Descending Star

CONVERGENCE

The UCLA camp had an early dinner and packed in before dusk, knowing that they would all be up again before midnight. Zoey had been eating all day, in small amounts, a near-constant activity. Even through her casual, ambling hike of the Loop Road, she had ignored Jacob's continual asperity and had kept her own mouth busy by nibbling.

At the campfire that afternoon, Penny and Amy had given her the rundown of the media outlets that were sending correspondents tomorrow morning. The topic didn't interest her. Drake groused that they should have made arrangements to record the climb. They could have put Portaledge camps on the Wall, at various cruxes. They could have rented drones and fitted them with cameras. They should have documented the climb for posterity, and also for proof. This last perplexed Zoey, but not for long.

Drake explained, "There are lines and bolts all the way up the route. If we don't record it, no one will believe the climb was unaided."

Zoey absently said to the campfire, "No one has to believe it but me."

She said goodnight to everyone at four in the afternoon and crawled into her tent to stare at the bright nylon ceiling and breathe. She slept some, but she was up constantly, to make nervous trips to the restroom. Everyone left her alone, when she did emerge– even Jacob, since he had gone back to the meadow to pace and fret.

By eight PM, Jacob had spent the last of his mosquito repellent, not that it did much good. In the past three hours he had called Ben Swan more than five times, always with no answer. The loser should have been here by now. Jacob didn't know who to blame for that, the loser or his girl. If Ben didn't show up, their friendship was over. Jacob made this resolution right around the time the count of welts from mosquito bites topped a hundred.

He called Leah Clearwater and actually got her. He heard her slapping her own skin, and he heard the clomping of her boots. He asked her where the hell she was, and she said big Sam Uley had them out hunting wolf.

"My dad, too," she muttered.

"What? Harry's in the woods?"

"And Jez, too. And Embry. His attitude is shittier than mine. Hates carrying the rifle they gave him. Says his shoulder hurts." She laughed at that– somehow she found it funny– and her laughter lapsed to nothing.

Jacob asked her what they'd given her for a rifle and she told him to grow up and get real. She had refused. But she still had to be out there, in the woods, moping in misery, overworked, underpaid and underloved, when she'd rather have been moping in bed. They weren't really hunting wolf, and they were only stumbling around in the woods with shoulder cannons for sake of appearances. Charlie Swan had turned up at Jake's house just as Harry had started organizing the hunt, and he'd come out of the house after a sit-down with Billy and deputized half the town of Forks.

"So yeah. Now we're hunting wolf. I love the irony. What the hell are you calling me about?"

"My girl. Zoey Martine. Her birthday is in less than four hours."

"Yeah. So what?"

"So she's going to do it. She's in her tent, meditating and humming mantras or whatever, and she's going to absolutely actually do it."

"So come home. I told you. That girl is poison."

Jacob wanted to remind Leah that the Quileutes were a small Tribe that valued strength. He wanted to tell her that this flax-haired dancer from Arizona was off-the-charts strong, a driven machine, more powerful and skilled than any man he'd ever met, and he was sure he could circumnavigate the world and never find her equal. And he was the heir apparent to the Tribe. He had a responsibility to promulgate their strength and ensure their continuation. This girl could enhance them. Improve them. He couldn't get into all of that with Leah.