by C Lee Tocci
“No.” He jammed his hands into his pockets, digging his fingers into his palms.
Lilibit’s face fell. It hurt to see her disappointment but Todd just shook his head.
She dropped her eyes and looked at the stone. Lifting it to her cheek, she listened for a moment and then, with a small sad smile, said, “Tai-Kwee says he’ll wait. I’ll hold him for you for now.”
Todd’s mind was in turmoil as they walked back to the others.
They walked eastward, their path running parallel to a spit of train tracks that ran along the far side of the canyon. Every time a train appeared, Todd made them crouch down among the sage scrub and wait motionlessly until the cab pulled out of view. Since the rest of the train just pulled flat beds stacked with metal containers and had no people on them, they could walk alongside them and not worry about being seen. Some of the caravans pulled more than a hundred cars and took a half hour or longer before they pulled out of sight. The clacking of rails was comforting. They didn’t feel quite so alone when the trains chugged alongside.
When the morning sun finally shone full in their eyes, they came upon an abandoned shack along the side of the tracks. There were holes in the roof and one of the walls had collapsed, but it gave them shelter from the wind and from any eyes looking for them while they slept.
Syxx sat in his darkened office, his fingers steepled beneath his chin, his eyes focused on the large grey rat that twitched nervously on his desktop.
Syxx was not pleased.
The rat knew this but did not run when Syxx reached out and grabbed its head between his fingers. Syxx felt the rat’s thrill of terror as its skull was slowly crushed. One short, shrill squeal and the rat was dead. He shook it once or twice, trying to catch that last, sweet echo of death. Then he raised it above his head, opened his mouth and swallowed it whole, sucking the tail through his lips like a fat strand of hairy spaghetti. He smacked his lips in satisfaction.
Syxx did not need to eat to survive, but the flavor of fear and death was irresistible to him, even in small servings. Yet this pleasant diversion could not distract him from the greater conundrum. Killing the messenger did not negate the message. The rats had failed. The Nether Rock survived. And the child still lived.
He called for the Director.
Despite all their vacillating and weaknesses, humans were still his most effective instruments for pure devastation. All you need do is seduce them with power, coddle their vanity, or perhaps just deceive them into thinking that their own destruction is exactly the one thing which they most desire. For such innovative, ‘rational’ creatures, they were quite delightful in their corruptibility. Give him a dozen ego-bloated, power-hungry humans over a half a million rabid rats any day of the week.
Syxx was smiling quite benignly when the Director entered his office.
The sun was still a few hours from setting when they awoke. They ate a dawdling meal, waiting for dusk.
“I am so glad to see the end of these!” cracked Jeff as they opened the last can of baked beans. “If I ever see another can of brown bread, I’ll scream.”
Devon sneaked up behind Jeff and placed an empty brown bread can on his shoulder. The others broke up laughing as Jeff gave a mock scream of melodramatic horror and pretended to faint on the floor, but Todd’s smile was a little twisted. He didn’t know how much farther they had to go, nor how they would get more food.
A sudden silence drew Todd from his thoughts. Marla and Jeff looked at him with questions in their eyes. They glanced to where Lilibit sat, arranging her stones, “listening” to them with her cheek. Todd knew what they wanted him to ask.
“Lilibit?” Todd asked quietly, “what are you doing?”
Lilibit looked up. Her smile faded when she realized they were all watching her.
“Just talking to my stones,” she answered, a defensive edge in her voice.
“Stones don’t talk,” Todd declared.
“Yes they do! Ask Marla! Doesn’t your stone talk to you?”
Marla was a bit surprised to have all the attention redirected towards her. “I can hear Ulex with it, if that’s what you mean?”
Lilibit looked at Marla doubtfully. It was obvious that Marla not being able to hear the voice of her own stone was something Lilibit was having trouble understanding.
“Well,” she mumbled with a shrug, “my stones speak to me.”
“What do they say?” asked Jeff with smirk. “Do they like rock music?”
“I don’t think so,” answered Lilibit seriously.
