by D. J. Niko
Sarah tried to gauge where they were, but the sameness of the terrain betrayed nothing. They were surrounded by rocky escarpments and stone spires standing on their own like ghosts presiding over this stretch of forsaken country. The Subaru labored over the pothole-strewn red clay path, raising dust so high it nearly wiped out visibility. The crunching of stones beneath the tires drowned out all other noise.
Jostled in the backseat, Sarah and Daniel stoically awaited their fate. Sarah was painfully aware Daniel hadn’t looked at her once during the journey. She was certain he couldn’t forgive her for throwing Simon off the scent. She wanted to explain but couldn’t in the presence of Brehan. What disquieted her most was that she might never have the chance.
Near the top of the mountain, the path disintegrated into a patch of loose gravel.
Brehan stopped the car. “Get out,” he barked without bothering to look at them. He tucked a semiautomatic under his arm and marched them down into the canyon.
The sun beat down with soporific heat, and no shadows were cast on the rocky realm. The spires glowed in the early afternoon light, golden fingers reaching toward the turquoise roof of the earth.
With their bound hands throwing them off balance, the prisoners took awkward steps on the descending path. Behind them, Sarah heard the quick steps of their executioner. When they descended to a ledge hanging over the mouth of the deep chasm, he ordered them to walk to the edge.
Sarah winced as she considered his sinister intentions. He would shoot them and let their dead bodies tumble down the canyon, where wolves and bearded vultures would find them. She recognized this as her final, if narrow, window to save their lives.
She spoke in Amharic, not only to endear him but also to ensure there was no misunderstanding. “Brother Brehan, will you grant this doomed soul one last wish?”
“Why should I?” Brehan barked. “Look at me. You did this. Now you pay.”
“You are alive. Your brother is dead. You took his life with your own hands. When you were in that labyrinth with your head engulfed in flames, the knife you used to puncture Apostolos’ heart lay at his feet. He could so easily have finished it. But he did not. I saw the way he looked at you … with the compassion of a true man of God. Even as his own lifeblood trickled from his body, he could not bring himself to harm his own brother. Does that mean nothing to you?”
“You killed him. He put himself in the knife’s path to save you.” He pointed the gun at her. “Now you will die for your sins.”
Sarah let go of every inhibition, every suppressed emotion, every charade of polite society, and spoke. “Money and power will not save you, Brehan. You must believe me. As a monk, you were free. That still is your gift. Do not forsake it for the pleasures of the flesh.”
He twitched with discomfort, and she did not relent. “Your brother spared your life because God commanded him to. How can you renounce this God? Have you no gratitude for the life granted you? Have you no respect for the one who would rather die than forsake you? Enough blood has been spilled. End it, Brehan. Only you have the power. Show Apostolos you are worthy of his sacrifice.”
Sarah dropped to her knees and bowed her head. Drops of perspiration fell onto the rock and vanished like raindrops on hot asphalt. For the first time, she resigned herself to death. She was no longer aware of where she was but felt utter peace. Icons from her life flashed in her weary mind’s eye: the sun rays filtering through the leaves as she swung under the fig tree in her mother’s garden … her father putting her on a quarter horse when she was seven … her wails of sorrow when she learned of her mother’s suicide … the sensation of the eternal dust in her hands when she dug for humanity’s past even as she tried to escape her own.
A thundering cannonade of gunshots echoed off the canyon walls.
Daniel instinctively cowered to the ground but did not appear hurt. Brehan had either missed or fired the shots in the air.
The monk shouted down at them. “If God wills it, the wolves will find you, and in their jaws you will suffer a slow and miserable death. Your fate is no longer in my hands.”
He made his way up the boulders and disappeared over the ridge.
In the ensuing silence, Daniel sat back against a rock and let out a breath. Sweat trickled from his drenched hair into the furrows of his brow and saturated his T-shirt from his neck to his sternum. His eyes moved to and fro, seemingly unable to focus, betraying his agitation.
For her part, Sarah felt surprisingly calm. Her plan was working, at least for the time being. “We got our second chance. I say we make the most of it.” She studied the bowl of dust and prehistoric rock for opportunities to escape. “We should get ourselves onto the ridge. Better chance of being seen that way.”
“Seen by whom?” His anger was apparent. “The wolves and the jackals? News flash, Sarah: nobody is here. Look around. It’s a fucking wasteland.” He spat on the ground and groaned.
“Maybe not all is lost. I took a chance back at Matakala’s house.”
“You can say that again.”
“It’s not what you think. The reason I called Simon was to give him the SOS.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s something he and my father had put in place ages ago to help each other in times of trouble. Back in the seventies, they had gone stalking for lion in Tanzania—illegally, mind you. A guard for the property owners found my father and detained him at gunpoint. So he radioed his pal Stanley and said the password: ’I do fancy a pint right about now.’ It was a benign enough phrase. The guard never suspected it meant he needed to be rescued.”
He clenched his jaw and nodded. “That’s all well and good, but just knowing we’re in trouble doesn’t mean they’ll find us. Ethiopia is a big place. These mountains are vast and hostile. It would be like looking for an ant in a waterfall.”
