Red Lotus

by Catherine Airlie

  When they eventually came to the narrow entrance to the upper valley, half hidden by a screen of stunted sage, he refused to go on. Nervously he sniffed the air, his sensitive nostrils quivering as he pawed the ground before him.

  "Treasure, you must!" Felicity besought him. "You must take me there. I may be needed."

  Her voice faltered on the final words. She could hardly breathe for the heat, and a desperate unnamed fear rose in her heart.

  How long had she taken? How much time, had she lost by missing the path and riding those extra miles along the ridge? She had left her watch behind her in her haste to get away, but time seemed scarcely measurable in the ordinary way up here.

  She glanced up at where the sun should have been, to see only a molten ball of fire glaring at her through the haze. I've got to go on, she thought. I've got to go on!

  The narrow road to Lozaro Alto went down into a steep barranco whose sides looked almost precipitous. Great jagged pinnacles of rock towered heavenwards, red and fantastic-looking in the peculiar light of the veiled sun, yet she could see far beneath her a valley of great beauty.

  Cradled between these savage mountain crests, Lozaro Alto was a valley to be dreamed about, deep and narrow and green, with trees already growing on its steep sides and a stream running clearly down its entire length.

  Life-giving water! No wonder Philip saw it as his future home. Here toil would be abundantly rewarded. Here the vine would grow on the terraced hillsides again and the valley itself would be white with orange blossom covering a thousand trees. There would be maize in the hollows in the spring, and the emerald of corn. They would plant figs and limes and a red camellia tree—

  She tore her thoughts away from her smiling vision of the future to attend to the present. Treasure had come to an abrupt halt on the narrow road, quivering in every limb, and the sun had hidden its face again. Even as she watched, the whole world seemed to grow dark. She felt the thunder beneath her feet again and the valley rocked gently as she looked.

  The sun, she thought. I've been too long in the sun!

  Carefully, steadily, she got down from the saddle, thinking to find some shade for a moment, and almost immediately she felt the earth tremble again. With a final, desperate whinny of terror, Treasure took to his heels and fled.

  "Treasure! Treasure—!"

  Her voice seemed to echo mockingly through space. He would neither heed nor obey. She watched the cloud of dust which obscured him rise and disappear in the distance. She was alone.

  Despair settled on her like the haze that was steadily creeping towards her down the mountainsides. What could she do? What could she possibly do to reach the valley now that Treasure had deserted her?

  For a moment her anger with the horse was uppermost, but very soon she recognized the true implication of his flight. Roll upon roll of what she had taken for thunder shook the crags on every side of her, and suddenly the guardian peak which looked down over Philip's hidden valley began to belch smoke from its rugged side.

  A blow-hole, she thought in horror. A miniature crater torn in the solid rock by the molten inferno within!

  Fear seized her, and a terrifying sense of her desperate vulnerability. She was alone, so alone that the very crags seemed to threaten her and the sight of even a bird of prey would have been welcome. There was no movement anywhere now. The whole valley seemed to be lying still, crouched in expectancy before the coming fury of volanic wrath.

  I'm trapped, she thought. Trapped up here by my own stupidity. I should never have got down, never let Treasure go!

  Once more panic seized her, and then she was conscious of the calm of acceptance. Philip was somewhere down there in the valley. Somehow she must reach him.

  The road she followed wound slowly uphill, however, nearer and nearer to the crater's edge, and the air she was breathing was full of sulphur. It was a difficult, narrow road, with a sharp drop of hundreds of feet on one side down into the valley below. She wondered despairingly if she had come the wrong way, only to remember that Conchita had said that there was only one road into the valley. This road; the way she must go. The way by which she and Philip, Conchita and Julio must come out.

  It was so dark now that she could hardly see. A dull, molten cloud had effaced the sun and it seemed to be pressing down close against the sides of the peaks ahead of her. Then, with a terrifying sound which shook the whole barranco from top to bottom, the side of a hill caved in and a great fountain of smoking rock and stone leapt into the windless air. Cinders and sparks showered down to cover the whole road ahead of her, and she drew back in terror.

  For an endless second she stood watching, her eyes dilated, her heart thumping heavily against her ribs, but the trembling of the earth had ceased. All sound had suddenly fled, leaving a dreadful, awful calm.

  There was nothing left in Felicity's mind but the desire to reach Philip. She began to run forward along the path, gasping for breath as she went, stumbling in the darkness and subtly aware of a silent, moving thing somewhere on the steep hillside above her. It was fear, she thought, fear of the unknown. There was nothing there—no tangible thing.

  Her breath came in agonized gasps, but the road seemed to be going downwards now, into the valley. Suddenly a flare of angry light seared the sky above her and she saw the whole narrow barranco lying at her feet. It looked cold and completely deserted.

  For the first time she faced the possibility that Philip might not be there. If he had heard these terrible warnings inside the mountain, wouldn't he already be well on his way back to San Lozaro? Philip, and Conchita, and Julio?

  Her heart stood still and a frenzy of loneliness caught her by the throat. The grim, Dante-esque columns of rock on all sides seemed to be pressing closer, slowly, relentlessly, before she began to run.

