by Sharon Sala
He nodded. “I’ll find Montford and tell him.”
“I’ll get our packs,” she said.
He turned around and grabbed her by the shoulders, his dark eyes as serious as the tone in his voice. “Don’t move until I get back.”
She blinked as her sight began to refocus and laid her hand over his heart. “Ever my protector, the eagle in the sky watching over the little dove. Go find Nantay. I will wait.”
Yuma grabbed her hand and kissed it, then ran off through the crowd. She shouldered her pack, checked to make sure her water jug was refilled, and then checked his pack as well before laying it beside her. And then she waited.
Every so often they could feel a tiny aftershock beneath their feet. It reminded Tyhen of the lingering tremors running through her body after she and Yuma made love. But these tremors were warnings, where hers had been reminders of earlier joy.
She glanced over at the river. The whirlpool was massive now, reaching from one side of the river to the other, leaving the riverbed below visible to the naked eye.
If they walked far enough, they should be able to find safe crossing. She just wanted the people off this mountain and out of this country while they were still in one piece.
A few moments later, she heard Yuma calling her name. She looked back and saw him coming toward her and felt a brief moment of lust. He was so beautiful in her eyes.
When Yuma reached her, he took her arm like a child does playing a game when they run home to touch base.
“They are ready,” he said. “They’ll bring the injured ones last, so it won’t slow down the walk. Are you ready to go?”
“I go where you go,” Tyhen said, and in that moment, a memory emerged from Yuma’s life before Firewalker.
It was one of the few memories he had of his mother. She was in his father’s arms and crying because they were going to have to move. He had seen the sadness on his father’s face because it was his job that had caused this. His mother had also seen the sadness, and it made her stop and wipe her eyes. Just as his father began to apologize, she put a hand over his mouth and said, Whither thou goest.
He knew what it meant now, and in a world so far away from that one, in so many words, he’d just heard it again. It was a vivid reminder of how strong a woman could be, and how all-encompassing her heart was to the people she loved.
Tyhen was motionless, waiting for him to speak. She could tell something she’d said or done had triggered a memory because he had that faraway look in his eyes. She never liked to see that look because it meant he was in a place she’d never seen. So instead of waiting for him to speak, she slipped her hand into his.
“We go,” she said softly.
He curled his fingers around her hand in a won’t-let-go grip and then kissed her knuckles and nodded.
When they started walking, the others followed. Soon, all of the survivors were walking downhill, following the bed of the dying river and silently grieving the dead they left behind.
Chapter Fourteen
Everyone from the palace went down to meet the people running up from Naaki Chava. The earthquake had done something that nothing else could have ever done. It had put them all on equal footing. The people from below had the clothes on their backs and what belongings they had rescued from the fires, and when Singing Bird and the servants rescued what they could from the wreckage of the palace, they would be no better off.
There was much crying and screaming until, at Cayetano’s bidding, Adam blew the Conch shell one last time. When he did, the crowd went silent, waiting to hear what came next.
Before Cayetano spoke, Adam quickly whispered in his ear.
“We have to leave. This mountain will die within the next three days. This earthquake was a warning.”
Cayetano’s eyes momentarily widened, but it was the only sign he gave of the shock. He glanced down into the city that was afire behind them and then began to speak, shouting loudly to be heard.
“As soon as we recover what we can from inside the palace, we will leave. The gods have shown us mercy. Shaking the earth was our warning to leave. Sometime during the next three sleeps, the mountain will die.”
There was a long moment of silence as the people tried to come to terms with the concept of an earthquake and a fire being a merciful stroke of fate. The city was in flames behind them, but the mountain was still silent. They decided the chief was right, took a collective breath, and waited for what came next.
“What do you want me to do?” Singing Bird asked.
Cayetano hated to let her out of his sight, but he knew she would be insulted if he didn’t let her go.
“Take the servants, find our packs, and bring them outside of the palace. If they have been destroyed, just take what you can find and hurry.”
Singing Bird spun on her heel and waved to the servants.
“Come with me,” she said and started running back up the hill. They followed without hesitation, anxious to get away from such devastation.
When they reached the palace, seeing the destruction was shocking, but in a way made leaving less painful. What had been was gone. What would be was yet to come.
She could see the servants were hesitant to go inside, fearful something might still fall down upon them.
“We have to hurry,” she said. “Grab what you can of your belongings and come back out here to wait.”
She led the way through the fallen blocks of stone and the broken tiles, and when the others scattered to their own places to find what they could, she started down the hall toward the chief’s quarters.
Making her way through all of the debris was not only slow going, but dangerous. Once she slipped and fell, cutting her knee deep enough that it bled, but she kept on going. When she finally reached what had been the entrance to their rooms, the doorway was but a pile of rock. She had to go around through a connecting room, and then in through a broken wall to get into the space.
