Smoke Screen

by Emilie Richards

  She did need him. Together they were more than a whole. The truth was so simple, but the truth had come too late.

  More tears cleansed the paths of the first. She had never known love before, not love like she felt for Adam. Their love hadn't been to please anyone, nor to bandage a broken heart. Her love for Adam just was. A love out of time and place. A love that could only come once.

  And when it had come, she had questioned it.

  She had to find him.

  The moon was three-quarters full. It hung in the sky above her, a shrouded beacon that barely took the edge off the darkness. What stars there were, were muted by the landscape's gray haze of smoke and mist. Paige stood anyway and took a step forward. The path was just visible, and she remembered enough of the terrain to know that it continued for about two hundred yards before it climbed the small ridge. She took another step, then another. Her progress was slow, but steady. She was sure that, for a little while anyway, she was safe.

  Adam was alive. Mihi had told her so, and now Paige concentrated on that assurance. Adam was alive. She believed it was true, because if he wasn't, somehow she would know. As children they had been united. Despite everything that had separated them, the bond was still there, tempered steel and purest spirit.

  Adam was alive, but he was in gravest danger. Paige walked until she reached the ridge. Beyond it lay uncertainty. With the flashlight she could have chosen the next part of her route; now, once she had scrambled up and over the ridge, she would have to guess where to go, feeling her way. Adam could be anywhere, and she was reduced to deadly guessing games.

  She climbed the ridge anyway, shouting his name when she reached the top. She tripped on the way down, sliding the rest of the distance on her knees. At the bottom she rested, shaken and bruised but not seriously injured. She listened and heard the sound of running water. There had been a stream beside the path that led to the geyser. She remembered it because Jeremy had splashed pebbles into it as they had walked. Then they had reached the geyser, and Adam had put his ear to the ground.

  Standing, she brushed off her pants, wincing as she did. Using her ears more than her eyes, she found the stream and walked carefully beside it. Clouds drifted across the moon, dappling the ground so that sometimes she could see clearly, and sometimes she couldn't see at all. When the darkness closed in around her, she waited impatiently for the moment when she would have enough light to continue.

  It was one of the rare moments when the moon shone brightly that she saw the glint of silver on the path in front of her. Taking advantage of the light, she walked quickly toward the object, reaching down to pick it up just as another cloud obscured the moon once again.

  The object was slender and coldly damp to the touch. She held it up to her face and confirmed what she suspected. It was Adam's pocketknife.

  Her finger had throbbed as he pricked it with the knife. "If you had any Maori blood, you don't now," he had told her as her blood dripped slowly to the floor. "You are your father's child. And you are nothing to me."

  She dropped the knife to the ground and hid her face in her hands. "Adam," she whispered, caught between the pain of past and present. "I love you. I was afraid for you. I'm afraid now."

  The wind began to pick up, and smoke drifted toward her from a nearby fumarole. Resolutely she pushed on, stumbling in her haste to find him. Light drifted back and forth over the path, but the sound of the stream guided her footsteps.

  She rounded a bend and the stream disappeared. She felt vibrations at her feet and knew what she had found.

  Kaka geyser.

  The kaka, green and brown parrot of the New Zealand forest. Adam had told her that when it played in the sunshine, Kaka geyser was like the iridescent plumage of thousands of parrots. And, like the kaka, the geyser was elusive, appearing when it was least expected.

  She walked farther, to the place where Adam had placed his ear to the ground. He had told her that he was listening to Papa's laments. Papa, the earth mother who cried for her husband Rangi, the sky father.

  Paige knelt and laid her cheek against the earth. "Papa," she murmured, "I, too, mourn for my lover. Help me find him."

  The earth was silent, its faint rumbles felt but not heard. Surely if the geyser were going to play, the pressure would be building so that it was audible. Paige stood and looked across the steaming rocks that led to the cliff where Pat had been found. Adam hadn't told her his destination, but she knew him, and she knew he would have investigated the site of Pat's accident.

  She had found his knife.

