Lightning

by Bonnie S. Calhoun

  “True on both counts,” Selah said. “And farther south in Waterside, they use petrol-powered energy sources more than we do in Dominion because they produce their own petrol.”

  “So in this land they must have extended amounts of fossil fuels, or extreme sources of it,” Cleon added. “I never thought about it, but I’ve never seen any mining or reclamation operations, so I don’t know where they’d be around here.”

  He navigated off the road and into a small clearing, following the field around a stand of large trees and then into another clearing of long grass and wildflowers. Obscured by the tall forest to the west, the sun drew long shadows on the field. Selah could guess the time. It would be dark in a few hours. She hadn’t slept under the stars since traveling from the Mountain. It brought back memories and a shiver, causing her teeth to momentarily chatter.

  As they entered the field, Selah picked up on a low continuous rumble hard to describe. She had nothing to reference it by—maybe horses. It sounded like thundering horses. The farther they traveled into the open area, the greater the sound grew in intensity. The air felt heavy, moist. Selah felt a misting on her face. The AirWagon drifted to the ground. The roar vibrated through the earth, making Selah tingle.

  “What’s causing the vibration?” Selah said in a voice loud enough to be heard over the rumble.

  “Where is it?” Treva yelled to Cleon. He pointed to the right.

  Treva took Selah by the hand and said into her ear, “Come see this. You’ll love it.”

  Jaenen stayed behind with Cleon to get their weapons out for hunting. Selah reached in the AirWagon, grabbed her bag of kapos, and stuck them in a lower pocket of her pants. They banged against her calf, but the feeling gave her a sense of security. Treva motioned impatiently. Selah picked up her gait and trailed her around the next grove of trees.

  The roar was deafening. Selah stopped and gaped, and her breaths quickened to short, labored bursts. It was beyond anything she’d ever seen. Water. A lot of water. Pure power.

  The water cascaded over the top of a narrow rock cliff at least three hundred feet high, dropped to another ledge a hundred feet below, then cascaded another hundred feet or so into a large natural pool surrounded by enormous jagged boulders. The torrents of water moved over the rocks so swiftly and with such force they churned white—a waterfall of milk that regained its clarity as it poured into the crystal-clear pool.

  The mountain and cliffs on either side of the falls were covered with trees and bushes, moss and vines with beautiful large blossoms of yellow flowers clinging to the ledges and trailing to hang over the sides in long, colorful tendrils. Selah stared in wonder, not having words to describe the beauty.

  “So what do you think?” Treva asked.

  “I think I want to stay forever,” Selah said with a contented smile.

  Treva chuckled. “I think a whole bunch of people would have something to say about you living in the wilds.”

  “I wouldn’t care. I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. We have nothing to compare with this in Dominion,” Selah said. She could imagine hiding away here with Bodhi forever.

  “We have artificial waterfalls in the Mountain, so I recognized the sound,” Treva said. “But we don’t have anything like this. The volume of the sound alone would drive them crazy in the Mountain. They’d demand a hologram falls where they could turn off or dull the sound.”

  Selah dropped to the grassy slope and wrapped her hands around her knees. The roaring sound evoked peace, drowning out all the other things trying to talk in her head. Her whole body seemed to relax. She dropped her head to her knees and shut her eyes to rest for just a few minutes.

  “Hey!” Cleon said as he nudged Selah in the shoulder. She jumped. Had she fallen asleep? She looked at the shadows. They hadn’t lengthened much. She’d only been out minutes, but it was enough to refresh her.

  “I need to do some hunting. Do you want to come?” Cleon asked.

  Selah squinted her eyes, awakening her dormant thoughts and shaking off the sleep. “I heard you say that before, but I thought it was a joke. When did you start hunting?”

  “After we came to TicCity. Treva convinced me the game was safe to eat.”

  “Oh, excuse me—I try for years to get you to eat meat, and your lady love does it in a couple of months. Oh, my heart.” Selah clutched at her chest and laughed out loud. “So much for being able to have an influence on someone.”

