by Ray Hudson
The pack sprang into another churning ball of fur, out of which a shape began to emerge as fox leapt on fox in gradually decreasing numbers as a perfect pyramid was created. Fur brushed my legs as Stink dashed away. A final pair of foxes scrambled to the top. And then Stink scampered up all the other foxes until he reached the summit. He arched his back and tooted in victory.
I pulled Booker away as the pyramid collapsed on itself and the room erupted in joyful turmoil. We ran through Ash’s workroom, under the archway and onto the bridge. We had taken maybe a half-dozen steps toward the great door that I hoped was still open for latecomers when Stink dashed past, not even a little out of breath. He skidded to a stop and turned around as Booker and I slid to a halt. He looked up at us, boy-shaped, with a boastful smile. “What’d you think?” he asked.
“You’re late,” said Summer-Face-Woman as her bony hand crashed onto Booker’s shoulder. He collapsed onto the bridge and rolled toward the edge. Stink was instantly a fox. He snapped his jaw around Booker’s ankle and pulled him back. So there we were, like what, three blind mice confronting the cat?
“Your guests are waiting for you.” She pointed at me with her bundle of feathers. “Come,” she ordered. “Now!”
“She’s not—” Booker was wobbling to his feet. “She’s not going.”
I had to admire him. Basically useless, but admirable.
The woman looked at him with eyes that were as indifferent as death.
“With me,” she said.
34. Anna
Booker glanced at me. Partners?
I nodded slightly.
“Just the girl,” she said as Booker took a step forward.
“Enough,” she said. She drew an obsidian knife from inside her clothing. I could hear Booker’s breathing. He moved closer. She pointed the knife at him.
“Back away,” she ordered.
Ash stepped onto the bridge behind her.
“Lower the knife,” he said quietly, like he was trying to calm a wild animal.
She held the blade still.
“Lower it, Summer-Face-Woman,” he repeated.
The instant she whirled around, the blade flew from her hand and buried itself in Ash’s shoulder. He crumpled to the ground. Booker dove past me and straight into the back of her legs. She threw her arms up to keep her balance and the feathers went flying. At the sight of Ash pulling the obsidian knife from his wound and hurling it away, something broke inside me. I clamped onto her, screaming and shoving and holding on like a limpet to a rock. Booker was sent tumbling onto the bridge. She thrashed and cursed, but I buried my fingers deeper into her clothing. She rolled me onto my back and forced my arms to the floor. I squirmed and bucked, but all that did was to rock us closer to the edge until the sharp corner scraped the back of my head. Booker grabbed one of her legs and Stink latched onto the other. They pulled, but she delivered a furious kick and sent them spinning away. Now she straddled me and pinned my arms with her knees. I saw Booker reach into his pack. He tossed his mask aside and removed a small red folding knife. I heard it clatter onto the stones and glimpsed him scrambling after it. Every muscle in my body buckled as Summer-Face-Woman leaned sideways to recover her obsidian blade. I raised a shoulder and bent a knee for leverage as first my head and then my neck dangled over the void. I felt myself slipping into the cold air rushing up from the chasm. I saw her lift her blade, saw it catch the light. I gave one final agonizing thrust, wrenching my chest and head up, and my eyes met the blank eyes of Booker’s mask. I was instantly calm. I went instantly limp. I gave myself over to gravity as she plunged the knife down, and we tumbled over the edge.
The knife dropped from her fingers, and the mask fell. The rush of air muffled her screams as we plummeted down. She flailed her arms as the air distorted her face into ragged contortions and drove the mask onto my face. I shook it away as I held on to her with hands like talons. A shrieking bark erupted from somewhere inside me before I broke free and let her go. The wind pushed against me. It lifted me up, threw me onto my back and spun me around until I wasn’t so much falling as hovering. I was swimming through the darkening air as I plummeted deeper and deeper. The air grew warmer as I turned and floated like the bundle of rosy feathers that drifted by. I struck out with a fist, opened my fingers and caught them. I tore the braided grass that held the bundle together and the feathers floated upward in the warm current. I dove into the air as into water. I stretched my arms and banked into the currents. Far below, Summer-Face-Woman twirled downward, smaller and smaller and smaller until she was nothing at all.
