“I don't want anything to happen to you, Imena. You were nice to me today. Not many people have been.”
Billy followed the Elder as all his men fell into line and kept the villagers at bay as they left.
Imena called out to Billy one last time, “You will die! All do.”
Billy looked back and gave her a smile that neither of them believed was real.
“Maybe nobody's just ever been fast as me,” Billy called back as he faded into the silhouette shroud shadow of Wind Hill.
~2~
THE WIND
IMENA CRIED IN SPITE OF HERSELF as the line of shadow cultists from Wind Hill vanished from view towards the lonely, far off, forbidden place. She couldn't help caring so much that Billy was caught up in something that was not only over his head, but would cause him to lose it. Billy was a foolish boy, and what he was engaged in now was equally foolish. He had wrapped it in a cloak of caring for her well-being, but even though she barely knew him, Imena had felt enough of his character to know that altruism wasn't the only goal.
That kid secretly wanted to jump off that mountain.
Men were tending to hysterical mothers and children. There was talk of gathering up and going after those who had threatened to burn their homes and roast them in the process, but Imena knew they wouldn't follow. They regarded Wind Hill as a haunted place, and nothing good could come of traveling there.
Above all, they were more afraid than they were vengeful that night. Imena couldn't blame any of them.
Only the Shaman stood at the edge of the village, out past the well, and watched the night. Imena had always regarded him as most wise, and tonight, exceptionally unafraid. She dried her tears as she made her way to where he stood.
“How can I save him?” Imena tried not to let pleading slip into her words.
The Shaman didn't try to hide the grave expression he wore on his face. Wisdom held honesty tightly in its grasp that night.
“Surely there is something that can be done?” Imena wasn't giving up easily. “Surely?”
He said nothing to the girl, simply pointed towards a thick grove of trees across the plain, barely visible in starlight.
Imena didn't want to look that way, but made herself.
“I can't go there.” Imena let her words slip out as she stared towards the trees. “You know what happened there.”
The Shaman continued to point.
“That's where it took them.”
The Shaman turned away from her and walked back towards the fire, leaving Imena alone with her fears.
The girl continued to stare into the grove.
“Where the wind stole their souls.”
She had every reason not to then, but regardless of all the no's, she found in herself a tiny yes. This yes caused her to not only keep her eyes trained on the place of the savannah more horrifying to her than the false mountaintop dangerous men were dragging Billy to then…
It caused her to run.
Imena ran until she was thick into the grove and it was impossible to run anymore. The trees had begun to close in on her; it was denser in there than it looked outside of the grove. The brush became thicker and thicker, and it was impossible to see where she was going. She became trapped in vines and brambles, and as her eyes failed her more and more, she used the cuts and scrapes she received to guide her through the trees.
She continued to push in.
This was the place her mother and father had ventured into. They had followed the blood left by a villager who had been snatched from a gathering party by a lion. They had never returned of their own volition.
Some of the men had gone into the trees after them when they had learned what they had done. “Those groves are dangerous,” the Shaman had said. “Trees are not meant to grow so twisted and thick here. Starving and clawing one another, reaching for Mother Sunshine. Trying to pull one another back into the ground.”
The tribesmen had found her mother and father. They hadn't been mauled by a lion. They simply had no life in them.
The Shaman had said the wind had found its way into the trees and carried away their souls.
Imena pulled herself from the nest of vines and tripped into a clearing in the center of the stand of trees. She looked at her hands, palms pressed in front of her to the earth. When she finally raised her eyes, she was staring at a rock which had a golden war ax leaning against it. Imena had never seen anything like it in her life, except in books.
She knew no one who carried such an ax in these lands. Decorated to be beautiful, yet forged only for war.
Beyond this oddity, she took in another. The woman was tall and lean; her body was as if she was from this place — a warrior's form, mixed with a sensual beauty which was mostly hidden from Imena's sight by the dark cloak and hood she covered herself in. It was as black as the night's curtain, with star points of threadshine, accented with the feathers of warrior falcons. Two long twists of braided golden hair were wrapped in leather and trailed down the front of her regal form.
She didn't give Imena time to process the information of her existence, or what any of it meant. She didn't give the girl time to speak.
The warrior woman held up a carved totem of dark stone crafted into the shape of a winged cat.
“Do you want this?” The woman's voice was cold and matched the wind.
Imena didn't know how to answer.
“Do you want to save him?”
Imena nodded. “Yes.”
The warrior woman nodded back to her. Imena strained to make out her features — she wasn't like Imena. Her skin, what could be seen of it, was pale, and the way she talked was like no voice the girl had ever heard. For some reason, Imena imagined her eyes were silver, not that she had any clue as to why since she surely couldn't see them hidden under the cloak.
The warrior woman walked and laid the flying cat carving on the rock before the girl. “If you take this gift, you are changed.” The woman took hold of the handle of the ax that glowed with a light all its own and twirled it over the frightened and confused girl's head. “You can never return to live with people,” the woman continued, “and you are alone unless you find more like you.”
