Chapter Ten

The faint sound of a woman screaming filtered through the trees just as Felix and Ari were about to enter Arthur’s little cottage.  Felix’s heart skipped a beat as recognition hit him. “That’s Kendra!”

“How do you know?” Ari asked with a scowl as she attempted to pull him through the door.  “It’s probably a wild animal that sounds human when it screeches.  Remember,  their different here.”

“That was a human scream,” he protested.

“What’s the matter?” Olga asked as she walked into the living room with the baby in her arms to find Felix resisting Ari’s attempts to pull him inside.

“Kendra just screamed,” he said with urgency.

“What?” Olga barked with concern as she moved closer to them. “How do you know? Where is she?”

Ari glowered at Felix as she silently dared him to admit to his aunt that he’d play voyeur while Kendra and Rex were in the throes of passion.  To her surprise, he did just that.

Olga closed her eyes while she listened to what her nephew had to say.  She’d been aware of his attraction to Kendra for most of their lives, but she hadn’t thought it serious enough to impair his marriage like it was apparently threatening to do. 

She heaved a sigh of regret.  Perhaps she’d done wrong in not telling them the truth about their relationship to each other.  Kendra was indeed her blood niece, but Felix and Rupert shared no blood with them.  They were  both children who’d been adopted by Olga’s siblings in their infancy.  They were  related by law, but not by blood.  She’d withheld this truth from them for a variety of reasons; the main one being her desire to protect Kendra from Rupert.  He’d showed aggression at an early age and she worried about having him and Kendra being isolated like they were. Rightfully so, since he’d tried to force himself upon her while thinking them blood relatives.  She could only imagine what might have occurred had he known the truth. 

Withholding the truth from Rupert was the right thing to do, but was it the same in Felix’s case? She moaned inwardly.  At this point, it was water under the bridge.  Felix was married to Ari and Kendra was married to Rex.  There was no sense in confessing such a secret at this point and time.  It was far too late. 

She studied Ari during the last part of Felix’s explanation of why he was certain that it was Kendra’s screams that he’d heard.  It was clear that the girl wanted no part of saving her husband’s cousin.  Tension and animosity of this kind was never good; especially at a time when solidarity was of the utmost importance. Hopefully, Felix would move through this phase before his marriage to Ari was damaged beyond repair and the dynamics of the family unit would return to normal.

“Do you remember where you saw them?” Olga asked.  When he nodded, she grabbed a bow and quiver that was fully stocked with arrows. “Ari is expecting and must be tired.  I’ll go with you to check things out.”

“I’m fine,” Ari protested.

Olga’s eyes bore into the younger woman’s.  “You don’t look fine.  It’s best you lie down while we check things out. I wouldn’t want to risk anything happening to that child in your belly.”

Hearing his aunt’s words, Felix gasped and urged his wife to please cooperate and take a rest.  Then, after assuring her that they’d be as quick as possible, he grabbed a bow and quiver for himself and headed off in the direction they’d last seen Kendra and Rex.

Even at her advanced age, Olga was in fine physical condition.  Keeping up with her under normal circumstances took  strength and stamina.  Felix’s club foot didn’t help matters any.

“Do you think they ran into a beast that they couldn’t handle?”  he managed to say as he struggled to keep the pace.

Her thoughts had been bouncing from worry about what could have happened to her niece to concern about her nephew’s young and faltering marriage and his feelings for the wrong woman so it took her a moment to realize that Felix was struggling to keep up with her.  Feeling guilty about forgetting his handicap, she quickly slowed her pace.

“They’re both such adept hunters,” she mused. “I can see if it was just one being caught unawares by a beast, but, with the two of them together, it makes no sense.”

Felix’s brow knit together. “How close did Arthur say we were from Center Land?  Do you think they were taken by those people?”

Olga pursed her lips together. “You don’t trust them either, I see.”

“I can’t say why,”  he said.   “I mean… Ari’s a huge supporter of them and she was raised there.  It’s just that… well… something feels off about that place.”

“Like the fact that they take children who can’t cut the mustard off to a place that Ari has no idea where?  Or the fact that the girl never once stepped beyond their walls?”  she asked.

“It’s that and then something else,”  he said with a shrug.  “Call it a gut feeling.”

“I pray to the gods that your gut is wrong, son, but I don’t think it is,”  Olga said as she grabbed a bolder to help pull herself up the path faster.  “We’re supposed to go after Eugene tomorrow.  I hope whatever’s happening doesn’t prevent that.  I worry about him being there for so long.”

“If he’s even there,” Felix blurted as he strained to pull himself up after his aunt with the same boulder. “There is a path we could have followed, you know.”

Olga shrugged. “This is a more direct route.”  Then, as she continued onward, she said over her shoulder, “What do you mean if he’s still there?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “It just came out.”

They walked in silence for the rest of the way until they reached the small clearing where he’d spied on Kendra and Rex.   Rex’s clothes lay where he’d tossed them during their love making, but there was no sign of either him or Kendra.

Although he wasn’t as adept a hunter as Kendra, Felix possessed a few skills of decent measure.  One of them being tracking.   After inspecting the ground around the clothes, he sucked in air.  “It looks like there were at least a dozen people here. Five were carrying a load.  From what I can tell, four kept an even pace, so I’m thinking they were all carrying the same load and then one was on his own.”

“They were kidnapped?” Olga gasped as she gathered Rex’s clothes and hugged them close to her chest. “We need to get to Arthur and see what he thinks.  If it’s Center Land, I’m not waiting until tomorrow to start out.”