Once inside, she began moving through rubble, trying to remember where she’d left everything. There had been a large pack apiece for her and Cayetano, and a small one that she’d meant to carry in her arms. It had medicines and healing herbs and things she could not leave behind. Aware that they would be waiting on her, she began digging through the rubble in haste.
****
Because it was a shorter distance to their room, Adam and Evan entered the palace from the back entrance, only to find that the palace had not suffered as much damage as the front. But once they reached their room, the interior was a different story. It was in shambles.
“Where did you leave our stuff?” Adam asked as he set the Conch shell down on small table that had survived.
Evan frowned. “I’m not sure. I think it was at the foot of our beds, or maybe beside that table by the door.”
“There is no longer a table by the door, and I do not see our beds,” Adam muttered as they began to search through the debris.
Once they located their packs, they began checking to make sure everything they intended to take was inside. Adam opened his up and put the Conch shell into a space he’d made for it just this morning. He was trying to remember what he’d taken out in an effort so that the Conch shell would fit, when all of a sudden, it hit him.
“Oh no, no, no! The portal cube! The bird necklace. They’re gone! I have to find it! It’s the only way we have to find Tyhen and Yuma again, and it’s not in my pack. Help me look! She told me to take care of it,” Adam cried. “She said she wanted it back. She will kill me if I’ve lost it.”
“No she won’t. She can’t kill us if we never see her again,” Evan said.
Adam stared at him. “Did you hear what you just said?”
Evan shrugged. “I stated a truth.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “Shut up and help me find the necklace.”
“I already know where it is,” Evan said as he dug through his pack and pulled out the box with the portal cube. “If it’s in with the cube, then it is here. I saw it this
morning and put it in my pack.”
Adam wiped a shaky hand across his face and held out his hand.
Evan handed it over with ceremony. “You’re most welcome,” he said.
Adam rolled his eyes as he checked to make sure they were both there. And they were.
“Thank you. Now let’s check on Singing Bird and see if she needs help.”
They shouldered their packs and didn’t look back, leaving the room that had been their home for the past fifteen years as easily as they’d left Landan Prince to die on Bimini Island without them.
****
Singing Bird had finally located the last of their things, but there was no way she could get all of it out in one trip. She was just about to go look for help when she heard voices. Someone was calling her name.
“Singing Bird! Where are you?”
“I am in here,” she yelled back.
To her relief, it was the twins. They came in the same way she had through the hole in the wall.
“What do you want us to carry?” they asked.
She pointed to the large pack she’d made for Cayetano.
“That belongs to your chief. You can take it to him.”
Adam grabbed it with one hand while Evan picked up the other.
“That one is mine. I can carry that,” she said.
“After you get outside,” Evan said and pointed to her knee. “You are already bleeding. Cayetano is not going to be happy.”
She didn’t argue because she knew they were right and took the small one, instead. He tended to lose rational thought where she was concerned and she was grateful for the unexpected help.
“Thank you, my sons.”
They nodded and then glanced at each other.
She knew that look. They were keeping something from her, and the moment she thought that, she knew it had to do with the others—with Tyhen and Yuma and the people who’d gone with them.
“What happened?”
“First you need to know that Tyhen and Yuma are okay,” Adam said.
Singing Bird’s stomach knotted. “Which means others are not. Tell me what you know.”
“The earthquake caught them as well. They were halfway up a mountain when it struck.”
Evan picked up the story. “They were holding onto the trees to keep from falling down when Tyhen sensed a more serious danger. The quake caused a large landslide above them. She sounded the warning as they began trying to outrun it. Most of them made it, but some of them did not and she is very sad.”
She moaned. “They lived through Firewalker and then died like that? It isn’t right. It isn’t right.”
Adam shrugged. “Life isn’t fair. Why then should death be any different?”
His words struck her as cold, but when she looked at them, she remembered what the existence of their life had been like before, and realized they were right. Nothing was fair. People are born. People die. It’s what they do and how they do it in between those times that matters.
“You are right. I’m sorry. It was just a shock. But you are sure Tyhen and Yuma are safe?”
“Yes, we are certain,” Evan said.
“Good. Then we go.”
Once they exited the rubble, they began counting off the names of the servants who’d gone inside, making sure everyone was present.
As predicted, Cayetano immediately saw the blood on Singing Bird’s leg and stopped everything to make sure she wasn’t seriously injured.
“I am fine,” Singing Bird said and smiled as she stroked the side of his face.
He knew he should not have let her go inside on her own, but after a look at the cut, took her at her word.
“Is this my pack?” he asked as Adam handed it over.
Singing Bird nodded.
He slipped his arms through the straps, shifted it one way and then another until it felt comfortable on his back and then turned to the vast number of people awaiting his word.
They were scattered around the grounds of the palace and all the way down the hill, carrying only what they’d been able to rescue from the fire. His warriors had retrieved plenty of weapons, but it was not the way he’d planned their exit.