Imena stared at the totem gift; it was beautiful, and resembled nothing that the girl could have ever imagined on her own. It, and the woman who offered it to her, were both more fantastic than even the wildest story the Shaman had ever told around the fire.
The woman began to move towards the trees, opposite the way Imena pushed herself into the grove.
“Was it you?”
The woman stopped before the wall of choking vines at the girl's question.
“Did you take my parents?” Imena asked in a near whisper. “Are you the wind?”
The woman didn't answer as she pushed into vine and limb. “Do you take it or do you not? Decide. You're running out of time.”
As the woman faded, Imena's fingers wrapped around the cat cloaked in wings under the African night.
II.
Billy Purgatory's feet hurt. The zoo sucked, and that funky half-moon shaped mountain he was climbing in Armenia was way too high. If he hadn't have kept staring over at the ramp he was gonna fly off of, and dreaming about how he'd be the most famous skateboarder from this side of a Rhino's Uranus and back, he'd have ditched this Elder guy and run off.
That guy, the High Elder, was having way too much fun trudging up that mountain. Billy watched the feather he had dangling off his robes swing back and forth as he led the way for him and the rest of his culty-clique. Thank whatever that he was wearing that robe too; seeing the guy's bony ass shake around underneath it was punishment enough.
It was on that morning, before the sun rose over the zoo-country, that Billy Purgatory realized he sacrificed a lot for his art.
“Why does it have to be so high?” Billy dug his sneakers into the rock path and kept pulling himself up.
“So you may fly.” The High Elder always had that happy squeak in his voice, lik
e he was trying to sell someone something. He reminded Billy of that vacuum cleaner salesman that Pop kept slamming the door on. The guy always came back smiling, even after Pop shot at him with a rifle.
“How come I have to fly?” Billy was all into the idea of flying, but he didn't know why it was so important to these zoo dudes.
“Because it is prophesy.”
“Is that all you got to do in the zoo? Hang out and try to fulfill your dumb… what's a prophesy anyhow?”
“My people have made predictions. You should know what prophesy is, Purgatory. You might just be the chosen one.”
Okay, so this guy thought about people that were badass a lot — Billy wasn't gonna argue that he wasn't that. “Chosen by who?”
The High Elder pulled himself up between two boulders. “It is difficult to explain.”
“Why?”
“Must you ask so many questions?”
“Yeah, I'm a kid. That's what we do.”
“Play a game of quiet.”
Climbing made Billy's scar ache. “Are we there yet?”
The High Elder looked back to Billy, his crazy eyes staring down his beard at the boy. “It will be almost as satisfying if you crash into the rocks and it stops your questions.”
“Why?”
“You ask the universe silly things. ‘Why is it so high?’ ‘Why must I fly?’ ‘Can I have a sandwich?’”
“Well, can I?”
“No. You are here for one reason and one reason only. You are to fly off this mountain, as has been predicted by the ancients.”
“You ever ask yourself if them ancients you're talking about might have just been making this stuff up?” Billy took a minute to catch his breath. “You ever heard of someone flying before? Unless it was out of a cannon, and if there's a cannon on top of all these rocks, I am so in.”
The High Elder looked back up the dark trail and the peak under the twinkling stars. “There is no cannon. Outlandish boy, the ancients made a promise that they would shame God and prove him wrong.”
“Why do you wanna shame that guy so bad? What'd he ever do to you? Don't the story go that he made all this stuff, even all the zoo stuff?”
“Why do you keep talking of zoos? Focus! You are the instrument of our labors. We will finally gain his attention when he sees you sailing into the clouds like a great hawk.”
“Oh, I get it. Someone didn't get enough attention when he was a little Elder and had a tiny beard.”
The High Elder turned from Billy and the men at Billy's back urged him to keep walking with their spears.
“He will finally hear our demands.”
“Yeah, maybe he'll gimme that sandwich.”
And Billy Purgatory was forced to climb more…
When the boy felt like he couldn't take another step and was about to drop his board in the dirt, the High Elder spun around and opened his arms wide. Dawn began to break on the world far below.
“We are here.”
Billy looked around; he couldn't remember ever being so high. The village was far away and just tiny dots. The big lake he'd seen the hippos taking a bath in looked like a puddle. The wind was unceasing at the peak atop the vast hill which carried its name.
Billy stared down the smooth expanse of the half-moon that led halfway down the far side of the mountain. “Dude, this is the sickest skateboard ramp ever.” Billy clutched his board in one hand and spun its wheels with the other.
He licked his lips and grinned wide.
The High Elder was taken aback, but not far enough that he fell off the mountain, which would have been way cool. “Skateboard?”
“Yeah, breezy-britches. Isn't that what I'm up here for?”
“You are here to run down the expanse. You will open your arms and embrace the air spirit. You will run into the sky and ravage it.”
Billy Purgatory shook his head at the old crazy dude. “Uh, nuh uh. Real O.G. skateboarders can't run fast.”
“Nuh uh?”
“Yeah, no wonder everyone wrecks down on those rocks. I don't run. Put that in your prophesy and puff puff.”
It was the High Elder who was shaking his head now. “It is how it has always been done.”
