Chapter 11

"Okay. C'mon big boy, work with me here." She lifted Sam's rather large frame, grasping under his arms. There was no way she was going to be able to pick him up, as awkward as that would have been. So, she decided to let his ungodly long legs drag on the ground. "Okay, not much further." She told herself, considering her traveling partner was a useful as a sack of potatoes. Getting him out of the cave was one thing. And to think, she had been grateful, after finding that the kids weren't in the cave, that Sam was.

The goblin's lair wasn't as large as she thought it would be. She only had to search for about 20 minutes before she found herself at a dead end. A dead end with a live Sam. He had the nerve to be unconscious, however. She would have preferred him conscious for so many reasons even if his solution spared him from the worst the cavern had to offer. He was just too big in her opinion. Dragging him now, she wished he had never hit that growth spurt. He had been a cute, half pint back then. Now she might as well have been dragging a dead cow around with her.

She might have been able to lift Dean into a fireman's carry on a good day, but she wouldn't have been able to sustain it for long. She couldn't carry either man the miles back to the car. Her body ached, more now that she was thinking about it and the considerations she needed to take into account.

They were miles and miles into the woods and at mid-day, nightfall would catch them before they made it out of there to the relative safety of Dean's car. "I swear to God..." She mumbled, "You're totally worthless here Sam."

It took much longer to drag Sam out of the cave than it did to find him. Fresh air and the promising light had Mae taking a relieved breath. She had to stop. All things being relative, she felt like they were far enough from the cave for safety purposes. Although, she and Dean has been ambushed a way back so the range for this particular goblin was pretty extensive.

She lay Sam down gently and took a seat on a nearby rock. After taking a drink from her canteen, she sighed. If it were from the fall, the exertion, or the fact that her adrenaline had worn off, she was exhausted already. Mae was also well aware that she and Sam were making an awful racket as she struggled to move him through the forest. With him in this position, she had left herself completely open to an attack.

But he was alive so that was a point in their favor. Why did this victory feel so much like a loss? She didn't know if or when the duende might come back. She wasn't even totally sure that there was just one. They were pretty sure they had only seen one but perhaps not. She didn't know if Dean found it. Hell, maybe he too had made a misstep and was laying at the bottom of a valley unconscious or worse.

They had come up with virtually no plan after they'd separated. She hoped they were both under the assumption that they would meet back at their original camp site. By her estimate, they were about 5 miles away. On her own, she might have made it back in 2 hours, given the terrain. But having to drag Sam, she'd be significantly slower. Then there was the question of water and she would very likely need to eat. They hadn't brought enough supplies for more than two, three days tops.

They had hiked in for the better part of the day, with few breaks during the hike. By the map, they were about 15 miles from the car. So, realistically, they were a day and a half from the car, from help, and from civilization. It didn't seem like much distance to cover but on foot and injured, it was. And even then, she remembered that Dean had the keys. In spite of everything, she chuckled at the notion that the man would probably haunt her if she hotwired his damn car.

Right then, she simply couldn't go farther. Very quickly, she threw down a ring of salt, hoping that would at least provide her and Sam some sort of protection and barrier. At that point, she was finally able to take a better look at Sam. In the cave, she had managed to only assess that he was still breaking but the fact that he was still unconscious was troubling.

For her perspective, he did not appear to have a spine injury and if he did, she had already committed to moving him and, in all honesty, a spinal injury was probably less of a risk than being caught in that cave. His breathing, despite her rather rough handling of him was even. His heart rate seemed normal. His pupillary response was normal, and he was responsive to the sharp pinch she gave to his trapezius, all good signs so far.

He looked as if he had put up a fight at some point during his misadventure too. Scrapes, bruises and dirt colored his features too. The head wound was of more concern. It was older. The blood had dried, sticking some of his dark brown hair to his forehead. Well, at least they would all look like a set Mae thought with some bitterness. He had wounds that would need cleaning and bandaging. Mostly he would just be sore from the bruising.

Her best guess now was that he was either hit over the head by something or, just as she had, took a tumble down some unsteady terrain and then was taken to the cave. In either event, it was unclear how or why he had left the camp without letting her or Dean know. Right then, she hoped the small lucky streak she was on would hold out long enough for Sam to come to and walk his own ass out of the forest. Sitting back on her heels, her gaze wandered back up the steep embankment. Before there had been little luck that she would make it back up to solid ground that way. But with 190 pounds of useless on her hands, she'd be taking the long way home.