“Don’t forget what Matakala said. Scotland Yard agents are already in Ethiopia looking for us. If Simon does his part, which I’m counting on, they can trace the GPS of where the mobile call came from. That would lead them to this general vicinity.”
Daniel shook his head. “That’s a lot of ifs. You do know this is a long shot?”
“I do. But it’s the only shot we have. Listen to me, Danny. We can’t despair now. It’s going to take all our wits to get out of this place.”
His voice softened. “I still say this was a gamble.”
“Suppose I hadn’t rolled the dice. We’d probably be dead already.”
He nodded.
They wasted no more time arguing. It was time to move.
By the time they reached the ridge, it was nearly dusk. Their progress up the boulders was slow partly because of their bound hands and partly because of their dwindling energy.
Sarah hadn’t eaten a thing in two days, and the relentless heat sapped what little strength remained. At the ridge, she dropped to her knees and exhaled. “I don’t know if I can go any farther.”
He looked around. “We’ve got to find some food—before we become food. Surely there’s a rabbit or some sort of rodent around here. I’ll eat anything at this point.”
“And how are you going to kill it, caveman? With your own hands?”
“Remember, I grew up in the backwoods of Tennessee. I can hold my own in the wilderness. I’m going to poke around. You wait here.”
“As if I could go anywhere.”
She lay on the ground, her face so close to the red earth she could smell the dust of the eons. She gazed at the horizon. Mercifully, the sun was descending behind the ancient spires, casting shadows on the depths of the canyon. Only the tops of the rocks glowed red, like fired iron. The bands of sediment stacked tightly on top of each other like layers of a terrine. Everywhere else the world might have been moving at terminal velocity, but change came to this rocky realm an inch at a time. She liked the thought of that.
She was drifting in the purgatory between sleep and wakefulness when she heard the rustle of firewood. With her eye
s still closed, she addressed Daniel. “Are we going to feast on a juicy rat steak? I’d like mine medium rare, please.”
“The restaurant was all out of rat. How about roast loin of black chat instead?” He threw two tiny bird carcasses on the ground. “Not much meat on them, but it’s the best I could do.”
She sat up, stunned. “How the hell did you manage to shoot birds down without a weapon?”
“There was a nest over yonder. These were too young to fly. It was too easy. Their mother will probably hunt me down and peck my eyes out.”
Sarah looked at the meager kill. “They’d be great with a spot of truffle oil.”
“I knew there was something I forgot to pack,” he said, equally deadpan, as he stacked dry sticks for the fire. He split a branch and lay the two pieces side by side, holding them down with rocks on either end. He rubbed pellets of dried goat dung until he exposed the digested grasses, then stuffed it inside the crack between the two branches. With another stick he sawed at a perpendicular angle until he coaxed the first thread of smoke.
Sarah helped by adding dry grass and blowing into the base of the smoke.
The dry wood lit, and Daniel threw the birds directly onto the fire, removing them a minute later to pluck their charred feathers. When all the feathers had burned off, he skewered them on a stick and held them above the flames to roast slowly.
“Voila,” he said as he handed Sarah the morsel.
She greedily dug in to the meat and was surprised at the mild taste. She gnawed on the bones, eager for any scrap of nutrition. Afterward, they both lay on the ground and looked at the sky. Thousands of stars and the astral dust swirling around them were visible. Beneath, the dark cliffs undulated like lunar forms forgotten by time. It looked like a snapshot of outer space. Under the monumental panorama, words seemed superfluous.
“Are you worried?” Daniel broke the silence.
She didn’t see any need to lie. “A little. What if my father is angry enough to just let me rot in this place?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure he thinks you were quite valiant to pursue something you believed in. Most people would have abandoned the quest when told to do so. You risked everything for your convictions. Why wouldn’t that impress him?”
“You don’t know my father. He doesn’t impress easily. Not when it comes to me, anyway. I could give him the moon and he’d say, ‘What? You couldn’t get Venus?’”
“There’s no such thing as the perfect daughter, you know.”
“Tell him that. I’ve been wondering what would be worse—dying here or being rescued and having to face his wrath.”
For a few moments, neither of them spoke.
Daniel turned to her. “What was your mother like?”
Sarah didn’t expect the question. She didn’t speak much about her mother, keeping her memory locked away like antique glass too precious and fragile to handle. As she composed her answer, she felt the familiar knot rise to her throat.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel whispered. “That was inconsiderate.”
“No,” she said, pulling herself together, “it’s okay. It’s just … my mother was my best friend. She was the yin to my father’s yang. When he punished me, she would divert my attention with stories of faraway lands and exotic people. And I would imagine myself there, in jungles and deserts, in the company of native people and mythical beasts. To this day, I think her stories are the reason I do what I do.” She felt a little embarrassed by her revelation. “I know it sounds corny—”
“Sure as hell does,” he said with a chuckle.
“It’s funny. She insisted that I play my hand even when I wanted to fold, yet she did not herself have the strength to stay in the game. I’m sure you know all about it.”
“Well, the tabloids certainly didn’t spare any details.”
