Rivers of Fire (Atherton, Book 2)

by Patrick Carman

  He jumped down out of one of the only trees that remained standing and landed in a foot of water at his feet. He lapped up handful after handful. Even in the face of escalating danger he could not help but quench his thirst. The water was pushing hard against his legs and another wave was rising out of the Highlands, threatening to bowl him over.

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  "Charles! Where are you?" he screamed as he made his way into what little remained of the village.

  "We're here!" cried Charles, stepping out of a door and onto a porch just as a five-foot-high wave slammed into the house. The wave knocked Charles and Edgar off their feet. Edgar had taken hold of a fallen tree with roots that were still lodged in the ground and he was sucked under the hanging branches. When he emerged, gasping for air, chunks of tree and house were floating all around him, threatening to hammer him unconscious.

  Charles had recovered from the blast of water and retrieved Eliza and Adele from inside the house. When they came out, Edgar had made his way to the porch, and the four stood together as the water receded. Another wave out of the Highlands was building as the four braced themselves.

  "After this one comes through, we need to run for it!" said Edgar.

  "I'm not leaving here," said Eliza. "Not without Isabel." The wave struck the porch and the four held on tightly.

  "I was wrong!" said Edgar. "She's still alive, and so is Samuel! I'm sure of it. But we must go to the Flatlands! There's no other way out for them or for us."

  Eliza and Adele were struck by the courage of this boy-- how he had come back to get them--and as the water receded once more, they relented.

  "How do we get out?" asked Adele, looking at Edgar and Charles, her wet hair hanging in strands before her face. "We have to find them!"

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  Edgar moved to the door of the house where water was standing two or three feet high. "We need a rope. A long one," he said.

  "I have it!" hollered Charles. He had made a stash of provisions in the house and waded through the door looking for the rope he'd saved. "Here! Here it is!"

  It was still wound tight and he threw it over his shoulder. When he came out the door he saw Edgar, Adele, and Eliza staring with horror at two Cleaners swimming through the water, their jaws chomping at the surface as they were propelled on flapping tails. They could swim surprisingly well. It appeared to come naturally to them.

  The two Cleaners approached the porch, snapping their teeth as if laughing with glee.

  "Hold on!" commanded Charles, and a moment later, the biggest wave yet smashed into the house and blew it over. The Cleaners were swept away, past Edgar and through the trees. Charles, Eliza, Adele, and Edgar screamed for one another as they were all pulled under and through the grove. None of them knew how to swim.

  When the wave was gone, its power taken by the vast open space of Tabletop, three feet of water remained, a shifting lake that spread all through the trees. Edgar and Charles popped out of the water first, quite near each other, and to their left Eliza emerged drenched and coughing. Adele was nowhere to be found and they called out for her.

  Edgar had quickly grown used to the feeling of water

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  around him, as if he were made for water in the same way he was made for climbing. He dived under, searching the fallen trees for any sign of Adele. He came up for air, went back down, and this time he saw her, trapped within the tangled roots of a third-year fig tree. She was not moving.

  "Here!" cried Edgar, calling for Charles. He followed Edgar to the tree and the two dived under, releasing Adele's legs and hauling her to the surface. Her face had turned a shade of blue and she was cold all over. They didn't know how to help her.

  "Put her over your shoulder," said Edgar. "We have to get out of this grove before it kills us."

  Charles hoisted Adele up and her chest slammed into his shoulder, shooting water out of her lungs and mouth. Adele was a small woman, and as Charles moved, she bounced up and down, her chest pumping with air and pushing out water. Then, miraculously, she began to cough.

  Charles placed her down in water that came to the tops of her legs and he lifted up her back. Soon, she was able to stand on her own and the group of four was moving fast out of the grove. The waves had stopped and the farther they went the lower the water became until it was splashing at their ankles and they were able to run once more.

