“Do ya need help with ana-ting?” Ms. Ruby asks us.
“Why don’t you wait with the children as they come downstairs?” I say. “And don’t let them come out here. I want to prepare them for what’s going on first.”
“Sure, dear. I’ll wait with them. There are two trays of candles in the common area. You can take those upstairs with ya.”
“Need any more help?” Johnny asks.
“You boys can come help gather supplies from the kitchen.”
He gives me a thumbs-up, then whistles to Emerson, Pedro, and Mateo, who are focused intently on the rising water. “Time to gather up supplies,” he says.
They jog over to us and up the steps, then we all head inside. We find Cheyenne sitting peacefully on the small couch. Ms. Ruby sits next to her, and I tug Tallulah from my neck and shoulders. “Cheyenne, can you hold Tallulah for me?”
“Oh, sure, dear. I’d love to.”
I let Tallulah sniff her first, then set her down in Cheyenne’s lap. Cheyenne strokes her fur with a knowing, gentle touch, which seems to calm Tallulah instantly.
We head down the hall, Smudge and I to the common area to fetch the candle trays, and the boys to the kitchen for food and water. Once the candles are lit, Smudge and I each carry a tray up the stairs.
“You get the boys,” I say. “I’ll get the girls.”
“Okay. And meet back downstairs?”
“Yes.”
We part ways at the second floor, and she continues up to the third. I travel from room to room, waking pairs and trios of girls, and setting a candle on each nightstand. I tell them to pack their things and hurry downstairs, that we’re leaving and we’re not coming back.
“What’s wrong, Momma Joy?” Chloe yawns, stretches in her bed, next to Pia, who still sleeps.
“Grandpa!” Raven jolts awake in the adjacent bed, gasping. Her eyes dart around the room until they find me approaching her bedside. “Where’s my grandpa?”
“He left with his militia. But he’ll . . . be back soon. Now come on, everyone up. We have to go. Get your things together.”
“But why, Momma Joy?” Chloe lies back in her bed. “I’m tired, and I don’t wanna—”
“Now!”
She and Pia both shoot up, wide-eyed.
“Out of bed, pack your things, and get downstairs with everyone else, immediately.”
They see the fire in me and do as I say, hopping from their beds and tugging on their clothes and shoes.
“I have to pack my and Baby Lou’s things. As soon as you’re packed and dressed, go downstairs. Hurry.”
In my room, I sit the tray of remaining candles down and blow them out. All but one. Then I fill my daddy’s magic bag with our meager belongings. Again. My mother’s jeans and my daddy’s work shirt, still folded on the tabletop in the corner. Millie from Baby Lou’s crib. The rest of our few clothes, Baby’s sling, and my daddy’s book of magic tricks from the nightstand. All of it back into the bag it came from a little over two weeks ago. I swing it over my shoulder, take the last lit candle from the tray, and with one final glance around the room I hoped I’d someday be comfortable in, I head down the hallway.
“Everyone out?” I bang a fist on the wall.
Footsteps patter down the stairs from the third floor. Pia, Raven, and Chloe’s room is empty. The last of the girls hurry from their rooms with their own bags, joining the others downstairs, and I peek inside each doorway for any stragglers or remaining possessions. After grabbing Tallulah’s knapsack from Vila’s room, I pause for a moment in the doorway at the end of the hall. Aby’s room. It’s the first time I’ve dared to come down here since we came back without her.
In the flickering light from my candle, I see her bag on the floor by her bed. And although I trample my own heart with each step toward it, I go to it anyway, and set the candle down on her nightstand. I pick up the bag—which weighs almost nothing—and dump its few contents into my own. No time for bleak nostalgia now. And when I go to retrieve the candle, something silver reflects its light from the nightstand. Aby’s father’s pocketknife.
The emotion is strong, and my body jumps from it. I can’t let it out now, though; it’s not the time. So I swallow it down, wondering how long I can keep it there. I push the tiny knife into my pocket, but it meets resistance, something blocking it. I reach in to find the shell Smudge gave me when we first got here, along with the folded paper from Professor Al. I almost forgot about that.
