Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2)

by Josi Russell

  The cool breeze blew out of it onto Ethan’s face. He hadn’t realized exactly how hot the sauna room was. He shone his light down the corridor, trying to determine if it closed off in a dead end or constricted into another tight squeeze. It appeared to be a uniformly wide crack, and though he couldn’t see the end, he felt the breeze distinctly. There must be an outlet. He walked back to the group and told them about it.

  “We should stay a bit longer,” Traore said guardedly. It was good to hear him speak.

  Brynn took his hand, as she had been doing lately, and Ethan saw her look into his eyes. “We have to go sometime, Traore. We have to find our way out.”

  Traore’s gaze dropped down to their clasped hands. His shoulders slumped a bit more. “What if there is no way out? What if we all die down here?”

  The room filled with a barren silence. It was the fear that crept around the edges of their minds all the time, ever since they had found themselves in the wrecked ship at the bottom of the shaft. Though no one had said it aloud, they all knew it was a possibility—maybe even a probability. Now, hearing it spoken and feeling the press of the cave all around them, the fear pushed its way to the forefront of their consciousness and hung there in the midst of them, heavy and terrible.

  They could not bring themselves to leave the warmth of the cave, could not bring themselves to force Traore out into the cold darkness again. And so they stayed. Another night. Two.

  ***

  When Ethan awoke after their third night in the Sauna, his mouth was dry, his cheeks burning, his lips cracking uncomfortably. He was out of water, had been for several hours, and so were the rest of them. They had rationed food, but here in this constantly dripping, weeping, damp place, none of them had thought to limit their water.

  It had been over a week since they had filled their water bags in Crystal Springs. The baking heat of the Sauna Room, so welcome when they first came from the chill of the cave, had dehydrated them quickly, and they had awakened from their last sleep parched.

  “We need to go,” Ethan said, gathering their packs and handing them their discarded coveralls. “We have to find water.”

  Ndaiye looked up at him. His lips were cracked and Ethan longed to give him a drink. He looked through his pack. No water and precious little food. A single nutrition bar, and maybe two more among the group. The situation was getting more and more desperate.

  When he had them all on their feet, he tried to tempt them into the passage. “The cool air feels great in here!” he said with enthusiasm.

  Brynn, who had picked up some of Traore’s discouragement, replied, “It will be great until we’re all freezing again.”

  Ethan walked on, the truth in her words gnawing at him.

  ***

  Ethan had been gone for over two weeks. Kaia found herself staring out the window aimlessly more often now. She couldn’t seem to find the energy to work on bots for the kids, visit the junkyard, or visit her passengers. The last few days all she could manage was losing herself in the battleship manuals the Admiral had brought home for her. Even though she’d been reading them for six months and there was nothing new in them, they were a good distraction and she found that she couldn’t put them down.

  Ethan couldn’t be gone. Not so quickly, without a chance to say goodbye. Not the man she’d mourned for half a century. She looked up from the manual to see a military hovercar pull up. Why would they be coming when her father was in Lumina?

  “They do know he’s not here, right?” she asked out loud.

  But they weren’t there, as they usually were, to collect her father. Her missive jingled and the voice on the other end of the line was Admiral Reagan.

  “Kaia. We’ve got an alien situation. I need you in Lumina.” His voice was tight with worry.

  “I’m coming,” she said, and even as her breath came quick with fear of the aliens, she was relieved to have something to distract her from Ethan’s disappearance.

  Chapter 20

  Aria had spent so many days in the mountains that she had lost her fear of them. They were not, as she had first seen them, waiting to snatch her and her children along with Ethan. They were solid and strong, safe even, compared to the crush of people in the city, so many of whom were ill. And the people were so indifferent to Ethan’s loss. At least the peaks seemed to echo her loneliness. She still went out, poling Luis’s sleek little boat down the river, and then hiking, sometimes wandering for hours over the landscape looking for a clue about where he’d gone.