  At the edge of the grove, where the water was shallow, they encountered a Cleaner, staring them down. Its jaws were snapping wildly, but it was unable to move.

  "What's happened to it?" asked Eliza.

  "It must be the water," said Edgar. It seemed right to him

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  that Dr. Harding would plan it this way. Before them lay a Cleaner thrashing with rage and might, but its legs were gone and only the wild teeth and tail remained. The legs had retracted, leaving only small stumps that were too short to carry the Cleaner anywhere. It also appeared that the Cleaner was having some trouble breathing, as if being submerged in water had changed it into something entirely different. A sea monster lay before them, only it had been pushed out of the water and here it was, hopelessly stranded.

  The group of four walked past the Cleaner as it snapped and tried to attack them, but it could not move to sink its awful teeth into a leg or an arm. It struggled to breathe as they made their way past, its middle heaving in and out.

  "Can you keep running?" Edgar asked Adele.

  "I think so," she answered. They began moving faster toward the Flatlands, looking in every direction for Cleaners as they went. At a dead run it would take them twenty minutes or more to get across, but even from where Edgar was he could see in the distance that Tabletop had moved down. How far, he couldn't say.

  They saw no Cleaners as they went, but soon Edgar spotted them in a writhing pile at the edge of the Flatlands. He could make out the shapes of people above, hurling rocks down at hundreds of Cleaners. The Cleaners seemed intent on leaping and scratching at the wall, trying to get out, totally immersed in the effort of trying to exit Tabletop.

  "They want out," said Charles. The group had come to a stop out in the open.

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  "They must know the water will change them," said Edgar. "Maybe the change hurts."

  Eliza thought the whole messy business of Cleaners was sickening, and she made a sour face at the thought of these monsters transforming.

  "We need to change course, stay wide of them," said Charles. He had been able to keep the tightly wound rope over his neck and shoulder, and Edgar wondered aloud how long it was.

  "I don't know, maybe fifty feet," said Charles.

  "That will be plenty," said Edgar, though he secretly knew that if Atherton began moving again the Flatlands might well rise quickly out of reach of a fifty-foot rope.

  They set off at a run once more, taking a diagonal path to the Flatlands that led away from the thrashing pile of Cleaners. When they were but a few minutes from reaching the rising, jagged cliffs leading to the Flatlands, the ground began to sway beneath them.

  "Don't stop!" yelled Edgar. All of them were out of breath, but Edgar the least. He was a boy who had spent his life climbing to heights no one could imagine. He had boundless energy, and raced ahead of the rest at full speed.

  "I'll start up," he hollered back at Charles, who struggled to go on. "You'll need to throw me the rope."

  Edgar charged on as Atherton shook with the pains of birth -- a new world being formed and shaped just as Dr. Harding had planned--and the Flatlands rose higher. When Edgar reached the wall, he climbed without delay, the stones

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  rumbling in his hands as he went. Looking back, he saw waves ten times higher than the ones he'd endured in the grove. It was enough water to cover all of Tabletop, and Edgar knew he and the others must hurry.

  The Cleaners became aware of the coming wave as Edgar had, and they scattered in every direction, searching for a way out. Some of them spotted Charles, Eliza, and Adele as the three darte
d for the wall. Charles removed the rope, seeing that the wall had risen to forty feet above, and he threw it to Edgar who hung high on the shaking wall.

  It took two more tries, but Edgar finally caught the rope and began moving up at an astounding pace. From behind came the giant wave, and from the side came the menacing Cleaners looking for one last meal to devour.

  "Throw the rope!" cried a voice from above. It was Gill, and others were with him. Edgar had come within five feet of the top as Atherton began to settle into a gentle quake. Edgar was unwilling to take a chance that they might miss the catch, so instead he kept the rope gripped firmly between his teeth and scaled the last of the wall in a matter of seconds.

  Gill took the rope from the boy's mouth and hollered down. "All of you! Take hold!"