  Cleon grinned, holding out a crossbow and a heavyweight compound. “Do you want either of these?”

  “I’ll let you take down the big game. This I’ve got to see. I’ll do small stuff with these.” Selah pulled out her kapos. She could peg a rabbit at twenty feet with one of them, and with her newfound strength she was pretty sure her range had increased exponentially. She tested the knife weight in her hand. It felt natural and familiar.

  Cleon walked back to the AirWagon and deposited the compound. He slung the crossbow, cocked and loaded, across his shoulder, the quiver mounted lengthwise along his forearm.

  “No one else coming?” Selah fell in step beside her brother. It felt good to be walking in the woods with him again. It made the time and distance from home melt away.

  “Treva’s going to set up the AirWagon for sleeping. We were lucky those bandits didn’t realize we had side compartments.”

  “Too bad we didn’t have the food in there,” Selah said. They trudged away from the waterfall.

  “That would have posed worse problems. If we didn’t have something for them to steal, someone might have gotten hurt or killed.”

  “What are we hunting for here?” She followed Cleon down a path that looked worn and traveled.

  “The last time I was in this area, I got a wild pig, and one of the guys in our party got a deer.”

  Selah stopped and looked at him. “Who are you and where is my brother, the fish and clam eater?”

  Cleon shook his head, snorting with soft laughter. He held up a hand and pointed through the trees. About twenty yards away in a small clearing, three very large rabbits grazed outside a three-burrow warren dug into the hillside. As fate would have it, the breeze was blowing in the rabbits’ direction.

  One rabbit jerked up its head, put its nose to the air, and thumped its hind leg. The other two jerked to attention and started to dart away. Cleon swung his crossbow around front and fired at the same time Selah threw a kapo.

  The rabbit on the left skidded back a few inches and fell with an arrow piercing its side. The kapo skewered the rabbit on the right, while the one in the middle escaped death by scampering into the warren and disappearing before they could shoot again.

  “Two should feed the four of us tonight,” Cleon said. He leaned the crossbow against a tree and moved to retrieve the game.

  Selah followed behind, shaking her head at his accuracy with the bow. Cleon removed the arrow, wiped it off, and returned it to his quiver, then proceeded to try to clean and gut the dead prey. Selah watched with amusement. He hadn’t quite got the hang of dressing game, and a few times he gagged trying to lop off the head. After all the years of abuse her brothers had given her about hunting, she almost enjoyed watching him retch. But Cleon was all she had left at the moment, and she did love her brother.

  She reached over, stopped his hand, and gave a give-me gesture. “You go dig a hole to bury the entrails and skin,” she said. She figured that was the better of the two options, rather than watching Cleon continue to make a mess hacking at the meat.

  Cleon, sweat beaded on his forehead, looked relieved. He eagerly handed over the kill and moved about five feet away to stab at the soft forest floor. The dirt moved easily while Selah made short work of stripping and gutting both rabbits. She laid the rabbit meat on a large flat rock and scooped up the entrails, skin, and heads and moved them to the waiting hole. She and Cleon pushed the dirt in to cover the detritus and wiped the blood from their hands.

  Selah did a little extra tamping down of t
he soil. She always felt like she was completing a grave and owed the animal some small measure of respect for being her sustenance—for maintaining her life—even though she was going to enjoy the meal.

  Cleon turned away from the hole. “Selah,” he said in barely a whisper.

  “What?” She continued to tamp in a few errant clumps.

  “Selah! Turn around slowly.” Cleon seemed to force out the words, still in a whisper.

  “What?” Selah spun to face him.

  Cleon was frozen in midstride, facing down half a dozen of the largest coyotes she had ever seen. They easily weighed a hundred pounds each, which was unheard of in the south. Their large black eyes and wide, sharp teeth garnered her instant attention. She tried to remain calm so as not to excite them further. The freshly killed rabbits were doing an excellent job of that. Three of the mangy animals stood poised between them and the crossbow, ready to charge. One other circled to their left, and the last two sniffed at the rabbits.

