“I think I did a fine job of covering our trails at least,” offered Pahlo.
“It won’t matter,” said Oleja. “He will find me eventually. And when he does, I’ll have to face him. I’m not fast enough to evade him like this.”
Pahlo bit his lip. “But are you strong enough to kill him?”
“I’ll have to be,” she said wearily. Pahlo nodded in solemn thought, but then perked up.
“I’ll help.” He jostled his sword where it hung, sheathed at his side.
“It’s my fight,” said Oleja with a shake of her head. “He will only kill you too.”
Squaring his shoulders, Pahlo sat up straighter. “So be it. I will fight by your side to the death if it is what has to happen. I’d give anything for your cause. I have to save someone; it might as well be you.”
“I’m not asking you to do that,” said Oleja, her voice rising in intensity though she kept the volume low. She could no longer be sure who might overhear her out in the wilds. “I would never ask you to do that.”
Pahlo’s shoulders slumped, though the tension did not dissipate from his frame. Though he clearly fared much better during his trek through the desert so far, it still took its toll. Weariness hung heavy in his eyes and dragged his shoulders down to the earth. Sure, his veins contained no traces of rattlesnake venom, he was well hydrated and better fed, he had no infected wound—or wound at all, as far as she could see—and with his raider’s robe still intact, it appeared he dodged the worst of the sun’s heat as well, protecting him from the sickness or burns it inflicted upon Oleja. But had he slept? Worry was a burden just as heavy as any other.
“We will have to make hard decisions when the moment arises, it seems,” said Pahlo, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “You can make yours, and I will make mine.”
Oleja thought on that for a moment. A dark assertion, but he left her no room to argue with him.
“That sounds fair to me,” she said. He nodded in agreement. They sat together in the dark for a while, illuminated only by the dying light of the low fire and the waking light of dawn. Clearly it was not the time to tell him she still wanted to go off alone.
But why? She was dying out there on her own. It was fair to say that his appearance saved her life. She could rebuke death and pull herself along by determination alone, but none of that mattered when dehydration and starvation kicked her to her knees, miles from the nearest drop of water in the middle of the desert. Pahlo wasn’t trying to take over her plans, he was offering suggestions. He wasn’t botching plots, he was saving her life. What reason did she have to send him away?
“I’m going to set up the tent,” said Pahlo. “We can camp here for the first half of the day so that we don’t have to walk in the heat, then figure out our next move and walk for the remainder of the day and into the night when it’s cooler.” He paused. “That is, if it’s okay for me to join you again. I know it may seem like I betrayed you, but I promise I did not. I understand if you’d rather part.”
Oleja looked up at him. Going in separate directions could be as easy as speaking a few words to him. The perfect opening lay before her, and she could do it free of guilt.
“I’ll accept your company,” she said, surprising even herself. Pahlo smiled.
“Great. I’ll set up the tent, then.” He hurried to do so.
Oleja looked out east, watching as the sun peeked over the horizon, a sliver of orange that bathed the sky in hues of pink and pale blue. Somewhere out there, Honn trailed her. The pursuit resumed, and it wouldn’t be long before it ended—truly, this time.
One way or another, their chase was about to come to an end.
Chapter Twenty
They ducked inside the tent as the sun rose, dragging the day’s dose of heat along with it. Even beneath the canvas, the hot, dry air permeated the material alongside specks of the harsh sunlight. It deflected most of the heat and light, however, keeping the inside just cool and dark enough to not be miserable. Oleja was out cold as soon as she got her body halfway horizontal.
An hour into the sun’s descent, the two of them were up again. They made a meal from their combined rations, though the quantity of their food supply fell short of the plentifulness Pahlo had alluded to. After they ate, they broke down the tent, packed up, and started on their walk—continuing Oleja’s course northwest after she shared her aims with Pahlo.
Oleja now wore the last of her three bandages. Her wound looked no better—rather, quite the opposite. Putting pressure on her left leg brought sharp bouts of pain, but she ground her teeth and forced herself to endure it. She had to get out of the desert; she had to stay ahead of Honn for as long as she could. The afternoon sun offered her sweating and weariness, and coupled with the pain from her leg, her body shook, breaking down as she drew all of her energy to keep herself walking at a reasonable pace. It was no surprise that Pahlo noticed the toll the walk took on her.
“Do you need some support?” he asked, extending an arm. “I can help take some weight off your bad leg.”
“I’m fine,” grunted Oleja.
Pahlo hesitated before drawing back his arm. “Are you sure?”
“I got this far, didn’t I? I can keep going.”
He let his arm fall. “I believe that you can, it’s just about how much energy you’re going to expend in doing so.”
“As much as I need to.”
Pahlo stared at her for a long moment. “I mean this in this nicest of ways, but do you know what your problem is?”
Oleja’s anger spiked, fueled by the pooling frustration that already sloshed about in her mind. She readied to round on him, tell him off and send him away like she should have done the night before, but he didn’t give her a chance to speak before he continued.
“You let your determination get the better of you. Every challenge you face, no matter how daunting or impossible, you tell yourself you can beat it as long as you force yourself to endure enough suffering. But that’s not how you overcome big obstacles. You do it with help.”
