The Forgotten World

by R Gene Curtis

  Eventually we can’t hear the crowd behind us. Ler stops and we duck into a thicket. I collapse onto the ground, pulling every oxygen molecule from the air in great bursts of breath. Ler sits beside me saying nothing.

  I close my eyes, embarrassed by the tears that stream down my cheeks. I can’t believe I’m alive. My body starts to shake with relief.

  After a while, my breath returns to normal. The sun makes it over the peaks. Ler motions for me to get up and we start down a trail, walking this time.

  We walk for hours, weaving through the trees. I have no idea where we are, but eventually we come out into the clearing. There is a small cave here, and a large, white animal rests inside it.

  A fuma—the animal whose skin I sleep in every night.

  Ler pulls a knife out of his tunic and throws it at the animal, striking it in the jugular vein. A second knife in the thigh takes it down. The smell of fresh blood fills the air.

  Blood. That girl. The image of her mutilated body. I bend over and throw up.

  When I look up from my vomit, there is a rustle from the bushes and Ziru and Lydia emerge. They have another man, a woman, and a baby with them.

  Lydia glowers at me. Her eyes are puffy and her wild hair is sticking out in every direction.

  “You’ve ruined everything.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You snuck away last night? Went wandering through the village?”

  “I was coming to talk to you.”

  New tears splash onto her cheeks. “Did you see what he did to Cadah?”

  I did, and I don’t want to talk about it. We don’t have time for drama. Lydia must agree with me now. We need to get out of here. We need to go home.

  “We need to get moving if we’re going to make it back to the portal before the sun goes down.”

  She doesn’t hear me. “She was so nice to me,” she mumbles.

  “Lydia, we need to go home,” I say again, louder this time. The panic from our first day here is back. I have to get through to this girl. She has to take me home! I don’t need to understand the situation or how she feels. Not now. I need to get home. I want to eat a normal meal, to be with people I know and care about.

  “Karl—we can’t leave yet. Not now.”

  “Yes, we can. Right now.” How could she want to stay here? “We are going to die! What has to happen before you’re ready to acknowledge that we’ll both die if we don’t get out of here?”

  She stares blankly in front of her.

  I’m going to die because of this stupid girl. “How can you stay here one more minute? You’re going to die, Lydia!”

  She looks away again. She’s good at that. This isn’t fair. She has no right to gamble away my life.

  “I need some space,” she says in a voice so quiet I have to take a step closer to hear. She cowers, like she thinks I’m going to hit her. Ziru and Ler both stop what they’re doing and look at me. I take a step back and put up my hands.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m sorry, Karl.”

  That’s all she says, and she turns and limps into the cave. I stand helpless, frozen by the glares from Ler and Ziru.

  Stupid girl.

  I spin away from the cave and walk away from the idiots.

  The easiest path goes straight down the mountain. My mind is so fuzzy with rage I can barely think. Lydia isn’t going to take me home. The thought of tagging along on a journey to another remote village is ridiculous. This isn’t right. People aren’t allowed to hijack other lives like this. People can’t just control where others go. It’s not my fault I’m here, and I can’t fix it.

  I don’t know how long it is before the mountain stops, though I’m a little calmer when I get there. A three-foot drop-off separates the mountains from the valley forest. The drop-off runs as far as I can see in both directions. I run my fingers along it, and it is rock, but it’s as smooth as glass. The same trees and shrubs grow on each side of the divide. Did an earthquake cause this? How is the boundary so smooth?

  How far does it go?

  I walk along the edge. It continues as far as I can see, the forest undisturbed on either side.

  I don’t worry about my way back. They’ll come for me soon enough.

  A twig snaps behind me. They’re already here. Couldn’t they have given me at least a little more time? I keep walking. I hear another snap.

  They can’t take a hint, can they?

  “Ler!” I yell. “Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk.”

  Nothing.

  I look behind me, and a large, white predator cat moves out from behind a tree. Ler is nowhere to be seen.