Far above me, like the shadow of a dark ribbon, the bridge stretched from side to side. I glided into a sharp turn and began to ascend. My speed increased and the bridge grew larger. I saw Booker and Stink. They were rushing down the steps along the edge of the chasm. The wrong way, I thought to myself. In a moment they would turn into the hall that led to the storage rooms and eventually to capture. I focused on a landing just below them. With every ounce of muscle and speed that I could muster, I swept over the edge and landed. I don’t know what I looked like, but they both backed away from me like I was about to bite. Stink actually had the nerve to growl. The mask fell from somewhere in the folds of my parka to the ground. I didn’t have time to argue or to explain what I couldn’t explain. I ran right between them up the steps.
“This way!” I ordered and, believe it or not, they followed. I had taken only a half-dozen steps when I sensed something hideously familiar. Raven’s shadow flickered as he stalked onto the bridge. His feathers clattered like metal and glistened with terrible, terrible beauty. His stench streamed behind him. I saw Ash standing. He had wrapped a wide band across his wounded shoulder and tied it in front. He kept his distance as the great bird sniffed the frame around the obsidian door like a wolf. He pulled it open and stepped inside. In a moment he was back at the edge of the bridge. He bent his beak and delicately lifted a strand of something that had been caught on a sharp stone. I did my best to cover Booker and Stink, hoping to camouflage the boy’s fox scent and Booker’s whatever scent with the fancy parka. We huddled as close to the wall as possible, wrapping whatever darkness we could find around us. After an unbearable silence, I heard a hushed whispering like paper rubbing against paper as Raven crossed the bridge, swept into the passage and back to wherever he had come from.
I didn’t wait to see if Ash followed him. By the time we reached the bridge, he was gone. We ran through the open door and into the alcove that angled down into the volcano. Even before my eyes adjusted, Stink let out an angry snarl. Ash was standing on one side and watching us. Booker and I jumped with alarm, and Stink growled, but Ash just stood there. He nodded toward a pile of sealskins folded on a stone bench.
“Perfect!” I said and tossed one to Booker and one to Stink who was now in a boy’s body. Booker flung his around his shoulders and tried to close it at his neck for a sort of ill-fitting cloak.
“It’s already hot in here,” he said.
Ash let out a laugh, but Stink had spread his at the top of the mat-covered stone incline that led out of the chamber. He made a forward jump and landed on the sealskin. He grabbed the sides and slid out of sight. Booker now understood and followed—after I had turned the pelt around so the hairs pointed backward. In seconds, he was gone.
I looked at Ash.
“You’d better be going,” he said. Everything I had wanted to be was standing there telling me to leave. The last real Unanga I would ever know.
“I’ll have to tell her,” he said.
I racked my brain for something to say.
“Qaaasakuqing, Ash, “I said. It was a simple thanks. It was completely inadequate.
“Lalu,” he said, “not Ash. Txin qaaasakuqing.”
Why was he thanking me?
I turned and vanished from the chamber without waiting for an answer. It was smooth sailing until the first set of steps arrived. From then on it must have been like trying to stay aboard a bucking horse.
Deeper and deeper we rode the sealskins down into the volcano, taking several steps in a single swoop. I hadn’t remembered all this downward plunging on the way up. Then the path leveled off. We coasted on the sealskins a few yards before another short downhill burst brought us to a landing. We dropped the skins and ran across the stone bridge where two streams joined together.
Stink skidded to a halt just as we reached the other side. He turned around. I heard nothing. Booker heard nothing. Then we saw a small red fox sprint back in the direction we had come from. We saw a red tail flick nervously from the highest step in sight and then in a moment the small creature was back at our feet.
“Somebody’s coming,” the boy said.