“I'm skating off this thing.” Billy licked his finger and then put it into the air. He had no idea why he was doing that, he just figured it would look cool while they thought he was planning.
The plan was already mapped out in Billy's head, though. He had only one mission in life. Down that ramp and into the clouds. He'd ravage the sky too — whatever that meant.
The High Elder was pointing at Billy's board. “That thing? You mean to roll down Wind Hill?”
Billy nodded, still with his finger in the air. “Yeah, rolling.”
“The carving on the cave wall, it did show a boy on a plank. Perhaps…”
“Are we gonna do this?”
The High Elder raised his finger, then he and his robes went into a huddle with other guys wearing robes. Billy only half paid attention to their pow-wow and whispers in zookeeper talk.
Billy's focus was clearly and utterly distracted from the High Elder's club when he turned to find the Devil Bird standing next to the same boulder that Billy was. Billy looked the big bird up and down, then focused on those serious eyes of his over the base of that long beak.
“Fly me out of here, chicken.”
The Devil Bird didn't seem to care how high up they were, or what Billy was planning to do. He had a look on his bird face like he was smarter than everyone else up here at the top of the world. “I told you it was all leading up to this.”
Billy thought about the dream he'd been having lately about being on top of a mountain and talking to the Devil Bird. It was all kinda coming true and maybe this is what prophesy meant. Oh, and he still wanted a sandwich.
“Yeah, can't you fly? I wanna skate this ramp, but Pop is gonna be looking for me. He send you?”
The Devil Bird looked down the ramp. “I wouldn't try to fly off that thing. I'd smash my head in the rocks.”
“You are the worst bird in bird history.”
“You're going to smash your head in the rocks too, Billy. It's prophesy.”
“I wish people would stop using that word. I can make that jump.”
“There's nowhere to jump to.”
“I'll eventually sail smooth to the ground, just like going off old man Stringer's roof.”
The Devil Bird shook his head and made the big red and orange flap of skin under his beak shake like a wino's walking stick. “You landed in his hot tub.”
“That water was boiled—gnarly. Like landing in stink-foot soup.”
“There aren't any hot tubs around here.”
“Yeah, there's a hippo lake down there somewhere. Besides, I've never listened to you, chicken. I ain't starting now.” Billy wished he had his lucky trick-doing goggles. “How's my Pop?”
“Your father is in a panic. He is making a big mistake in who he is aligning himself with to rescue you.”
Words. Chicken-nonsense. Words. “I knew Pop would have a plan to come get me.”
“You need to forget about skating down this mountain. You need to get yourself back before he does something stupid.”
“I'm in the zoo in Asia, and you can't fly, and Pop never does anything stupid. How am I supposed to get back, anyhow?”
“Africa.”
“I'm there too, yeah. And besides, ain't it just as hard to get back from there?”
“You got here, now get back. Do it before your father makes a big mistake.”
Billy looked down the mountain. “Maybe I'll jump so far I'll just fly back.”
The High Elder was suddenly back at Billy's side and looking down over the boy. His face was more confused than normal. “Who are you talking to?”
“That stupid chicken.” Billy raised his thumb in the direction of the Devil Bird. The High Elder and everyone else in robes just stared at the boulder, and Billy realized that the Devil Bird wasn't there a
nymore. “Lying bastard, I knew he could fly.”
“It is good that you are insane, Billy Purgatory.” The High Elder was smiling like a fat kid at the business end of a cupcake dump truck on full-tilt. “It might be just the edge you need.”
“That's not what the lunch-line lady said.”
The High Elder, and everyone in a robe, raised their arms into the air and embraced the morning rays of the sun. Billy looked on as they began a slow chant.
“What're you doing?”
The High Elder answered Billy in the most condescending voice he was able to while still singing. “Before you fly, we do the sacred chant.”
“I'm not waiting on you to sing your dumb song, Square Dance.”
Billy dropped his wheels to the rock and put his foot on the deck. He rolled the board back and forth with his foot and crossed his fingers. The guys in robes got even louder and started shaking their asses and dancing.
“I gotta get outta Argentina.”
His other sneaker pushed off and Billy rolled, then hit the sharp incline down the side of the mountain. He could hear the High Elder screaming at his back as he rolled further away, and the world around him was again a blur.
“Look at him. Look how fast he goes.”
The warm breeze coming up the mountain felt good in his hair. Billy steadied his body more than once at the onset. The ramp was as smooth as you could wear down the side of a mountain, but that didn't mean there weren't any bumps in the road. This was the fastest he'd ever rolled. He had expected his heart to be thumping out of his chest like a busted piston, but he was cool and relaxed as he lowered his body and crouched to ride that ramp.
The greatest ramp that man had ever built, probably. This was going to take him into the sky. Billy knew when he finally sailed off the edge of this thing that he would truly be flying, and he wasn't afraid. He was ready to do something great.
“This is how it's always supposed to have been,” Billy thought. “This is the trick I've been training for my whole life. Once I pull this off, nobody will ever laugh at me again.”
Billy let his arms spring out to his sides and he stared down what was left of that half-moon mountain.
Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five Page 3