"I'll say." Kayla liked to have the last word. I decided to let it pass.
She bent to dig around on the floor and came up with a crinkled paper sack. "Want some teriyaki seaweed jerky?" she asked.
"No, thank you," I said. "Could you pass me the dried buffalo strips?"
"Sorry, but I don't touch dead things. Get it yourself." She arranged her earphones, turned on her CD player, and mouthed the words to Ricky Martin's latest hit.
The counselor had suggested that when I was angry I count to ten before speaking. I counted to fifty. That helped a lot. Despite our differences, all I wanted was a nice mother-daughter weekend together. Outdoors, communing with nature. Getting in touch with the warrior within. While Kayla ate her trendy vegan diet, the rest of us would dig roots, pick berries, hunt animals. We would come together for dessert. We had two diet rules: 1) Unlimited chocolates and 2) Everyone eats what they kill. Rule one built community. Rule two protected our offspring when patience ran thin.
Kayla didn't believe me, but I was trying. As a concession to civilization and my easily grossed-out teen, I'd brought plenty of dental floss so she wouldn't have to see her mother with sinew hanging from her teeth. Still, I had my limits; Kayla would have to learn to accept them.
She flipped down the mirror to apply lipstick. I heard the unmistakable sound of a mister as she sprayed herself with yet more Flower Power. My eyes watered. Then she did her nails. I rolled down the window and tried to focus on nature, which was harder than it should have been, despite our being a hundred miles from the nearest town.
Finally, we arrived at the retreat. A narrow gravel road led up a hill to the grassy meadow in the forest where we would sleep a dozen to a teepee. Twelve teepees were already set up, their tanned hide walls stitched together with gut and painted with the stories of our exploits over the years. There were many images of women spearing animals. One picture story depicted the time Mavis shot a man with her crossbow. He should have known better than to wear brown in the woods the weekend of our retreat.
In the center of the circle of teepees was a fire circle. Gladys Badger Woman was already hauling wood in for the fire we'd need during the drumming we'd be doing later tonight. She had mighty thews and a big axe.
Other SUVs and ATVs were parked beside teepees while women offloaded weaponry, toilet paper, and auxiliary mail. The air was alive with jingling, jangling, clanking, and greetings.
Our meetings would be held in the lodge, a river-rock building just a short hike up the trail. To the left of the lodge, a flagstone deck held a stone altar and overlooked dry Starving Woman Creek. Other communal buildings were tucked further into the forest beyond the lodge.
I parked beside the executive teepee to unload; Kayla scampered out to explore the rock cave in the nearby woods.
Three years ago, she'd been enthusiastic about coming on a Women Warriors retreat with me. She'd had the time of her life here. No whining then about what to save and what not to eat. I had a Polaroid of her in the bottom drawer of my desk at work. In the picture, she held up a half-cooked rabbit on a spit, and her mouth was smeared with animal fat. She wore the biggest smile I'd ever seen on her face.
You'd never catch her smiling at me like that now.
"First workshop starts in three hours," I called after her.
"Oh goody, arts and crafts. I can hardly wait."
"Force yourself," I said.
There were ten girls enrolled in the Teen Warriors program. The applied arts class was held in a lean-to constructed of sharpened bones and animal hides that opened to the front. It was a rustic look that practically screamed Don't Mess With Me! I thought it attractive enough that I had instructed our PR division to make postcards with an inscription reading "Wish you were here."
Kayla seemed determined to corrupt the others with her pacifist nonsense. It only took one wrong-headed person to ruin things for everyone else. So why did that one have to be related to me?
"I'll be back to check up on things," I whispered to Lanyard Lana, our arts group leader, and left to make sure the bow-stringing class was running smoothly. All the materials were in place for the mask-making workshop tomorrow. Another group had already speared a twelve-point buck and were gutting it in preparation for roasting over the coals for dinner. Everything looked well under control. I headed for the galley at the back of the lodge and watched Cookie stir her huge black cauldron. I smelled vegetable broth and frowned. Had Kayla somehow gotten to Cookie? "Need any help?" I asked, on the lookout for any white cubes that might be tofu.
She grinned. "One troll," she said. "That's all I ask. Enough for a decent broth, and the rest of them can go back to Idaho."
Trolls were a protected species. "Sorry," I said. "But I'll be glad to skin you a rabbit."
"Not the same," Cookie said with a sigh. "Goddess, I miss the good old days when you could kill anything you wanted."
I shrugged. "You gotta change with the times," I said, and waved good-bye.
I decided to drop by the sign-up desk. There was one problem with a credit check, but otherwise everything was in order. I checked on supplies. We had enough ammo and plastic wrap to last a year. The troll traps were set and my border guards were alert and on patrol.
Back at the lean-to, the girls were constructing chain mail from soda can pop tops, a very clever project, I thought, with proprietary pride. Then I saw Kayla's innovation. Instead of aluminum, her chain mail was made from paper gum wrappers.
She looked up, saw me, and got an impish grin. Before I could protest, she pulled a lighter and her perfume mister from her pocket. She coated her mail with Flower Power. "To peace," she said, and lit it on fire. The whole thing burnt to ashes within seconds.
I could barely see through my allergic tears.
"Kewl!" said one of the younger girls. "Can we burn ours, too?"
"I'd like a word with you, Kayla Marie," I said, and took my daughter's hand to pull her outside. I forgot how to count to ten and was well into my lecture when I heard Cookie's monstrous laugh, followed by a child's horrified scream.
"Got one!" Cookie cackled.
"Oh no!" Kayla screamed, breaking away from my grasp. She ran up the hill, toward Cookie. "Murderers!"
I didn't have to see to know we had trapped our first troll.
I was sound asleep when I heard the camp guards sound the ram's horn. I heard booted footsteps approaching my teepee, and barely managed to rouse myself before a woman in a plated copper tunic thrust her torch before my face and said, "You'd better come out. When we did the bed check, we found a few irregularities."
"What type of irregularities?" I asked, stifling a yawn.
"Well," she said, keeping her cool. "The troll has been sprung, and, uhm…"
"Go ahead," I prompted. "Tell me." How bad could it be?
"I'm really sorry to report," she said with an expression so flat I could have used it as a mouse pad, "we think your daughter did it. She and the troll are missing."
I jumped up from my bed of skins and pulled on my light mail nightie and some sandals. I preferred sleeping au nature; because of the chafing factor. I lit a torch and rushed out to search the Jeep first, then climbed up to the tree house, then checked the arts and crafts lean-to. Empty.
I decided to look for her in the cave and headed down the pathway into the forest. The guard stomped along behind me. A breeze wavered our torches, but other than an occasional owl call and the mutter of leaves and pine needles in the trees above, the night was quiet.