I tuck the shell down into my other pocket, unfold the paper, and hold it up to the candlelight. At the top, the words “The Seeker’s Keys” are printed in Professor Al’s messy script. In the center sits a large circle broken into three notched sections, and behind it is the sky and the ocean . . . I think. They aren’t colored, but they appear to be clouds and waves. And then, along the bottom, is written: “The three blind eyes will help you sea to the east.” The word see is misspelled, though I’m unsure if it’s purposeful or not.
I stare at the confusing message for a moment, dumbfounded. Is this supposed to bring me some kind of hope? Because it doesn’t. What does it even mean?
After another moment of inspection, once I think I’ve memorized every line, I bring the paper to the tiny candle flame to destroy it, like Professor Al said to. But I hesitate. It’s the only possession I have to remind me of him, the man in the rainbow suspenders, the man who once taught us. And if, by chance, I never see him again, I’ll hate myself for burning this. I can’t do it. So I fold it up and tuck it back into my pocket. I’ve lost too much already.
Shaken by Professor Al’s cryptic message, I make my way down the stairs in a surreal state of semi-shock. This is all too much, and my mind is burning gears trying to decode it all. And in a moment, with words like dynamite, I’ll blast the children’s hopes and dreams to smithereens by revealing the secrets that once made the magic work here. This stabs a hole in my soul, deflates it, because I know they’re about to face the ugly, despicable truth: that there is no paradise. No freedom. No dream come true. There’s only fear, escape . . . the promise of certain death, wherever we go.
When I get downstairs, every face in the room is glued to me, and the words are nails in my throat. I plop down onto the arm of the couch near Cheyenne, and she gives me a pat. “Be strong,” the gesture says. So I take a deep breath and go for it.
“I’m . . . I’m so sorry. I lied to you. We’re not in paradise, not on a beautiful beach, somewhere safe. Truth is . . .” I look up from my lap, scan every face in the room. “We’re deep underground, surrounded by walls that display the images of the sea and sky we’ve seen for the last two weeks—”
“Momma Joy?” Raven kicks a tattered tennis shoe toe at the floor. “I already told them all.”
“Yeah, she told us a few days ago.” Chloe plugs her thumb back into her mouth.
I blink in bewilderment. “And you didn’t say anything?”
“No one told us that!” a boy says.
Hostile murmurs rise around me. Some of the olders apparently missed Raven’s announcement.
“Let’s all try to relax.” I raise a hand to silence them. “We—”
“Where’s my grampa?” Raven asks. “Is he dead? Because I had a dream he was.”
“We . . . don’t know where he is,” Smudge says. “But we’ll find him.”
“But I like it here,” says a younger boy, “and I wanna stay.”
“We can’t.” I rise from the chair arm. “Zentao’s flooding.”
Some of them gasp in fear, and they crowd the front window, and Tallulah hops from Cheyenne’s lap, back to her spot on my neck and shoulders.
Smudge swings the front door open. “We have to go. There’s a very tall ladder we have to climb. But we’ll all be tied to each other with rope so no one falls.”
“That sounds scary!” Pia takes my hand. �
��Where’s my bubba?”
“I’m here, sweetheart,” says Mateo from the back of the crowd, near the hallway.
“We’ll be okay,” I assure them. “Everything is going to be all right.”
How many times have I uttered those words?
As many times as they’ve been lies.
Outside the Center, the youngers huddle into a tight group, bawling at the sight of the dark, wet city that wasn’t even home for three weeks. The water has already swallowed most of the huts, and seems to rise faster with every passing minute. Another twenty yards and it’ll be at the doorstep of Cheyenne’s.
“Smudge, where’s the ladder?” I ask.
“The back right corner of Zentao, where I mentioned before. Near the corral.”
“We ready?”
“I think so, yes.”
I remove Tallulah’s knapsack from my bag and open the drawstring. I attempt the clicking noise Vila makes when she tells her to go in it, and to my surprise, she listens to me, hopping from my shoulders and into the bag. She curls in a ball, peeking up at me, and I draw the opening closed, leaving enough space for her to get air. Then I add her to the rest of the cargo on my back.
