Mother Wings Cabin

The wood had turned from fir to a dry pine forest open with sparse under brush. It was easy to walk through and hard to see the difference from one area to the other. The river kept Peter oriented. Cheyenne seemed to know where she was going. It was in the direction he wanted to go so he let her lead. He liked watching her. She knew how to track and how to walk softly through the wood leaving very little signature of being there. They didn’t talk unless out of need. “Hand me the rope.”he would say if he was helping dismantle a fence. Her major obsession. He knew that she was trying to save the animals from starvation. It was becoming more obvious that people were dying, after the quake, of some unknown cause. She gathered weeds and suggested he join her in drinking teas from them, “To keep strong and protected” she said.
He could see a cabin in the distance. No road to it only foot paths branching off the four directions from the circular clearing. A passion flower vine blossoming in an arch over the gate. Inside the fence a garden tidy and packed with blossoms of various heights. Foxglove, larkspur, poppies, dandelions and plantain. He thought weeds that look tended. . Pinks, orange, purple, yellow and reds, brightened the air around the cabin. He wondered if some of the weeds in the tea she had given him were hallucinogenic. Everything was so vivid and crisp. When Cheyenne opened the door of the cabin without knocking, she called in a sweet voice, “Mother Wing?”
Over her shoulder he saw a mural of wings that stretched across the breadth of the cabin. A wooden pine planked table that could easily sit eight people and had seven chairs around it (two at each end, three facing the door, two facing the wings) with a vase of fresh larkspur and calendula flowers sat in its center. “Maat”, he thought as he looked at the Mural. It had the colors of an Egyptian motif, royal blue, green, yellow and red out lined in black set in a shimmering gold. He assumed they were mosaic tiles upon closer look they had different stones embedded into the small tiles all placed in what seemed to have order and meaning. The meaning slipped by his conscious awareness but seemed to carry a scent, that lingered like a dream.
She set the rope and bolt cutter down and primed the hand pump over the kitchen sink. Cheyenne washed her face with the thick stream of water that started to flow after minutes of pumping. She turned around and smiled. The first time he had seen her smile. He sat down feeling the weight of their thirty mile treck. She showed him the pantry and the wood stove. Picked up a book that was laying on the table and walked outdoors. He thought she was going to the outhouse and then probably to get wood for cooking. He assumed she would cook.
After about a half hour he had eaten a can of lentil soup cold and started the fire he started to wonder where she was. When he got outside, he found a page out of a book…’Poems of Emily Dickenson’ . Underlined on the ripped page twenty two was
“I never hear the word “escape” Without a quicker blood.”
At the bottom of the page in green crayon“Tell the truth but tell it slant….See ya round cousin. Peace.”
She was gone. He heard some shouts in the woods. He saw three men in camofloge
approaching the cabin. Peter pocketed the page. He felt like eating it. “God they’re loud.” Peter thought.