“What the—?” Peary sputtered with frustration.
“What is the real plan, old man?” Cord asked. “Because I know you have one.”
The Real Plan
Chapter Twenty-One
“Glad you asked,” the Poet said. He leaned toward Peary with an apologetic look on his face. “You’ll have to forgive me, son. I couldn’t let you get yourselves killed doing something stupid. You’ve tried so hard to die over these past few weeks since I met you, but something—or someone—keeps having to step in and help you.”
“Get on with it,” Cord said. Even from a position of weakness, the brigand showed no humility. It wasn’t in his nature.
The Poet ignored Cord and spoke directly to his friends. “Peary, you and Marisa are getting out of here. Right now. Head west until you’re in those mountains yonder and far from here. You’ll find a place, you will. A beautiful place to survive and settle down. Maybe you’ll have a family.”
“How quaint,” Cord spat.
“That’s not going to happen,” Peary said. “Because we’re not leaving. What about you? What would happen to you?”
“It’s not so dramatic as you think, friend. I’m no hero. Never have been. I’ll just keep these fine gentlemen busy for a few days. We’ll laugh and sing and drink and maybe I’ll teach them some poems. And then… well, then, when I know you and Marisa are safely away, I’ll take them down south, peaceful like. Show them the big dive. I’ll show them where we were when we found the Danvar salvage.”
No one spoke for some time. The men surrounding them, as if with one mind, appeared to decide that the threat was over, and most of them lowered their weapons. At last, Cord spoke.
“That’s it then,” Cord said. “I agree to your terms, Poet. So long as you can take me to Danvar and I keep the gold, these two can go.”
“I can take you straight to Danvar,” the Poet said, “and I will.”
“This wasn’t the plan,” Marisa said. She was crying and wiping tears from her cheeks.
“It’s the new plan.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Peary said.
The old Poet smiled. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Then get going,” Cord said to Peary. “Get on out of here, you two. I don’t want any bombs going off on accident.”
“Not yet,” the Poet said. “I’m not letting them leave until everyone is here. Every single one of your people, Cord.” He nodded at the pirate and emphasized his point by looking down at his own thumb on the button.
“Everyone is here, old man.”
“Not everyone,” the Poet said. “I’ve counted, and all of your subordinates are here. But there’s one more. Another fellow who doesn’t work for you. I saw him in the distance when you first arrived. He’s stayed in his tent, too cowardly and ashamed to make himself known.”
Cord looked around and then sighed. A smug smirk tightened his lips.
“In fact,” the Poet said, “I think that man is the real boss of this outfit, not you. Why, now that I think of it, you’re just a hireling too, just like all of these other folk.”
Cord looked up and stared at the Poet for a moment, rage now blazing in his eyes. It was obvious to everyone in the tent that he wanted to lash out, to smack down this old man who sneered at him and laughed with his eyes. But he didn’t lash out. He was too afraid of dying. It’s an age-old affliction in cowards. So instead, he turned to one of the brigands and nodded his head, and the man pushed his way out of the tent.
“Good,” the Poet said, “now we’re getting somewhere.” He turned to Peary. “Young man, will you do me the service of scouring the rest of the camp. It won’t take long. Just make sure every breathing soul is in this tent. I don’t want anyone following you and Marisa when you leave.”
Peary didn’t move. He looked deeply into the old man’s eyes; what he saw there steadied him. The old man had changed. Something was in those eyes now that hadn’t been there when Peary had first met him. Purpose? Happiness?
Peace. Maybe that was it.
***
The brigand returned to the tent a few minutes later with another man following behind. When the pirate had cleared out of the way and returned to his spot along the tent wall, Marisa could at last see the face of the new visitor: her uncle Joel. Joel, the real leader of this band of pirates. She glared at him and didn’t look away. She didn’t speak because she didn’t have to, and she noticed that her uncle could not meet her stare.
“I take it that you’ve been briefed on the agreement, Uncle?” the Poet said.
Joel took his time looking up, still studiously avoiding Marisa’s glare. He looked over at the Poet and nodded. “Yes.”
“Anything you want to say to your blood kin?”
Joel shook his head. “No.”
Peary returned at that moment and made his way back into the center of the circle. “That’s it,” he said. “There’s no one else out there.”
The Poet smiled. “Are you sure? No one wandered out for a pee or blacked out from too much beer on the back side of a dune?”
“I searched. There was no one else.”
“All right,” the Poet said, nodding. “You two get going. I’ll take these men to Danvar.”
“Are you sure?” Peary asked.
“Yeah,” the Poet said. “I’ve even made up a poem to teach them along the way. It’s about how Danvar is a place far below the sand, in the depths of the earth, where men go to atone for their sins.”
“That’s nonsense,” Peary said.
“Yeah, it probably is. Now get on with you both. Get out.”
“But—”
The Poet sighed deeply. “No words.”
Marisa stepped toward him, as if to hug the old man, but he stepped backward and held up the bomb.
“No words, young lady. Just go.”
Peary’s eyes met the Poet’s again for a brief moment, but this time the old man looked down, and the young diver could see a tear going down a weatherworn cheek. He reached down and took Marisa’s hand, and led her out of the tent.
Peary and Marisa were too far gone to hear him, but the old Poet spoke as the tent flap swung shut behind them. He spoke to them both, but his words disappeared unheard into the night.
“Don’t die in the sand, friends. Just don’t die in the sand.”
***
The moon was full, and high enough now that Peary could pilot the sarfer through the dunes without much trouble. The valley headed straight west, and just as the fires of the pirate camp disappeared behind him and Marisa, a wonderful breeze filled their sail and pushed them even faster.
“How far will we go tonight?” Marisa shouted over the sound of the speeding sarfer.