“I—”
“You can’t save our people if you die first.”
Oleja’s mouth snapped shut. She wanted to be angry at him for being so rude, but whether she didn’t have the energy or whether something else stopped her, she couldn’t fan the flames hot enough. Instead, his wording caught more of her interest.
“‘Our people,’” she said.
“What?”
“You said ‘our people.’ You’ve been calling them my people.”
Pahlo thought for a second, then shrugged. “I guess I have.”
“Why the sudden change?”
“I don’t know,” Pahlo admitted. “I guess I’ve just started to see them as my people too—the people in the canyon, I mean. At first we regarded them as a different groups, but I think they’re more connected than that. They might not have contact, but we are all united in our oppression beneath the earthborn. And… they’ll be united under you, when you lead the uprising to liberate them all. I consider myself one of your people. And even though I don’t know anyone else from down in the canyon, I’m determined to help them. I don’t have to know them to know what they’ve been through, because in a lot of ways it’s what I’ve been through too, and I can understand the pain and fear that’s been laced through the generations. I want to help free them from that.”
Oleja’s foot hit a loose stone that slid under her weight and she stumbled, staggering to regain her balance. Pahlo caught her and pulled her back upright. She nodded a thanks.
“I’d never thought about it in those terms,” said Oleja. “I intended to free the people aboveground too—killing the eclipsers would pretty much do that by default—but I always thought of them as two separate camps. That is, after I found out people lived up top.”
“I always wanted to do something,” said Pahlo. “I knew how much everyone suffered and how much better off we’d be if we had our freedom. But I never knew what to do. I don’t think anyone would’ve followed me i
f I tried to lead a charge. Our numbers were too small anyway. And I never had the intellect to come up with anything more strategic. I don’t know if I have what it takes to be a hero, and when we get back there, I don’t know how much help I can be. Not like you—you are a hero, that’s clear. You have what it takes to save our people. I just want to help however I can… and if I can.”
Oleja looked at him. “You have what it takes. You can be a hero too.”
As they walked in silence for a few minutes, Pahlo seemed to become restless, grappling with something in his mind. Tension filled the air—or perhaps it was just the tangible heat—until at last he spoke.
“Tell me, truthfully—why did you yell for me to wait at the gate lever?”
Oleja sucked in a sharp breath, then tried to mask the sound with a light cough when she realized Pahlo had likely heard it. Of course he wanted to know—her lie after his first inquiry was less than convincing. It wasn’t believable then, and she could expect just the same now. Pahlo would have questioned her further at the time, certainly, but Honn’s debut appearance saved her from being grilled about her motives.
Could she tell him the truth? It was a selfish one, one that resulted in her own failure as well as his and could very well have gotten him killed. Her need for heroic glory cost her the chance at freeing the village, which just made it more of an embarrassing truth to confess. But he wanted an answer, and she had to provide something better than claiming a false fear for his life like last time. She could either tell the truth or come up with something fast.
“Well, I said I saw the eclipsers coming and—”
“And you worried they might kill me,” said Pahlo, cutting her off. “I know what you said before, but it didn’t sound like the truth—or at least not the whole truth. What’s the answer, honestly? I won’t blame you if you doubted yourself or… or if you second guessed what you should do.”
“It wasn’t that,” said Oleja, waving away the idea that she could have been unsure of herself. For him to think that was embarrassing, almost even more so than the truth.
“What then?”
“I…” Oleja’s heartbeat quickened. Her voice quieted. “I wanted to be the one to do it.”
Pahlo looked at her, shock striking him across the face first, followed up by disbelief, with something like anger bringing the sequence to a full-on beating.
“Oleja,” he started, his voice level despite a power boiling audibly behind the words. “Why would you do that? What does it matter who pulls the lever so long as it happens? You recognize that I could have pulled it, right?”
“Yes, I recognize that,” said Oleja, reinforcing her own voice as his challenge cemented her convictions. “And I didn’t want you to.”
“Why?”
“Because it had to be me! I had to pull the lever. It was my plan—I trained for it, escaped for it, fought for it. You just walked out of a nasty-smelling barn and ran after me. It was my chance to be a hero, you can go make your own after you’ve spent ten years of your life preparing for it!”
“That’s not how it works!” shouted Pahlo, laughter bleeding into the edges of his words.
“Yes, it is,” snapped Oleja. “I was meant to free them. I’m Oleja Raseari, a skyborn girl. I came from the sky and I was meant to bring my people back to it. I was meant to be the hero. Me. Not you!”
The anger on Pahlo’s face simmered to frustration, but then dissipated slowly, draining out of him and getting left behind as they walked. Oleja’s words hung in the air as Pahlo collected himself and then spoke again.
“This is exactly what I meant, Oleja. Me helping you doesn’t make you any less of a hero.”
“If you pulled the lever, you would have freed the village, no?” She stared him down. She was right and he knew it.