“They don’t like rock music because they’re stone-deaf!” Jeff laughed at his own pun and Donny joined in after getting an elbow in his ribs.
Todd watched Lilibit as she went back to “talking” to her stones. He watched her secretly, not that it mattered. She was so focused on her stones, she was barely aware of anything else. Marla was talking with Ulex. She fingered her stone in her hand while her lips twitched. Like Lilibit, it would take a meteor crashing next to them to get her attention.
Todd stood and stretched, his shoulders creaking from sleeping on the hard packed earth. He was looking around for a good place to bury their trash when a flicker of movement on the horizon caught his eye. A helicopter, looking like a flea in the distance, flitted around a distant mountain before disappearing behind the crest.
He watched that spot it for a long minute, but it didn’t reappear.
“Can we get going now?” Jeff kicked at the dirt grumpily.
“No.” Todd, still staring at the horizon, felt Jeff’s impatience like a fireball beating on his back. “We’ll stay where we are until full dark.”
Jeff grunted in disgust, but didn’t argue. Todd sat back down besides Lilibit, watching her fingers arrange and disarrange her stones. Tai-Kwee was one of the stones that lay there in the dirt, resting between a half a dozen other stones. With an effort, Todd pulled his eyes away from them
“Lilibit,” he asked quietly, “what do you remember from before Dalton Point?”
Lilibit’s fingers froze, suspended above her stones. One hand slipped into her pocket where she kept the obelisk stone, while the other arm hugged her knees. She rocked softly back and forth, her eyes focused on a point beyond the shattered wall. When she finally spoke, her voice was hushed and slow.
“I remember things at the hospital. I remember the doctors and the nurses there. They were good. Not like the others. I remember the lady who took me to Dalton Point. She kept talking to me, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I think my head was broken. I knew I should know stuff, but I couldn’t remember what it was I was supposed to know. My head wouldn’t work and it hurt when I tried. Then the lady took me to Dalton Point and I saw the mountain. I wanted to go up the mountain. I didn’t know why, I just wanted to go. Then when we were walking, I started to hear the stones calling.” She looked up and gave Todd a small, secret smile. “They were glad I was there. Then the stones told the mountain and the mountain gave me my stone.”
Lilibit smiled as she pulled her hand out of her pocket, revealing her obelisk stone. As she held it in her open palm and Todd was able to see it clearly for the first time. It wasn’t a grayish brown as it had first seemed. Glinting in the afternoon sun, he saw it capture many colors, flickering purple and gold, blue and green, depending on how the light hit it. The colors reflected back up onto Lilibit’s cheeks as she gazed at it.
“Her name is Ewa-Kwan.” The simple joy in Lilibit’s voice made the others stare. “And she stays with me.”
Todd hated to interrupt her quiet delight, but there were too many questions needing answers. “Lilibit, what did you mean by ‘not like the others?’ Were there other doctors and nurses?”
Lilibit stared hard at Todd, but he saw her mind was fixed on a distant thought. Her eyes glazed, her brow furrowed and her hand clenched hard at Ewa-Kwan.
Suddenly a wash of white filled Todd’s head. He could still see, but his mind wasn’t paying attention to his eyes. Instead
, images flashed in his mind and Todd realized that these fragments were Lilibit’s memories, pushed into his head by the frightened little girl huddled in front of him.
Glimpses of a white cold room. Cold-eyed people dressed in white medical jackets. A chill of fear and loneliness and despair. And then a memory of pain so excruciating that the vision dissolved. Todd’s breath hacked in his throat and his heart pounded hard against his ribs. A glance at the others showed him that they were pale and gasping too. All of them had seen and felt Lilibit’s memories.
“I can’t remember.” Lilibit’s whisper was barely a breath. “I just know it was bad.”
“And what about the helicopters?”
“I can’t remember,” she repeated.
Todd thought she might remember more if he pushed her, but she was so upset, he decided against it.
