by Diana Renn
Vasil came running around a fairy chimney from the opposite direction.
“Oh, good, Vasil is here.” Lazar smiled. “Vasil, it seems these girls do not want to visit with us. What should we do?”
Vasil reached into his pants pocket and took out a gun. “I went back for this. We need?” He cocked the gun and pointed it at us.
Sage stifled a scream. I sucked in my breath as we clung to each other, backed up against a tall boulder.
Lazar said something harsh to Vasil in Bulgarian or Turkish.
Sage slipped down to the ground. Was she fainting? I pulled her up, and realized she had something in her fist now. She’d picked up something from the ground.
Lazar and Vasil continued to argue, even though Vasil still had the gun trained on us. I imagined Lazar was warning him not to take our lives yet. He didn’t have his precious information from us.
Nor was he going to get that information. Sage wound up her arm and threw the rock directly at Vasil’s head. The baseball-sized rock with jagged edges struck him on the forehead, drawing blood.
“Run!” Sage shouted at me, grabbing my arm and pulling me sideways while he staggered backward, confused.
We ran and ducked behind another fairy chimney, bullets exploding behind us. My feet seemed to move on their own. Blood coursed through my veins. We ran to the next fairy chimney and the next, trying to confuse our pursuers by weaving a crazy pattern. Ducking behind the chimneys helped us avoid the gunfire that occasionally burst from Vasil’s gun, followed by Lazar’s shouts.
We came to a ledge with a slope leading about ten feet to the ground.
“What now?” Sage cried out.
“Slide!” I said.
We jumped and slid on our backs to the bottom.
Lazar and Vasil followed fast. But when I glanced back, I saw they both tripped getting up from the slide, which bought us a little more time. We ran on, through the forest of fairy chimneys.
They were larger now, some rising over a hundred feet high. My long dress came unhitched, and tore on bushes that we thrashed through. My bare feet stung. Still I ran faster, Sage by my side.
There was no sign of a road, or any human life-form. It was like we had landed on Mars. The landscape had changed slightly, too, the earth turning redder. The fairy chimneys widened into hills and mesas with fatter bases. Some of the hills had dark holes for windows. Unoccupied caves from a long-ago time, built into the rocks instead of underground. I felt like an ant surrounded by anthills. An ant that was going to get stomped on by giants.
“I really need air. And water,” I said, stopping to lean on a fairy chimney.
“Me too,” said Sage, doubled over. “I don’t know how we pulled that off, but I think we lost them. I haven’t heard gunshots or footsteps for a while.”
“Where are we, by the way? What is this place?”
Sage shielded her eyes and scanned the area. “I’m guessing we’re in Zelve. It’s a national park. Zelve is famous for its fairy chimneys and its red dirt.”
“And for crimes against hikers and tourists,” I added grimly, thinking of the map Aunt Jackie had in her file, the highlighted routes twisting like veins. “This is where my uncle was. Should we shout for help?”
Sage made an expansive gesture. “Who would help us? Birds?”
She had a point. The landscape was totally desolate. Why on earth would Uncle Berk have chosen to hike in this creepy place all alone? He wouldn’t have. Aunt Jackie was right. He was coerced into coming here.
“I don’t want to shout,” said Sage. “I’m sure Lazar and Vasil are still nearby and looking for us. We need to hide.”
“What about there?” I pointed to a rounded entrance to what looked like a tall, narrow anthill.
“That’s a cave,” said Sage. “But look at the sign.”
Right by the entrance was a Ministry of Tourism sign with words written in English, Turkish, French, and German. In English, it read: DANGER. DO NOT ENTER. THIS CAVE CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC DUE TO EXTREME EROSION AND EARTHQUAKE DAMAGE.