She brushed a hand through Sam's floppy hair. "Ah kiddo… when the hell did, we all get so screwed up? I mean everything seems like it was stacked against us but wasn't there a time when it seemed like we might be okay?"

Part of her really hoped he would respond or that she would get an answer from anyone at all. "Maybe not. Dude, you so need to wake up. You're unreasonably big, you know, that right?"

Mae shoved a hand through her hair, she had stopped trying to control it and it was a messy mass of red, dirt and leaves now. Now seemed to be the time to prove she was the smart one, right? If she couldn't MacGyver her way out of this, she had lost her touch. Searching the area, she found two long branches and with her few supplies, Mae fashioned a stretcher of sorts. She would still have to drag it, but it would be much less strain on both her and Sam and would lend her slightly better mobility.

Mae sighed as she pulled the contraption over to the younger Winchester. She certainly had her fill of hauling that boy already. Still, she grabbed his arms first and pulled him on to the stretcher, then moved to capture his legs and situate him on the apparatus. "God damn you're heavy."

Having situated him now, she knelt next to him, going through her bag. Needing to occupy herself with something other hand her aching body, she tended to his wounds. She gasped slightly when his eyes popped open.

Sam came to, up and swinging. "Hey, hey! Calm down there." Mae's strong steady grip was on his arms. "It's just me."

Sam tried to blink the haze out of his mind until the redhead's face came into view. She looked like she'd had just as big an adventure as he did. She leaned over him, red hair a tangled mess and her face and clothes streaked with dirt and blood. It was the prettiest damn face he'd seen in days. "Mae?"

"Yeah."

"Thank God." He crushed her in a bone-bending hug.

"Dude-" She wheezed, "you need a shower." He laughed as Mae ran her hands through his shaggy hair playfully.

"You look like hell."

"Thank you for noticing."

"Where's Dean?"

Make shook her head. "I'm not entirely sure. Somewhere back there." She said gesturing behind them."

"What happened?"

"We were ambushed by one of those creepy fuckers and thought...well, for a lot of reason, thought we might have a better chance finding you. I headed this way and he was going to try to lure the duende and take care of it. I'm not sure where he is now or... we've got to find him now and if we run into that thing, we'll have to take it out. How did you end up here?"

He almost looked sheepish. "I should have just come back but I had to go to the bathroom, so I headed off away from camp and um, I thought I heard something. I wasn't sure what, so I explored a bit further. Then a bit further. And I guess in the dark, I got turned around until I took a header down a slope. I woke up a few times when I was...in that cave or whatever but...I don't remember what else."

"That is one fast goblin then.

She helped him into sitting position, stopping when he pressed his hand to his head. "Wait, no, there are more of them."

She grabbed the pen light that she kept in her first aid supplies from her bag again, checking his pupils as she spoke. "More of them? Maybe we've just run into the same one a few times."

"I don't know… I've been kinda passed out. But there were definitely more than one, I'd say four or five. I don't think I was just hallucinating that. You didn't see anything?"

Mae shook her head her hands still steadying him. He must have looked worse than she did. She batted his hand away as he moved to touch the wound on his head. "No. Shit." With a huff, Mae looked around, not sure if she should be worried or relieved that they were still alone. "So… I guess we've still got a job to do."

"I have a theory." He said

She looked skeptical. "I don't know that this is time for theories, Sam."

"So, you and Dean figured out how to stop it then?" It was amazing how many expressions she and his brother shared sometimes, he though as Mae tilted her head and admitted that she didn't know.

"Well, not exactly. When you went missing—"

"I think I know." He cut her off.

"Had some time to figure it out while you were unconscious did ya?" Her smile was teasing but eyes serious.

"Before that. I remember reading something about these duendes."

"Yeah, we read a shit ton of stuff and got nowhere."

"Mostly nowhere. There was one thing, about them not being goblins so much as spirits. They take physical form using the mud, dirt, soil, whatever." Sam corrected as he attempted to push himself up but found it a bit more difficult than he first thought.

"Spirits of what?" Mae's hands were on his back and chest, trying to make him take it easy.

"Unborn or unwanted children."

Mae sighed, shaking her head. "This forest is like walking limbo then?"

"Could be. Not that it helps us."