At sunset, he gave the order to pack up and they moved out of the shack. They hadn’t seen Grey Feather, or any other bird, since they’d escaped from the Nether Rock, but since, in his dream, he had recalled flying into the morning sun, they hiked towards their fading shadows and the distant mountains that lay to the east.
Todd fell back with Marla. Nothing was said for a while as Marla ‘talked’ with Ulex. Todd watched Lilibit plod along in a silent funk.
“Marla?” Todd kept his voice low. “What is it with that stone?”
Marla brought her focus back from Ulex. “What do you mean? You mean Ulex?”
“No. I mean the stone. What does it feel like? How do you feel when you touch it?” Todd found himself staring at Lilibit’s pocket where he knew Tai-Kwee lay.
“Well…” Marla took her hand from her pocket, separating herself with an effort from her stone and from Ulex . “…It’s hard to say what’s the stone and what’s Ulex. The stone is warm when I touch it, and it kind of hums. Sometimes, when Ulex isn’t talking to me, I can sort of feel parts of my head working that never did before. Like I can remember things that I never knew.”
It was quiet for a moment as Todd thought about all this. Marla furtively slipped her hand back into her pocket.
“The cold hasn’t really bothered me since I first held Hesha-Tay. And when we walk for hours and hours and everyone is so dead tired, I feel like I could keep on walking for another three days.”
She pulled Hesha-Tay from her pocket and squeezed it between her fingers until her knuckles paled. “And I think if ever lost this stone,” she whispered, “even for a minute, I think I’d die.”
They walked on, Todd navigating more on instinct than by any conscious thought. He couldn’t stop thinking about the stone Tai-Kwee.
Was the stone a tool to be embraced? Or a trap to be avoided?
Chapter Thirty Four
Occurrence in the Valley of the Wind Dancers
It was a heavy march that night across the desert. Small rockslides of gravel slithered beneath their feet as they plodded over one scrabbly hill after another. Then, as they crested a high knoll they stopped and stared. Rows upon rows of stark windmills, arms turning like synchronized swimmers, lined the desert floor and rode up the slopes of the dunes and hills on all sides.
“Look! Wind Dancers!” Lilibit’s voice echoed across the desert. She scampered down the slope and danced between them, her arms matching the spin of the blades. Nita and Devon ran down after her, laughing and flapping.
The sound of the wind rattling through the windmills was very unsettling to Todd as they passed between them. He rubbed his scalp. The hum of the Wind Dancers seemed to sing out a warning.
The desert sprawled in front of them, the lights of a small village glistening in the distance. The faint howl of a train whistle called a soft greeting to the little town.
Todd changed their direction to skirt the town. Their new path would lead them over the train tracks and south of the village.
As they approached the edge of the windmill valley, Todd’s ears picked up a new sound. Turning, he saw a white glow from the far side of one of the hills they had just crossed. As he watched, the light grew brighter, silhouetting the arms of the wind dancers as they spun frantically.
A blast of wind struck their faces. Todd counted nine helicopters in a menacing chevron cresting a distant ridge. Their spotlights brushed the desert floor in choreographed sweeps.
“Run!” The roar of the choppers drowned Todd’s words, but no one asked him to repeat himself. They ran for the village hoping to hide among the buildings, but Todd realized they would never reach it in time.
“The train!” yelled Marla.
Looking back, Todd saw the lights of a train closing in on them from the west. It lost speed as it approached the town and Todd thought that, if they reached it in time, it might be slow enough for them to jump on. Todd nodded and they veered to their right, racing down towards the tracks.
A rush of panic powered his legs but Todd was amazed to see Marla sprint into the lead. Marla, always a bit lazy at gym, had never been one for exercise, but now she ran like a deer. She leapt smoothly onto one of the moving cars and immediately started to run back along the line of flat beds, bounding from one to the next as she worked to stay with the others.
Jeff reached the train next and grabbed at Marla’s outstretched arm. With a jerk and a heave, Jeff flew off his feet and landed in an ungraceful heap on the flatcar floor. When Donny reached for her arm, Todd was certain his weight would pull her right off the train, but with a sweep of her arm, Donny sailed past Jeff, bouncing off the side of the container that lay on the flat car.