“Technically speaking, yes, I suppose one could say that, but only when looking at it so literally. You’re still the one who escaped, and therefore the one who gave me the opening to pull the lever. Do you think I would’ve done it otherwise? Because I wouldn’t have. If you had never flown out of the canyon, I’d still be shoveling shit and dreaming of the world outside the earthborn camp. Even if I’d tried to pull that lever on my own, I never could’ve reached it without you fighting off the earthborn.”
“Exactly! I would have gone through all of that work—the escape, the flight, the fighting—only for you to end up pulling the lever and being the hero. You’d have stolen the victory without any of the work.”
Pahlo shook his head, dark curls poking free from the hood of his robe. “It doesn’t boil down to who pulls the lever and who doesn’t. Being a hero isn’t about pulling a lever, and if you still can’t see that, you are so incredibly stubborn.”
“Well, I am,” she said flatly.
“Believe me, anyone who has spoken to you is well aware. But glory can be shared, Oleja. When you shoot an arrow, is the action all in your hand? With it, you draw back the arrow and then release it. Those actions are the most defining, yes, but you couldn’t shoot with one hand alone. What about the other hand that holds the bow, or your eyes that take aim? Even your legs keep you upright and balanced so you can move around and take a clear shot. Or… or your glider. It’s made from a lot of pieces working together. They each—”
“If you preach to me for another second,” started Oleja, cutting him off, “I will leave you behind.”
Pahlo cracked a wide grin. “Good luck with that,” he said, gesturing to her injured leg. “But you take my point, then?”
“I tried to take it a hundred words ago, but you seemed unwilling to part with it until you’d talked it to death and beaten me over the head with it. You remind me of… Well, you remind me of an old friend.” A tinge of a smile played at her lips.
“They sound very wise,” Pahlo said, sarcasm pulling his grin wider.
“Maybe he is, but only in an insufferable way, and I’d advise you against ever feeding his ego by telling him such things. You two could waste away a week simply talking at one another.”
“I hope to meet him once we have freed our people,” said Pahlo.
“I will make sure the chance arises, then.”
The pair reached a knee-height ledge in the rocky ground. Pahlo stepped down without issue and kept walking. When Oleja took her turn, she hit the ground hard with her bad leg and it buckled, pain shooting daggers up through her thigh. She staggered and sank to one knee, scraping the skin and freeing a few drops of red blood. A hiss of pain slipped through her teeth. She clenched her eyes shut and waited for the waves of suffering to subside.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw that Pahlo stood beside her, arm outstretched, waiting to help her back to her feet. She took his hand and hauled herself up, and then, after one weak, staggering step forward, she hooked her left arm across his shoulders, bracing herself so she could alleviate some of the strain from her bad leg. Together, they moved ahead.
“What do you mean when you say you’re a ‘skyborn’?” asked Pahlo. The question surprised Oleja at first, leading her to wonder when she used the term, but just as with her conversation with Kella, she realized after a moment that she’d let it slip without intending to use it.
“In my village, we sometimes have babies that come down from above. They just sort of appear at random. They’re the only people who ever enter the village; everyone else is born there. A long time ago, the people believed they were born from the sky itself and that it made them special. People don’t believe that so much anymore—at least most don’t. I don’t really know if I do, but…” she trailed off for a moment, biting off a chunk of her pride but hesitant to swallow. “I guess it just made me feel special or important. Gave me a reason to believe in myself—that I could do good or something. I don’t know.”
“Wait, they come down from above?” asked Pahlo, completely disregarding the very personal feelings she shared with him. He was so irritating.
“Yes.”
“Babies?”
“Yes, did you miss it the first time?”
“How old?”
Oleja shrugged—an odd gesture with her arm draped over Pahlo’s shoulders. “Very young, usually a few days old. Why?”
“You don’t come from the sky. You come from us—the slaves aboveground. Sometimes the earthborn take newborns from their mothers and they never see them again. We never knew what happened to them.”
“How do you know they’re the same babies?”
“Well, I don’t,” admitted Pahlo, “but it makes sense if you think about it. The work we do aboveground isn’t too dangerous; everyone lives a natural lifespan, more or less. But the mines are more treacherous. You said yourself people die down there a lot. The earthborn want to keep the population stable down there. They probably don’t want to send down adults—remember what Honn said? Something about breeding hope out of the people down there? They don’t want news of the aboveground to filter down.”
Oleja didn’t know how to feel about all of this. Her mind reeled. Pahlo’s theory made perfect sense and was likely the truth. Part of her always knew some mundane reality backed the stories. There had to be a logical explanation for the skyborn babies, and maintaining the population seemed as good as any. Babies weren’t just born from the sky, hero fledglings in the making ready to take up arms against their oppressors. She knew this. She always had. But that didn’t change the fact that some part of her—no matter how small or how deeply buried in the depths of the old abandoned mines—just wanted to cling to the idea that perhaps, just maybe, there was a slight chance that the blood running through her veins held something special, something more important than the gold and copper in the mines or the food that came down every day or the crystal-clear water running through the canyon. That maybe she was born into heroism, fated to burst forth from the rock and lead her people to victory and freedom. That she was special.
But she was just the girl who spent all her times fantasizing in the darkness of the underground caves, shirking off her duties in favor of her own ambitions.
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