Did she just blush? Oh my god.
“Loop,” Garrett says, and I hate the utter bliss that fills his eyes and his goofy grin. “Have you met Kitta yet? She’s a friend of Freda’s.”
“Oh, we know each other, silly,” Kitta sings, her yellow hair glowing backlit by the kitchen’s fire. “We met when Lupay was in Southshaw.” She beams at me like the summer sun.
I remember that. I thought she was one of the most charming people I ever met, that night. I guess Garrett agrees.
I should have stayed with my father and talked about blanket allocation, or laundry detail, or whatever they were moving on to next. At least I wouldn’t have to watch my best friend, my hermanito, reduced to a goofy blubbering lovestruck idiot.
My mother wipes her hands on her apron as she steps away from the pot over the fire and gives me a tight, pointed smile. Okay, Mami, I know, I smile back. I will be good. I will give this beauty a chance to prove she has more than just a gorgeous face, a gorgeous voice, a gorgeous body, gorgeous hair…
I have this sudden urge to grab my knives and go hunting. I feel like killing something. A rabbit, maybe. I wonder if I could find one with long, yellow hair.
I swallow back the sickness climbing up my throat, and I laugh. “How could I forget? You were so sweet to me that night.” I turn to face my mother. “Mami, what are you cooking? Smells great. Clearly, Garrett hasn’t been helping.”
“Pff,” says Garrett as he chops his knife down so hard through the apple it thunks on the table.
My mother and Kitta laugh again, and I start to thaw out. It’s hard to be upset when my mother is laughing.
Kitta really isn’t that bad. Garrett could do a lot worse. They might actually be good for each other. I just need to relax. It’s going to be hard after all we’ve been through. A lot will be hard over this winter.
“It’s a stew,” she says. “Your friend Patrick brought us some fresh venison this morning.” She looks over the work being done by the other two with an approving nod. “He was hoping you’d be here,” she says.
I try not to react, but inside I’m a mixture of happiness and anger. He came here with a gift for my mother without telling me? Who does he think he is? I wish I’d been here.
I glance at Garrett to see him staring at me intently, with a suggestive little grin on his lips. My face flushes hot and I throw him a glare like I’m trying to turn him to dust. After a second, I can’t help it. “What? Spit it, cabron.”
“He’s a good guy,” Garrett says.
“The best!” Kitta agrees. “You should have known him back home. What a nice kid he was growing up. If you’d known him before… before this whole thing started… well, you know.” Her gorgeous eyes go wide, and she looks down to her dough as she falls silent.
Remarkable girl. In another time.
The door thumps open and we listen to two people stomping snow off their boots.
Tom and Patrick come into the kitchen, crowding the room but not uncomfortably so. I smile at Patrick. It is good to see him, but his returned smile doesn’t seem happy.
“What is it?” my mother asks before either of the men can say anything.
“Tom,” Patrick says, “you tell them. I don’t know that I can.”
Whatever warmth was in the room just got sucked right up the chimney. Tom’s snow-white face is stony and grim. Patrick glances at me, then looks to the floor.
“It’s Darius,” Tom says.
“But,” I blurt before he can continue, “Darius is gone. He has no more army. We beat him.”
Tom nods. “That’s right.”
“Then what’s wrong?” I don’t get it. And I’m not sure I want to. Why did they have to interrupt our happy moment, one of the few happy moments I’ve had in six months?
“While we were going through the houses, we found a locked cabinet in Darius’ office.”
“In Marshall Turner’s house?”
“Hush, Lupay,” my mother says. “Let him finish.”
Patrick nods. “That’s right. The potter’s house. I think Turner was his name.”
Tom looks even more grim, if that were possible. “We found some papers. Diagrams. None of us really understood them, but I’d seen something like it before in the office of a friend of mine who works in Subterra’s history vault. They looked like electricity diagrams.”
“Electricity?”
“Lupay, hush now.”
“Sorry, Mami.” Why can’t he just get to the point?
