The True One

Chapter 13 Part 1

Verity

We'd reached an impasse.

I'm not referring to the relationship between Alek and myself, though it had felt like we were on the verge of a standoff last night.

No.

We now faced a literal impasse, where our trail met a rockface rising at a nearly perpendicular angle from the ground. It stretched high into the morning mist, unscalable for all of us amateur hikers.

"What now?" asked Flora, checking Alek's map for the millionth time. "I swear, this is the way it says to go."

"This is the way Samuel Cleaver thought he had to go too," Alek answered. "But this is where the trail ended for him, as far as the historical record is concerned. Whether, off record, he made it further, we can't know for sure. But we do know that he and his team came back off the mountain in poor health, having picked up some sort of bacterial infection from a local stream. He was too weak to put up much of a fight when the sheriff showed up to arrest him. His team didn't even make it that far. They died on the trail."

"Wow, so many people in the Buckshot Barney legend end up dead at just the right point to keep things mysterious. Such an amazing coincidence." I might be keeping my wolf nature hidden inside me, but sarcastic Verity was out in full force.

"It was a rough existence back then." The vein in Alek's neck began to throb but he kept up his pleasant treasure hunt guide demeanor. "People died prematurely all the time."

"Not like now, when everyone lives to a ripe old age." A bunch of frowning faces greeted my words. Pity, annoyance, sadness. They all knew who in my life had been deprived of a long life. My mother's story was real, though; this one was a figment of Alek's imagination, or at the very least, an embellishment on the historical events for the sake of lining his pockets. Still, as someone who made up stories in the form of songs to sell to people, I suppose we weren't entirely different. And if I was going to give Alek a chance to prove himself, I could probably lower the snark a few notches.

"Sorry. Go on. I genuinely want to know what we're supposed to do next."

"Well," he traced the rockface in circular motions with his index finger, the one attached to the hand that had gripped me from behind and maneuvered me closer to him. This reminiscence softened my cynicism as well as my resolve. I'd enjoyed his hands on me more than I would ever admit to him.

"We could call it a day," he finally replied. "Go back home."

"What?" Flora looked like she might start crying.

"We're not giving up." I patted her shoulder for reassurance. "We're not going home until we've succeeded. So, Alek, tell us what we need to do next. Brush up on our Parkour? Put on our jetpacks so we can fly over this mountain? What?"

"No jetpack necessary. But we do need a bit of tech." He unclasped his backpack and fished out of it a foldable metal detector.

"Are you saying the treasure is right here?" my father asked. He looked down at the inconspicuous dirt path. "Are we standing on it?"

"If only it were that easy," Alek said. He turned to each of the members of our party, pausing for a moment before moving on. "Last chance to turn around."

"When we're this close?" Macy studied the detector. "Why would we do that?"

"Yeah, Alek," I said. "Why would we do that?"

"I'm just saying... this last bit might be treacherous if the stories I've heard can be believed. I won't take you unless you're one hundred percent in."