A/N: Wow, thanks for all the reviews! I really do appreciate them. I've tried to update faster this time.
Someone mentioned adoption, which is a totally valid point, so I thought I'd address it here. This doesn't bear directly on the story, so if you're not interested, feel free to skip to the chapter itself. Two main issues: First, adopting a child (especially a baby) isn't as easy to do as some people think. You have to go through a "home study" wherein a social worker or similar gets to pass judgement on your suitability as parents; you have to sign on with an agency, a lawyer or similar; depending on the type of adoption you're after (variations include country of origin, age of child, whether you want one the same race/ethnicity/colour as you, how old you are, open vs. closed adoption, public vs. private, among other factors), you might be on a waiting list for up to a decade (yes, seriously!) or you might have an adoption fall through at any point between the initial agreement and (depending on where you live) up to a year after the child is placed with you; the costs involved, especially for an overseas adoption, can be staggering. Second, any adoptive parent or advocate of adoption will tell you that "we couldn't have our own children" is not a good reason for deciding to adopt. It is a starting point for many adoptive parents, true, but in order for an infertile couple to be good, healthy parents to an adopted child, they really need to finish grieving the biological children they're not going to have. More to the point here, though, is that people in the midst of unsuccessful attempts to conceive aren't known for thinking rationally and logically about the issues. They want what everyone around them seems to have achieved so easily, and it seems terribly unfair that it isn't happening for them.
/soapbox
And now, back to our story ... :)
Chapter 9: Back Country, 25–28 July
They found the trail again more quickly than Numair had expected. His relief at this was short-lived, however: it soon occurred to him that, although they were safer on the trail, they were also far more likely to encounter other backpackers, who would certainly want to know what on earth two British tourists were doing with a cougar cub. That he and (especially) Daine were in fact better qualified than most to look after such a creature was, besides being difficult to document in these circumstances, not likely to matter much should someone decide to challenge them.
And then there was the matter of how to feed her. Already she had eaten and drunk her way through the rest of their powdered milk and sardines, and Numair was not at all sure what to suggest the next time she got hungry.
"Fish," Daine said, startlingly, as though she had been reading his thoughts. "Cougars will eat fish if game's scarce. And I'm not catching martens and things for you," she added sternly, peering down at Kitten. "Anything you can catch yourself you're welcome to, but there are limits."
"You do realize we haven't got a fishing permit," Numair pointed out. "If we're caught fishing in the Park without one—"
"Weren't you listening to Sandy and Jim? There are hardly any patrols in this part of the Park, and remember, we've not seen a single human being for nearly three days now. Besides," Daine went on, in her most matter-of-fact tone, "if we did meet a Park warden, chances are they'd be more exercised about her than about any fish. Have you any notion of how many rules we've broken already? Going off-trail – feeding wildlife – touching wildlife – we've brought wildlife into our tent, for goodness' sake."
"Not exactly brought," he disagreed. "But you do make a valid point about the fish. Not that we've got anything to fish with, of course."
"We have got dental floss and a sewing kit, though."
Numair's puzzlement must have shown in his face; Daine looked up at him, laughing, and said, "Don't tell me you never stole your mum's sewing-pins to make fishhooks when you were a lad?"
He shook his head. "I didn't have quite that sort of childhood," he reminded her. "But if you say it can be done …"
"You ought to have more faith in me," she scolded, still laughing. It was odd, he thought, how much she had laughed today. "Kitten believes me, don't you, Kit?" The young cougar opened her mouth in a feline grin.
Numair, feeling outnumbered, dropped back to fiddle with his bootlace. Kitten peered over Daine's shoulder and mewed at him, for all the world as though she were concerned he would be left behind.
By the time they stopped for the night, they were nearly two days behind their scheduled itinerary. "Which means we're not doing at all badly," Daine pointed out, "considering where we've been."