She cringed at the recollection of her family’s private life splashed all over the gossip media. The press on both sides of the pond had told the story with varying degrees of sensationalism. They wrote about her parents’ bitter quarrelling in the months prior to the suicide, even details about the arguments. Somehow reporters knew her parents never could agree on Sarah’s education or on money. Her father insisted she receive proper English schooling, while her mother wanted her nearby. Nor could they see eye to eye about money. In the end, Sir Richard cut off his ex-wife, leaving her with no income other than what she earned from her acting jobs, which became scarcer and more insulting as she aged. The combination of his insensi-tivity and her own lack of self-worth led her to take a bottle full of Valium with a vodka chaser.
Sarah had found her the next morning in the bathtub, her long hair floating amid spent bubbles and her slender, red-tipped fingers still wrapped around a rocks glass.
As those stories became public, Sarah had felt exposed, like everyone’s eyes were upon her, judging her for her mother’s suicide. Scandal is always frowned upon in polite society, her father was in the habit of saying.
Rather than trying to keep up appearances, she had severed herself from that world and walked her own path.
The more solitary, the better.
”It’s ancient history.” She didn’t want Daniel, or anyone for that matter, to pity her. “Tell me about you. What’s your family like?”
“What’s left of it, you mean? Old man walked out when I was six, so I don’t remember much about him. He liked the ladies. Left my mother for a saucy blonde from the West Coast. Never heard from him after that. My mom worked all the time, trying to put food on the table, so my brother and I basically raised ourselves.”
“You must be close with your brother.”
“Nah. We have nothing in common. He lives in Kentucky, in the backcountry. Works for the electric company, has a bunch of kids. He only calls when he needs money.”
“I take it you don’t get back home much.”
“Not much, no.” He sighed. “That’s not home for me. No place is, really. I have a small place in Newark, my home base. But I’m basically a wanderer. And a bit of a loner.”
At that moment, Sarah felt a deep affection for him. Their backgrounds were as incongruent as the moon and the sun, but life had led them down a similar, solitary path. Their circumstances were different, but she knew they understood each other. “What do you say we get some sleep? We have lots of ground to cover tomorrow.”
”You go ahead. I’ll keep the fire going. There are wolves out there.”
She closed her eyes and listened to the silence of the mountains. Though she couldn’t see in the darkness, she could feel his eyes on her. His breath sounded like the ebb and flow of a distant ocean, and warmth radiated from his body. Even here, in this hostile no-man’s-land, on the path of unspeakable hidden predators, she felt safe.
The days following Brehan’s departure had passed without much progress. As they had every day, Sarah and Daniel started early in the morning when the mountains looked like phantoms, amorphous and cloaked in shadow. The fog was their ally, for it covered the grasses with dew. Even that meager mist was a gift to their parched throats. It was the only water to be had in this arid wasteland, where it hadn’t rained in months. The scorched earth of these mountains was one reason foreign armies had stayed out of Ethiopia over centuries of its colonization; the other was the terrain itself, unwelcoming and unforgiving. It was nearly impossible for any creature, save for goats and birds, to negotiate these jagged teeth of rock. One poorly calculated step could send the unfortunate intruder straight into the rocky abyss.
For Sarah and Daniel, the handicap of bound hands and scant food and water made it even more difficult to gain ground. Sarah was beginning to worry they would not be found. Every time she felt the fingers of despair reaching for her throat, she fought to hold on to her ever more tenuous lifeline of hope.
That afternoon, the worst setback came. She felt cramps in her abdomen so severe that she couldn’t stand, let alone walk. She knew from experience it wasn’t good.
“Dysenter
y,” she said, sweating and weak. “That dodgy water finally caught up to me.”
There was alarm in Daniel’s eyes. They both knew that, without medical intervention, dysentery was a death sentence. “We’ll rest for a couple of days. You’re tough. I know you can beat this.”
She smiled weakly, her body temperature creeping up as the bug established its presence in her bloodstream. Her mouth was drier than cotton, and her intestines were being twisted by some invisible hand. She had no choice but to rest.
As days passed, she grew weak and gaunt. Dehydrated, her skin shriveled like an old woman’s. Her legs could no longer carry her even short distances. She was certain it was the end, and yet among the silent massifs she felt a strange sense of peace. For the first time in her life, she didn’t try to make sense of events. There was no real reason to. Their chances of escaping this lonesome wilderness were slim, her chances of survival even slimmer. There was nothing to do but accept that.
When the pain was too intense to bear, she said, “Danny, I need you to hear what I’m saying. I can’t make it out of here. You have to go on without me.”
“Nonsense. Even if I have to hoist your corpse out of here, I am not leaving you.”
“Stop being idealistic about it. I’m asking you for selfish reasons. I want you to get out of here so you can deliver this to UNESCO.” She strained to reach into the pocket sewn into the lining of her trousers and pulled out a memory card, letting it drop to the ground.
His eyes widened. “The photos you took in the library? I thought those were lost with everything else.”
She laughed. “They never looked inside my trousers. This is our only proof those inscriptions were the prophecies of the tenth saint. Everything else has been destroyed or is in the hands of the enemy.”