Now all three of us heard the deep gulps of breathing that accompanied what had to be the six sea lion sons trampling each other in their downward tumble.
“That man is leading them,” Stink said as he scampered past. We ran, panting as the trail turned uphill hugging a stream. As I raced past, I dipped a hand into the small lake and flicked cold water across my face. I remembered the room of waterfalls as my head brushed against a few low-hanging tangles of stone flowers and sent them clattering to the ground. I followed Stink as he turned down another hall and into a foyer. Here the carpeted path ended and stone steps led uphill. Booker and I had just started to sprint up when the fox let out a snapping growl and nipped at Booker’s heals. Booker turned with a frustrated groan.
“No!” the boy said, or rather, snapped in an abbreviated bark, as he disappeared down a different passage. We heard the rumbling and tumbling of immense bodies in the long passage. Ahead of this tumult, I heard Ash calling my name. I grabbed Booker’s arm as he was about to plunge after the fox. I quickly removed the necklace of pale-blue beads and thrust it into what passed for a pocket in my parka. Then I tried to remove the cord with the two beads Ash had given me. Booker saw me struggling and used the folding knife from his pack to cut the cord. I placed the beads where Ash would find them on the first step leading up. Booker laid the open knife beside the beads just as an angry yapping drew us into the passage where Stink was disappearing. Booker followed the fox, but I hesitated.
The avalanche of noise grew louder, and then Ash sprang into the foyer. The two amber beads brought him to a sudden stop. He picked them up and saw me. He looked from me to the beads.
“I’ll be fine,” I said just as the six sea lion sons burst into the clearing and I ducked deeper into the passage. The first sea lion gave a sharp-toothed smile at the sight of the knife in Ash’s hand. Ash signaled for them to follow as he sprinted up the stone steps and away.
The corridor plummeted downward until the three of us stepped into a vaulted chamber where a corrugated dome arced overhead and a mammoth stone extrusion sloped away. We had entered a cave within a cave, a sea cave. I heard the pulse of water and saw pools flooded with anemones, sponges, starfish, and barnacles. We stepped carefully to avoid slipping on the damp stone. In the distance, where the roof lowered and a series of twists led to the open sea, light hovered under the water and illumined the shadowed walls. Now Booker followed me and I followed Stink, who seemed to know his way. At times he led us right beside the walls where I fingered the damp rock. Then we veered away and scooted down across an expanse of sheer smooth stone. After a series of gentle switchbacks, we turned a corner to where a small compact man was holding the lines to a pair of kayaks.
“In, Booker, in!” I held the bow of one while the chief seated himself in the rear hatch and Booker slipped into the forward hatch and tightened the spray skirt around his waist as the chief barked instructions. I leapt into a second kayak where Stink sat in the forward hatch. In moments we were out on the water and heading toward the passage that led to the sea. The cave’s entrance was framed by a dark half-circle of descending rock, beyond which I saw a gray sky and a gray sea streaked with whitecaps. As we passed under the cave’s overhanging mouth, the silence of the underground cavern was consumed by wind. We struck the open water with enough speed to send us skimming into the choppy waves.
Once free of the cave, I glanced over my shoulder at the avalanche of approaching clouds. Boulders of black air rolled in the west as a gut-wrenching fury cascaded in our direction. A dark form rode the air currents down the side of the volcano. Broad wings hacked at the air. The Real Raven’s hoarse victorious barks devoured any chance of escape. We were slivers of vulnerability. He broke upward, soaring into the air, and then I saw him circle back, sending a wake of darkness toward us. He somersaulted and crowed with triumph as he announced his find.
Even from a quarter mile away, I heard the eruption at the mouth of the sea cave as the sea lion men torpedoed into the water and surfaced in an explosion of hair and flippers. Their bellowing roars were like thunder, like the slamming of huge doors. I paddled furiously. I occasionally glanced back, but the chief kept his eyes straight ahead. His paddle sliced the water like the wings of a wren cutting the air.
I could see the coast of Kagamil.