Todd ran along side the train and scooped up Nita, lifting her to Marla, who hefted her easily and set her onto the train cart. Then he tossed his staff and pack onto the next car as Marla’s car pulled away. Jeff ran past Marla, leaping over the gaps between the cars to reach Todd just as he hoisted Devon up. Then Todd turned to grab Lilibit, only to find she was not there.
Looking back towards the searchlights, he saw Lilibit’s silhouette, running towards them, stumbling. Todd didn’t know how she had fallen so far behind, but he did know that there was no way she would make the train the way she was running. With a hiss of frustration, Todd turned from the train to round up the stray.
Lilibit staggered and fell. Todd wondered if she was hurt, but as he got closer, he realized she had collapsed in despair, her eyes blinded with tears, thinking she had been left behind.
“For the love of crows, brat!” Todd pulled Lilibit to her feet. The helicopters were too close to waste any time worrying about feelings. “Don’t just lie there!”
Todd was dragging her towards the train when an explosion rocked the desert.
One of the helicopters plummeted in a ball of flame. They shielded their eyes as it crashed into the desert floor, erupting with fire and fury. In the silhouette of the flames, they saw the figure of a caped man, wielding a glowing staff, standing to face the oncoming choppers. Lilibit froze, her head cocked as she gazed at the shadow of the man. When Todd realized that she wasn’t running, he grabbed her by her waist and carried her towards the disappearing train.
Marla was still leaping from car to car, but she was approaching the end of the long caravan and he needed to run faster than he ever had before if he was to catch the last car.
“Here! Take it!” Lilibit voice rattled from jostling.
Glancing down at her, Todd saw Tai-Kwee clutched in her hand. He tore his eyes from the blue stone and continued to run towards the train, but the image of the stone kept pulling his eyes back to Lilibit’s fist. His breath was in tatters and the train was pulling away. He saw Marla on the last car, watching him, uncertain as to what she should do.
Without thinking, Todd tore the stone from Lilibit’s grasp. From the moment his fingers wrapped around it, he felt a rush of warmth starting from the palm of his hand, surging through his body. His legs ran effortlessly and with a rush of adrenalin, he felt his pace quicken. The train grew closer and at first he thought it was slowing, but after the cab had passed through the small town, it
had actually sped up and Todd was now running faster than the train.
With a final burst of power, Todd leapt onto the last flatbed car. Marla grabbed his shirt and pulled him from the edge of the platform. Panting, he released his hold on Lilibit who scrambled away to catch a last look at the silhouetted figure of the man standing before the flames.
Todd was exasperated. You’d think, at least, she would show a little gratitude that he’d gone back for her, but his annoyance faded when she turned to look at him, fear and confusion in her eyes.
“Who is he?” asked Todd.
“I don’t know,” Lilibit whispered, her eyes glazed as she watched the fading glow of the helicopters. “I’m scared, Todd.”
Marla looked as worried as Todd felt. Taking Lilibit by the hand, he led her back up the caravan to where the others waited.
The glow of the wreckage was miles behind them, but Lilibit still stared in that direction. Todd could see her brow ripple as she worked to fit in what she had seen with the tatters of her memories. She sat alone at the end of the flat car, her arms huddled around her knees.
Marla sat, leaning against one of the containers, her eyes almost shut. Her lips moved faintly and her hand clutched her stone as she spoke with Ulex, miles away and fathoms below.
“Ulex can usually keep up with us,” Marla said, her eyes not focused, “but the train is going faster than he can run through the caverns. And sometimes he has to take detours if the tunnels don’t run exactly the same way we’re going. He’s getting farther and farther away.”
“Can you still hear him?” Todd asked.
“Oh, yes!” Marla sighed with relief. “But I think it’s going to take him a while to catch up.”
Todd really wasn’t sure what to say to that. A fierce seven foot tall rock man stalking them was a bit scary, and it didn’t look like shaking him off was going to be that easy.