I now remembered Mom and Aunt Jackie talking a while back, on the boat dock, about the earthquake damage to caves out here and how some tourists had died in a cave-in. To the right of the sign was a pile of construction equipment—mostly metal pipes and lumber underneath some clear tarps, though I saw the handles of a pile of shovels and axes, too. I could see the entry to the cave was a small tunnel that had been bolstered by metal boards and a few pipes, as if to hold up the tunnel ceiling. On the right side of the cave was a scaffolding structure, with boards and pipes bracing the cave and in one place going directly through the cave wall. This cave was probably under repair. “Perfect hideout,” I said, darting into the cave.
“But, Zan, it’s not safe!” Sage lingered in the doorway instead of following me in, peering down the four-foot entryway tunnel I’d just passed through. “It could collapse. It really happens around here.”
“Then hopefully Lazar and Vasil will pay attention to the sign. For now, it’s our safest hideout. Now hurry! Before they see you!”
Sage looked behind her, then ran inside to join me.
It was a few degrees cooler inside, and dim, with light coming in only through the mouth to the cave and a couple of holes near the cone-shaped top. I touched the rough wall, which was made of the same soft volcanic material we’d found in the cave city. My throat burned, and I longed for water. But there was none to be seen, except—almost cruelly—a drawing on the cave wall that showed the sea.
That wasn’t the only fresco inside the cave. Other drawings showed people in colorful robes, only their faces were all rubbed out, which gave me the shivers all over again.
Sage followed my gaze. “I learned in my art history class at the international school that Islam traditionally prohibits showing human faces in art,” she said. “These caves would have been occupied at some point by Christians. This one might even have been a small church. But later, people came and erased the faces.”
Stolen faces. Was no art safe in this country? I thought of what Uncle Berk had said, how when art or artifacts are stolen, everyone loses. And I made myself another promise. If I got out of this place alive, I would never steal again. I was sure that other people I didn’t know had paid in some way for my crimes. And my family had paid a lot.
Crack. Crack.
“Bullet!” Sage hissed, her eyes wide. “Oh, crap. They must have seen us come in. Get away from the entrance! Hit the floor!”
We retreated to the walls opposite the entryway and crouched down low, covering our heads with our arms.
Crack, crack, crack. This time, bullets whizzed right by the entrance to the cave and echoed off the surrounding rocks. When I dared to open my eyes, I saw, just outside the doorway, a red haze from the dust the exploding bullets had stirred up outside.
“Oh my God. What are we going to do?” Sage squeaked when the volley of gunfire was over. “There’s only one doorway. If we walk out, they’ll shoot us! And if we stay in here, they’ll shoot us! We’re cornered!”
“They’re trying to scare us,” I said. The ringing in my ears was so bad, my own voice sounded far away to me. “They don’t want a mess on their hands. Lazar has cleaner ways of offing people. Like pushing them over cliffs and making it look like an accident.”
“It’s different this time,” Sage insisted. “We know too much about his business, and about the Karun Treasure urn. He’s at the end of his rope. And we’re in the middle of nowhere. Who’s going to see any mess he leaves behind?”
I shook my head. “It’s precisely because he’s so desperate that he needs to avoid a mess,” I said. “You’re the one who told me he never shoots at close range. He can’t risk a murder investigation so close to his headquarters, with everything that’s been going on. He can’t shoot us and leave our bodies for someone else to find, let alone a t
rail of blood that might lead to him. He knows my dad would stop at nothing, and use every connection he has, until he found whoever killed us. To bury his secrets, Lazar needs to bury us so we’ll never be found. That’s why he tried to seal us up in the cave city.”
“Why don’t they just come in here and haul us back to the cave city, then?” Sage demanded after another volley of bullets was fired.
Dust rained down the cave walls as the bullets hit the exterior walls. I recalled the warning sign outside.
“No need,” I said. “We’re right inside a spectacular accident that’s just waiting to happen. If we stay here, this thing will conveniently collapse and bury us, except maybe for the entryway. They’re not trying to scare us out. They’re trying to bring this cave down. On us.”
Sage’s hands flew to her mouth and she stifled her cry.
“We have to get out,” I added.
“What, through the door? Right into their clutches?” said Sage.