They were able to pitch camp in the usual way today; Kitten took up a station at the centre of events, watching in apparent fascination as Daine constructed the tent, laid out the bedrolls, and set up the water filter, while Numair put up the tarp and set up the stove. That done, he selected two stout trees, well apart, and strung a length of rope between them some four metres above the ground, then began searching the packs for supper ingredients. Daine extracted a small trowel from her rucksack and set off to dig the latrine pit; Kitten, wearing a curious expression, trotted after her.
When they returned, Numair was stirring together a batch of bannock. "Don't stir it too much," Daine reminded him, not for the first time. He frowned at her. "He starts thinking," she explained to Kitten, speaking just loudly enough for Numair to hear, "and then he gets distracted and keeps stirring and stirring, and then it bakes up hard as rocks."
"The world is full of critics," he sighed, thinking, with some satisfaction, At least it's not my turn to wash up.
Though the day had had been warm, the air cooled as evening fell, and the night was positively arctic. Outside, hoarfrost rimed leaves and twigs, blossomed whitely on the exposed surfaces of tent and tarp, furred the food bag and the ropes that held it off the ground and away from the trees. Inside their tent, Daine, Numair and Kitten drifted closer and closer to one another until, when the sun rose, they found themselves curled together in a heap in the centre of the tent. Daine woke with her head tucked under Numair's chin and Kitten purring loudly against her throat.
"Lonely, were you?" she inquired, yawning hugely.
They ate porridge for breakfast – even Kitten, to Daine's dismay. "You're meant to be a carnivore," she chided. "This is herbivore food."
"Let her be," counselled Numair. "She's got to eat something, and it's not as though we're loaded down with meat to feed her on. It's only for a few days, in any case."
After breakfast, when the dishes had been cleaned and the stove put away and Daine was filling in the latrine pit, Numair spread out the topo map and sat down to try to work out how much longer it would take them to reach the trailhead. At best, he calculated, they could save some time by getting an early start and thus arrive only a day and a half later than planned; it remained to be seen, however, whether they could regain, and keep up, their usual pace or whether, in fact, the new addition to their party would ultimately slow them down still more. In that event, this might turn into a very, very expensive trip: there were only three days between the expected end of their backpacking trip and their scheduled flight to Toronto, the tickets for which it would be impossible to change again if they were still out of mobile-phone range when the flight took off.
"What are you looking so gloomy about, love?" inquired Daine, who had come back without his noticing and was redistributing the food supplies into their two rucksacks.
Numair looked round, startled, and burst out laughing: while Daine was busy with the packing, Kitten had dragged one of the sleeping-bags out of the tent and was "hunting" it, stalking and clumsily pouncing whenever the breeze stirred the lightweight fabric of the shell.
"If you're after more breakfast," Daine told her – with some difficulty, as she was laughing so hard that she could scarcely draw breath – "I think you'd have better luck with something smaller."
Kitten left off her hunting practice and stalked, tail stiffly upraised, around to the opposite side of the tent, where she sat with her back to them, looking insulted.
Though they all tried their best to keep up a brisk pace, it was soon apparent that rather than making any headway against their timetable, they were falling farther behind. Daine wished heartily that there were no plane flight to Toronto to race toward; had they not been so worried about getting back in time, she thought, this might have been a truly idyllic trip.
When Kitten grew bored with being carried, Daine let her down to roam about on her own; the cub seemed delighted to have so much new territory to explore, racing ahead of them and making excursions to either side of the trail, then returning to flop at their feet, apparently exhausted. "Well, if you'd pace yourself better," Numair told her after one such display, impatience warring with amusement in his tone.
"She's a baby," Daine rebuked him, not for the first time. "She doesn't know how. I think it's your turn to carry her, by the by."
"My turn?"
She nodded, and Kitten, who had been sprawled on her back at Daine's feet, flipped herself upright and stood up on her hind legs, her front paws against Numair's trouser leg, and looked up at him expectantly.
"All right, all right," he grumbled, and crouched down to pick the cub up.
