Force

by A.R. Rivera

Natives

  The boy is young, maybe eight or so years-old. He’s got no shirt, only pants that look like something you’d see in a Frontier museum display. There’s a plate-like necklace around his neck—large, decorated with tiny turquoise tiles that form a round, grimacing face. His large brown eyes, stare with awe, gliding over my clothes and gear, stopping on my face.

  Suddenly his jaw slackens and he lunges for the ground, hiding his face in the grass over bent knees. I watch the boy’s slight frame tremble as he bows in the dirt.

  As an American, I know very little about early indigenous tribes. As a Californian, I know more about Aztecs than Pilgrims and Cinco de Mayo than Thanksgiving. There’s Mayan and Aztec art displayed all over southern California. Calendars featuring Montezuma in his giant headdress are free at most Carnecerias. I’ve been to cultural events on city diversity days. I know Aztecs and Mayans were a dark, mysterious people with distinct features. I know they believed Cortes was a savior because of his light complexion.

  And it’s weird because, though I’ve never laid eyes on anyone like this boy, something about him feels familiar. The dead man, the chief, this kid: their clothes and hair remind me of those cultural awareness days but their skin is way too light for Aztecs or American Indians. White-white, like the dead man.

  Why is he bowing?

  “You think I’m a god?” I look to my hand. “Well, we are the same color.”

  Finally, he lifts his head, timid, like he’s not sure if he should. I place one hand up, palm out. “I don’t want to hurt you.” As I say it, my other hand involuntarily raises the stones.

  His gaze shifts, watching them. I don’t like the look in his eyes and draw the bag behind me. He raises one boney finger, pointing and starts… well, talking I guess, but I can’t understand a word of his choppy, guttural cadence. The language is like nothing Spanish.

  The boy rises up on both knees and tosses the large plate-necklace, spinning it from his chest to his back. His fingers then clutch at a long, black thread beneath his throat. He pulls at it until it snaps and raises his open palm towards me.

  When I hesitate, he speaks what sounds like a single halting word, trade-yous—maybe two short ones, spoken quickly. Who the hell can tell?

  I give a patronizing sort of grin and nod. “My rocks?” Going by his gesturing and the rings I saw back in the forest, I know he recognizes the stones.

  He bows down again, not so low this time, holding out his hand with the black thread in it.

  I cautiously lean in to look and nearly shit my pants. Excitement ripples through me at the sight of three smooth discs, no larger than nickels, hanging from the black leather strap—one white, one red, and one black.

  He knows. And I bet he knows where and how to get to them.

  Taking in his demeanor and posture, and how he crept up in silence, I start to think... he had the drop on me. He had a chance to run and tell, or attack. But he didn’t. The way he’s holding out the necklace, it looks like an offering.

  “Can you take me to these three stones?” I finger the round shapes floating in the mesh bag.

  He tosses a cautionary look in the direction of the Chief still over on the hill and then slinks away.

  I stay put not sure if I should trust him.

  A few yards away the boy looks back and talks in his halting way, moving his hands together in circles.

  I decide that he’s too small to present a real threat and follow after him.

  He takes me down the other side of the hill and back to more familiar territory. We pass a few trees that I’ve marked as I searched for a way through the denser forest, trying to get near the open area where I saw the brown rings—the Threestone mark on Mother Nature.

  We’re taking the same path I’ve trodden through several times already, swerving just out of sight of the broken wagon and into a dense part of forest. Amazingly there’s little resistance from the path we follow. It’s a worn trail nearly obscured by needles and underbrush; one that I never would’ve found unless I’d been shown.

  I look back to the darkening clouds in the distance and wonder if I’m making the right choice. I haven’t seen any flashes in the sky which makes me think that maybe it’s okay to follow, but the further this boy leads me away from the approaching storm, the more I doubt.

  It’s like I’m Marty-freaking-McFly and the stones are my flux capacitor. Harnessing lightning is my only chance of getting home. What if I see the sudden flashes of light? Will there be more than one and if there is, could I cross the distance in time?

  Then again, this journey is supposed to be about finding the duplicate stones. This kid’s the first living person I’ve interacted with. He immediately indicated that he knows what I seek. I don’t sense a threat from him, but this whole situation exposes a nagging feeling like I’m not supposed to be here. But I am here, so I’m not sure what to do about it.

  When you don’t know what to do, the best course of action is to do nothing so I simply keep following—sticking to the path of my small leader, clinging to hope, hoping against another regrettable decision.

  The trees become denser as the path curves west. The canopy grows thicker, blocking out the sun and the undergrowth thins. There are only shadow and trees when we come upon another small hillock.

  We mount the graded ground, heading for a thick wall of spiny plants that look familiar. They’ve stopped my advancing on more than one occasion. I want to complain but stay quiet, watching and following the light-skinned native boy with mismatched black hair leading up the hillside toward a blind opening in the briars that I can’t even see until he disappears.

  I stop, simultaneously awed and irritated; awed that I came so close on my own and frustrated that I came this close and still didn’t find a way through the briars blocking my path to the place I saw from the top of the waterfall.

  Where I saw the marking of the Threestone.

  Passing through the spiny line of shrubbery, I continue following the boy up the hill. The view from the top reveals we’re heading toward another long, narrow field filled with waist-high grass, only this bit isn’t thick and green, it’s thin and golden brown—wheat stalks.