“No.” My eyes traveled up. Up and up and up an imaginary top rope, to the narrowing top of the cave, about forty feet high. To the only way out that would let us avoid walking right into gunfire. I pointed. “There.”
42
Light leaked in through the small carved-out windows way up at the top of the wall. If we could find enough holds in the rough wall, we might make it nearly up to the ceiling, which narrowed at the top, like a cone. Then we could climb up and out one of those small holes, and down the other end of the rock formation, on the opposite side of the entrance to the cave.
I stood up and felt the wall for rock features that might hold our weight, testing out a couple. Some of the volcanic rock crumbled beneath my grip, but eventually I found a few holds.
“What are you doing?” Sage asked, joining me.
I quickly explained my plan. “Follow me up. Put your hands and feet exactly where I do.”
Sage looked terrified. “I can’t,” she said, quaking. “I’m afraid of heights, remember? And I don’t know about these walls.” She pointed to a wide, spreading crack that ran diagonally around the perimeter of the cave walls, and a spiderweb of cracks and fissures radiating from the doorway. “I’m really worried about the warning sign. Some tourists were buried alive in a cave city a few months ago when they went into a restricted area and started looking for tunnels. Just the pressure of their feet on some weak spots brought the whole structure down on them.”
I stared at her. “If this cave’s stood for hundreds or thousands of years, it’s going to have to stand for ten more minutes. And I do know you hate heights. But you also hate Lazar.”
Another round of shots rang out. This time some of the bullets whizzed into the cave. One lodged itself in the ankle of one of the painted figures on the wall, right between Sage and me. We both flattened ourselves against the wall, as if we were frescoes, too. Frescoes with faces twisted in terror.
“At least try to climb,” I said when the bullets had stopped. “The higher up we get, the less likely we’ll get hit by a stray bullet. And if you can make it halfway up the wall, I bet you can get to the top.”
Grim-faced, she looked upward. She wiped her hands on her dress and blew on them. “Okay. Let’s do this thing.”
My heart was pounding. I tried to take deep breaths and calm myself as I stared at the hole near the ceiling. We had zero climbing gear. And Sage was a novice climber.
I started my ascent. I’d never climbed barefoot before. But suddenly I understood why some outdoor climbers ditched their shoes. I could feel for footholds more quickly without a rubber sole in the way, and use my toes to help grip the rock features.
Sage followed close behind, breathing hard.
We were free soloing now, as I’d started to do back in Fethiye. Soon we were even higher than I’d gotten on the cliff wall back there. And fortunately the bullets had stopped ricocheting around the cave walls inside and out.
“I have no idea how to do this!” Sage cried.
“You’re doing great!” I assured her. “Stand on your feet. Pull up with your hands. Don’t make your forearms do all the work. Make most of the moves come from the pushing up and your core strength.” The voices of my climbing instructors echoed in my head, coaching me, urging me on, and I told Sage every piece of advice I’d ever heard. “Trust your feet!” I called down to her more than once. Every so often I looked down to make sure she was behind me. Once, a hold that looked like solid rock turned out to be only volcanic material. It disintegrated beneath me, sending a cloud of powder into Sage’s face. I hung from my handholds, my feet scrambling for something to ground them while Sage spat out dust.
Suddenly we heard a series of loud thuds, and the whole cave seemed to shake.
“They’re hitting the walls with something from outside!” Sage cried.
“The metal pipes,” I said, remembering the pile of construction equipment outside the mouth of the cave. “Could that really take this cave down?”
“If they hit loose spots, maybe,” Sage panted. “If they find just the right spots, it could happen.”
“Keep climbing!”
My heart felt like it was going to burst. My throat screamed for water. We climbed at a steady pace, onward and upward.
Our destination, that hole big enough for us to crawl through at the top, was just above me now. But the texture of the cave wall had changed. Except for more spiderweb cracks, it was smooth, and curved upward. There were no natural features to grab hold of. I’d been in a chimney at the climbing gym before, where I’d learned to spread my body between two faces at an angle. I could almost do that here, but my foot scrambled for purchase on the opposite wall, slipping off every time. Volcanic dust snowed down. I had no idea how to swing up to that window.