  They had thought of going one at a time, but there was no way for that now. They would all have to take the rope at once and be hauled up. The wave was growing in speed and size as it came, cresting at twenty feet tall. The Cleaners were very nearly on top of them as Charles wrapped the end of the rope around

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  himself, tying it tightly, then took one woman under each arm, holding fast and screaming into the air. "Pull us up!"

  Gill and ten other men were at the ready when Edgar gave the signal to pull on the rope. The boy couldn't help joining in the effort, all eleven people moving farther and farther from the edge, bringing with them a growing length of the rope. When they had most of the rope pulled up, everyone who had stood at the edge backed away, for the wave was about to strike the wall.

  Edgar watched as the powerful wave slammed into the wall and white water shot high and fierce into the air. Then he ran for the edge, hoping against all hope that Charles, Eliza, and Adele had been able to hold on.

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  *** CHAPTER 32 EDGAR'S DEPARTURE

  When Edgar arrived at the edge and looked down, he saw three battered and bruised people hanging soaked and gasping for air against the rocks. Charles had held on, but he was quickly losing his grip.

  "I can't hold them, Edgar!" he screamed.

  And there was more trouble than that. A second wave was forming that threatened to suck them out to the quickly forming sea below, and worse, the Cleaners were leaping out of the water all around them, snapping their jaws very near Charles's feet.

  Edgar sprang into action, climbing down the side of the cliff without hesitation. When he arrived beside them, Adele put an arm around his shoulder and he winced in pain. But she

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  was light, almost as light as he was, and he was able to take most of the weight from Charles.

  "Gill! Pull us up!" cried Edgar. The rope began to move again, bringing the group of four within a few feet of the top, where they were grabbed and pulled into the Flatlands just before the second wave hit.

  "Away from the edge!" said Gill. "This one's going to come all the way over!"

  Charles helped Eliza, and Edgar tried his best to run with Adele as the wave crashed, sending a wall of water over the edge where it pounded into the Flatlands with a roar.

  The water receded, leaving behind a half-dozen Cleaners that had been tossed over the edge, their legs already beginning to shrink inside them so far that they could hardly move. As they flailed on the ground, men with spears finished them off without difficulty.

  It was then that Atherton began what would be its last quake. It was the longest of them all, though not as violent, and when it was over, everyone who remained walked to the new edge of the world and looked over in wonder. Tabletop was far below them, two hundred feet or more, and it was filling rapidly with water. Cleaners were jumping along the edge, getting accustomed to the fact that they were no longer land animals, but instead creatures of a great lake.

  "I think the transformation of Atherton is very nearly finished," said Edgar. There was a ring of authority in his voice that even he didn't expect, but he was beginning to recognize

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  his intuition about such things and to understand that somehow, some way, Dr. Harding had inexplicably connected Edgar to Atherton. Edgar now knew that the water would rise, but only as far as the edge, and then Atherton would be the way it was meant to be from the start.

  Maude and Briney came up alongside Gill, looking beaten and tired. Briney had a bunny sack over his shoulder, filled with the very last of the rabbits.

  "He's gone," said Maude.

  Her words reminded everyone within earshot of Horace, their fallen leader, and a deep silence ensued. There was much to be celebrated, but a terrible price had been paid and it was beginning to sink in.

  Edgar had endured tremendous hardship and loss along with everyone else, but it was he who was the first to begin thinking of a calmer future. "When you get your inn going again and there are rabbits running everywhere, will you cook me one that's crispy with fig dust?"

  "I would if there were any figs to be had," said Maude. "But I'm afraid the grove was lost, and in all the chaos, no one thought to bring a fresh fig along for the journey."

  Edgar dug down inside his shirt pocket and removed the chunk of Cleaner he'd been carrying around for the past two days. He unfolded wet leaves surrounding a clump of meaty green slime and, digging his fingers inside, he produced three soft but shiny figs. They were perfectly preserved as he'd known they would be. Dr. Harding had told him so in his dreams on that last night in the House of Power, and so it was.