  She was especially drawn to a section of the river that had a broad, stony bank. In many places, the trees and thick grasses came right to the edge of the river, spilling into the water and blocking hope of passage. But in this section, far beyond the petrified Taim grove, the forest was welcoming. The peaks around it yawned with arches, grottos, caves, and cavities carved by eons of water. Hank had directed her to it as a good place to look. He had a crop of kwai fruit growing nearby and sometimes she saw him as she pulled the boat onto the shore and set off into the forest.

  She worried because the children were beginning to show signs of anxiety having both she and Ethan away from them. Even Kaia was unavailable, staying in the barracks at the base in Lumina, helping her father figure out the alien situation. So Aria took the children with her into the mountains sometimes, and sometimes she took them to their school, and as the days passed and there was no sign of Ethan, sometimes she stayed home playing with them and comforting them in their grief at his loss. She only cried once they were asleep.

  She met with her friends from Ship 12-22 often, bringing them fruits and gathering their trade items. Hannah, a skilled doll maker, was one of her favorite people to visit. Today she stopped and offered Hannah a basket of berries.

  Hannah handed her two standard dolls, which she tucked into her pack.

  “I have something else,” Hannah said, “for your friends, you know, with the little girls.” Hannah retrieved from a cabinet in her cottage another doll. “Polara told me she gave one of them her doll, so I gave her one just like this when she was here with Kaia the other day. But she said there was another little girl there, in the tenements, so I thought you could give her this.”

  Aria took the doll carefully from its creator. It was exquisitely made, with delicately stitched hands and a sweetly painted face. Its long dark hair was soft as down, and Aria knew that Daniel’s little sister Nallie would love it.

  “You are an absolute artisan,” she told Hannah. “This is beautiful.”

  “I wish you could convince the Market District here in the city.” Hannah scoffed. “Since your woodsie friends are liking them so much, I took them around to every shop in Coriol and not one will carry them.”

  “Maybe you should open a little toy shop of your own.”

  “Saras would never give me any shop space, and he owns it all. Anyway, there’s fines for people taking Saras scrip without paying the fee to Saras, and paying the fee to accept it cuts out any profits. A few people come here and they do pay me in scrip, but if he finds out I’m selling them, the fines will be more than I could make on dolls in a lifetime in Coriol. “

  “The company town isn’t as wonderful as it sounds on paper,” Aria agreed.

  Hannah went on. “And it’s not just that. Saras could make lots of scrip if he’d open up a toy store himself, but he won’t ever do it.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “There’s a reason there are no toy stores in Coriol,” Hannah said. “Saras doesn’t want children playing with toys. Toys won’t help get Yynium out of the ground. Toys won’t prepare children to be miners and managers of miners. Saras doesn’t want any distractions from his main objective.”

  Aria shook her head. Though Hannah sounded a little extreme, Aria suspected she was right. The few toys Polara and Rigel had came from their friends from the Ship 12-22: the dolls from Hannah, the beautiful wooden animals and finely carved blocks from Winn the carpenter, and the tiny play dishes from Luis. The only things in the
Market District made for children were clothes and occasionally books.

  Every decision Saras made seemed to tie back to his lust for Yynium. Saras was ruled by Yynium, and Coriol was ruled by Saras.

  She hugged Hannah before she left. “I’ll take this to Nallie right now,” she said. “She’s going to love it.”

  As she rode across town, she looked forward to handing the doll to Nallie. She’d brought berries for them, too.

  But when little Merelda opened the door, Aria forgot about the doll in her hands and the anticipation of giving it to Nallie. The child’s eyes were red and swollen, as if she’d been crying for days.

  Aria leaned down. “What is it?” she asked, gathering the weeping child into her arms. “Merelda, what’s wrong?”

  Merelda buried her head in Aria’s shoulder and spoke in a voice twisted with grief. The single word was muffled, but Aria would have recognized it anywhere. “Mama.”

  ***

  Aria had never attended a funeral on Coriol. This one was short, held in the evening so that people could get back to their apartments and get some sleep before work tomorrow.