I’d screwed up and made everything worse. “Zan?” Sage called up. “We’re close, right?” The banging of the pipes against the cave walls was relentless. Then we heard a sharper metallic sound. An ax blade striking wood.
“Oh, no,” said Sage. “They’re hacking at the scaffolding.”
A chunk of rock material broke off near the doorway and fell to the floor with a clatter.
“We’re so close,” I said. “But we’re out of holds.”
“Isn’t there anything we could do to make more?” she asked. “This volcanic stuff can be carved into, you know. That’s how people made their cave homes, back in the day.”
“I’d need some kind of tool,” I said. “Got anything sharp in your pockets?”
“No.”
I looked down at Sage’s head and saw that her scarf had fallen off. Her long curls were clipped back from her forehead, held by two large barrettes. “Hey,” I said. “Let go with one hand, and take off one of your barrettes. Then pass it up to me.”
“I’m scared,” she said, her voice quaking. “I don’t want to let go.”
“Don’t think about it. Just do it,” I begged her. “Nice and slow. There you go,” I said, as she slowly released one hand and removed a barrette.
She handed it up to me. I reached down with one hand as far as I could. There were still about five inches between us. I couldn’t quite get it.
“Damn!” she cried out as she dropped the barrette. We both watched it slide to the bottom of the cave and lie there among the bullet casings.
“We have to try again,” I said.
She ripped out her remaining barrette, then pushed herself up one more foothold to raise herself a few inches higher.
“You’re awesome, Sage! You can do it!”
My fingertips grazed the barrette, then grabbed it. Now I had a tool. I got busy scraping at the wall. We were just four moves away from the window. Removing some of the loose volcanic tuff exposed hard rock beneath, which allowed me to create surfaces that stuck out enough for us to grab. In a few minutes I had two new handholds. I inched up higher and exposed more rock to
make two footholds. At the very top, it was narrow enough for me to reach out with one foot and one leg to the opposite wall, for balance. Then I reached for the base of the window hole and pulled myself up.
I’d done it! I was out!
The other side of the cave was steep, at a sharp forty-five-degree angle, and a three-foot drop would land us on the top of a narrow mesa below it. It should be even easier than jumping from Aunt Jackie’s rooftop to Nazif’s. But first I had to get Sage out. I lay on my stomach against the side of the cave, reached in through the window, and helped pull her through. She crouched in the window hole for a minute while I dropped to the top of the mesa, and then she followed me. We stood there a moment, panting and dazed, while little avalanches of pebbles and volcanic tuff skittered down beneath our feet. Our skin and the ripped remains of our clothes were covered in reddish dust.
“There they are,” Sage breathed, pointing below. “Lazar and Vasil. They stopped hitting the cave. What are they doing?”
“Arguing, I think,” I said. We watched as the two men exchanged a volley of angry words with each other. They dropped the heavy pipes they were carrying. Then Vasil turned to pick up an ax from the pile of construction equipment near the mouth of the cave. Lazar hurried after him.
Sage and I exchanged a look. “They don’t know we made it out,” she said.
“They’ll figure it out soon enough,” I said. “Look, they’re going into the entryway. Maybe they’re going to give up on bringing the cave down, and knock us out and drag us back to the cave city after all.”
We heard the rhythmic, metallic sound of an ax on wood again. “The wooden support beams in the entryway,” said Sage. “I bet they’re going to try to take it down that way. Destabilize the structure from the inside scaffolding. They probably think we’re still hiding in the cave behind a rock or something.”
I dropped to my knees and started crawling, fast, along the narrow mesa top, away from the cave. “Don’t try to stand. It’s like a balance beam, and you’ll fall thirty feet if this stuff gives way. Let’s get as far from the cave as we can and look for a safe place to slide down this mesa.”