Daine set off again, trusting Numair to follow; when she glanced back after a moment, he was striding along in her wake, Kitten draped around his shoulders, and both of them were grinning.
They stopped for lunch shortly after noon, having covered some two-thirds of the expected distance. Daine ate her cheese and crackers and apple in silence, wishing there were more to eat or that she weren't so dreadfully hungry. When she had finished, she dug out the sewing kit from her pack and, using the still-shiny corkscrew on her battered Swiss Army knife, began bending pins into makeshift fishhooks.
"We're going to try a spot of illegal fishing, are we?" Numair inquired, noticing what she was doing.
"I don't see what choice we've got. We've only brought enough food for two people for one extra day, instead of which we've now got three people for who knows how many days—" she stopped, frowning. "Where is Kitten?"
Numair looked around, frowning too. Just as he seemed about to announce that he didn't know, the object of their concern padded out of the trees, looking smug and carrying something in her mouth. She came closer, and dropped the something in front of Daine: a young ground squirrel, very dead.
Daine swallowed. Once, then again.
"Well done, Kitten," she said after a moment, smiling at the cougar cub and scratching behind her ears. "Very well caught. Eat up, now."
To Numair she said, "That's something, any road. But I expect we'll still need to catch her some fish."
That evening they kept on as long as they could, stopping only when they began to lose the light. They set up camp in record time, and Daine put up a scant cupful of rice to boil on the stove and sent Numair and Kitten down to the creek to try their luck at catching some supper.
When they came back from their fishing expedition with the one modest rainbow trout Kitten had not devoured, gutted and cleaned and ready for the pan, their campsite at first appeared deserted. Kitten chirped uncertainly; reassuring her, Numair stood for a moment looking around, and quickly found what he had been looking for.
Daine sat cross-legged in the small needle-carpeted gap between two fir trees, her hair (which she had been brushing) falling round her shoulders like a curtain, and the forest birds and mammals came to pay their court. A chipmunk ran up her arm and perched on her shoulder; a marmot lumbered out of the undergrowth to put its head on her knee; a pair of waxwings fluttered and danced in front of her like jesters performing for their queen.
Numair thought she looked like some sort of sylvan goddess, bewitching and half-wild. He considered telling her so, but (smiling to himself) reflected that she would almost certainly laugh at him, and thought better of it.
Instead he sat silently and watched her, holding the drowsy Kitten in his arms, and when at length she said her last farewell and came to greet him, he pretended they had been dozing against a tree.
On Friday morning Daine shrugged into her bra, then adjusted the straps, again, so that it fit more comfortably. I knew this would happen, she thought, annoyed; too many dratted pancakes with syrup! She unrolled the cleaner of her two t-shirts and pulled it over her head.
It strained at the seams so that she feared for its structural integrity.
"Numair!" she called out the tent-flap, rather crossly, "What on earth did you wash my shirts in? I know this one fit the last time I wore it!"
"Cold water and laundry soap," he called back. "Not guilty!"
Grumbling, she crawled out of the tent and went in search of breakfast.
Soon after their departure their route took them to the confluence of Divide Creek and the Red Deer River, whence they turned west to follow the latter on a trail that, according to the Parks Canada map, was designated for the use of hikers and commercial trail-riding parties. They had briefly canvassed the idea of changing their route to eliminate the possibility of encountering a large party of people and horses; but in the end the considerable additional distance involved, coupled with existing worries over rations, had tipped the balance in favour of the original plan.
"I can always tell Kitten to run away and hide, if we should meet anyone," Daine had argued. "She'd probably be terrified of horses – they may not be predators, but they're big enough to squash her flat, after all. And it's so quiet out here, we'll be sure to hear if anyone's coming."
Periodically they tried out their mobiles, on the off chance that, somehow, there might be enough signal to enable them to let someone know they were alive and well but running late. The screens stubbornly continued to read NO SIGNAL.
"Just as well," Daine joked after one such attempt. "Whatever would we tell them?"
"We shall have to tell them something eventually," Numair pointed out reasonably.
