“Millie? Millie? Oh, no! My sister fell into the ravine! Help! Help!” someone yells. Damn fool scares a thousand birds into flight land and, of course, the butterfly inches from my clutches. “Help! Somebody, please help!”
With a sigh befitting a teenage girl, or my pouting socialite fiancé, I pack up. One spongy moth is one less hazard for the forest and one step closer to ecological stability. Oh, but how I wanted to track the gorgeous monarch! As I gingerly make my way to the screaming buffoon, I pass dozens of monarchs. Each one pulls my smile wider. Their summer migration is in full swing, and I’m honored to be here with the butterflies…despite the humans who scare them.
“Why are you yelling? Don’t you realize there isn’t a soul for miles?” I yell over the man’s frantic screams. He’s shorter than me but built like a rugby player. His thick fingers smooth the brown hair from his forehead to reveal brown eyes pulled round with panic.
“It’s my sister,” he all but shrieks. His clean clothes and sparkling white teeth rule out he’s a homeless vagrant trying to set up camp in the forest. Part of my adjacent position with Winged Wildlife is to call the police when I find a camp. “She’s fallen into the ravine! We must get her out! What if she’s hurt”
Spread eagle and facedown in the creek bed is a brunette lady. If it weren’t for her raving brother’s pointing, I wouldn’t have seen her. Her dark chestnut hair and tanned limbs blend in with the muddy ground. If it weren’t for her outfit, I wouldn’t have found her. She wears a short dress made of black feathers…and black high heels?
“No wonder she fell in,” I say with an eye roll. “Who wears stilettos on a hike?”
“My sister’s a little extra,” he mutters before turning to me. “I surprised her with a picnic in the woods. She expected a fancy restaurant.”
No picnic basket. No blanket. In fact, he carries nothing for camping, or picnicking. The “sister” doesn’t even carry a purse. I smell a trap. These two are probably thieves who want to steal my wallet—which I left in my truck—or my whole truck. I crouch down as if looking closer at the sister, whose wavy hair shimmers with each breath she takes. In reality, I’m searching the brother for a handgun or pocket knife. No weapons. They must be long-game con artists who hope to pin her fake fall on me, so they can sue for “pain” from an imaginary injury. If I’m not careful, I’ll support them financially for life.
I hate people.
“She’s breathing but not moving. I suspect a spinal injury. Here, let me get my cell phone from my backpack—”
“You can’t diagnose a spinal injury from here. Won’t you help me lift her from the creek bed? I’m disabled, or I’d climbdown there myself.” He leans on a thick walking stick that is too rough to be considered a homemade cane. The bark-coated branch is too large to fit comfortably in his palm. Knobs and snapped offshoots rub his ‘bad leg’ as he paces. If he were truly injured, wouldn’t the constant bumping hurt? It’d annoy the hell out of me, and I’m fit as a fiddle. The couple doesn’t have health insurance. I bet my life on it. He must have fashioned a cane out of a branch or doesn’t need walking assistance at all. Either is evidence that I’m stuck in a trap.
“Nope, we need EMS to rule out a spinal or neck injury before I’m doing anything. You’re not suing me when she wakes up unable to use her legs. That’s on you,” I grouse, digging through my backpack. I rummage around notebooks, specimen jars, extra clothes, pill bottles, and hundreds of pens for my damn phone.
“If she’s paralyzed, would she be able to move?”
The woman blows a giant hole in my con artist theory by shifting her head and groaning. She raises a tiny hand to the back of her head and embeds her fingers in her thick hair. The wiggling of her hips lifts the hem of her dress, but the feathers on the back don’t move. If the feathers were part of the dress, shouldn’t they shift too? I guess it isn’t strange to wear a feathered cape when you also traipse around the muddy landscape in sky-high hooker heels.
“I’ll be damned,” I murmur. The ravine is about twelve feet down, so the fall wasn’t life-threatening. But she’s one tough lady if she gets back up with no broken bones. Why can’t I take my eyes off the feathers on her back? Are they attached to elastic bands around her arms like wings or clasped under her chin to the furry collar she wears? Why am I so fascinated? Something itches the back of my mind.
Maybe I’m the one who needs EMS to check their head because I swear, she has wings.
“We need a closer look,” he says and then adds in a shout, “We’re coming, Mills!”
For the first time, I agree with the “brother.” I must investigate the winged lady with outrageous style and wild hair. I abandon the search for my elusive phone. She keeps her eyes closed over her button nose. Ugh, I’m a sucker for delicate facial features like the twitchy nose of a witchy mom of my favorite black-and-white TV show. Too bad this lady is most likely a criminal…and I’m engaged to Amber’s pointy, pouty face. My feet carry me halfway down the cliff face before they lose purchase. I glide as if riding a snowboard until I’m at her side.
“I can’t climb,” the stranger calls after me. He sleds down a muddy patch on his butt. “Lame leg from a car accident, you see? Thanks for your help.”
“Matthew? Matthew, is that you? Don’t tweak your knee. I’ll be right as rain,” the lady whimpers with a charming, Appalachian twang. “Oh my, my dress has ridden up—halfway to Canada! Can you fix it?”
“Oh yeah, ask the complete and total stranger to—omf!” My retort is bludgeoned from my mouth when Matthew’s stick cracks against my head. The thumps of my body falling into the ravine blend with the snaps of twigs to sing the song of my doom. They aren’t thieves. They’re kidnappers and most likely murderers.
A Louisville Slugger drops the ground inches from my head. Blood in the shape of my blockhead mars the end. Matthew’s cane was as thick as my waist because it hid a weapon. Oldest trick in the book—like hiding a nail file in a cake on the way to visit a jailbird—and brilliant Dr. Horus Mills fellfor it. Pain wigwags from my ear to my elbow on my frayed nerves.
We may need paramedics after all. The world tilts like it’s churning in a washing machine. I choke with vomit as my digestive system cries in distress. Those feathers lured me into my folly and now have bile-colored puke dots, thanks to me.
“You work at the hospital. Do you know many paramedics…who would fix this stranger without sending us to jail?” The lady asks her accomplice, pretending she cares about my welfare. I wish she didn’t have an accent I love. “Don’t worry, baby, we weren’t coming after you. You’re just a bird caught in the propellor blades.”
A winged lady just called me a bird…
She rolls to my side and rubs circles on my back. The nurturing caress calms my gag reflex and quiets the urgency in my belly. She gathers me into her embrace. My arm dangles from my injured shoulder, but my nervous system doesn’t register the pain anymore. It’s shut up shop for the duration. I lay my cheek on her generous cleavage. As she cuddles my head, my back spasms relax from violent heaves to rolling waves. Is she humming? As delicate as a snake’s rattle with cricket chirps every few beats, her strange song lulls my mind to stop questioning her and trust…
Trust the con artists who tricked me into climbing into a creek bed, without my phone, and bashed me on the back of the head. Yes, trust the humming beauty with a tiny nose between two glowing, red eyes…
Chapter 3
Millie May
“Eew, eww, eww,” I whimper as mud soaks into my black sundress and hair. The cool gloop sticks to my cheeks and forehead. I can’t believe women pay for mud masks. The urge to flick the mess from my face twitches in my fingers. If I lift my arms, my wings may slide from where I tucked them against my dress. With the shadows of the forest canopy, the stranger should assume they are part of an elaborate outfit, but I can’t call his attention to them by moving my elbows.