“So I had my friend look at the papers,” Tom continues. “We think Darius has figured out how to detonate the bomb you all have been keeping in Southshaw.”
Patrick doesn’t react, but Kitta throws her floury hands to her face and gasps. Her eyes fill with tears. Is she overreacting, some drama act for Garrett’s benefit? I don’t get it. “So what?”
“So,” Patrick says as he takes my hand, “that one bomb could destroy this entire valley, the lake… everything.”
“Then we have to stop him,” I say.
Patrick tugs on my hand to keep me from going to find my knives and my whip.
“It’s too late,” he says. “Darius is already back in Southshaw, and if he’s going to detonate the bomb, we think he can do it in about three days. It would take us that long to get to Southshaw. He burned the remaining boats, remember.”
“This can’t be happening,” I say. “After all this, Darius is going to win anyway?”
“What can we do?” my mother asks.
I realize that Garrett has reached across the table to hold both of Kitta’s hands in his. Tears run down her face and draw tracks in the fresh flour on her cheeks.
“We have to escape,” Tom says.
“Subterra,” I blurt out. Did I just say that? I can’t live underground the rest of my life. But I suppose it’s better than dying. I watch Garrett’s fingers massaging Kitta’s slender hands. I kind of wish Patrick would hold mine like that.
Tom shakes his head. “That bomb will irradiate everything. The lake, the air, the trees—everything it doesn’t incinerate.”
Irradiate? Incinerate? I bite my tongue so I don’t get hushed again by my mother.
Tom continues. “Subterra is powered by lake water. It pulls in air from the valley for the people to breathe.”
“We’d survive the blast, but we’d all die within a few months. Maybe weeks,” Tom finishes.
“We have to leave the valley,” Patrick says.
My mother’s calm voice shows none of the stress that fills me as she says, “Does my husband know?”
Patrick nods. “We’ve just come from the meeting hall,” he says. “We think we have two days, perhaps three, to get everyone over the hill beyond Upper.”
I remember the refugee camp where Shem Shiver had taken all the people of Upper once before. It’s not a place we can live forever.
The door opens again, and Dane clumps directly to the threshold of the kitchen, his boots still covered in snow. He is breathless and red.
He looks right at me. “You already know,” he says. It’s not a question.
I nod.
“Lupay, I am so sorry.”
“About what? It’s not your fault, Dane.”
“In a way it is,” he says. “Remember when Baddock came upon us, at that old house in the woods?”
“Of course.” How could I ever forget one of the worst days of my life? Every second of that crappy day is crystal clear in my head.
“Remember the things you found in that house and brought out for me to look at?”
“Some toys. A book, maybe? Some marbles?”
“And that music thing.”
That little box. The tune that’s haunted me all summer, the one I could never quite remember. “A little black thing,” I say, picturing it in my mind. “When we opened it in the sunlight, it made music.”
Dane nods. “The Subterran guy called it solar. He says Darius can use that to blow up the Bomb.” His breathless urgency suddenly
dies. He looks completely crushed. “It’s all my fault.”
It can’t be possible.
Tom says, “I didn’t believe it at first, but my friend says the diagrams are clear. Whoever put that bomb in your chapel three hundred years ago made sure it would be easy to use. There’s a timer—a kind of clock—that just needs a bit of electricity. And they left instructions behind, too.”
“Why?” cries Kitta. “Why would they do that?”
“And where,” Dane wonders aloud, “did they keep those instructions all these years? Did my father know? He never told me.”
Patrick says one simple word: “Prophecies.”
Dane’s face pales. I know what that means. Freda told me. The third Southshawan book—Truth, Laws, and Prophecies. The same book that Darius used to justify taking over Southshaw, exiling Dane, starting his holy war against us… everything.
Kitta squeaks, “The instructions for ending the world were in the book of Prophecies? But Prophecies was destroyed long ago!”
“Apparently not,” Patrick growls.
