Nathaniel yawned, a lung-busting yawn lasting almost to a count of ten, and then pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and rubbed. As his hands fell away, they revealed a face ravaged by fatigue.
I could tell since childhood when his patience was wearing thin; his attention would lapse and his eyes would lose focus.
Before he snapped, I interrupted the mentor. “We understand the need to practice, but with the earth mother’s agreement, why do you drive us so hard? The machines won’t fail tomorrow.”
He waved a hand, and the holos spinning above us vanished in a blink. He rolled his chair close. “My sensors, the eyes and ears that keep me informed, tell me that Caleb has defied the earth mother and broken his vow. His zealots continue to batter the cliff with picks and shovels to make their new pathway up the mountain, one that will bypass the stone guards. They’ll break through in a matter of days. After that, the sensitive machinery inside will be easy to destroy. What remains of the dreamers will come to a violent end.”
The room hushed but for the muffled hum underlying the techno city. The thoughts of those who dreamed in the mountain flashed silently on the wall, their detached minds oblivious to their fate.
I focused on my breathing as if still trying to let go of my conscious self, to flee from reality. Breathe in. Breathe out.
“When?” I finally said. The lone word echoed across the room.
“To be safe, you should leave first thing tomorrow.” His eyes clouded, and he slipped lower in his chair. “I’m so tired. The fate of the dreamers weighs on me with a bone weariness the young can never understand. I had no choice but to be a leader in my later years. I struggle every day to choose the greater good for my people, doing the best I can. What I’ve asked of you is wrong, but you’re my last hope. I leave the decision to you. In the morning, renounce your vow and I’ll set you free, or be ready to head up the mountain. There is no more time. Go now, and sleep if you can.”
***
Two days before my father died, he lapsed into a stupor. The elders had examined him and advised my mother to keep him comfortable and pray.
As a seven-year-old, I struggled to understand what was happening. His chest still rose and fell with each breath. His eyes blinked in their normal rhythm, yet when I stroked his hand, he failed to grasp mine. When I whispered “I love you,” he never answered.
I asked my mother if he was angry with me, if I’d done something wrong.
She wrapped her arms around me and pressed me to her breast. “Oh no, my child. He loves you more than ever, but he’s begun his journey to the everlasting light.”
Perhaps the vicar had made a mistake, and committed my father’s body to the light too soon. I stared into those glassy eyes and wondered if he was still inside, watching me but unable to respond. I sat with him day and night, reading to him, telling him stories until he took his last breath.
In the dream, would I be like my father in the days before his death, a shell of a body with no mind?
How have we come to this?
To the earth mother, we were a means to return to their past; to the mentor, a key to their future; and swirling like phantoms between them, the mysterious dreamers. Both wise Annabel and powerful William knew more about the dream than they let on, yet neither would send their own people into the mountain.
They left the fate of their land to two strangers, a farmer and a weaver who’d sailed in on a storm.
***
I’d begged the mentor for a few minutes each day to visit the silent boy. As Kara had predicted, he healed at a miraculous pace. The machine masters’ science had saved Zachariah from pain and more—the possibility of a life-long, crippling injury. If Nathaniel and I chose to break our vow, few would condemn us. Even the mentor had offered a way out. But what of the next little boy who fell ill or the little girl who shattered her leg? Where would their miracle come from?
Years before, on that bleak Little Pond morning, we might have run from the stoning, but we’d have left the world a lesser place. Now, if we ran, how much more would be lost? For technos and greenies, the chance for a better life; for Nathaniel and I, the hope to return home with miracles. Might such miracles have saved Nathaniel’s mother, who died in childbirth, a woman no older than me? Might they have kept my father alive to be with me today?
If we’d refused to flee from the stoning, how could we now flee from a chance at miracles?
No matter. Though we never spoke of it, both Nathaniel and I knew we’d made our choice. Only one part remained: which of us would surrender our soul to the machine?