“Everyone be still so I can make sure we’re all here,” I announce.
After a quick head count, Smudge and I start the procession, all of us loaded down with weapons, bags, and lanterns. Baby Lou screams in Serna’s arms from the back of the long line.
“Want me to sling her to you?” Smudge asks. “You probably need assistance with all you’re carrying.”
“Yes.” I wave Serna to us. “Thank you. This is going to be a challenge.”
“Yet another you’ll conquer.” She brushes my arm with a warm hand.
“I hope so.”
“Ma-maaa!” Baby Lou screams as Serna makes it to us with her.
“It’s okay, Baby, shh . . .” I remove her sling from my bag and hand it to Smudge, then take Baby Lou from Serna. “Stay with the youngers toward the back,” I tell her.
“Okay.” She jogs toward the rear of the group again, where Emerson stands with his crossbow, lantern raised, peering out at the water level.
I hold Baby Lou in place at my chest while Smudge ties her sling around us. I follow Emerson’s gaze to the reflection of lantern light in the water’s surface. It now laps at the doorstep of Cheyenne’s.
“Is that tight enough?” Smudge asks.
“Yeah, that’s good.”
“Time to go.”
Behind me, Chloe, Pia, and Raven huddle around Mateo, and he does his best to comfort them. “We moving?” He lifts his own lantern higher.
“Yes. All right, everyone!” I yell. “Stay together and move quickly, but safely. Those with lanterns, please do your best to hold them high to light our way.”
Four lanterns rise into the air, shedding more light on scared children and our flooding sanctuary.
A surge of water that could only come from something colossal, collides with Cheyenne’s, a great wave shattering its windows and ripping the door chimes from their handle. The tail of a Teuridon slaps the wall, and the hut collapses on itself like a house of cards. And in an instant, pieces of magic, never shared, lovely things seen by a blind woman—gone—in a thousand watery deaths.
The youngers squeal and scream, and Johnny stabilizes Cheyenne a few bodies behind me. She grips his hand, and he gives her a side-hug, crossbow in his other clenched fist.
“Let’s move!” I wave my hands to get everyone’s attention, and then Smudge and I start walking.
“We’ll take the higher path along the wall with the children,” Smudge says. “Then when we get to the fence, a few of us can go to the shed and collect the rope.”
“And the cage. Then we’ll take a few of those piglets. Do you think they’re old enough to leave their momma yet?”
She glances at me like I’m being foolish, but answers anyway. “They should be. And I suppose I can carry the cage. You already have your hands full.”
“That would be great, thanks.” I peek down at Baby Lou, who sucks her thumb, tucked snug in the sling. Tallulah wiggles a bit in her knapsack, but only to find a more comfortable position, it seems.
Terror makes little feet move fast in the dark. In less than five minutes, we’re passing by the greenhouses. Smudge darts in through the doorway of one, and returns with a branch of Dahli. She stuffs it down into my bag for me.
“Thank you.” In all of the commotion, I haven’t even noticed any nausea, which makes me think adrenaline’s a cure for it, too.
We cut back behind Greenhouse D and the amphitheatre comes into view. To our right and down the slope, the water reaches up the hill for us, too close for comfort.
“It seems like it’s rising awfully fast,” I tell Smudge.
“It is. They must’ve reversed the outtake flow.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means twice the amount of water is flowing in than what I originally thought.”
“And . . . ? How long?”
“Maybe an hour.”
“Damn. Okay, everyone!” I call behind us. “We’ve gotta pick up the pace! I know we’re carrying a lot of stuff, but we have to hurry as much as we can!”
The pace does pick up, and I’m soon out of breath. The nausea returns, along with a light-headedness. Looks like I spoke too soon. But I don’t slow my pace. This is life or death. I reach inside my bag and yank a couple fresh Dahli leaves off their branch and cram them into my mouth.
“Are you okay?” Smudge asks.
“As okay as I can be, I guess.”
