Wounded (a mystery and a sweet romance)

Wounded: Chapter 10

The baying of the hounds had faded into the distance, and Tara was wondering how much farther she needed to follow Malcolm before inquiring about a break. She thought his opinion of her had improved with her business help, but she had a hunch he had originally dismissed her as some ignorant city girl who would be useless in a setting that required self-sufficiency skills. That wasn’t entirely untrue, but she could at least hike up the side of the mountain without whining. Even if it was a rather steep mountain with a lack of anything except deer trails clogged with blackberry brambles that liked to scrape and claw at one’s clothing...

She remembered that Malcolm was shirtless and kept her mouth shut. She was lucky enough to be wearing sneakers instead of the sandals she had almost selected for dinner, though she was wishing—she grunted as her toe caught another rock—she had grabbed hiking boots.

“This contact of yours we’re meeting,” Tara said, “is he part goat?”

It was the first thing either of them had said beyond, “You all right?” and, “Yeah,” since leaving the eco village. They had been running as often as walking, and Tara had shifted from holding Malcolm’s hand—all the romance had gone right out of it when they had both started wiping sweat from their palms—to hanging onto the back of his belt. He slowed down, perhaps reminded that she was back there.

“He does have a tuft of a beard,” Malcolm said, “and I caught him rubbing himself against a tree once.”

“Er, are we on the equivalent of a second date now? Where the crude humor comes in?”

“What?”

“Sorry, I thought we’d devolved into dendrophilia jokes.”

“Mountain goats molt by rubbing against rocks and trees,” Malcolm said dryly.

“Ah.” Her attempt to not come across as an ignorant city girl wasn’t going well. “So your friend was molting?”

“Scratching an itch, he said. He doesn’t bathe often, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he had fleas.”

“And why—” Tara hissed as thorny brambles scraped across her neck. “Why are we hoping to talk to him?”

“He’s been picking in this area a lot longer than I have, and he has more local contacts. If someone’s paying for something exotic, he’ll have heard about it.”

“Something exotic such as Fomi-something Official... officion...”

“Fomitopsis officinalis,” Malcolm said. “I knew you read my email.”

“Yes, but I didn’t get a picture of it to load up. It was taking forever, and I got distracted by...” Maybe this wasn’t the best time to tell him that she had rewritten his blog post. “It was taking forever. What’s it look like?”

“A big cylindrical bracket fungus that grows on the sides of coniferous trees. There’s a picture on my tablet.”

“On the sides of trees? That would explain why I didn’t notice any mushrooms on the ground.”

“Yes, your copse there had numerous specimens. It’s rare to find even one any more.”

“That’s what the email said.” Seeing a chance for a break, Tara added, “Why don’t you stop and take a look at it? I haven’t heard the dogs for a while.”

“It’s not much farther to the contact point.”

“Listen, Malcolm,” Tara said, forgetting her no-whining vow, “if we’re going to scramble all over mountains together, I need you to interpret my thinly veiled attempts to call for a rest break.”