He turned to the twins.
“Is there more to know?”
“There will be more shaking, but nothing like before.”
He looked down into the city and tried not to think of what was gone. They’d lost so much already, but nothing could matter but people. Everything else could be rebuilt.
A few more people emerged from the jungle. They’d been there when the earthquake began. There were more wails and more cries of disbelief when they realized what was lost but were soon calmed by the realization that they were lucky to still be breathing.
“Adam, send the signal. We leave now.”
Adam pulled the Conch shell out of his pack one last time then blew it, sending the signal they’d been waiting for.
People began getting to their feet and gathering up their things, and when the chief lifted an arm into the air, swung it South, and started walking, they followed. There was no need to look back. Naaki Chava was already gone.
****
Wesley Two Bears trip to the river was uneventful, but upon arrival he found two large water birds feeding in the shallows where he usually tossed out his line, so he moved a short distance downstream. He had just thrown his line into the water when he heard what sounded like an explosion.
Startled, he turned toward the city as the big birds took flight. They were in a panic to be airborne and he was focused on the people he could see who were running, and he didn’t see the birds flying toward him until it was too late.
The largest bird flew into the side of his head as it took to the air; knocking him off his feet. There was an intense pain and a loud snap as his hip gave way. He fell only inches from the water, unable to move and in terrible pain.
He shouted for help, but there were so many people screaming and yelling that they did not hear him. When the ground began to shake, it threw the water up into his face. He tried to crawl away, but every time he would move, he would faint from the pain, only to be awakened by the water sloshing in his face.
The last time he passed out, the water kept splashing, and his face was underwater and so he drowned.
After the shaking stopped, the water returned to its normal place. Smoke was blowing in Wesley Two Bears’ face as he lay near the river’s edge, his fishing pole crumpled beneath him.
His fishing trip was over.
****
Little Mouse was halfway up the mountain looking for fever root when the loud boom sounded. Startled by the noise, her first thought was that this was it. The mountain was going to die and she was on it. But then the top did not come off and there was no fire shooting into the air. Before she had time to rejoice, the ground began to shake, and she dropped to her belly and grabbed hold of the earth, begging and screaming at it to be still.
But the earth did not heed her cry and kept shaking and toppling trees, rolling rocks, sending all the birds in flight and every animal in the jungle into a race to get away. When the tree beside her cracked at the roots and began to fall, she knew she should have been running. But by the time the thought went through her head, the tree was down and she had been knocked unconscious by one of the limbs.
It was the smell of smoke that woke her, which made her panic. She didn’t know where she was or what had happened, but she didn’t want to burn up. She pushed and shoved at the out-flung limbs until she made her way out from under the tree, then dragged herself up to a standing position.
Her head was bleeding, her right knee and left arm were throbbing, and the smoke was so thick it made her gag. She stumbled and staggered on her way downhill. All she wanted to do was get back to Naaki Chava. Someone would help her there.
But after only a few minutes of walking she emerged into a clearing and looked down into the valley, expecting to see the city below, but it was gone. All of it! Gone! Reduced to piles
of burning rubble!
“No,” she said and started walking. “Noo!” she shouted as she lengthened her stride. “No, no, no!” she screamed as she began to run.
But it changed nothing. No matter how fast she ran, it was all too late. Her city was in ashes. The people were gone, and there wasn’t a living soul in sight. She forgot about her injuries. She was immune to all the pain. She just ran and ran and ran until she reached the first pile of smoking embers, then stopped, heart pounding and choking on smoke.
“Hello? I am Little Mouse! I am here! I am here.”
Smoke drifted between her line of vision and the city, and when it cleared, she looked up, straight toward the palace. She could still see the shape of it and her heart thumped once in thanksgiving.
That was where they’d gone! Everyone must be up at the palace! Yes! That was it! The city caught fire, so they ran, and they are safe with Cayetano and Singing Bird.
It didn’t register that scenario would have been impossible. The city has been too large for all the people to fit into the palace, even if it had been built for the chief of Naaki Chava. She needed that fantasy to get her through the city, and when the wind blew burning embers into her hair and on her clothes, she put them out with her hands and kept moving.
She didn’t know until she reached the palace that one of her sandals was missing and the other nearly burned through on her foot. She reached down and pulled it off, then tossed it aside without care. They would find her another pair. They would put medicine on her burns.
Blind to all the debris lying in the doorway, she walked around it and stepped into the first hall.
“Hello. I am Little Mouse. I have been hurt. Will someone help?”
A bird suddenly flew out of a doorway down the hall and came toward her, aiming for the light. She dropped to her knees as it sailed over her. She was shaking now so hard she could not stand. Shock was setting in.
“This is me! I am Little Mouse! Someone come help me! Help me!”
The words echoed. A wind whistled a warning as it moved through the palace.