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  "We can start a new grove," said Edgar. Gill was very pleased at the sight of the round figs covered in slime, and he took them from Edgar. A worker from the grove was called over and came near, retrieving the figs. Edgar watched as the man disappeared into a crowd of ogling people, and then he glanced to his right where he heard sheep. He counted five, along with a shepherdess who watched over them. And there were the two horses, held by one of the few men who remained from the Highlands.

  "A male and a female?" asked Edgar.

  Gill nodded with a smile. "A good bit of luck, don't you think?"

  There was a group of men standing around one of the fallen Cleaners that had been thrown by the wave into the Flatlands. Edgar went to it and asked the people to step back.

  "May I use your spear?" asked Edgar, gazing up at a man standing beside him. The man handed it over, and Edgar thrust it into the Cleaner's side four or five times in a small circle, then he handed the spear back again.

  "Thank you," he said.

  The man nodded and looked at Edgar as if he'd lost his mind, but Edgar knew what he was doing. He reached down and tore a chunk of the Cleaner free where he'd made the circle, and then he ate it. Everyone gasped in horror at the sight of the boy with green slime running down his chin.

  "It tastes best if you cover the black with the green," said Edgar, recalling how Dr. Kincaid had showed him the best way to enjoy the remains of a Cleaner. He wiped his mouth and went for another chunk, holding it out to Gill who stood near.

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  Gill sniffed it warily for a long time, but his nose was the smartest part of him, and it was telling him that this revolting clump was something his nose wanted him to eat. And so he did, smiling at the sweet and salty taste in his mouth.

  Edgar felt certain he'd made his point--that there was plenty of food to be had while they waited for more rabbits and sheep and figs--if only they could find a way to retrieve the Cleaners from the rising sea of freshwater. He surveyed everything before him, thinking of the long journey across the Flatlands that he was about to take.

  "I think we've got all we need to start again," said Edgar. "It will be nice to have so much water for a change."

  Charles, Eliza, and Adele were sitting down, sorely beaten by the events of the day, and in no shape to make a long trek across a deserted land.

  "There's someplace I need to go," said Edgar. "I'll be gone for at least a day, maybe longer, but I need to go alone. I'm not sure what I'll find there."

  "I'll go with you," said Gill. He was not as accustomed to
Edgar's secret ways as some of the others had become, and he didn't want to let the boy go wandering around without protection.

  "You're needed here," said Edgar, reaching out for the spear that Gill held in his hand.

  "What if you find Cleaners out there or some other terrible enemy?" said Gill, sniffing the air in search of something unexpected.

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  "All the Cleaners are gone," said Edgar. "There's nothing left to harm us except ourselves."

  Gill understood the meaning of what Edgar was saying.

  There were four groups of people together that would need to work together as one to survive, and without Horace to lead them it might not take long for them to begin fighting over supplies and territory. He handed Edgar the spear and started back toward the others to begin the hard work of making a new home. Only Maude and Briney remained.

  "You sure about this, Edgar?" asked Briney.

  "He's sure," said Maude. "Come on. Let's go find a good spot to build an inn for you to run." She looked off toward the shepherdess and said something to Briney she'd been thinking for a while. "I wonder if she would teach me how to tend sheep."

  "I bet she would if you showed her how to cook a rabbit," said Briney. He was happy to see Maude's interests leaning toward quieter things. The two moved off, and for a moment Edgar stood alone, trying to get his bearings. A much younger boy of five or six ran up and handed him a piece of Cleaner and a jug of water.

  "This is good!" said the boy, stuffing another piece of the slimy meat into his mouth.

  "I'm glad you like it," said Edgar, taking the meat and the jug.

  "The water is rising fast," said the boy. He was afraid of being washed away or of being eaten by a Cleaner. "Are you sure it won't come any higher than the edge?"