  The little all-purpose church was full of Marise’s neighbors and other workers at the mine. Reverend Hardy said a few words. There was a song, slow and sad, in Marise’s native language, and a dedication of some sort before they took the body away.

  Aria looked across at the somber, blank face of the boy she’d helped weeks ago. Daniel was stoic, unnaturally still. He turned his hollow face toward Aria and the emptiness there pulled the air from her lungs.

  She glanced away, looking at the mourners as they filed past her on their way home. It was then that she realized how many of them had the flowering purple bruises. Aria involuntarily covered her mouth. As soon as Daniel and his sisters left the church to follow the body, Aria fled, running until she could hold her breath no longer. Standing on the sidewalk, she sucked in great gasping breaths of the fresh air.

  Chapter 21

  Brynn had been right. The cold was beginning to seep back into them, maybe even worse for the time they’d spent warm. They’d left the Sauna hours ago, traveling a branching, winding tunnel that required the use of the marking rock. The passage was not wide, but after the Python Pass, Ethan felt he could stand anything as long as he could stretch out his arms. There was little conversation as they tried passage after passage, their thirst growing more and more desperate with each passing hour.

  Ethan heard a thud and a scrape. When he turned, Maggie was on the floor. Brynn stepped close to her, but Maggie pushed her away. Ethan went and lifted the captain, his lips splitting as he tried to smile encouragement to her.

  “I’m thirsty,” she said blearily.

  “I know. We’ll find something soon.” They walked on.

  Finally, as they rounded a corner, they saw a sheen on the dead end in front of them. The wall was weeping.

  “Water!” Ethan croaked. He set Maggie against the wall and fell against it himself, pressing his mouth to the rough stone. But it was a trickle, and as he scraped his tongue painfully against the wall, he came away with only the barest drops. Frustrated, he stepped back. Pity swelled in him as he saw them all, the rest of his crew, trying to pull life-sustaining water from the stone.

  It was then that Ethan saw one more end for them in this labyrinth. If they didn’t fall down a shaft or get crushed by a rockslide, if the krech didn’t get them and they didn’t get trapped, they would survive just to die anyway. They would survive all those horrors just to die of thirst or starvation.

  He walked away, unable to watch them. There wasn’t enough water there for a Xyxos, much less a person.

  As if on cue, a pink flash caught Ethan’s attention. It was a Xyxos, darting out nearly to his feet and then back to the edge of the wall. It happened too fast for Ethan to see it clearly, but his attention was diverted by something far more exciting. The Xyxos left little wet footprints, surrounded by puddles, as if it were dripping wet. For it to get that wet there must be a pool around here somewhere.

  Ethan called to the others and kept his eyes on the little creature as it scurried along the passageway behind them. Another, dripping Xyxos joined it, and then another. As the crew came up beside him, Ethan helped Ndaiye with Maggie.

  They followed the herd of little pink Xyxos. When a split came, the Xyxos seemed to know just which direction to take. Ethan peered ahead of them. What if they were simply getting more and more lost? What if the Xyxos led them to a dead end?

  But wasn’t that what he had just figured out? That everything down here was a dead end, in one way or another? He let the darkness of the thought play in his mind a moment until a flash of white caught his attention.

  Ethan peered ahead of them. At the edge of the light he thought he saw someone. A tall figure slipping around the edge of the next column. But when they arrived at the column, an empty space greeted them. He glanced around. Had anyone else seen it?

  He felt something crunch under his boot. At the risk of losing the Xyxos, he paused to pick it up and look at it. It was, impossibly, a chei seed, like the ones Aria had been drying at home. How could it be down here? Excitement choked him as he thought that perhaps they were nearing an exit. More seeds crunched under his boots. Perhaps the Xyxos were dropping them as they ran.

  Shining the light ahead of the little herd of Xyxos, Ethan felt a stabbing apprehension as he saw a row of shining seeds stretching before them. The Xyxos weren’t dropping the seeds. They were following a trail of them. They weren’t leading the survey crew, they were being led themselves.