I tried to convince Nathaniel that I be the one to venture into the cocoon, despite my deepest dread.
Stubborn as always, he refused to discuss it.
Let it wait until tomorrow when we go into the mountain. Once there, I’ll yell and scream if I must, trick him if need be, anything to keep him safe.
Better to crawl into that coffin-like container than to watch the man I loved become lost forever in a dream.
***
Before dawn the next morning, we stood at the rear of the commons, at the foot of the stone watchers guarding the pathway up the mountain—Nathaniel and I, the mentor and Kara.
The mentor handed a pack to Nathaniel. “Food and water for the journey, and an electric torch to light your way. I’ve already granted you access. You can leave at any time.” He reached out a knobby hand to Kara. “They may need your help to find their way. Will you guide them?”
Kara’s mouth opened as if she intended to protest, but, obedient as always, she held her words.
I rested a hand on her shoulder, recalling the time she’d been to the dreamers’ fortress and watched her parents disappear. “Please come with us. You won’t have to go inside.”
She nodded, brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, and almost curtsied.
“Brave child,” the mentor said. “Be sure and wait for them beyond the black doors until they return.”
She turned to us, her eyes wells of concern.
“No need to wait.” I said. “She can return to the comfort of the city, her home. We can follow the path back down on our own.”
The mentor closed his eyes and sat so still, I imagined him laid out on one of the greenie pallets in the woods, with Kara bringing him daisies.
Then the deep blue eyes opened and fixed me with their gaze. “She’ll wait, not to show you the way back, but to support you. If our experiment goes awry, the one who survives should not have to trudge down the mountain alone.”
Chapter 23 – The Darkened Lake
I ground my teeth as the rays from the stone guards scanned me. Once granted access, I joined the others on the far side.
“Are you ready?” Kara said.
I nodded without speaking, afraid my voice might betray my unease, and followed her through the mouth of the tunnel. Beyond the entrance, the glow from a row of naked bulbs highlighted an unblemished and seemingly endless ribbon of black pavement. I strode along, counting the echoes of my footsteps—a mind game to keep from dwelling on what lay ahead.
Kara paused midway to point out odd carvings on the wall. “The mentor says the cave through which this tunnel was built goes back to ancient times. These paintings were drawn by the earliest man, and have been preserved from the elements here beneath the earth.”
I traced the lines with my fingertips. The primitive artist had carved crude drawings into the rock wall, many of them pictures of unfamiliar animals and birds, but in a few, he’d lovingly rendered his tribe, mothers and fathers with their children. Despite the millennia, they seemed not so different from people today.
When the tunnel finally ended, we emerged into a natural glade surrounded by rhododendrons in bloom. In the dim light of dawn, no obvious exit showed.
Kara grabbed a fallen branch and poked through the bushes at the back until she located an overgrown opening to a path. “Before the day of ascension, greenies maintained the way up the mountain in exchange fo
r food and sweet water. Now, I’m the only one who comes here. The mentor asks me to climb up once a month to make sure the path stays open.”
I brushed her arm with my fingertips. “I’m glad you came with us. It’s natural after what happened to be afraid—”
She yanked her arm away. “I’m not afraid.” Then she turned her back on me and started up the path.
The ensuing trail followed a stream. Signs of spring flooding lay everywhere—watermarks on the rocks, broken branches littering the trail, and tree trunks muddied to nearly knee high. Even now, the soggy surface forced us to high step as we pulled our boots from the muck.
Once the path rose to drier ground, we proceeded in silence, none of us willing to give voice to the thoughts swirling in our minds.
I focused on my breathing and the swish of my footsteps on the pine-needle carpet. For an instant, I imagined music ringing out above the running water, a high-pitched whistle like the notes of Thomas’s flute. I paused to listen.
Nothing but the stream. No birdsong, no chitter of insects or scamper of squirrels in the brush, as if the birds and wildlife knew our mission and kept their silence out of respect.