We scurry along the wall, behind the orchard, our view of the watery black death momentarily blocked. Not seeing it makes it even more terrifying. What a horrible way it would be to die. I recall my dream, just yesterday. The eerie similarities to these actual events make chill bumps rise on my skin. As if my subconscious already holds secrets to my future, and all of the catastrophes it promises.
There’s a yelp behind me, and a crash. A lantern hits the ground and shatters, spilling greenish-yellow liquid-light onto the dirt, followed by cursing and a quarrel.
“What happened?” I call back.
“Hang on.” Mateo pries himself from the three girls and limps to the commotion. A minute later, he’s on his way back to us. “They tripped over each other, it’s fine. We’re just minus a lantern.”
“Everyone watch out for the person in front of you!” I say. “Moving forward!”
We clear the orchard and find the water a few feet closer. My nausea subsides, but adrenaline pumps too much charge into my veins and panic grips my lungs. We’ve gotta move faster. But my back and shoulders are suffering under this weight, and my muscles threaten to give under the pressure. Must keep moving.
A short eternity passes, and my entire body has shed its water into my clothes. I’m sweaty and parched, but the sight of the gate is a massive relief. That relief is dispelled, though, with a scurrying on the ground and a fluttering in the air around us. “We’ll have to deal with jumpers and bloodbugs, too, huh?”
“I’m afraid so.” Smudge yanks at the lock on the gate. “Like the rats, they’ll be going out the same way we are to escape the water.”
“That’s just great.”
“We’ll need some assistance with the rope. It’ll be heavy. And the . . . animal cage.”
I turn and wave to get everyone’s attention. “Listen up! Serna and Emerson, can you two please come here? And the rest of you will wait here while we get the rope.” I lean in closer to Mateo. “Stand guard with that gun.”
“Will do.”
“Momma Joy, where are you going?” Chloe asks.
“To get rope. And a surprise for you girls.”
“A surprise?”
I nod and pat her head, set my bag and crossbow
down, then remove Tallulah’s knapsack from my shoulders. “And I’ll need you to hold Tallulah for me while we go, okay?”
“Okay.” She grips the knapsack straps and clutches it to her with two tiny hands.
“Need help with somethin’?” Emerson asks when he and Serna reach us.
“Yes. We’ve gotta run to the other side of the corral to the shed, for rope and a cage.”
“A cage for what?” Serna asks.
“We’re saving a few animals.” I give Mateo a thumbs-up, and he returns it, then I wave the others on after me. “We’ve got to hurry.”
Now minus the weight of most of my cargo, my body thanks me. Baby Lou weighs next to nothing now, with that relief. But again, that’s a momentary celebration. As we get nearer to the other side of the corral, the water sloshes so close, we can see the five-foot fins of the Teuridons emerging from the surface in the light from Smudge’s hand. When we get to the large storage shack backed up against the side of the corral, Smudge opens the doors and shines her light in to an organized space with racks full of various crates and bottles, tools, and other random supplies.
“So, what are we getting?” asks Emerson.
Smudge rotates, hand outstretched, surveying the room’s contents. “Rope. A lot of it.” She digs around in a crate, then tosses him two large bundles. She tosses me two, one to Serna, and takes two for herself.
I loop the heavy bundles over my arm, then spy the cage Mr. Tanner spoke of, in the corner near us. I collect it, too, and inspect it. A little rusty, but it’ll work.
“Come on.” Smudge exits and we follow, to water at our doorstep.
When we get to the corral, I’m praying momma pig and her babies are nearby so we don’t have to hunt for them. I spot them a few feet from the fence, a group suckling and a trio trotting around her. “Emerson, Serna, you see those three?” I point to them. “Let’s take those.”
They drop their rope bundle, and Emerson hops the fence, then helps Serna up and over. I stifle my heartbreak, watching them thieve three piglets from where they try to hide at their momma’s side. They squeal and wiggle, but Emerson manages to tuck two into his shirt, and Serna does the same with hers.
The Soultakers (The Treemakers Trilogy Book 2) Page 9