  Ethan stopped abruptly. “Wait,” he called to the others. They stopped, nervously glancing ahead as the Xyxos moved into the dark without them. “This may not be safe.” Ethan said. “Maybe we shouldn’t follow them. I think someone is baiting them, and we could be walking right into a—”

  “Hush!” Maggie interrupted him. “Look!”

  “But—” Ethan began, but then he saw what she was pointing at. They all saw it.

  It couldn’t be what they thought it was, what they hoped it was. Ndaiye pulled away and broke into a run. Ethan called after him to be careful, his mouth dry and his voice cracking.

  They all ran, more quickly than was prudent, toward the place where their feeble light bounced back to them from the shining reflection of water. A vast underground lake stretched in an enormous cavern. They stumbled to their knees and bellies beside the flat, wide mirror of water that caught the shadowy image of the stalactites on the ceiling and held it in perfect stillness before them.

  Ndaiye drank first, his noisy slurping bouncing off the rocks and his hands, plunging in and lifting the water to his mouth, causing furious ripples across the surface of the lake.

  For several minutes, they said nothing, simply drank and dipped their hands and faces in the water, until their cheeks were red with the cold and their fingers came away numb. Ethan didn’t think there was anything better than the taste of that cold mineral water. He looked around at the slopes around the lake, covered with slowly flowing, seeping water, drips and streams flowing from small crevasses in the rock, constantly filling the lake. The shimmering water shone back at him and he silently thanked the Xyxos and whoever or whatever had led them here.

  Looking down through the clear water, he saw opalescent cave fish pushing lazily along the rock bottom. He glanced over to see Maggie watching them, too. She pulled the cover off her pack. Seconds later she scooped it through the water and pulled it up. In it was a wriggling cave fish, which she grabbed by the tail.

  Ethan heard a smack as she knocked it against the rock. It lay limp in her hand and he watched as she put it to her mouth and gingerly pulled the white flesh off the bones with her teeth.

  After weeks of limited fare, Ethan shouldn’t have been surprised at how delicious the fish looked, but he was. Maggie slurped and peeled and he found himself nearly crazy to get one for himself.

  Ethan wasn’t the only one. “How did you do that?�
�� Brynn asked, scooting close to where Maggie was feasting.

  Maggie scooted away. “Easy,” she said between bites. “Just scoop ‘em. They’re blind. They can’t see you coming.” Ethan thought her purposeful gaze lingered on Brynn a little longer than necessary, but he forgot about it as he plunged his own makeshift net into the icy water, coming up with a wriggling fish.

  The others netted fish, too. Traore accumulated a great pile of them before he started eating. It was a real feast.

  Ethan took a bite, trying to pull the skin and flesh off the bone like Maggie had. Even when a sharp, flexible bone poked the inside of his cheek, Ethan hardly slowed. The fish was rich and tender, with the sweetness of meat he barely remembered.

  When their hunger was curbed, their thirst was slaked, and their water bags were full again, the crew began to skirt the lake, looking for another passage. It was enormous, and the cavern sometimes closed on it, looking like a dead end. But Brynn slipped through and found, every time, another cavern on the other side of the wall, where the lake continued.

  After several of these rooms, Ethan heard an unusual sound. The laughter of running water filled the cave ahead. It took him back to the day this nightmare started, when he’d pushed through the vines seeking solitude. Now, he stayed close to his crew as they moved together towards it.

  Traore passed Brynn and slipped around a wall of stone in the direction of the sound. The rest of the crew followed, finding themselves in a small chamber where the water churned through the opening in the wall. Shining their weak lights across the tumbling water, they saw a chute where the cave floor dropped away and the water fell, bright and powerful, out of their view. Ethan, at the rear of the group, was suddenly aware of the damp, slick rock beneath his boots. The seeping water made it slippery and he backed away, images of Python Pass in his mind. What if this led to a funnel, or a flooded chamber where there was no air? He placed a hand on Ndaiye’s arm and opened his mouth to offer a warning.