? Frannie isn’t falling to her death. You shouldn’t either.”
He pulled himself up the ledge toward where she stood above him. His hand found a thick root and he grabbed it. His toe found a narrow crack and wedged in. He was doing okay.
Then he slipped.
He slid down several feet toward a rocky chasm. Oh no, Jesus no.
He grabbed at a whip of a tree, bent the sucker almost double.
It held, thank God.
“C’mon, L. L. Bean, you can do this,” Frannie called to him from above. “Just be careful. Don’t lose your focus.”
Panting, afraid of becoming a bleeding pile of flesh and shattered bones, he slowly inched his way back up again. That was the thing about Kit… he didn’t give up easily. He heaved himself over the lip of the rocky ledge. Normally, he’d have managed a snappy comeback, but he didn’t have enough wind left in him to answer her.
“What’d you just call me?” he gasped eventually.
“What do you mean?”
Kit achieved a crawling position, then stood up. He lurched over to where Frannie was sitting on a rock, massaging her toes. Nice toes, long and lean and very flexible.
“Why’d you call me ‘L. L. Bean’?”
She squinted up at him, shrugged her shoulders. “Your clothes, I guess. They’re brand-spanking-new, city boy. L. L. Bean–type.”
“You’re hurting my feelings.”
That cracked Frannie up. She bent at the waist and hugged her sides and laughed hard. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Kit looked at her and started laughing, which only compounded his wheezy, exhausted whoops into hysterics.
“It wasn’t that funny,” said Frannie, when she could finally speak again.
“I know,” he managed to say. “It wasn’t half that funny. But it is. Look at the two of us.”
Which sent them both into hysterical laughter again.
It was Frannie who recovered first. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. Then she hunted around in her pack, pulled out a first-aid kit, and tossed it to him.
“Your stomach. There’s blood on your shirt. Ooohh. I can’t stand the sight of blood,” she kidded.
He doused the abrasion on his belly with alcohol without wincing. Frannie watched him. A cool expression on her face. After he was finished with the alcohol, he said, “Ouch,” and grinned.
Kit looked around, searched the surrounding hills with his eyes. “Well, we sure didn’t catch up to her. She’s gone again.”
“I keep wondering who her parents are,” Frannie said. “Where the heck did she come from? Where does she live?”
There was no comment from Kit. Only dead silence.
Frannie stared hard at him.
“Wait