  Selah eyed each one. With every particle of her being she wanted to flee. Not practical. Coyotes could run at forty miles an hour. Even breaths. One of the group of three curled its lip and bared its teeth, then took a step closer. Selah averted her eyes to the ground. No panic attacks. Calm—when she wanted to scream. The animal stopped.

  She ever so slowly lowered herself to the ground. Watching the animals in her peripheral vision, she groped for the knife she’d laid down while burying the remnants. Letting out a breath, she slowly rose to stand beside Cleon. He had a knife in hand as well, ready to fight.

  “How are we going to take six of them?” Selah felt her shoulders tighten. Her knees tried to shake but she willed the fear away. She would be an asset to Cleon, not a liability that could cause his death.

  “I don’t know.” Cleon’s voice cracked with fear. “Can we scare them? You’ve spent more time in the woods than I have.”

  “But I’ve never had to face down a coyote, especially ones this big. What should we try?”

  “Hey, get away!” Cleon shouted and waved his arms suddenly.

  The two animals sniffing around the rabbits startled at his voice and jumped over the rock, taking up tensed positions closer to their right.

  “Well, I guess that didn’t work,” Selah whispered. “Let’s try to back away. On my mark.”

  They began backing toward the trees on the other side of the clearing. For every step they took, the animals moved a tentative step closer. Now they had begun to growl among themselves, as though discussing who was going to eat whom.

  Selah began to sweat. The coyote closest to her sniffed the air as though it could smell her. Lowering its head, the mangy animal bared its teeth and emitted a gurgled growl. It moved toward her slowly at first, then it began to gallop. Selah stepped back and into the middle burrow of the rabbit warren.

  Pain shot through her ankle as it twisted, and she fell, her backside smacking against a pointed rock to the left of the burrow. She yelped in pain. Cleon turned to grab her. Their movement broke the standoff spell.

  With a vicious growl, the lead coyote leapt toward her. The rest of the pack charged.

  Selah screamed and raised her hands to fend off the attack.

  Cleon threw himself on top of her.

  11

  An arrow cut through the air, sinking into the chest of the leaping coyote. It fell dead on top of Cleon, who yelled, pushed it away, and repeatedly stabbed at it, probably not realizing that it was dead. Selah, her breathing out of control, scrambled away as another arrow shot from the trees, felling another coyote. The force of the strike drove it into the animal beside it, which yelped and, with the other three, ran off in the opposite direction.

  “Are you hurt?” Selah grabbed her brother and hugged him so hard that for a second she thought her arms had locked up. Tremors rolled along her extremities, making her hands shake uncontrollably.

  “I’m okay. Did you get bit or anything?” Cleon snorted out deep breaths, trying to get himself under control as he looked over Selah.

  “No.” Selah stared at the dead animals and looked around. “Who did this?”

  “I did.” A voice came out of a tree.

  Selah peered at the tree, thinking it had to be her imagination. Cleon put his arm protectively around her shoulder. The underbrush rattled, then separated, and a suntanned woman with long, cascading golden curls fluidly worked her way through the branches. Just her movements impressed Selah, because not a single tendril of the woman’s hair got hung up in the branches, where Selah had to keep her own pulled back or it constantly snagged.

  “Thank you for saving us. Who are you? Where did you come from just in time?” Selah asked as she and Cleon scrambled to stand.

  “Mari Kief, Regent of WoodHaven.” Mari navigated the last of the tree limbs and stood eye to eye with Selah. Carrying a vicious-looking crossbow, dressed in tanned buckskin from her shoulders to the heavy boots on her feet, she sported a leather quiver on her left forearm and looked completely natural in the wild.

  Selah held out her hand. “I’m Selah Chav—Rishon, and this is my brother Cleon Chavez. Thank you again.”

  Mari looked down at Selah’s hand, hesitated a moment, then shook. “I don’t like killing animals when we don’t need the meat, but you’re welcome. You didn’t have much of a chance after they smelled those rabbits. That’s why we hunt and trap in parties.”

