Snow on Cinders (The Tallas Series Book 2)

by Cathrina Constantine

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Look. You can see it.” A breathless Fabal and Swan pushed through brushes, arms motioning. “Aw-w...you can’t see it from here. We have to go around the bend.” Expressing an optimistic brow, which widened his eyes, he said, “It’s a bridge.”

  Fishing in her knapsack for the map, Keeyla withdrew the scrap of brown paper, which Fabal had religiously studied. There it was, circuitous outlines indicating a channel of water and a bridge. “Perfect.” She ruffled her son’s unruly hair. Then poring over the map, she wondered about the scribbly circles and an A-frame pictured on the other side of the bridge. She lowered the paper for Fabal to read. “What’d you think this is?”

  He twitched his nose to the right and the left. “Hmm...I don’t know.”

  “Rock cairns, maybe?”

  “Ask Garth,” Fabal said, twiddling with three rocks in his hand, “he might know.”

  Attempting to stand with gusts at their backs, Keeyla showed the map to the men. They shrugged in unison. “Don’t know. Could be a graveyard or a house.”

  “I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” she said and noted people bunched together waiting to hear the next leg to their journey. “Up around the bend, there’s a bridge we can cross.” Murmurs of relief, angst, and fatigue spiked the airwaves as they collected their goods, slinging them over their shoulders.

  “Once we cross there’s probably nowhere we can find shelter on the plain,” Tanya said, catching up to Keeyla. “We’ll be stuck in the storm. Should look for somewhere in these mountains to wait it out.”

  Keeyla eyed small clefts and fissures in the lower half of the mountain. As far as she was concerned backtracking wasn’t an alternative. Full speed ahead. Her skin prickled, either from the changing temperature or knowing Doogan was within range. “I think if we hustle, we’ll make it to the valley by sundown.”

  “Yeah, and then what?” A disgusted Tanya flipped her wrist in the air. “You think we’ll find shelter there?”

  “I don’t know, but my instincts are telling me we’d better hurry.”

  ***

  In awe, Fulvio covered his mouth and spoke through his fingers. “Assassinate?” The word a bitter tang on his tongue lingered in his mouth. He stroked the length of his beard. “Kind of unorthodox, don’t you think?”

  “The five of us don’t make an army,” Ennis said, his face a tight skein of conjecture. “How the hell...”

  “We can do it.” Smelt’s hand scrambled his nose. “Pick ‘em off one at a time.”

  “Then what?” Doogan rose from the damp ground and brushed his knees. “I predict pandemonium. Since they’ve been deprived for many years, people might get frenzied. They’ll strip the orchards, fields, and the livestock trying to hoard as much food as they can. Mediators sniping citizens when they start, and then tearing into the food rationing station.”

  “Really? Is that a bad thing?” Gus decided to add his two cents. “Now—I never lived there. And I’m kind of like an ignorant bystander”—rising to his feet— “but from what I’ve deduced, Tallas has this...bastard of a dictator punishing people, and you think they’d revolt if this dude bit the bullet? Seems to me, they’d be rejoicing in the streets. And maybe, just maybe...people like us”—he raised his extra swollen arm—“Would be safe from those doctors cutting us apart like...what’d you call it, Fulvio?—guinea pigs.”

  “Kids got a point.” Smelt hobbled to his knees and then to his feet.

  “We’d need to develop a smooth transition.” Fulvio remained on the ground, peering at the paper, but not seeing it. “I don’t condone senseless murder per se,” he said bewildered, two hands kneading his temple. “But maybe, just maybe, Pomfrey would listen to reason...or else...”

  “Or else—Kapow!” Smelt touted his hand like a pistol and snapped his thumb.

  “Fulvio, you’re kidding yourself if you think he’ll listen to what you have to say.” Doogan shoved two hands along his temple, dejection written over his face. “No matter what, I’m getting into the Infirmary to see Riggs. Citizens won’t survive without a competent doctor, and I don’t know if I can leave them, again.” He glimpsed Ennis and then Gus. “I know you need me here, but they need me too. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Doogan, he’ll kill you.” Fulvio’s bulk eased upward, his eyes shattered looking at his son. “He’s insane, mad, and he’ll kill you.”

  “He needs me. He needs a physician.”

  “Now—you’re kidding yourself, my son.”