  The moon escaped its cloud cover, and Paige stepped onto the rocks. She knew she was assured only seconds of light. And if Kaka blew...

  Paige picked her way across carefully, but quickly. Her ankles were seared once by a spurt of steam, and once she faltered, almost losing her balance as she teetered at the edge of the steaming crater that was Kaka's home.

  In less than a minute, however, she was on the other side.

  "Adam!" she shouted. The rising wind took her voice, and she tried once more. "Adam!"

  If there was an answer, it was lost to her. She turned to the cliffs, skirting their edge. She was grateful for their guidance. As long as she followed them, she couldn't be lost. She would find the spot where Pat had been injured, and if she was lucky she would find Adam. Alive.

  Twenty minutes later she reached the rockslide. She began to shout Adam's name as she searched the rubble. There was no sign that anyone had been there, no sign of anything except one of Papa's mistakes. Only this mistake had been caused by Hamish Armstrong, not a mythical earth mother. Paige felt the malevolence of his presence as surely as if he were still there setting his deadly trap.

  The trap had caught Pat. Had another like it caught Adam?

  She searched more carefully, looking for a clue that Adam had been here. There was no sign, however, only the feeling, the smell, the taste, of evil. She shut her eyes and swayed, overcome by fear, fear she trusted as surely as she trusted her love for Adam. Something was terribly wrong. Adam had been here, and Hamish had been here, too. She could see no signs of fighting, but she felt their confrontation in her very bones.

  Hours had passed since Adam had left his house. If he had come here, first, confronted Hamish. . . Paige opened her eyes and tried to piece together the scene that had occurred. Adam had come looking for clues to Pat's accident. Hamish had appeared. The two men had clashed.

  In any fight with Hamish, Adam would have won easily. He had the superior strength of a man who worked outdoors and the coordination and reflexes of a warrior. But there were no signs of a fight, and that could only mean one thing. Hamish had been armed.

  Paige shuddered. She wanted to believe she was imagining everything. Perhaps even now Adam was back at Four Hill Farm, his search for the mauri successful. Perhaps even now he was cursing her foolishness and wondering if she was all right.

  Perhaps even now he was lying dead in some smoking ravine, one perfectly aimed bullet lodged in the center of his heart.

  "Adam!"

  The wind was rising. The sky darkened, and for the first time she feared a storm. She had come this far against great odds, but this had been her final destination. Now she didn't know where to go. She had guessed that Adam would come here, but she had no guesses as to where he had gone—or been taken—after he had left this place. The thermals stretched out before her, a fathomless netherworld. She had no clues to this deadly maze, no knowledge of its dangers or surprises. The day they had passed this way, they had followed the cliff beyond this point, twisting and turning around craters and spouting springs and boiling hot pools to a narrow ravine that had led to Paradise.

  "Because now I'm going to look in the one place I never bothered with before."

  Adam's words of this morning leapt out of her memory. She had questioned him about his search for the mauri, and that had been his answer.

  On the day when they had rested in the small valley guarded by the kai-tiaki, the s
tone man, she had asked Adam if he had ever looked for the mauri there. And he had told her that he had never bothered because once the valley had been a gathering place. Never a shrine.

  He had never bothered.

  Is that where he had gone? Was she imagining that Hamish had been here? That he and Adam had fought?

  She could find her way back to the farm. She could search indiscriminately, risking her life as she did. Or she could push on to the valley she had named Paradise.

  The wind swept across the cliff, keening mournfully. She shouted Adam's name, although she expected no answer. It was a talisman against fear.

  The wind moaned again, the sound so human that for a moment it fooled her. She strained her ears, listening for something, anything, to help her make her decision. The wind moaned; the wind cried.

  We cry for our dead. The young woman at the hui had told Paige the meaning of the mournful lament during their greeting. Now Paige heard the young woman's voice again. Explaining the wind.

  Paige put her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. She was overcome with terror. Her imagination was out of control. She was trapped in Hell, her mind her only weapon against the elements surrounding her, and, slowly, she was losing it.