“We’re going to need to stop in a few minutes and tie down those provisions I grabbed from the other sarfer,” Peary said. “I didn’t want to take the time to stow them properly while those men were watching us.”
“Will he really take them to Danvar?”
Peary shook his head. “I don’t know if he can. I don’t even know if he knows where Danvar is.”
Silence again, and the two lovers could hear the sound of the sand passing underneath. The moon cast a blue hue on the sarfer and the sand.
“Why did he do this?” Marisa asked when the silence became deafening.
Peary looked over at her as his gloved hands deftly controlled the lines. “I can’t say for positive, but I saw something in his eyes. Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t say for sure, but I think I saw the reason.”
“What did you see, Peary? What was the reason?”
“Restitution,” Peary said. “It was as if he was telling me he’d finally become a man, after all these years.”
“That’s what you saw?”
“Yeah.”
“Men are strange.”
***
Ten minutes later, Peary brought the sarfer to a halt near a strange outcropping of stone that jutted up from the sand.
“This is int
eresting,” Peary said. “The sand must not be very deep here. I don’t know when’s the last time I saw something like this. Maybe when I was a boy. Or maybe only in a diver dream.”
Peary staked down the sarfer while Marisa rearranged the provisions and water skins so they could be tied down properly. Keeping the supplies from shifting around becomes a difficult proposition when a sarfer bounces and jumps over the low dunes.
They were just finishing their tasks when the sound of a distant explosion rolled through the blue-black night and caused them to turn back to the east, the direction from which they’d come. The sound had been slow in traveling, and when they turned, the towering fireball in the far distance had already reached an immense height against the black sky. Dark smoke blotted out the stars, giving the fireball a surreal cast.
Marisa gasped and her hand came up to her mouth.
“I’ll be…” Peary sputtered.
“He…” Marisa said.
“I should have known,” Peary replied. “I should have known.”
“He waited until we were far enough away,” she said.
“He took ’em to Danvar,” Peary said.
***
The next morning, Peary and Marisa set off to the west again, but managed only a couple of hours before they found themselves unable to proceed any further with the sarfer. Unthinkably, the sarfer had run aground on a sloping, unending patch of solid rock and soil, and here and there boulders as big as a tent jutted up around them. It seemed that the sand—that immutable, ubiquitous truth that had ruled their whole lives—was now behind them.
The sun was barely beginning to show itself, just a glint of pink to the east, and the air was heavy, like a wet blanket or a towel soaked in warm water. As Peary gazed back the way they came, the pink glow began to disappear, and a roiling, black-blue sky occluded most of the light of dawn.
“Something’s happening,” Marisa said. “What is it?”
“Something… I don’t know.” He sniffed the air, unable to identify the damp humidity saturating it. “Something new.”
He darted over to the sarfer and began jamming provisions into backpacks for them to carry.
“We’ll have to each haul a water skin,” Peary told her as he tossed her one of the packs. She caught it smoothly and swung it onto her back.
“Whatever it is, it’s coming closer,” Marisa said, looking back toward the east. The air was becoming even heavier on their skin.
An updraft of cool, wet air, cooler than most mornings, pushed over them then, and the wind stirred up dust, and other biological material that Peary and Marisa knew nothing of, into the air.
“I’m scared,” Marisa said.
“Don’t be,” Peary said. “We’ve made it this far.”
“I know.”
“We’ve cleared the sand.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t be afraid.”
“How do I do that?” she asked.
“The Poet said that the worst thing in the world would be to die in the sand.”
He had to raise his voice for that last statement, because the thundering wind and approaching strangeness pushed over them like a primitive force, driving them to look for shelter.
Securing their packs in place, Marisa and Peary quickly left the sarfer behind and continued west on foot. The firm, unyielding soil felt foreign to their sand-accustomed legs. They moved at a hurried pace, although it was clear that they couldn’t outrun whatever phenomenon was headed their way.
Marisa felt it first, and when she did she stopped—she had to look down at the bare skin of her arms.
Peary felt it then, too. Water, in tiny droplets, whipped by the wind.
“There must be ground water near here,” Peary shouted as he reached back to take Marisa’s hand. He pulled her forward, and the wind and moisture doubled with each step.
“No,” Marisa shouted back. “It’s coming…”
“What?” Peary shouted, looking back at her.
“It’s coming from the sky!”
At that moment, the sky above them opened up, and water fell like peace and grace and mercy altogether, falling from on high, drenching them entire like a poem. A sand hawk screeched, and they could hear it above the wind, but they could not see where he came from or whither he went.
The two dropped to their knees as one, clasping hands, looking at one another, tears forming in their eyes. And the water from heaven joined with their tears, and soaked deeply into the hungry earth.
The End
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Other Books by Michael Bunker
Novels
The Pennsylvania Omnibus
The WICK Omnibus (w/ Chris Awalt)
Osage Two Diamonds
The Last Pilgrims
Legendarium (w/ Kevin G. Summers) (A Bombo Dawson Adventure)
Shorter Fiction and Collections
Three By Bunker (3 works of Short Fiction)
Hugh Howey Must Die! (A Bombo Dawson Adventure)
Futurity (Novella)
Anthologies
From the Indie Side
Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel
* * *
[i] A small fire built into the sand by the use of a deep metal ring, usually carried in the packs of dune travelers. It is arranged so that the smoke is diffused and the fire doesn’t draw attention by creating excessive light or smoke.
[ii] A handmade stringed instrument, usually made from hardened wood or stiffened skins and strung with woven human hair or catgut.
[iii] Sand stays. Used to tie down sarfers while in the dunes.
Dunes Over Danvar Omnibus Page 10