  Suddenly a bolt of white lightning struck nearby, and menacing clouds seemed to meet the earth. The extreme variance of climate clashed as a cold front rampaged over the summit to their campsite, showering pellets of icy hail. Prior to seeking shelter, they jumped to the buckboard wagon to cover their provisions with a tarp.

  ***

  “Quick, get under the bridge.” Clayton marshaled them to a dry piece of property. “Damn weather’s crazy. Everybody move. Let Tibbles through with the cart. Don’t want all our stuff to get soaked.” People branched apart providing bear and rider to snuggle under. The dramatic change of weather was nonsensical, yet since the final days much had transformed the planet.

  The bridge was twenty feet in diameter and sixty feet in length and appeared to be haphazardly man-made. Seemingly erected after the war that meant people had survived nearby and had the means and measures to find an expedient method to cross the channel which, at first sight, looked like a lazy river, now agitating water and rising banks.

  Keeyla roughed hands through her hair sprinkling ice pellets, some already thawed leaving her head cold and wet. Shivers chased up her spine. Dropping her knapsack, she rummaged through her skimpy belongings for a hoodie, then looked for her son. “Fabal, put on a sweater.”

  She found him standing at the far end of the bridge gazing onto the plains. Hugging arms around her waist, she inspected the bridges supporting framework. Horizontal crossbeams made of sturdy wood held the trestle in place. As she pirouetted in place, she detected crosspieces and broken beams where the bridge appeared to distend awkwardly downward. “Oh, great,” she muttered to herself.

  “There, there, there,” Fabal hollered, gesturing and acting like a jumping bean. “Black smoke. It’s smoke from a fire. It’s them. The valley’s right there.”

  Keeyla’s heart clutched, so close, yet so far. Weaving like a fool between crowding bodies, she wished to see the confirming smoke.

  “See—look to the left.”

  “How can you tell its smoke through this storm?” someone said.

  “I saw it! Look above those trees.” Fabal kept his eyes glued to the spot. “A cloud of black smoke from a fire that was watered down.”

  “He’s probably right.” Keeyla squinted, staring for signs of smoke. “We’re almost there.”

  The hail transitioned into sleeting rain, a curtain of water blocked their view beyond the bridge. People scattered, undocking wood and kindling from the cart. They lit a fire dispersing the damp chill and began clanking kettles about for a pot of stew.

  Fabal stationed himself on the border of percolating wetness keeping a keen watch.

  Keeyla had just finished inspecting Knox’s sutured legs and shoulder and proclaimed he’d healed well. Dousing alcohol over her sewing scissors, she cut his stitches and ripped them out of tender skin.

  Knox buttoned his lips, not uttering a word or flinching, he then fingered the weal and scratched the healing itch. “Ah-h...that feels better.”

  “Does he still need to wear the sling?” Swan asked, leaning in to get a good look at her brother’s scars.

  “The clavicle’s still mending. I think Knox will feel better if he wears it. Takes pressure off the shoulder. It takes longer for bones to heal.”

  “How’d you know so much about bones and such?” Tanya asked.

  “I learned a few things from Doogan over the years.” She cleansed Knox’s wounds and readjusted the handmade sling around his arm and nec
k. “Try and take it easy. Okay?”

  “Yepper. I’m feeling great.” Knox stretched his legs and twisted his ankles, grinning. “Hey, I’d been thinking, can’t Tibbles head over to the valley, just to let them know we’re here?”

  “Good idea.” Keeyla grinned and finger-tipped Knox’s nose. “But I hate to send him out in this.”

  The rain modified to a crossway current getting Fabal drenched, his watch post was somewhat defunct. Deciding to dry off by the fire when he apparently heard Knox’s comment. “Why don’t we ask him?” Fabal suggested. People jockeying for a spot by the miniscule fire blocked his view of his supersized furry friend.

  “Tibbles?” He paced further under the bridge into the dreary darkness where two-by-fours protruded from the dirt and the fringe of his hair brushed the rafters. “Tibbles?” He distinguished a sprawling mass and then a sniffly snore. “I guess you’re tired, huh, fella? Lugging all that junk for us.” He reverted from the bear’s sleeping quarters saying, “Tibbles is zonked.”