  We cry for our dead. Paradise. Papa, the earth mother cries for Rangi, the sky father. The legend says that Horo-i-rangi resides in the place where night and day meet. It is a place of opposites, earth and sky, fire and water, tapu and noa.

  She sobbed out loud. She couldn't block the voices, nor could she block the keening of the wind. She opened her eyes and saw one thin moonbeam on the path at her feet. Overhead the moon was covered by clouds. Yet one thin moonbeam was lighting her way.

  The wind began to sing. The words were liquid and incomprehensible. She took a tentative step toward the light and it moved ahead of her. Pressing her fingers to her temples, she sobbed convulsively as she stepped toward it once more.

  You have powers you've always denied. Powers even Adam won't always understand.

  Guided. Guided.

  Paige sobbed again and took another step. "Adam."

  The wind was a lullaby, its breath caressing her as she moved along the edge of the rockslide, avoiding the angry gurgles of a hot spring. She calmed, swallowing her sobs. Moving with the light, she let the wind soothe her fears. Its liquid song asked her to move to its rhythms, and slowly she began to sway, to move through the deadly maze as if she were performing a graceful Maori poi dance.

  Guided. Guided.

  Finally she let the dance take her, all fears forgotten.

  * * *

  Adam drifted in and out of consciousness. All day he had struggled to stay awake. Asleep, his head dropped to the ground, closer to the source of the sulphide gas that was slowly poisoning him. Awake, he could lift it enough to find the oxygen to survive. But the effort was impossible to sustain for more than a few minutes at a time. The muscles in his neck were on fire. Soon they wouldn't respond at all.

  Then he would die.

  He had fought death all day. He still fought it, but he was making his peace with its possibility. His spirit would take the mythical journey of all the Maori departed. He would climb down the roots of the ancient pohutukawa tree where the northernmost tip of Aotearoa met the Pacific, and he would disappear into the sea-swirled kelp to find his way to his ancestral home of Hawaiki.

  And there he would wait for his beloved.

  Paige.

  His regrets were legion. He would not see his son grow up, wouldn't see the first time Jeremy rode a bicycle, the first time his dark eyes danced at the sight of a pretty girl. He would never hold his grandchildren, never know the legacy he had left.

  And he would never be able to tell Paige how much he loved her. He would never be able to plead for forgiveness, never erase the astonishment and hurt from her eyes. Never tell her that she was his heart, his soul, the breath in his body.

  His eyes were wet, either from the fetid sulphide fumes or the emotions tearing at him. It didn't matter which. One was killing him; one was keeping him alive. And he was pulled between them.

  Even if he died, he had one satisfaction. His enemy had died, too. Armstrong had left him to rot in this hellhole, but, judging from the screams Adam had heard, Armstrong had met his own death. A death he had deserved.

  At the top of the cliff overlooking the stream lake where Maori women had once cooked and gossiped, Armstrong had cocked his revolver, waving it in the air in a parody of a priest's blessing. "Say your prayers," he had murmured as he pulled the trigger.

  But he hadn't counted on the swiftness of Adam's movements, nor his finely honed reflexes. Adam had hit the ground and rolled in the split second before the gun had gone off. The shot had missed its target, tearing the flesh of his arm instead, and before Hamish could recover, Adam had rolled over the side of the cliff.

  He had expected a clean fall, hoping to land on the narrow strip of ground where bushes grew between the cliff and the lake. He had hoped he would be lucky enough to remain conscious and somehow gather the strength to find a hiding place before Armstrong made his way around the cliff's edge and down the valley below. And if he couldn't have that, he had hoped for a quick death in the lake waters, a death of his own choosing, not his enemy's.

  He had gotten neither. Instead he had bounced against the cliffside and landed on a projection of rock that held a deep smoking crater. He hadn't been able to extract himself before he was once more the target of Armstrong's gun.