  For the second time in this miserable day, I run for my life. This time, though, there isn’t a steady hand to push me forward.

  Are there any sticks around? A rock or something I could use to defend myself? I scan the ground around me. While I’m distracted, my boot hits a slick spot of moss and my leg goes out from under me. I fall, over the edge and off the mountain. My hands hit hard in a pool of water, and I yell as the rocks cut into them.

  I use one of my injured hands to grab a small, sharp rock from the stream. It isn’t much, but I’ll use it and I’ll fight. I roll my body over, scrambling to a sitting position as the cat leaps off the ledge, its claws out and mouth open.

  Light flashes out of the corner of my eye. A knife. Several knives. The knives lodge in the cat’s neck as it flies toward me. And then it hits me, knocking my body back into the stream. My head slams into a rock, my vision goes fuzzy, and then everything goes black.

  27 Regret

  Lydia

  I lay still on the hard ground and stare into the darkness, but in my mind, I only see Cadah. Her mangled body. Why would Arujan kill her?

  Not that she was perfect. But she was a human being. Someone who was nice to me. And Cadah was nice to Mara, even if it was against her will.

  I hug my legs tight against my chest. The cold from the cave floor seeps through my clothes. I think of Cadah turning to take Mara back to the village. I think of her rolling her eyes behind Ore at the meeting. She was cute. She was my friend. She’s gone.

  The crunching of rocks underfoot lets me know that Ziru and Tran are coming to join me. Tran’s perpetual smirk makes me sick. He seems to sense my distaste and stops at the entrance. Ziru walks slowly across the cavern and sits down next to me. Mara is also in the cave, but she’s hiding in another room, invisible in the shadows with her baby.

  “It’s a day for weeping,” Ziru says. “But we do not have long to mourn.”

  “She was really nice.”

  Ziru nods. “Her mother and I were long-time friends. Despite her youth, Cadah was a fine young woman. Much like her mother.”

  Where does he get his strength? Why isn’t he breaking down? He comforts me, when I hardly knew Cadah. He puts a foot forward, but I want to disappear.

  “She would have been your daughter in law,” Tran’s whiny voice echoes through the cave.

  Ziru bows his head. “Yes. No one has lost more than my son today.”

  My heart aches for Ler. The man who saved Karl’s life. The man who is out there following Karl as he wanders around the forest trying to cope with what just happened.

  “How could Arujan convince people Karl did this?” I ask.

  Ziru sighs. “The people expected this to happen the moment they first saw Karu.” He sounds accusatory—like this is my fault.

  Tran decides to join us, but at least he sits on the other side of Ziru. “For Arujan, your arrival was a disaster, fortuitous only because you brought the traitor with you. He’s used the people’s prejudice to create a rift against you. Seeing Karu sneak around at night was all Arujan needed to get rid of you.” There is no mistaking who Tran blames for Cadah’s death.

  What do they think we should have done with Karl, if not bring him along?

  “I should have never come.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Ziru puts his strong hand on
my shoulder, but I shrug it off. It’s my fault. All of this. Karl is probably right; we shouldn’t go to Keeper. We need to go home before anything else happens.

  “He just wanted to talk to me.” The tears come again. “I’ve been avoiding him. I’m the only connection he has to his world, and I’ve been avoiding him.”

  “People who saw him sneaking around, weren’t surprised to find someone dead in the morning,” Tran says. “What an idiot. No one wanders around at night alone. It’s too dangerous.”

  I don’t say anything more. I knew how Karl would feel about me hiding from him, but I avoided him anyway. I planned to leave Watch and go to Keeper without ever telling him.

  “What do you think Arujan will do next?” Tran asks Ziru.

  “I don’t care,” Ziru says. “We will move forward. We cannot defeat Arujan, but Lydia will be able to soon. We are living in the days our predecessors dreamed of, the days of the Blue Princess.”

