Page 53 of Sheltering Instinct

She held a hand over her mouth to answer. “It tastes exactly how one would think wildebeest would taste.”

“Gamey? Tough?” Gwen asked.

“Yes, that.”

“The zebra?” Iris pointed to the left side of her plate.

Tess cut a piece to try. “Hmm. I think I did myself a disservice by assuming zebra would taste like horse. It doesn’t.”

“Where did you eat horse?” Reaper asked.

“Iceland. They raise horses as a meat source like we raise cattle for the same. These aren’t pet horses that they name. It’s all very similar to cows in the United States. But I found the meat more tender. Zebra is still a bit tough and maybe a bit—I know this is the traditional Namibian way of serving meat—a bit of sauce or spice might help.”

“To mask the taste?” Gwen asked.

“It’s not my favorite to be honest.” Tess wiped her mouth. “Back to the wine. With the vehicle back story in place, this is the tale of how Gwen and I came to be in possession of your gift.”

Craig rubbed his hands together. “Yup, I’d like to hear.”

“I was sitting up front next to our guy, Otto. And Gwen was in the middle of the bench behind us, forming a conversation triangle,” Tess explained. “Otto told us that he'd decided not to take the normal route home. The route would take us up into the mountains. He told us how beautiful it was up there and that there were these amazing vistas and these wonderful photographic opportunities.” Tess smiled. “He went on and on about what a fantastic opportunity it was.”

“He got you jazzed for a thing that wasn’t going to happen?” Enrico asked.

“Rude. Right?” Gwen asked. “He told us that up on the mountain, they often see some of the wildlife that we hadn't come across along the road thus far or that we would even see in Etosha.”

Tess nodded. “Wild cats at dusk.”

Iris scowled. “But he wasn't going to go? Did you pay for him to take you up there? That was part of the package price?”

“Yes, it was. But since he wasn’t feeding us either, we didn’t think he was following all the bullet points in the brochure,” Tess said. “I asked. He was worried about not having a four-wheel drive with the weight of the trailer. That and we didn’t have any more spare tires.”

Iris nodded. “It was a sound decision not to risk it.”

“I have to say, for all my time working in areas that are off-grid,” Tess reached up to press her thick curls out of her eyes. “I find comfort in having a satellite phone. And while I am forever grateful for the effort and care that you all provided me yesterday. Another piece to this story is that no one had a means of communication. No radio, no sat phone, no cell connectivity, and a cantankerous vehicle.” Tess grimaced. “After that conversation about rerouting, I started to pay attention to how far we were from anything. And how few and far between were the fellow travelers along our path.”

“Just ostriches.” Gwen ran two fingers across the table. “It put me in mind of Disney’s Fantasia. But Tess is right. We were out in the middle of nowhere. We had been traveling—I don't know, Tess, what would you say forty-five minutes without seeing as much as a house on the side of the road?”

“That’s about right. Up until that point of our story, houses dotted along the way. A tiny desert house would be off in the distance like a plastic piece on a Monopoly board. But as Gwen said, we had been traveling quite a while with pink sand, the ostriches running along, and nothing else.” Tess looked at Gwen. “Does this remind you of my lone cow in Texas story?”

“No water then, no water this time either.”

Tess sent a glance around the table. “Sorry. That’s a story for a different time. So there we were in this bleak, sandy place.”

Gwen sent the flat of her hand to show the movement of their vehicle. “We were coming up over the hill, and as soon as we evened out the vehicle, ‘it stopped.’”

Craig scowled. “What does it mean you stopped?”

Gwen turned to her dad. “I mean that the engine cut off. We rolled to a stop. Otto tried to turn the engine over. It didn't even click. Nothing was happening. It was just dead.Dead.There was nothing to work with there.”

“He did go back and try that fuel thing that worked beforehand,” Tess said. “He moved the fuel, and we waited for a while, and we got nothing. Now,” Tess sent a bright smile around the table. “Here’s the miracle of this whole episode, just before the vehicle stopped completely. Otto pointed at a small cluster of houses a few kilometers back toward the hills. And he said, ‘That’s the last there is for the next hundred kilometers.’”

“To anything?” Iris put her hand over her heart. “You girls are going to be the death of me.”

“We’re here, Mom. We’re fine.”

Iris leaned toward her daughter. Her voice turned stern. “Out in the middle of nowhere with no communications, and you said you had no water?”

“Tess and I learned our lesson at Big Daddy. We had water and food with us. Not enough for everyone, and you know how that becomes a dilemma. What happens when you come prepared for you while the others didn’t.”

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