by Sacchi Green
Keeping it hovering there required more effort than lifting the great weight, but she managed. Setting it down on top of the other one required even more focus, and the boulder, not quite balanced, hit, bounced, and toppled down the cliff. Large chunks of the remaining stone went with it. Handling such large things was very different from making a cup of coffee float across a room, so maybe size and weight did matter after all. Well, at least she had managed the distance part. Good enough.
She swung the field glasses back and saw Cleo turn toward the falls, standing straight, head up. A movement on the high ledge caught the corner of Ash’s eye. There was something there, hidden behind the pine saplings.
“DROP! GUN!” Cleo’s warning blasted into her mind.
Ash didn’t drop. She focused, and tore loose the ledge—stone, soil, saplings, and all. A shot rang out and a rifle fell from the heights to the river below. There came a cry, and a desperate scrabbling. Ash sailed the slab of rock away so as not to block the falls, landed it, then returned her attention to the clinging figure, intending to dash it to the ground.
“NO!” Cleo’s command echoed in her head. “It’s Ariya! Just a blank!” Cleo was tearing through thorny shrubs and weeds toward Ariya.
Ariya? Treachery! Ash focused again, about to raise Ariya and smash her into the earth, but Mac gripped her from behind, pinning her arms to her side. “Wait! Let Cleo handle this. Those blasted idiots. There was no need!”
Ash tuned Mac out, seeing only Cleo reaching the girl, turning to stand in front of her, arms spread. Shielding her.
“MOVE!” Ash shouted with both mind and voice. She turned her power on Cleo and tried to lift her, to set her out of the way. But Cleo didn’t rise, didn’t move, resisting Ash’s power and glaring her defiance.
How could she dare! Ash strained to move her—or, no, she was straining to make herself force Cleo. Not knowing for sure whether she could, or what that would mean between them. Just knowing she couldn’t ever hurt Cleo. Or lose her.
“It’s a freakin’ test, Ash. A blank cartridge.” Cleo turned her head to listen to Ariya, then turned back. “She says she didn’t fire. You jolted her and it went off.”
Ash turned to face Mac. “A test? A freakin’ test?”
Mac’s outburst was as fierce as Ash’s. “Damnit, why couldn’t they just trust me! I guaranteed Razhan that Cleo could sense when a gun was about to fire. But no, she couldn’t leave it at that. I didn’t know what she was planning.” Mac stopped for breath. “I guess we’re lucky she couldn’t get hold of a landmine to test that skill, too.”
An incongruous urge to laugh struck Ash. She felt dizzy at the sudden shift of mood, and Mac looked like she felt the same. “How fast can we get down from here?”
Mac tried a downward step, and Ash held her from sliding without being too obvious about it. Mac took another step. “A lot faster than we came up.”
Halfway down, they paused. Ash stared out over the peaceful valley, drinking from the canteen and then offering it to Mac without facing her. “I came too close to blowing everything apart back there. And it’s just going to get worse in the desert. You know that.”
“Yes.” Mac took several gulps of water. “You’ll need every bit of strength. Your own plus whatever edge your savage goddess gives you. Control is going to be a bitch.” She handed the canteen back. “You can do it. I got you into this because I need your help, and you agreed even though it’s my problem, not yours. Maybe I should apologize. But I know that you can do it.”
“Well, let’s get on with it.” Ash took a few steps down the trail, then said over her shoulder, “It’s my problem now, too, with Cleo on the prison team.” She looked back. Mac’s face was so drawn that Ash regretted her brusqueness. “No need to apologize. We knew pretty much what we were getting into, and we jumped at the chance to do something worthwhile.”
By the time they reached the valley floor, Cleo and Ariya were already waiting at the cave with Razhan, who looked both apprehensive and obstinate.
“So.” Mac’s voice was icy. “What did we find out that we didn’t know already?”
Razhan hesitated. Ariya, still shaken, burst out, “Cleo knew I was there! Even before I raised the gun, she knew. I was quiet, and the waterfall makes much noise, but as I climbed through the trees up to the ledge she raised her head like she was listening. And when I aimed the gun, she stiffened, though she couldn’t have seen it. Then all was…was rock cracking, and falling, and fear…” She stopped for breath, gulped, and gazed at Cleo with as much awe as she’d ever shown for Ash. “Cleo saved me! She stood strong and would not let Ash move her from in front of me, would not let her kill me.” When she looked at Ash it was with dread.
“Fair enough.” Mac nodded. “One new thing discovered. Now we know that Ash can’t move Cleo against her will.”