  “Is this your land we were hunting on?” Selah looked down, shame filling her. At home, upsetting another’s food source was a major offense. She didn’t think Cleon realized this was someone’s land.

  “Yes, but you didn’t know. We rarely interact with passing travelers, for safety reasons.” Mari looked directly into Selah’s eyes, searching them till Selah felt self-conscious. “But I’d like to invite you back to our community for the evening meal.”

  Selah relaxed. Mari was looking for something, the way she drilled a stare into her—some recognition, or truth maybe. Apparently she found what she was looking for.

  “Oh, no. We couldn’t be a bother to you and your folks. We have two rabbits that will feed the four of us for dinner,” Cleon said.

  Mari pointed behind him. “No, I think your dinner gathering has been canceled.”

  Selah and Cleon spun. The rock sat empty. The coyotes had relieved them of the kill in their speedy retreat.

  Selah’s shoulders slumped. They would never catch another rabbit tonight. Not after all the noise they’d made. “I think it would be wise of us to take her up on her offer,” she said to Cleon.

  He nodded his agreement. “I’d better go back and get the others. We have an—”

  “AirWagon, yes, I know,” Mari said. “I will send a couple of my men to help you navigate through our secret access points to the colony.”

  “How do you know about an AirWagon? And how did you know about ours?” Mari seemed to know major details about Selah’s group, but she knew nothing of this woman.

  “I traveled widely to the Lander settlement at TicCity and south to the Mountain before and since my father disappeared. I have an exact memory for details and sounds. I recognized yours right away.”

  Selah liked Mari’s mannerisms and her soft-spoken ways. She appeared regal with her flowing mane, and if Selah wasn’t mistaken, the term regent meant someone standing in for a monarch. Mari’s father must have been the king or something. Funny to think of that term in this country, but since ancient times, many things had changed. People with their own kingdoms didn’t seem outlandish.

  Selah looked at Cleon and nodded. It would be all right—she sensed nothing devious. “How long will we have to wait for your men?” she asked Mari.

  “Oh, they’re right here,” Mari said. She raised her arm and whistled a sharp, loud call. Four men materialized silently from the forest, all moving just as quickly as Mari had and carrying weapons just as deadly. One bald man, clad in a dark green-and-brown-splotched one-piece with a knife sheath belt, wielded a wide blade about two feet
long. A shaggy-haired man dressed in faded black carried an old-fashioned rifle. The last two men with short dark hair, one in buckskin like Mari and the other in dark green, carried crossbows.

  Selah took note. She’d seen more rifles in the last day than she’d seen in all her years in Dominion. Curious.

  “You two go with this gentleman and help him navigate his AirWagon and the others to the colony,” Mari said to the dark-haired men.

  Selah tensed. Had she said she was going along with this woman? What if it was some weird kind of plan to separate them? She didn’t want to offend her new host. Cleon saw her indecision and looked like he didn’t want to leave her behind.

  “I’d rather you came back to camp with me. Are you sure this is the best plan, Sissy?” Cleon frowned, his eyebrows drawing together.

  Selah thought for a second. Her instincts about women were pretty good. Men . . . not so much. As fate would have it, she’d instantly liked this woman’s demeanor. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  Cleon and the two men walked off toward the waterfall and camp. Selah looked around at the two dead coyotes. “I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to upset the balance. I should probably tell our security to inform people traveling this way to be mindful that these lands are claimed.”

  “Actually, I’m sure they already know, but it’s not something that we want advertised,” Mari said as she made a hand signal to the man with the blade. “It might bring unwanted intrusions.”

  “Can anything be done with them?” Selah pointed at the carcasses, noting the long fangs in the open mouths. She shuddered at the damage they could have inflicted had it not been for Mari.

  “Yes, my man is going to field-dress them. I’ll send a wagon back for him and the meat.” Mari pointed in the direction they were going to travel.

  Selah’s stomach flopped. “But you’re leaving one man alone with only a knife. What if the pack comes back? I don’t want someone else hurt because of us.”

  Mari touched her wrist. “Raif, secure the site.”