The six sea lion sons were not natural killers. They were show-offs, braggarts, overfed by their indulgent mother, and easily distracted. I didn’t know how else to explain the fact that we were leaving them behind. It seemed incredible.
Every time I glanced back, Little Wren increased his lead. But I had to look. And that’s how I saw the six dorsal fins cutting the water with the rhythm of band saws. The killer-whale people were swimming in increasingly larger circles, alert and hungry, and three or four times faster than any kayak.
The wind swallowed my warning scream as I rowed furiously. Little Wren was heading toward a tongue of rock that extended off the southwest point of Kagamil. He seemed to fasten his entire boat and being on that single point. Off to my right, I glimpsed a huge killer whale as it barreled forward, arched its body, and shot from the sea. Then it dove in our direction.
I saw the rocky expanse directly ahead. One brush against the sharp, unforgiving edge and our eyelid-thin boats would be shredded. Little Wren aimed for a stretch of relatively smooth stone. He held back and directed Stink and me to pass him and make the first landing. We swept ahead with all our strength and coasted in as the sea relaxed. We slipped from our hatches and sprang for the rocks. The sea cascaded around us as we scrambled up. It swept our kayak away.
I turned and saw Little Wren maneuver his boat parallel to the edge and hold it there while Booker frantically loosened his spray skirt. He hoisted himself from the hatch and scrambled off the bow and onto the rock. With a single deft maneuver, Little Wren was behind him, urging him forward as a killer whale leapt from the sea. It landed on the kayak and splintered it into sticks and skin.
I ran toward the grassy upland where the island rose from rock and water. There, if not free from the attack, I would at least not be swept into the sea. I sprinted with a rush of adrenalin and had almost caught up with Stink when I stopped and turned. Booker and Little Wren were scrambling over barnacles and slipping on kelp, while on three sides the sea churned and writhed. I saw the water building behind them. The roar of the wind drowned out my shouts as a wave swept up and in one smooth motion engulfed them.
I saw Booker grab at anything. His fingers slipped through kelp as he was towed backward. He jammed his elbows and knees into the rock, hunting for leverage. Then he was being pulled forward and up as Little Wren gave him a tug, and they bolted forward. The rocky tongue grew larger and larger as though rising out of the water.
“The sea!” I shouted. “The sea!”
Then Booker looked and understood. The water was pulling away from the shoreline, exposing more and more of the rocky expanse. The sea was swelling behind them into one immense consuming wave ready to break.
Stink and I were scaling the grassy bank, hand over hand or paw after paw, scrambling up as high as we could before the wave broke. I looked down and saw Little Wren slow just as he reached the end of the rock. He stepped aside and gestured for Booker to leap for the grassy bluff. Booker latched
onto the grass and scurried up. The chief’s momentum had ebbed, forcing him to take a few steps back before he ran and hurled himself forward. He landed short and began slipping backward. Booker slid down and stretched out his hands.
“Give me your hand!”
Little Wren reached upward.
The wave began to crown behind them.
Little Wren hoisted himself upright with Booker’s help and they began climbing.
Booker looked back over his shoulder and hollered something to the chief.
“Hurry!” I shouted.
But the chief drew Booker to a stop.
“I just remembered!” I heard Booker shout out his words between gulps of air.
I was ready to swear at both of them.
“Move!” I screamed. I saw a small red fox scamper away.
The wind hollowed out an opening into which Booker shouted to the chief, “Your brother’s granddaughter said to say hello!”
And the air was struck with sudden calm.
I walked into a cloud as solid as water.
Booker was beside me. The ground inside the cloudbank opened to a descending grassy slope interrupted by outcroppings of rock. The air was calm. The sky was impossibly blue. The sea below was slowly lapping the shore.
I turned around and stuck my head back out of the cloudbank and felt a deafening blast. The storm was obliterating everything from sight with blinding fury: Little Wren, the grassy bank, the tongue of submerged rock, everything except, burning through the dense diagonal rain, the slopes of Chuginidak Volcano flowing with fire.