Footprints. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ to me, too. The first time I did it.”

      Annja frowned. “I thought you said you didn’t know how to do it. That’s why we went and saw your grandfather.”

      “What I said was I wasn’t skilled enough at leading someone else on a spirit track. I knew it would have to be you.”

      “You never mentioned that.”

      “Would you have believed me?”

      “Possibly.”

      Joey chuckled. “I guess maybe you would have.”

      They wound their way back down the trail. Annja’s legs knew the terrain by now and she was surprised at how relaxed she felt as she moved along. It was almost as if she was able to sense the flow of the land, to read it before she reached it and adjust her body accordingly. The result was she wasn’t nearly as exhausted this time.

      Joey led them back to the hill where he’d left Jenny. “Okay. Now what?”

      Annja glanced around. The last time she’d been there, she’d been out of her body and tuning into Jenny’s emotional state. But now, being there in the flesh, it didn’t seem possible to do what she’d done back at Dancing Deer’s home.

      “I don’t know.”

      “Annja.”

      Annja shook her head. “It doesn’t look familiar. I don’t know if I can do this again.”

      “Of course you can. You just need to stop thinking that it’s different now from how it was when you were in the chair. It’s not different. It’s the same. It’s all connected.”

      Annja closed her eyes. She tried to remember how she’d felt when she reached this point. She could feel her heartbeat increase as the waves of fear gripped her insides again. She was Jenny. She was feeling the approach of some kind of unseen danger. And then she was swept up.

      Running.

      Running.

      Through the trees and across the hills and the valleys. Branches whipped past her face. She could smell the wet pines, the dampness of the rain on the air. She could hear the breezes rustling the leaves and the deadfall. She could feel her feet on the slippery mud, but somehow kept her balance just the same.

      And still she could feel Jenny’s fear. She knew it now like it was her own. And she saw the darkness that surrounded Jenny.

      The cave.

      Annja opened her eyes and nearly fell over.

      She wasn’t by the pine boughs where Joey had left Jenny. She was somewhere else. Far away from where they’d been. Miles away, in fact.

      Joey stood nearby. He was smiling. “Hey.”

      “Hey, yourself. Where the hell are we?”

      Joey shrugged. “I don’t really know. This isn’t a part of the woods that I’ve explored before.”

      “I thought you knew everywhere.”

      “Nope. This is a lot of land. Parts of this place are almost inaccessible. Frankly, when you took off running, I was a bit concerned I’d lose you. If you’d kept up with me like that earlier, we might have found Jenny even faster.”

      “Funny guy. I don’t even remember moving.”

      Joey nodded. “Yeah, well, when you suddenly forget about keeping your body, mind and spirit together, crazy things can happen.”

      “I guess.”

      Joey glanced around. “This is some pretty steep terrain. You think Jenny’s around here somewhere?”

      “A cave,” Annja said. She could see the darkness. “I think she’s in a cave somewhere above us.”

      “We’re almost above the treeline as it is,” Joey said. “But these mountains and hills are packed with isolated areas that are almost impossible to get through. She could be in any one of them. Can you narrow it down some before we start poking our noses into every cave we come across?”

      “How would I do that?”

      Joey shrugged. “Close your eyes again.”

      “Okay.”

      “One thing.”

      Annja opened her eyes. “What?”

      “This time, try to consciously move a little slower, would you? You almost had me tired out back there.”

      Annja grinned. “All right.”

      She closed her eyes and tried to focus on the darkness. If Jenny was in a cave, they would need to know where it was.

      But instead of feeling like she could see the darkness, Annja found that she couldn’t concentrate on the pitch-black interior any longer. For some reason, it didn’t feel right.

      She opened her eyes.

      “Something wrong?”

      “I don’t know. I closed my eyes and tried to tune into Jenny again, but I don’t see any darkness. I’m trying to see the cave, but it’s not working for some reason.”

      “Weird,” Joey said.

      “Maybe I’m not doing it right?”

      “Maybe, but a lot of this stuff is just done by gut instinct. If something feels wrong, that usually means it is.”

      “So you think I’m doing it wrong.”

      “I didn’t say that. I just said if it feels wrong, then perhaps something has changed that we can’t see just yet.”

      “Like what?”

      Joey shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe Jenny’s not in a cave anymore.”

      “You think they moved her?”

      Joey frowned. “Did you say anything to her when you were spirit tracking?”

      “I called her name a couple of times.”

      “Yeah, anything else?”

      Annja frowned. “As a matter of fact, I think I told her to find a way out of the cave and that we’d find her.”

      “There ya go. She’s probably making her way back down to us even as we stand here.”

      Annja looked around. “Really?”

      “Why not?”

      “Well, I didn’t think she heard me.”

      “She probably didn’t hear you in the way that you would if we were speaking normally. But subconsciously she might have suddenly СКАЧАТЬ