"Well, that might be good news. It does explain how they can move so fast. Besides, spirits we can handle."

"Without bodies to salt and burn?" Mae grinned, patting his leg before she stood. "Roll with me Sammy, I'll show you all kinds of crazy."

Call it paranoia, she thought, but she was thankful she had brought some 'emergency' supplies. "Are you sure this will work?" He asked over his shoulder

"Not even slightly but we don't have a better idea." Sam nodded and watched her light the fire. It lit up the cave, reminding him why he didn't want to come back in. They had gone back in because Mae though they could deal with spirits easier than a goblin, considering none of the materials they had gone over gave a real explanation on how to kill them.

He and Mae began to prepare the space for the exorcism she claimed to know. Sam had his doubts that this would work but he didn't have any other ideas. Salting and burning wouldn't work because they had no idea who's spirits these might be and asking around for every lost or abandoned baby… they didn't have the time or resources. Mae suggested this. The slender redhead had brought in the dead-fall wood and brush she had found along with juniper branches.

Since Sam had seen more of the duendes than she had, she had him gather what was more of the clumps of red mud, which they had assumed were remains but were probably closer to something they could use like a taglock. She cleared a circle using one of the juniper branches. As she worked, Sam noted that she fell into… well, he might have called it a trance but that seemed all too mystical for this. Maybe she was just falling into a rhythm, a pattern as she swept and chanted something quietly. He couldn't hear it well enough to understand it and he wasn't sure it was even English.

Before she had started clearing the space, they had also built a stone ring and stacked it with lumber and brush. It had been tiresome to work with only the dull glow of her flashlight and but when they finally lit the fire, it brought the cave into stark reality. Exorcisms weren't his thing. They'd taken care of a number of spirits over the years and that one demon he had his brother had banished on the plane but his experience with them was limited.

It seemed Mae had a better idea of what she was doing. Her supplies weren't foreign: war water, exorcism powder, bundles of dried herbs for fumigation and of course the mud piles Sam had been gathering in the cave. The woman was pretty heavy into the craft it seemed. There weren't a lot of other choices and they had of course dabbled themselves.

He had been 14 the last time he'd seen her. When she had come back to see Dean, it was nearly 5 years later, and he was off at college. It wasn't until now that he realized she wasn't just the skinny girl they'd spent their summers with. She was a full-grown woman and clearly a hunter in her own right. Whatever her connection to their father or her uncle didn't seem to tie her as they did his brother.

Mae caught his eyes as he watched her. "What?"

"Nothing." He replied meekly as he went back to the task of gathering as much of the duendes he could sort out.

"You have that 'Let's talk look.'"

For some reason, the woman reminded him a little too much of Dean, bristling against real communication yet not quite able to keep up the façade. Sam frowned. "No, I don't."

"Whatever man." She had given him his opening, hoping that if he took it the ritual would have cut him off before they got too deep into anything. "Why are you here?"

She looked at him skeptically over the flames she had been casting into. "I told you; I ate it down that slope, found you and then you got this wild hair about these things being spirits."

"I meant hunting."

She paused as if he'd started speaking in a foreign tongue. "Hunting? I am a hunter, just like you."

"I don't think either of us have to be."

"Well, listen, we can throw on some Edie Brickell, pour ourselves a glass of Chablis and weep about our tragic childhoods but right now, let's just kill these fuckers and get out of here, 'kay?"

While some might have been offended by her brusque comment, he was only reminded of why Dean loved her. And he smiled. "Okay, so how does this work." Mae raised an eyebrow. "Are you asking if we have to get naked and howl at the moon?" Sam offered a thin smile.

"Well, this is a little more earth mother than hunter."

Mae snorted. "You boy hunters are all the same. Not everything can be put to rest with the shot of a gun."

He laughed, maybe it was the head injury. "That's funny, coming from you."

"Ah well, the whole thing's an art, not a science. And it's a shot in the dark. We could have a whole bunch of pissed off tiny creatures in top hats on our hands in a few minutes."

Sam sighed but readied the sawed-off shot gun, knowing that they only had limited rock salt rounds and that might not work. He just had to keep them off Mae long enough to let her finish the exorcism. "I remember living in a world when phrases like 'pissed off tiny creatures in top hats' didn't come up."

The woman smiled now too as she threw a handful of powder on the fire, filling the cave with the scent of sage.

"Sounds like a boring world to me."