  Except that obviously Armstrong had thought of a better idea by then. If Adam were found beside the crater with a bullet in his heart, his death would be investigated. If Adam were found beside the crater, covered with rock, as if he had been the victim of his own actions...

  Adam had blacked out after the first rocks began to fall, and he had regained consciousness to the sounds of Hamish's screams and a burning in his own lungs. He was pinned under rock, his legs free, but his arms and back sandwiched between the side of the cliff, where he had tried to protect himself, and a huge boulder. He had been spared being crushed. Now he would die slowly from the sulphide fumes and exposure.

  He knew it was only a matter of seconds before he lost consciousness again. Moments of lucidity were shorter now. He longed to let his head fall back to ease the excruciating pain in his neck. He longed to forget what he had to live for and make his peace with God. And he would have, except that every time his head dropped, every time his eyes closed, he saw Paige's face and the pain he had caused her.

  He couldn't die without telling her that he was sorry. He couldn't die without telling her that he loved her.

  "Adam!"

  He heard Paige calling him and knew it was only in his imagination. "I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice nothing more than a rasp. "I love you."

  He was drifting in a void somewhere between time and space. He was comfortable, more comfortable than he had been for hours. He wanted to give in to the comfort, but Paige's voice bedeviled him into opening his eyes again. With an action born of reflex, he lifted his head, crying out against the pain as he did. His brain cleared with the infusion of oxygen, but the pain was so intense he could hardly bear it.

  "Adam!"

  The voice sounded closer now, coming from the direction of the stone guardian. It was a dream, had to be a dream, yet he seemed to be awake. Had he passed the point of knowing the difference? If so, why hadn't the pain ended, too?

  "Adam!"

  He groaned, wondering what new torment he was being asked to face. He tried to call out, to silence the voice, but the only sound that came from his throat was a dry rasp. He swallowed, then forced himself to swallow again. "Go away," he croaked. He was talking to a dream, talking in a dream. He tried again, louder. "Go away."

  The voice, Paige's voice, was closer. "Adam? Adam!"

  His head fell back, no longer held by the neck that had gone into a terrible spasm. "Paige!" He was awake, and the voice was real.

  "Where are yo
u?"

  Adam moistened his lips. "Ledge under the cliff." His voice broke on the last word, and his head began to swim. Sulphide fumes burned his eyes, and his stomach began to roll.

  "I've got a rope. I'm tying it to the tree. If I send it down, can you get yourself up?"

  He tried to lift his head, to suck in fresh air, but his neck wouldn't respond. He tried to speak, but the only word he could manage was "sorry."

  On the cliff above, Paige was frantically tying a knot in the rope. When it was secure, she grasped it, moving carefully to the cliff's edge. Once there, she lay down and inched out until she could see below. At first she registered nothing except space and smoke. Then she saw a narrow, rock-strewn overhang. It took her seconds longer to identify legs and a body wedged by rocks between a smoking crater and the side of the cliff.

  "Adam!"

  He moaned in answer.

  She knew what she had to do. With trembling fingers she tied the end of the rope around her waist, looping it around her belt several times to secure it. She peered over the side as she did, gauging the sturdiness of the ledge and the possibility that her weight would cause a disaster. The ledge seemed solid, sturdy enough to hold the whole population of Waimauri, but if the last days had taught her anything, it was that looks could be deceiving.

  "Adam, I'm sending up flares," she told him, wondering if he could hear her. "We'll be found soon. Just hang on. I'm coming down to help you."

  He moaned, as if he were trying to stop her, but she ignored him. The flares went easily; it was a relief to have the old Navy-issue flare gun out of her pack. She settled the pack on her back again; then, giving a final jerk on the rope to be sure it was secure, she turned and, holding tightly to the length of rope above her, began to ease herself down.

  The rope burned her hands as it slid through them, and she stifled a cry, using every bit of her energy to hang on tightly. She dangled in the air, bouncing against the cliff until she wondered if she would find the ledge before her hands slipped. Finally her toes touched solid rock, and in a moment she was swinging forward to fully rest her feet.