Ahead, the trail climbed steeply through a stand of white poplars. A morning fog had risen with the sun and now mingled with the branches to cast a pall over the path. The mist floated in and out among the treetops, dimming the sunlight and dabbing the leaves with moisture. Sometimes the moisture condensed into drops that fell like rain, making a rustling patter on the leaves. The spray from the stream and the mist from the fog conspired with the light to form rainbows that appeared in our path and then vanished.
I sucked in the moist air through my nose. It smelled sweet and loamy, with a hint of rot.
While Nathaniel paced ahead, I followed Kara.
As we climbed, she kept glancing over her shoulder as if longing to return to the city. Once when she turned, our eyes met, but she looked away, like an executioner afraid to face her victim.
The trail wound along a ridge girding the midsection of the mountain. Halfway around, we came upon a lake.
“We’ll stop here,” Kara called to Nathaniel. “It’s a good place to rest and refresh.”
The path skirted the lake, which was sunk in a hollow some twenty feet below where we stood. Dense pines along its perimeter kept it shrouded in shadow, at least until the sun rose higher. Shiny patches of black ice left over from winter edged the gray water.
I shivered and pulled my tunic tighter about me.
Nathaniel opened his pack and passed out provisions.
We both settled on a log with a view of the lake, but Kara stayed standing and apart. As we ate our synthesized food and drank the sweet water—nourishment that would soon run out if we failed—I regarded the mentor’s granddaughter, recalling myself at her age. Sixteen-year-olds are never content, since their life lies over the horizon, but Kara’s restlessness seemed something more, like her life’s role had been predetermined, and was one she’d rather avoid.
“Do you ever venture inside?” I said.
She tapped her teeth with a thumbnail as her eyes darted this way and that. Finally, she fixed on me and raised her chin with a look of certainty, as if she’d conducted this conversation a hundred times before in her mind. “The mentor has granted me permanent access, so I can enter anytime. The mentor, confined to his chair, would hardly know until after the deed was done. I could look around and listen for the voices of my parents.
“They told me that day what they were doing was for me. The dream frightened them, but they found their courage in possibilities, the hope of providing a better future. I still remember how they smiled at me as they turned from the world they were born in, like facing the sun and walking into the sky. I could enter the dream as well. I’m their daughter, and I have their courage.”
Her mouth opened in a perfect O, like a child blowing out candles on her birthday, and she breathed out a lungful of air. “I should be the one to go into the mountain. I’m not afraid, and these are my people. My grandfather had no right to ask this of you. You don’t understand what it means.”
“But we’re trained to—”
“He trained me as well. I know everything you do and more.”
“Then why...?”
She stared out at the darkened lake, as if studying the water bugs skittering across its surface. Her eyes glistened. “My grandfather is ill, and grows worse by the day. He’s taught me how to control what’s left of the machines, but he hides the truth from the others for fear they’ll lose hope and join the greenies. If I go into the mountain and become lost like my parents, who will run the machines when he’s gone? The children will have no food, no water, no medicine... no leader.”
I stood and took her by the arms. “Then you have more to offer than us. Better we go into the mountain.” I waved in the direction of the dreamers’ lair.
As she followed my gesture, the sun peeked above the treetops and sent ripples of yellow shimmering across the lake. She turned from the mountain and glanced below. “Look how the sunrise dances across the water, maybe a welcome message from the dreamers. Who knows how much of nature they’ve learned to control. Time to find out.”
We resumed our trek, with Nathaniel racing ahead, eager to reach our goal. Periodically he’d stop and backtrack to keep us in sight.
I stayed close to Kara.
The day was turning out too fine, inappropriate for a visit to the possibly departed. I recalled when the elders placed my father in the ground. Even as a small child, I remembered being glad the day was gray; a blue sky should be reserved for the living.
After an hour, we emerged from the trees to a startling sight.
