"You're safe," Daniel shouted from somewhere below me. "Push off and let go, and I'll catch you."
"I can't," I said. His voice sounded too far away--too far to fall. I couldn't look.
"It's just like jumping from the gate in the Garden of Angels." I panted into my shaking arms. "I almost killed myself then, too."
"And I caught you then, too." Daniel's voice seemed closer now. "Trust me."
"Okay."
I pushed off and fell. Daniel whipped his arms around my chest, stopping me before I hit the boulder-strewn ground. He pulled me tight against him.
I couldn't breathe.
"So what part of 'stay' did you not understand?" he whispered. His warm breath brushed down my neck like caressing lingers. Heat encircled my whole body.
"Well, since I'm not a golden retriever ..."
Daniel set me down gently. I turned toward him. My legs wobbled as I moved. His blue shirt and slacks were still spotless. Only his forearms, where he caught me, were smeared with mud.
"How did you ... ?"
But then I noticed what was in his hand. Small, brown, fuzzy, and all too familiar. One of James's Curious George slippers.
"Where did you find this?" I asked, snatching it out of his hand. Strangely, the slipper was almost completely clean, not caked with mud like my shoes from wandering in the forest.
"There," Daniel said. Pointing to a heap of decaying ferns between two boulders about twenty feet from where we stood. "I thought for sure ..." Daniel backed away, looking around at the ground as if searching for some kind of trail.
"James!" I shouted, my voice echoing through the ravine like hundreds of desperate cries.
"James, are you here?"
Daniel kept searching the ground. His face became rigid with frustration. I followed him as he crossed to the other side of the ravine, opposite from where I'd slid down. He crouched, spreading a few ferns with his hands, and inhaled deeply. "I thought for sure I was on the right trail."
"Like you followed his scent?" I asked.
Daniel tilted his head slightly as if listening. He shot straight up and spun around, staring back up at the ravine wall, about a hundred feet from where we stood now. Then I heard something, too. A faraway cry from somewhere back up on the ridge. The monkey slipper fell from my fingers. And my heart stopped beating as I watched something that looked like a little white ghost in the twilight toddle out from behind a boulder, and right toward the edge of the cliff. James!
"Gwa-cie!" he wailed with his arms outstretched to me.
"Stop!" I screamed. "James, stop!" But his little legs kept moving. "Gwa-cie, Gwa-cie!" Then Daniel was moving. Running across the ravine floor toward James--faster than I thought possible. James took another step, slipped in the mud, and toppled over the edge.
"James!" I shrieked as he fell like a limp doll.
Daniel dropped to all fours and leaped like a mountain lion off a boulder. He sailed into the air toward James--twenty feet high, at least. I watched in paralyzed amazement as he caught James in midair and wrapped him in his arms, simultaneously twisting until his back slammed with bone-breaking force into the jagged rocks of the ravine wall. In that split second I saw a look of pain rip through Daniel's face, but he clutched Baby James closer as they ricocheted off the wall and started to fall, twisting out of control, the last twenty feet.
"No!" I clamped my eyes shut and said the fastest prayer ever. I waited for the gruesome sounds of a skull-cracking impact. But instead, all I heard was the shifting of rocks and the crunch of a branch, like someone had jumped a mere few feet on top of it.
I opened my eyes and saw Daniel standing on the ground with Baby James clinging to his chest like a little wolverine. My mouth dropped open.
"Holy sh ...
THE WAY HOME
"Nice word to teach your little brother," Daniel said as I pulled James out of his arms. Baby James clapped his hands and repeated my expletive with his happy baby lisp. He patted my face with his icy hands. His jumper and his one Curious George slipper were caked with mud. His lips were a ghastly shade of blue, and he shivered in my arms. But thankfully, he seemed uninjured.
"What else did you expect me to say?" I hugged James close, hoping to share some of the panicked heat that had flashed through my body when I watched them fall. "How on earth? What on earth? That was a freaking miracle."
"Fweaking," James said.
"How did you do that?"
"Miracle," Daniel said with a shrug. He winced. That's when I noticed the bloody tear in his shirt across the back of his right shoulder. I remembered the look of pain on his face when he hit the ravine wall.
"You're hurt." I touched his arm. "Let me look at it."
"It's nothing," Daniel said, and turned away,
"No, it's not. And what you did wasn't nothing." I'd heard of people doing extraordinary things when pumped full of adrenaline--but I couldn't believe what I'd just seen, no matter what the circumstances. "Tell me how you caught him like that."
"Later. We need to go."
"No," I said. "I'm sick of everyone dodging my questions. Tell me what's going on."
"Gracie, James is freezing. He's going to get hypothermic if we don't get him home." Daniel grabbed my uninjured hand and pulled me to a patch of mud.
He pointed at some animal tracks. They obviously belonged to something large and powerful.
"These are fresh," Daniel said.
I remembered that strange animal howl. I hugged James even tighter.
"We need to get out of here." Daniel unbuttoned his long-sleeved oxford shirt and pulled it off, uncovering his faded Wolfsbane T-shirt underneath. He tied the two long oxford sleeves together at the cuffs.
"What are you doing?"
"Making a sling."
"I thought your shoulder wasn't--"
"It's not for me, it's for James." He made a couple more knots in his shirt. "If I wear him up front, it'll be easier for us to make a run for it." Daniel pulled his homemade sling over his shoulder and took James out of my arms. The baby squealed as Daniel situated him in the fabric folds, but sure enough, the shirt had made a perfect little seat for him to sit in against Daniel's chest. "I've been here before. This ravine curves around back toward your neighborhood." Daniel took my hand again.