I wish Freda were here. She would have something wise to say. Didn’t she tell Darius something about how he was wrong about the prophecy? When we saw him yesterday, in the snow. She said… what was it?
I think out loud. “Darius was wrong,” I say. “Freda said so. The prophecy.” I remember. And there’s hope. I look Dane in the eye. “You know. Freda said the prophecy said the thirteenth Semper wouldn’t destroy the world like Darius thought. It said the world would be healed. Isn’t that right?”
Color returns to his face as he squints, examining his memories. “Yes. That’s right.”
Patrick is studying us both from across the room. His intense blue eyes bore into me, questioning.
“There’s hope,” I say, and I glare right back at him, wondering if he knows how lost in his deep blue eyes I am. “We need to go tell my father.”
Patrick shakes his head slowly. “No need,” he says. “Ryne knows. He and Fobrasse have already begun the evacuation.”
Evacuation. It has a cruel sound.
I look around at each face in the room in turn. My mother, peaceful and calm. Kitta, flour-streaked with quivering lips, and Garrett, his eyes locked on hers tighter than his hands entwined in her fingers. Dane, as pale as Tom but his chin set firm. Tom, his fidgety foot the only clue that he wants to get out of here and get moving. And Patrick, grim and focused only on me.
“Are you all right,” he whispers.
“Yes,” I reply, not entirely sure I am. But his blue gaze holding mine, and my mother bending to stop the stew from boiling over, and the knowledge that my father is helping people… yes, I’m all right.
“Yes,” I say, louder this time, and everyone in the room looks at me. “Two days. Plenty of time to get everyone out of the valley.”
Patrick nods and whispers, “That’s the Forsada I know.”
I snort a laugh. What can we do but laugh? Survival without laughter is pointless. Survival without hope isn’t really survival.
“Come on, cabron,” I say as I push past Dane to grab Patrick’s hand and pull him toward the door. “Let’s go do something useful.”
Continue the story
The story of Dane, Freda, Lupay, and Tom continues in the finale of the New Eden series, Freda. Get it now for Kindle at Amazon.
Freda : CHAPTER 1
Until this moment, I secretly hoped that Darius would decide not to destroy the world. The world still exists, for now, but as snow swirls around Dane’s boots before me, with every step I wonder if this is the moment we’ll all be incinerated.
From behind, Patrick whispers, “I’m sure your parents are fine, Freda.”
Until the Bomb goes off, we can still hope.
As the six of us rush through the outskirts of Southshaw, empty houses watch, hushed in a thickness of undisturbed white on a cold, windless morning. Nearly two days hurrying through the Subterran tunnels left us overheated and undernourished, and this freezing midday grayness refreshes me with a different kind of oppression.
We’ve come here to stop Darius. We’ve come to save the people who stayed behind. Dark windows and snow drifts gathered in doorways suggest that there may be no one left to save.
What did Darius do when he returned here in his boats two days ago after we defeated his army in Tawtrukk? Did he let the people flee into the hills? Did he round them up and kill them? Did he march them off to die somewhere else? I pray we’ll live long enough to find out.
“Smoke,” Dane says, pointing through the trees in the direction of the village center. “From Semper’s house, I think.”
“Your house,” Patrick corrects. It’s a nice gesture, acknowledging Dane as leader of what remains of Southshaw.
Dane quickens his pace through the ankle-deep snow. “Not for long if we don’t stop Darius,” he says without looking back.
Nearly two days running through torchlit tunnels, nearly two days of breathless speculation about Darius’ plan. But how can sane people predict the actions of the insane? The only thing we could agree on was that we would stay together. It was Dane who decided we would go first to the chapel. But not to pray.
I smell the smoke before I see it, breathing hard as we jog along this snow-covered road bereft of footprints and wagon tracks. After a minute, the shape of Semper’s house looms through the trees like a solid shadow. This is the second time I’ve emerged from Subterran tunnels to assault my husband’s house from behind. The first time was six months ago, on a summer’s night, to reclaim Southshaw from Baddock and his thugs. The woods were alive with night sounds, then. Today they lie shrouded in the pallor of winter.