To my right, a field of purple heather and goldenrod spread as far as I could see. Their blossoms, still moist from the morning dew, sparkled in the shafts of sunlight, and the air hummed with the hushed drone of bees feeding on their nectar.
Ahead, the path stretched before us and tracked the stream. At its end raged the waterfall that formed its source, announcing its presence with a whooshing sound, like the keepmasters’ train but made of wind. Despite the distance, this cascade roared louder than the four falls on the way to the keep, dwarfing them all combined.
These were the falls that powered the city, the forever flow of water that provided heat and light, and drove what machines still functioned. This was the energy source that had given flight to the aspirations of the dreamers.
Until the day the mountain erupted.
To my left stood a reminder of that eruption, an ugly scar across the land. A flow of lava five times taller than Nathaniel had snaked its way down from the falls and crushed everything in its path. Now, its anger spent, the lava had cooled to a grim memorial of the disaster, a river of black stone the vicars might have painted on the teaching chamber wall as a vision of the darkness.
I winced and turned away, focusing instead on the dreamers’ fortress looming high above us, rising out of the mists from the falls like a dream itself.
“So steep,” I said. “Did the dreamers have machines to take them there, fast wagons that could climb?”
Kara shook her head. “The dream is demanding, not just mentally but physically. Only those strong enough to make the climb were allowed to enter the mountain. This trek was another test to prove one’s worthiness.”
We plodded along from there, each footstep landing heavily upon the earth, not only from the steepness, but from a sense of foreboding. The mist had cleared, and the morning breeze had settled, leaving few sounds—the crunch of our boots on scree, our labored breathing, and the roar of the falls. Somewhere nearby, a woodpecker drummed away on a rotten log, indifferent to the folly of men.
Ten minutes later, a single ray from the rising sun struck the structure carved into the rock face, illuminating an unbroken window pane. The sudden flare gave the illusion of a beacon being lit inside, as if someone were leading us in.
For an instant, I thought of the
storm and our boat being dragged into shore. Had the dreamers become so powerful they could make the lightning flash and the thunder roar? Could they have drawn us here to them? I shook off the mood, recalling the earth mother’s words: They sought to control nature but could never master the winds. Had she been wrong? Had these geniuses lost in the dream learned to control nature and summoned us here?
More likely they were mad, or dead.
Nathaniel dashed back to me and waved his arm in a sweeping arc. “Our newest keep. May we find it as well-stocked with wisdom.”
“And good luck,” I added.
A few more steps allowed me to pierce the veil of mist from the falls.
Kara pointed. “There! You can see it clearly now.”
I shielded my eyes against the glare of the sun as the brooding structure came into view. A series of columns supported a marble frame, much like the Temple of Truth in the keepmasters’ ruined city. Behind them, two imposing gates barred the way, much different from the keep’s golden doors, all black and forbidding. On either side, the familiar stone guards kept watch, but triple the height of the ones below.
I gazed up at their lifeless eyes and wondered what secrets they guarded behind those grim doors.
Chapter 24 – Antechamber
We stopped at the final approach to catch our breath. Only fifty paces remained up a steep rise lined with crushed stone and bordered with blocks of white marble. As I marveled at the structure ahead, a wisp of a cloud slid across the sun, fragmenting its rays, and the air before the black doors came alive, shimmering as if wraiths were flying out to greet us.
Kara smiled at me. “That happens sometimes, especially in the afternoon when the sunbeams hit at a slant. Just science, like light passing through a prism, though the IBs might conjure up troubled spirits trying to escape their bonds.”
I trudged up the remaining path, daunted by the dream and fearful of our fate. A minute later, I stood before five knee-high steps leading to the base of the columns. And oh, what columns, with each individual groove deep enough to hold a grown man. Behind them, the black metal doors loomed, contrasting sharply with the simple oak of the Hall of Winds. Etchings of lightning bolts embellished their surface, symbols of power. The doors towered over us, far taller than the golden entrance to the keep.
The Stuff of Stars (The Seekers Book 2) Page 16