  She ran back along the way she had come in the semi-darkness of the veiled day, stumbling, choking, almost unable to breathe, until gradually a peculiar, diffused light spread across the distant pinnacles of rock until it reached her feet. It lit up the surrounding hillsides and the way ahead.

  Then, with a small, inarticulate cry, she had drawn back. It was as if the thing which had moved unseen in the darkness had touched her.

  Above her, belching out of the mountainside, a slow stream of boiling lava came steadily down towards the road.

  She stood, frozen in horror, watching it, fascinated by the slow-motion destruction of it, a red and black avalanche sweeping everything before it. There was the hot smell of sulphur and a rain of ash as it burned its way forward, and she could see the red core of it, the angry, semi-fluid heart of the lava itself, and the mass of slate-grey rock and stones above. It hurtled down towards her, with the plant life withering and crumbling yards in front of it, and involuntarily she stepped back.

  Hours later, when she found herself trapped in the valley, she wondered why she had not run for her life in that terrible moment of indecision, but in that moment, too, she had become aware of the subtle power of instinct which told her that Philip was still at Lozaro Alto.

  She fled back along the path, pausing to look only when she was sure that she was out of range of that dark river of death.

  The flow seemed to have speeded up, travelling faster. She watched it reach the road and cross it, a dark, molten barrier four feet high, spreading out in width with every second that passed.

  When it reached the far side of the road it plunged in an angry red waterfall over the cliff face to the valley below. It filled the little ravine like the waves of a heavy, ponderous sea, piling up slowly and forever rolling on.

  She began to run again. She ran till her heart seemed ready to burst, down and down, with that burning smell in her nostrils and utter despair in her heart. Small, incandescent rocks were thrown out of the new crater at intervals to burst in the cooler air above it like a gigantic firework display, and their fragments fell behind and before her. She did not know how she escaped injury, but presently she realized that she was beyond the h
ail of ash, running over a smoother road, with green grass, not yet scorched, on either side of her.

  A herd of small white goats huddled for protection beneath a group of young almond trees. They were bigger than the goats of El Teide, a finer breed, and pure white. She realized that there were dozens of them scattered about the valley, and they began to bleat piteously as she approached. Somewhere, she thought, there must be shelter.

  It was then that she saw the house, perched high on a terrace ledge above the valley floor. It was not very big, but it had a comforting red roof and smoke—ordinary smoke—rising in a .steady white column from its single wide chimney.

  "Philip!" she sobbed. "Philip!" and ran towards it.

  The house was empty. She went in through the doorway and called again and again. There was no reply. The house was small, built in the usual style of the Spanish hacienda round an enclosed court, where a fountain had once played. It was silent now, and the garden beyond the shaded patio was overgrown and neglected.

  Yet someone had been there quite recently. A fire of roughly-hewn logs smouldered beneath the huge open chimney in the stone-flagged kitchen and there was evidence of a recent meal on the heavily-carved table.

  She searched from room to room. The house had

  evidently been lived in up to a few hours ago. There were two bedrooms and a. central living-room, with windows overlooking the valley, and on one of the beds she found the jacket Philip had worn when he had set out from San Lozaro in pursuit of Conchita. Beneath it lay a revolver.

  She stood staring at the weapon for several minutes before she could think again clearly. Philip would never have left the valley without his coat and his gun. He was here, somewhere.

  The deathly stillness of the house drove her outside, but the garden was almost as still. An ominous, waiting silence hovered in the air, a sense of inevitable doom. Even the goats were quiet now, huddled in a pathetic little group on the bare outcrop of rock above her.

  A choking sensation of panic rose into her throat, but she tried to crush it down in the need for action. If Philip were here, somewhere, he might be lying hurt in one of the many deep ravines running down to the valley itself. If he were here at all, he must surely need her help.

  Standing on the tiny, overgrown terrace, she scanned the hillsides, trying not to look too often towards the thick pall of vapour which marked the stealthy progress of the lava stream, trying not to think of the road which had been closed behind her.

  It was then that she noticed the peculiar behaviour of a small group of the white goats standing on a pinnacle far above the house. They appeared to be agitated, bleating and scrambling up and down over the rough scree, sure-footed in their native element but not so sure in purpose. The encroaching stream of lava was behind them, and suddenly they began to run.

  They came down in a thin white line towards the little plateau where the house stood, leaping and clambering from rock to rock, bleating piteously, but every now and then they would pause to look back at the sharp pinnacles they had just abandoned.

  Below the jagged peaks of rock there was a small escarpment running out in a ledge for a hundred yards or so before it fell precipitously to an arid barranco far beneath. The goats, she supposed, would graze up there, although there did not appear to be any foothold.

  Then, somehow, she knew that she must go there. Instinct warned her of danger, and she tried to thrust the memory of Julio from her mind. She did not think that either Julio or Conchita was still in the valley. Only Philip.

  Fear lent wings to her feet. She ran, stumbled, tripped and ran again. Before she had reached the escarpment her shirt was torn and her hands bleeding, but she had no time to notice these superficial things. She passed the herd of goats, noting subconsciously how long and silky their hair was and how piteously they looked at her, but she could not stop. Soon the others had joined the herd, but she passed them, too.