“Do you hear that?” Tom, also behind me, has stayed quiet until now.
On the dead air float faint sounds of men working, far off, maybe near the lake. Hammers on metal, a man’s shout. I’ve heard enough fighting in the past month to know these are not the sounds of battle, but they make me shiver, wondering what Darius is building.
The five men around me break into a fast trot as we exit the woods into the clearing around Semper’s house. Dane glances back once as I fall behind, just before he reaches the house and sprints around the corner toward the chapel.
As I follow, memories threaten to overwhelm me. In a moment, I’ll round that corner, and I will see the steps where Dane and I stood before our wedding. The same steps we stood on when Darius exiled us. The same steps we snuck down two months ago when we abandoned Southshaw to help Lupay fight back against Darius and his army. I’m not sure I will be able to bear the sight.
But I go on anyway, slipping in the dry snow packed hard by the feet that went before. The sight shocks me to a sharp halt.
The steps are gone. The chapel doors lie askew on the ground, half covered by frozen, brown slush. Much of the wall has been hacked away, splinters and rubble littering the yard on either side of a wide swath of flattened, dirty snow. A pile of burnt scraps smolders nearby, wet smoke drifting skyward.
Patrick charges through the gaping hole where the door used to be, an axe in one hand and a hunting knife in the other. He growls a low battle yell as the first sounds of a clash shatter the midday silence. Tom halts outside and turns back to me, putting up his hand.
“Darius’ men,” he says simply. “Stay back.”
He doesn’t have to stop me; I’d be no help in a fight and have no interest in watching. Instead, I look to the trees and the village lying silent beyond the chapel. Could more be waiting to ambush us?
Grunting and yelling tumble from inside, the clash of metal on metal. One cry of pain. Was that Dane? No, I don’t think so.
But I can’t stand back here; those men in there must be made aware that I’ve come. I’m First Wife, even if they don’t acknowledge it, and my presence changes this from a simple brawl to a challenge of loyalty and faith. They see Dane only as an enemy, but they’d never expect my appearance.
After one deep breath of the cold morning air, I push past T
om and clamber up the rough ramp that’s been thrown together over the remains of the steps. At the top, I straighten to my full height, though I look more like a vagabond than First Wife in my faded brown Tawtrukk trousers and rough shirt, with my hair tied back under a knit cap.
The scene confuses me. I’ve entered this chapel through these doors countless times, but nothing looks the same except the high windows letting in the gray winter’s light. The wooden pews, wrenched from the floor, lie jumbled at the far edge of the room. The two thick pillars just inside, carved as Adam and Eve welcoming us to worship, are gone; the balcony they supported is also gone. Only the scars of frantic destruction decorate the walls. Under my feet, the ancient woodwork has been ripped out to reveal the harsh metal drains of the Decon ceremony.
The fighting is already over. In the room’s barren center, three of Darius’ men kneel before Dane, their faces wild with unkempt beards and their hair matted and unclean. They shiver in thin clothes as the breeze blows freely through the chapel. I would feel pity but for the destruction they’ve wrought, and for the unrepentant hatred in their sneers.
I never expected this sight. Darius really is insane. I thought he had merely mangled the scripture in his mind, twisting it until it drove him to kill his own brother and justify his war against our neighbors, but his madness goes deeper, driving him to this wanton desecration. In the end, our most holy place is no better than a woodshed to him.
One of the three kneeling men holds his arm and coughs blood onto the scarred, gouged-up floor. He wavers but does not fall. He looks up at me, and I try to pity him. I try to feel some compassion in my heart for him. But there is no uncertainty in his eyes. No regret. Only hatred. He rasps out heavy, foggy breaths that cloud the air between us.
“Where is the Bomb?” Dane’s voice is colder and sharper than the frozen sunlight dropping through the high windows.
None of the kneeling men speaks.
Dane raises his axe in threat but it has no effect on them.
Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series Page 29