  “We’ll wait out this downpour.” Inhaling a delectable aroma, Keeyla’s stomach gurgled. “Let’s eat and rest. We’ll be seeing your dad shortly.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Drafts whistled like a warning siren, buffeting the helio and rain leaked through the metal panels. They plugged cracks and sopped up puddles with rags as oxygen condensed becoming humid. Fluctuating from rain to drumming hail, and then to slushy snow the incongruous weather clobbered them on every front.

  “I wonder how Smelt and Fulvio are doing in the truck,” Ennis said, hunching over a pillar candle. Shadows played over his face, hollowing his cheeks and eye sockets. “This storm’s going to be an all-nighter.”

  “I wanted to be in the air by now.” Frustrated, Doogan wiggled his foot, but it wasn’t aiding in placating him.

  “We can’t fly in this.” Ennis hovered his hands over the candles flame. “You can’t save Paniess if you’re dead.”

  Doogan snarled. “I’m cracking the door to get some fresh air in here.” He bumped his shoulder into the sliding metal door, cracking it a smidge and inhaled. Then he crept to the cockpit and swabbed the condensation trickling along the windshield. “I can’t see anyone in the truck. The windows are fogged. They’re waiting it out just like us.”

  Jane folded her legs to her chest tying her arms around them. She balanced her forehead on her knees, and a waterfall of hair draped to the floor, appearing to be asleep. A cross-legged Gus sloped forward, his three arms buttressing his legs seemingly mesmerized by the flame.

  “Sorry, Doogan. I really can’t lift this baby up in a storm.” Ennis combed tense fingers into damp hair. “I can barely navigate over the mountains on a clear, windless day, let alone in this where I can’t see five feet in front of me. In the sky, it’ll be ten times worse.”

  Doogan mimicked his father, “Hmph” and plastered his spine into the co-pilot’s seat. Shutting his eyes’ he instantly dreamed of Keeyla. Precious stolen moments—was it only days ago?—it seemed like forever.

  In the fluttery candlelight, a sheen encapsulated her supple skin as his fingertips smoothed the curve of her waist tracing over her hips to her inner thigh. Tasting the nook below her earlobe she’d gloriously moaned. He’d nibbled his way to her parted lips. Their tongues met and played a well-tuned pastime of thrusts. She coaxed and taunted him with her hands, and he’d harmonized her breathless moan. Compliant in every way, her back arched to welcome his...

  “Doogan, where’s Zennith and Gingersnap?”

  His eye’s crunched, brought back from his luscious reverie. “Huh, what?”

  “Were you snoozing? Sorry. I didn’t know.” Gus’s hair hung on either side of his face like curtains merely the tip of his nose rose out of the silhouette. “Ennis, do you know?” He’d diverted his question.

  Doogan said, “The horses are probably hiding beneath the trees.”

  “Poor animals.” Yielding his limp body to the floor, Ennis pillowed his arms behind his head. “We should’ve built a lean-to as soon as we got here.”

  “Our first project when the storm breaks.” Gus yawned, and following Ennis’s lead curled in a ball and closed his eyes.

  Lulled by the tempest, Doogan slept fitfully, thoughts of Keeyla and Paniess standing side-by-side facing a firing squad.

  ***

  Able to catch fifty winks, Fulvio then slipped from the truck into a trifling drizzle, boots sunk into pools of standing water. He snagged his hat from the floor of the cab, squashing it on his head and took one last gander at Smelt. The scrawny man slept crumpled on the doorframe and cushioned seat, his chin resting on his chest, whiffling. Fulvio’s mustache twitched as his lips spread into a strained grin; they’d bickered until their words turned into groggy slurs.

  Now browsing the firmament, his face tinged with icy mist, he squinted. Swathed in spackled patterns of black velvet and amethyst and devoid of a telltale moon, judging time was hard spent, but guessed the three o’clock hour.

  As he stepped toward the buckboard wagon, boots slurping in gunk, he breathed in loamy odors and wet pine. Years of surreptitious thieving and hunting had prepared him for the task at hand. Clambering under the tarp to snatch supplies, he packed them into duffle bags.

  When his boots touched ground, Zennith planted his muzzle on Fulvio’s shoulder. “Aye, my friend,” his whisperings perked the horse’s ears. Caressing the stallion’s suede-like hide. “We’re off again. Sh-h-h, don’t make a peep.” Zennith’s fat tongue lapped the man’s neck and backpedaled to be saddled, clearly understanding.