"Aye," she agreed, "but why borrow trouble?"
That evening it fell to Numair to dig the latrine pit. He searched for some time for a suitable spot, far enough away from the water, the trail, and their camp. When he came back, Daine was sitting tailor-fashion on the grass, with the sleeping Kitten curled in her lap, scowling formidably.
"Is something the matter, vetkin?" he queried mildly.
"What?" she looked up, startled. "No – I'm only thinking ..."
"It looked painful."
"You are painful," she retorted.
"You weren't planning to tell me, then."
Daine appeared to be considering the matter. "I might do," she said at last. "But only if you're very, very good, and come and rub my back."
Shaking his head, he settled himself behind her and began to massage her shoulders.
When, after a few minutes, Daine remained silent, Numair leaned down to nuzzle her right ear.
"That's very distracting, you know," she complained.
"It was meant to be." He stroked long fingers down both sides of her neck and shoulders, and she shivered.
"I was thinking," she began, after a moment, "how much I'd like to stay out here."
Numair's fingers stilled.
Sensing his alarm, Daine went on hastily: "I don't mean forever. Just … a little longer. I wish we hadn't got to hurry back."
Relaxing, he wrapped gentle arms around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. "So do I," he said.
Saturday found them once again on the Red Deer River trail, making for the Red Deer Lakes. Mount McConnell rose grey and jagged to their right, and Mount Drummond, at the edge of the Drummond Glacier, loomed before them to the southwest.
"It's so beautiful," Daine sighed, as she hefted a plaintive Kitten after their latest water break. "So wild. Hard to believe someone could poach here. You'd think they'd be frozen with remorse and run home with their tails between their legs."
"It is hard to believe," Numair agreed, "irrespective of that appallingly mixed metaphor—"
He was about to go on, but changed his mind when both wife and cougar cub favoured him with reproachful glares. "It's hardly fair to gang up on me," he objected mildly, thinking, How on earth does she do that? "Not particularly prudent, either, as I'm carrying most of the food, and—" he looked pointedly at Kitten— "all the fishhooks."
"That was a perfectly serious statement," Daine retorted, "and it was hardly fair of you to mock my inferior rhetorical skill." The erudition of this remark was somewhat spoilt by the fact that she punctuated it by putting out her tongue at her husband.
"I'm sorry," said Numair. "You're quite right – it was unkind, and I apologize."
She looked taken aback, and mumbled, "'S'all right."
"It is beautiful," Numair said softly, bending to kiss her forehead. She smiled up at him; Kitten, not to be left out, climbed up onto Daine's shoulder and stretched her neck toward Numair until he took the hint and scratched her ears.
"'D'you know," Daine said meditatively, several minutes later, "it's the oddest thing. This weather, and all this—" she waved a hand at their picture-postcard surroundings— "I feel rather like singing."
Numair did his best to hide his smile. Daine had always been self-conscious – entirely without reason, in his view – about singing, and generally did so only when she was sure no one could hear her, or no one but Numair and the dogs and cats. "Sing, then," he suggested. "A marching song might be very useful. And Parks Canada recommend it, you know, to warn away bears."
This earned him a raised eyebrow: "I read the web site as well, you know."
But she did sing, after a silence so long he had begun to think self-consciousness had got the better of her. Her warm mezzo-soprano, husky and tentative at first, gained confidence as she forgot herself in the beauty of the day. The song she had chosen – oddly suited to their surroundings, Numair reflected, though meant for another continent in another time – was indeed perfect for marching to, and by the time Daine reached the chorus they were swinging along the trail hand in hand, singing at the top of their lungs:
Towering in gallant fame
Scotland my mountain hame
High may your proud standards
Gloriously wave!
Land of my high endeavour
Land of the shining river
Land of my heart forever
Scotland the brave!
Whether or not they managed to warn away any bears, they would never discover. They did, however, make sufficient noise that the dozen-strong trail-riding party that confronted them around the next turning took them utterly by surprise.