Farther up the trail, where the sun pours its golden glow over mountain peaks, the forest thins out, reduced to spindly branches on stunted trunks. But here by the stream, the trees are dense and plump, jostling for elbow room. Exactly what Iris needs, Zahir thinks. Shelter. Rest.
Zahir helps Iris limp off the trail into the thicket. In a small heart-shaped clearing, they dump their packs in the dirt. Iris eases herself down to sit on hers. The delicate perfume of trailing arbutus, tiny white flowers sweet as orange blossoms, mingles with the earthy scents of the forest’s life cycle. It’s a good place to camp.
Iris rolls up her pant leg and examines her twisted ankle. It looks soft and doughy, pale except where a bruise is starting to bloom. Zahir moves closer, but Iris waves him away.
‘I’ve got it,’ she says, her tone razor-sharp.
He raises his hands in mock-defense, but worry clouds his mood. How is he going to carry her and their two packs all the way to the next town? Roseley lies at least two days away and that’s at a normal hiking pace.
‘You’re going to have to wait here.’ Zahir unrolls their double camping hammock and ties one end to a tree. ‘It might take a few days for me to get there and back.’
Iris grimaces and rubs her ankle. ‘Someone’s following us.’
The stream plinks and plunks along its rocky course, muting the sounds beyond their campsite. There’s nothing to see. Shadows and trees and more shadows.
He doesn’t believe her, hasn’t believed her all day, regardless of how often she repeats the words. ‘We’re safe here,’ he says, but she turns her face away with a snarl.
With the hammock set up, Zahir boils water from the stream for a meal of freeze-dried chicken and dumplings. She wraps her ankle and they eat without speaking.
In the morning, Zahir wakes alone in the hammock. The dewy air hangs thick as honey. Anxiety stabs him, but when he raises his head, Iris is sitting nearby, barefoot, her back to him. She turns and he sees she is holding something, a bouquet, grasses and wildflowers.
‘Where did you get those?’ Zahir asks.
‘My ankle feels a bit better.’
‘That’s good.’ Zahir crawls out of the hammock, starts laying things out for breakfast. ‘Did you collect those flowers?’
She looks at the bouquet as if she has just noticed it. ‘These? No.’
‘Then where did they come from?’ He struggles to keep frustration out of his voice.
She raises them toward the tree canopy like Lady Liberty’s torch. ‘I told you someone was following us.’
Marion Lougheed grew up in Canada, Benin, Belgium, and Germany. Her flash fiction was shortlisted for the Sunlight Press Flash Fiction Contest and longlisted for Furious Fiction. She won the Prime 53 Poem Summer Challenge and the Poem In Your Pocket Day Contest (League of Canadian Poets). Her flash pieces have been published by Guernica Editions (This Will Only Take a Minute: 100 Canadian Flashes, 2022), The Arcanist, and Black Hare Press, among others. She is editor-in-chief at Off Topic Publishing and lives a bit of a nomadic life. Find Marion on Twitter as @MarionLougheed and at www.mledits.com.
Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash.
I love this piece.
I love the movement in this piece and the questions left at the end. Well written and intriguing.