  A sopping Gingersnap slurped into view, nipping Zennith’s shoulder. “Not now, Gingersnap.” Fulvio buckled the strap and then tested the saddle to make sure it was secure. “You cannot go with us.” The pony’s quizzical eyes looked at him. “You have to stay with Smelt.” She uncannily skimmed her muzzle and neck along the stallion’s flank as a parting message of friendship.

  Fulvio lowered the stirrups and gripped the saddle’s pommel and mounted, his girth eased into worn leather. He let the reins dangle from the harness as they circumvented the campsite, clomping as quietly as possible. Safely out of range, he needn’t flick the reins or set heels to his hide, Zennith seemed to know where to go.

  Heading due south along the overflowing riverbank, he gently nudged his knees into Zennith’s ribs, a hint to halt. He couldn’t believe his eyes. From his vantage, he perceived a smoldering fire and blanketed bodies beneath the bridge.

  “It appears we have a traveling band. What’d you think, Zennith?” The horse’s mane flicked. “A bunch of our people decided to make haste to their new village, eh?” He clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth forming an almost inaudible noise. The horse approached the bridge.

  A slow, measured gait and praying for silence, hooves clip-clopped over the wooden bridge. Reaching the other side they stopped to listen, when nothing was heard they advanced toward the mountain.

  ***

  An identifiable, palpable scent ringed Tibbles’ head. His nose flexed, gulping in the odor. Beady eyes blinked and focused, and felt pressure on his side. The boy and his mother had cuddled into him. His eyes moved, gazing to the wooden beams.

  He’d been wiped and had slumbered like the dead. Rejuvenated, the urgency to hound the scent was irresistible. The beast looked preposterous as he shifted and shimmied. His evasive maneuvers to unburden mother and son without waking them. Tibbles froze as Keeyla’s arm blindly swung out towing Fabal into her chest. Once they appeared settled, he rolled lengthwise and padded away.

  Bumbling from under the bridge he stopped for an elongated stretch. His wooly fleece jittered up and down his body, inhibiting a yawning growl. Tibbles elevated his head; nostrils flared and then jettisoned into the airstream.

  The soggy level landscape gave way to rises and unforeseen cavities over spilling with water. His paws caked with muck, clawed the incline. Arresting to sniff, he veered around a cleft among budding saplings and shrubber
y. He came upon a ridged plateau that was alighted in the dregs of an ebbing moon.

  A gleaming stallion pranced on hind legs while his front legs pawed the air, exhaling steam from his nostrils. Its rider regally perched restrained the horse. A magnificent sight. “My friend, we waited for you.”

  “Rumpf, rumpf” Tibbles swaggered towards his father figure.

  “Not this time.” His voice cracked around them. “While I’m gone, I need you to safeguard these people.”

  “A-a-a-r-r...Refer-r-r.”

  “Please, Tibbles don’t talk back. I must go to Tallas and take care of a pressing matter. Paniess is in trouble—and no—” The bear’s black eyes popped. “No, you cannot come.” The beast sensing despair rose on hind legs to gaze into Fulvio’s face.

  “I...I might not return.” He swallowed and choked during his confession. “My...forever...f-faithful friend, you are free to follow your dreams. Whether it be w-with Fabal or to venture and find happiness elsewhere. I...I leave the decision to you.” A mourning drone vibrated the bear’s esophagus.

  Fulvio outstretched his arms and Tibbles stepped into them. Patting his shoulders, not quite being able to reach the bear’s back. The bear hug continued until Zennith nickered.

  “I love you.” Fulvio’s said, his tone strangled. Melancholy beady eyes peered at him before dumping to all fours.

  Zennith curved his mighty neck coming nose to nose with Tibbles. The two animals seemed to exchange unvoiced apprehension and heartfelt love, nestling heads issuing ardent murmurings.

  “My loves, we must depart,” Fulvio whispered.

  One final nose prod and Zennith’s neck straightened, alert, poised, and ready.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Doogan had fallen asleep on the co-pilot’s seat, his neck kinked and ached. Claustrophobic, he peered through beaded moisture on the windshield, morning held little to be desired or, he’d risen before the sun broke the horizon. Across the way, a bleak mantle of fog walking through the valley swallowed the truck.