  She went up in their tracks, climbing, holding on to the rock with her bare hands, digging her nails into whatever soil she could find when there was no other way of helping herself up.

  On the level stretches she ran again, half-sobbing, wondering how near the lava was. It did not seem to matter now. All that mattered was Philip and the thought, driven into her mind with each advancing step, that he needed her. She would not allow herself to believe him dead.

  She reached the ledge and lay panting in the fierce heat of the sun. It had broken through the brazen cloud of volcanic smoke and stood scorchingly above the distant peaks, pitiless, beating down upon the rapidly dying valley with no promise of respite in the blue surrounding sky. It was a sun to be hated in that moment, sapping her strength, making the way more difficult for her, clouding her vision as her eyes struggled against it.

  Moving to the edge of the escarpment, she looked cautiously down. The deep ravine appeared to be empty. She turned away, a despairing sob racking her from head to foot. What now? What now, Philip?

  It was then that she saw the fragment of silk caught on a branch of a stunted tamarisk. It hung limply, but it was still too vividly scarlet to have been there very long. The sun would have bleached it if it had been there for more than a day, or the goats would have eaten it. And Julio had been wearing a scarlet silk shirt when he had left San Lozaro!

  Her hands trembling visibly, she caught at the limp

  scrap of material. It was the pocket of a shirt and it bore the initials J. H. embroidered within each other. Julio!

  There was no sign of struggle anywhere, but as she looked about her she was sure that Julio had been there. And so had Philip. She was as certain as if she had seen them together, seen them locked in a deathly struggle, perhaps, or in bitter argument.

  There could have been some sort of accident—

  In the breathless air she crawled back to the edge of the escarpment and within minutes she saw a movement far down in the ravine. Shading her eyes and focusing them intently on that one spot, she saw the first evidence of the accident she had feared. The vegetation was thick down there and it had been recently broken, crushed by the fall of a heavy body from a considerable height.

  Without thought, without waiting to consider any personal danger, she was making her way down.

  Somehow she found the necessary footholds and the grips she needed for her hands. In places the rock itself burned her where the full heat of the sun had been on it, but she was far beyond the consideration of discomfort now.

  She reached Philip in under an hour.

  He stirred as she dropped to her knees beside him, but she knew that he was not conscious and she gathered him into her arms for an endless moment while her lips moved stiffly in prayer.

  "Dear God!" she whispered. "Dear God—" but no more would come. Slowly, carefully, she ran her hands over his crumpled body, but she had no real knowledge of broken bones. All she knew with any certainty was that his heart was still beating, although he seemed to be breathing with difficulty.

  What was she to do? She looked about her at the almost impenetrable vegetation on every side and up to the arid waste of rock and scree where only the cactus had taken root. To go back by the way she had come was impossible if she had to support Philip, and to leave him here—

  She pushed the suggestion aside. She could not, dared not leave him, even to try to find another way back to the house.

  Her eyes fastened on a hovering bird of prey far above the highest rock pinnacles and she shivered. Somehow, and in some way, they must reach shelter.

  "Felicity—?"

  She had not been looking at him and in that moment his eyes had opened. Endlessly, it seemed, they gazed at each other, minds probing, heart searching heart.

  "How did you get here?" he asked at last.

  "I rode up. I had Treasure---"

  She remembered how the horse had gone, fleeing before the terror that slid down from the mountain peak, but she would not let her thoughts dwell on the road, the trap that had closed behind her.

  "You
followed me up here?"

  "Yes, Philip." She knelt down beside him again. "We must get away, back to the house," she urged. "You've been hurt. I must get you out of the sun."

  He passed a hand uncertainly across his eyes and slowly the colour began to come back into his face. With it, too, came a dawning realization of their present predicament. He turned his eyes to the serried mountain peaks above them, his brows drawn in a dark line.

  "We've got to get out of here," he said tautly. "We haven't a lot of time to lose."

  She did not tell him that time was already lost. There was only one road and that had been eaten up by the lava.

  "Do you think you can stand—even walk a little way?" she asked, keeping her voice as level as she could. "We ought to get into the shade."

  She kept reiterating that, as if it was the most important thing, but each minute held its own importance. Philip rolled over on his side, stifling a groan as he slowly tried muscles that were wrenched and sore from his broken fall. But he could sit up; he could, after a moment, stand.

  She stood beside him with a prayer of thankfulness in her heart as he shook the effects of oblivion from him.

  "Where is Julio?" he asked curtly.

  "He has gone." She was sure of that.

  "I told him to take Conchita back to San Lozaro." Once more he drew his hand across his eyes, forcing his

  scattered thoughts into coherence "There were all the signs of an eruption

  His eyes went swiftly to the smoking mountainside above them and suddenly his jaw tightened.

  "How long have I been here?" he demanded. "That damned fall—the boulder coming away just as I had reached the ledge

  "I don't know, Philip."

  Her voice was suddenly shaken, all her courage gone, and he put an arm about her, comforting and close.