  I should tell him I need to go home, either now or after Keeper. But I can’t bring myself to say it. They’re counting on me. I either abandon them, or keep Karl trapped here against his will.

  My hand reaches into my tunic, but it doesn’t find a phone there. Ever since the accident, I’ve always had that phone to remember Mom, her voice, and the conversations we had. She has stayed with me, encouraging me and telling me what to do.

  But the phone isn’t here. I’m alone.

  Tran and Ziru keep talking, but I tune them out and hug my knees tighter. I close my eyes and wonder where my phone is now. Is it sitting on the trail to Double Arch? Did someone find it and throw it away?

  That night I called Mom, it was my fault that she died, too. When she took her eyes off the road to answer the phone, someone pulled up beside her. By the time she said “hello,” she was being pushed into the guard rails and then off the bridge.

  When the police found her, she was still clutching the phone, and I was sitting anxiously on the other side, hearing nothing but water lapping against the side of the river bank. She mumbled something about a man with blue eyes and a long, blond ponytail and then she was gone.

  If only I hadn’t called her. If only my seemingly urgent request could have waited until she got home. I don’t even remember what it was. If only I hadn’t called.

  If only I had talked to Karl.

  Ler runs into the cave, breathing hard.

  Ziru and Tran jump to their feet. “Where is the traitor?”

  Ler shakes his head, his hands on his knees as he catches his breath. “Leopard trap,” he manages to say.

  A pit forms in my stomach. “Karl’s been eaten by a leopard?”

  “No.”

  “Then where is he?”

  “He was forced off the mountain,” Ler says, still breathing hard. “And captured.”

  I push myself off the cold ground.

  We have to fix this. Ler looks at me, but I don’t see anything but pity in his expression. He isn’t going to fix this; he expects me to do that. I’m supposed to fix everything.

  Everything I touch dies, and yet I’m supposed to be the princess that fixes everything.

  Ler clears his voice, but I don’t wait to hear what he says. I run past him. Out of the cave. Down the mountain path. The men follow, but I don’t wait for them.

  I haven’t run on my knee like this in months. It hurts with the downhill, but I ignore the pain and push myself harder. I step on a rock and my knee twists and buckles. My hands plunge into pine needles, which pierce my face and palms. I skid to a stop.

  My knee hurts. A lot.

  The men to catch up seconds later.

  “Are you all right?” Ler asks.

  I shake my head. I try to push myself up, but my knee can’t hold any weight.

  “It’s not too much further.” Ler picks me up and carries me like a little girl. My knee throbs. I’ve ruined the surgery and the months of recovery, and I’m a world away from a doctor.

  And Karl is gone.

  Ler carries me like an infant along a trail next to a ridge. But it isn’t just any ridge. The entire mountain looks like it has been raised three feet, and the rock face is as smooth as glass.

  “What is this place?” The shock of the scenery almost makes me forget about my knee.

  “The border,” Ziru says. “No one from the valley can cross it.”

  As Ler follows the trail, I watch Karl’s footprints. The stride suddenly gets longer—he was running.

  “The leopard saw Karu before he saw it.”

  “Why was there a leopard here?”

  “Wynn uses leopard traps to get people off the mountains. Leopards prey on fuma, but the fuma are agile among the cliffs and generally avoid them. However, if a leopard can force them down the mountain, the fuma loses its ability to maneuver. Wynn uses leopards to force people off the mountain and into his hands. He has captured some people in this way over the years. No one has ever returned.”

  Ler stops at a small stream. A large leopard lies dead in the water just below the ridge. Blood seeps from knife wounds around its neck, dripping into the water and joining the current into the valley.

  “When he saw the leopard, he started to run,” Ler says. “I tried to catch up. I was just about to release a knife when Karu slipped and fell off the ridge. Five men took him away. There was nothing I could do.”

  “Knives don’t pass through the border by themselves,” Ziru says. He takes one of his own knives and throws it at the leopard. It stops in midair just above the ridge and falls to the dirt. “What you did was right.”