  Along the hilltops surrounding this small valley, the forest wall picks up where the spiny shrubs leave off. Except on the opposite end of the field where there’s a high rock wall. Along the top of that, the line of trees seems to grow at a slant. Starting small on the left side, getting taller and older as they stretch upon the high wall, but the protective circumference looks natural, not like they’ve been planted, but like they’ve sprung up from a split in the earth to defend this small valley.

  The boy’s been periodically looking back at me, making sure I’m keeping up. As far as I’m concerned he could go a lot faster. I’d have made a comment if he could understand me.

  Oddly, the storm clouds don’t look any further though we spent at least half an hour heading away from them. They’re growing—huge and dark—comforting me. I smell rain on the chill blasts of wind. The air is so charged I can almost hear the thunder rumbling. Perfect conditions for lightning.

  As we trek, I hear the rippling river. Grasshoppers jump away from us with clicking wings. Through the dale we plod, heading to wherever he’s leading.

  I look out over the high grass and find a dark spot—looks like an opening—in the rock wall.

  A cave? I wonder and keep my eye on it as a point of interest.

  There’s a steep hillside that forms the furthest wall of this little valley which closes off any exit from that direction. The only entry into this area seems to be the invisible opening in the spiny bushes we passed through.

  I may be following this kid, but it doesn’t mean I trust him, or that whoever we might come upon will trust me. He has to belong to somebody and I have to find the duplicate set of stones before Daemon does.

  Just then, the black opening of the cave fills with color. My young guide halts, thrusting a han
d back that pulls me down into the shroud of golden grass. He speaks in low garbles that I can only guess are a warning against being spotted by whoever’s up ahead.

  I wonder what it is that this young boy feels he needs to protect me from as I watch him slightly turn back and cross his lips with two fingers. A universal sign—be still, stay quiet.

  He launches into a run. I have to guess his direction as the grass is too tall to follow with my eyes. After a moment I hear voices. One sounds like the boy, the other sounds older and possibly feminine.

  The grass is waist high with tips nearly the same color as my hair. Both dance in the gentle breeze as I peer between stalks, watching the boy and a woman. A dark woman with auburn skin and crow black hair. Her beaded dress, high cheekbones and almond eyes tell she is some type of Native American. When the two meet she turns to run her palm over the boys head, revealing another member of her company. A little brown baby. Every edge of his little form is round in the way only a baby can be. He’s got straight black hair, blunted to reveal his huge eyes that look aimlessly around the field until his keen gaze catches me spying.

  I hold my breath when the little one raises a hand and shakes it as if waving at me.

  Two striking shades of skin—the pale native boy and the dark woman with her baby—the three stride along the border of the field together. Shrinking into the distance, slipping through the invisible line in the foliage.

  He’s left me. Alone.

  I make a metal note to remember the spot where they disappeared and then take in my surroundings, waiting a little longer, wondering if the boy will come back and what I should do in the meantime.

  The clouds rest in layers across the sky. Hues of grayest gray inlaid with white and blue. To the East, the black plumes I’ve watched suddenly burst with brilliant shocks of flecked light sending my nerves into a dance of their own and I know I need to find the duplicate stones ASAP and get the hell out of here before the lightning passes.

  The slope of the rock ledge near the small cave where the woman emerged has that same shape I spotted from the falls. The picture of landscape is fresh in my mind. The rock ledge was to the right of the brown circles I’m seeking.

  Feet in motion, I wonder about the cave entrance; if they live inside there or if it’s just another passage leading to another meadow—one that might hold a certain pattern of dead flora. My boots cut through the high wheat, closing in on the opening in the rock wall.

  Inside its dark, smelling of damp and dirt. The rock floor runs smooth underfoot, though. My fingers slide the length of the wall as I wander out of daylight and into shadow.

  The cavern is long and winding, taking what remains of the daylight. It’s a few more steps before I realize I should be blind in this darkness. It’s a dank cavern, there’s no electricity or torches.

  But I can see. The rough wall to my right is carved with strange shapes. Some are circles, others are faces. One of them looks like an angry face sitting below a bare tree.

  The idea of taking a paper tracing of the grooves hits me, but bounces away as I’m hopelessly distracted by the floor in front of me: it’s come alive with a gentle light from a beam that traces back to the Threestone. Moving with me as I shift my feet, I wonder how the rocks cinched at my waist have managed to give me light in the dark when in the light of day they absorb everything, not even casting a reflection.

  I whisper my thanks to them, awed, wondering, what are these things? How can something so fantastic come from stone, or crystal, if that’s what they are? What kind of force resides inside them that they know I need light, and just give it?

  Following the rough stone wall around another bend, I catch a fleck of light up ahead and find myself asking, “Can you take me to the other set of stones?”

  The light guiding my feet rises up from the floor—floating like a phantasm—it’s not a beam, it doesn’t hit the nearest object and stop. It floats and then... changes. It transforms into a burning ball, swirling, glowing brighter like the worlds’ tiniest sun, moving as if it’s breathing. The flaming glow swishes to and fro before darting away.

  I jump after it, holding my breath and understanding better than ever why Daemon wants all these rocks so badly.

  Without a doubt that these rocks are a gift. So mysterious and magical.

  They lie still, yet keep me safe. They bring me light and take me places I could never imagine.

  The Threestone are my wonderful prize; my inheritance, a gift from my father.

  Such a high price he paid for them. For me.

  Bouncing off rough walls in hot pursuit of the globular light, his final instruction rings more potent than ever.

  Protect them at all costs.