  “Is there any hope of us going to save him?” I’m cradled in Ler’s arms, unable to walk, unable to be a princess.

  Ziru shakes his head. “Child, we don’t know if he’s alive, or how many men are down there. We are safe up here, but not down there. The legends say that you will lead us off the mountain against Wynn. But you must be ready first. We need to go to Keeper.”

  “But maybe if we got more men?”

  “After Arujan’s speech this morning, do you think anyone from the village would put their lives at risk for Karu?”

  I stare at the leopard, the image burning itself into my memory. First Cadah and now Karl. He’s not going home.

  I shift positions in Ler’s arms and pain shoots up my leg. My knee hurts. A breeze rustles through the trees. It’s quiet here, and it should be beautiful. But it’s not. Not anymore. I look at the leopard one more time, and then I bury my face in Ler’s chest.

  ✽✽✽

  Tran looks up from skinning the fuma when we get back to camp. He’s butchering the animal for its meat and skin, which has taken him almost all day.

  “What happened to Lydia?”

  “She hurt her knee,” Ler says.

  “Can she walk?” Tran is upset. For once, I don’t blame him.

  Ler shakes his head.

  “She can’t even walk? How will we get to Keeper like this? What are they going to say when they see her?”

  “I don’t care,” Ziru says. “We either go back and die fighting Arujan, or we go to Keeper.”

  Tran mumbles something I don’t hear, but Ler ignores him and carries me into the cave.

  “We’ll have you women sleep in here.” Ler puts me down gently across the cavern from Mara and Jarra. “We’ll sleep outside. Arujan probably won’t look for us, but we shouldn’t be too certain.”

  He turns to go, but I don’t let him leave. “Do you think I’m the blue princess?” I ask.

  “Yes.” He’s so confident—even when everything he loves is falling apart around him. It doesn’t make sense.

  “Why can’t I do anything the legends said I would do?”

  Ler’s response is unexpected. He laughs. “How did you get here?”

  “Through the portal.”

  “Just as the legends say. We’re going to Keeper and you’ll learn the secrets of the mountain. You will defeat Wynn. You’re the princess we have been waiting for.”

  I watch h
im walk away. I try to believe him.

  At least he doesn’t hate me. I saw lots of people who hate me today. Karl, the crowd, Arujan, Tran.

  Me.

  ✽✽✽

  I don’t sleep well, but finally the first morning light sneaks into the cave. My entire body aches, and I can’t move my left leg at all.

  I try to push myself up, but only end up crying out from the pain before I can stop myself. I bite my bottom lip, hoping I didn’t wake the baby.

  “Are you hurt, Lydia?” Mara’s voice is barely audible. She crawls over to sit next to me. Jarra must still be asleep.

  “Yeah. I hurt my knee yesterday when I ran down the mountain.”

  The pain subsides a little and I manage to push myself into a sitting position against the edge of the cave. Neither Mara nor I are ready for a 100-mile journey.

  “You walked with a limp before.”

  “Yeah, I reinjured my knee running after Karl.”

  “How did it happen the first time?”

  “It was during a game.” Describing soccer to Mara doesn’t seem worth the effort right now. “There was an accident.”

  I don’t tell her it might have been on purpose.

  “How did you survive with a hurt leg? I’ve never heard of a village leader who would support an injured woman.”

  “Things are different where I come from. No one is sent away just because of an injury. People treat life as a sacred thing.”

  “How strange,” she mutters. “Society is the sacred thing in the valley. Is it true you’re an Azurean?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not even sure what that is.”

  “Someone like Wynn.”

  As if that tells me anything. I thought Wynn was bad, too. We sit in silence for a moment.

  “Mara, do you mind if I ask how you got here? The others said no one from the valley can get into the mountains.”

  “It’s because of Jarra’s father, Anu. I met him when I was small. We would meet and play in secret in the forest. When I was older, he moved off the mountains to be with me. He had to stay in hiding because he would have been killed otherwise.”