To Ash, still shaken at how close she’d come to murder, it was also a revelation. Cleo had saved her as well as Ariya. She wondered whether she could have tried harder to move Cleo, whether it was as much a matter of “won’t” as “can’t,” and hoped she’d never be forced to find out.
“We already knew,” Mac went on, “because I knew, that Cleo can detect firearms before they fire. And that she can communicate that knowledge to Ash. I saw it in Ash’s face. Knowing almost immediately that the shot was a blank cartridge is a plus. I know from many eyewitness sources that she can also detect landmines in ways that seem impossible.”
“Oh, there are dogs that can do it almost as well,” Cleo said with fake modesty.
Trying to lighten things up, Ash thought. That’s Cleo for you. Thank God…or goddess…Cleo’s for me.
Mac smiled slightly, but her tone was still hard. “We also knew already that Ash can move almost anything she chooses at great distances. I witnessed her reach the far end of this valley today, which happened just before your test,” she spit out the word, “interrupted us.”
Razhan’s jaw was set, but she managed an even tone. “Mac, of course I believe you, but with so many other lives at stake…not just the prisoners, but those who will become prisoners to get inside the city, and the hundreds of others who bring their cars and trucks as transport—family members, volunteers, troops—I must be sure.”
“Well, you’d better be sure now, after what Ariya’s been through.” Mac gave a deep sigh. “How fast can we get out of here? I have plans to work out, too, and with no cell service I feel bound hand and foot.” She looked severely at Cleo. “Don’t think I can’t tell what’s on your mind. Get it out of the gutter.”
“Can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking,” Cleo quipped, and the tense atmosphere was pretty much defused.
“We’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning,” Razhan said.
Chapter 17
They broke camp at the first pale light of dawn, well before sunrise. Heading out provided a sense of urgency that brought them to the crest of the ridge faster than they’d gone down that same slope, and the glory of full sunrise hadn’t entirely faded away. Cleo lingered to shoot pictures of the glowing colors reflected on distant snowy peaks, then raced downhill to meet the others at the truck, not quite as surefooted as a mountain goat but without any serious slipups.
Once the beauty of the sunrise receded in her mind, she found herself tensing at each jarring bump on the dirt track, which meant tensing most of the time.
When they stopped to move rocks that had slid across the track in the few days since they’d passed, she claimed her turn to drive, and Ariya conceded the driver’s seat with such deference that Cleo was embarrassed. Ariya crushing on Ash had been amusing, but Cleo wasn’t comfortable being on the receiving end of that kind of thing. Saving young girls turned out to have its perils.
In control behind the wheel, each message of engine, suspension, and gears vibrating through her hands and into her ears, she began to feel better, organizing her tho
ughts and emotions.
Sure, the chances of failure were high, and failure could well be catastrophic, but all you could do was go at it with everything you had. She’d been in tight places before, and knew how much she had to give. Instincts, experience. Mac hadn’t totally convinced her that she had superpowers, but so what? Mac might be wrong, deluding herself out of a desperate desire to rescue her lover. It didn’t matter. Cleo trusted Ash and her powers absolutely, and would back Ash with all her skill, strength, and, well, level-headedness. Even to the point of challenging her. It did Ash good to be challenged.
They stopped to grab a bite of lunch and pour in the gas from the reclaimed can at the herdsman’s hut. Then they pushed on, Ariya back at the wheel. It was late afternoon when they halted briefly at the rocky falls where they’d stopped before. Mac and Razhan checked their cell phones, as they’d been doing compulsively all during the trip, but still with no luck.
Cleo refilled the tank from the last can and checked the headlights. Not the brightest, but they’d have to do. “It’s pretty much downhill from here. We can make it back to town by midnight if we hustle. Let’s go.”
Well before midnight, Ash and Mac and Ariya were asleep in the back seat, jumbled together in various positions that fit like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Cleo enjoyed night driving. The truck was its own dimly lit world, moving through a universe invisible past the beams of the headlights.
She liked to be alone with her thoughts, but Razhan was awake beside her, and after a while she felt that a little conversation was in order. “Say, Razhan, I guess I’ll need to dye my hair for this mission. Any ideas on how to do it?”
Razhan’s face was just perceptible in the faint glow from the dashboard. “We’ll darken it a bit with nut juice, to keep you from attracting too much attention, but red hair is not unknown here. Those Roman and Greek and even Nordic travelers who took so much from these mountains left traces behind them as well. A girl in town has red tints to her hair, as have her mother and grandmothers through many generations. We also have fair-haired people. Prick a Kurd and you see the blood of the world.”
They talked for some time in muted voices about the mission, how Cleo would fit into it. “The team that you will be with plans even now where and when they will allow themselves to be captured. Ariya will be among them, and several others who were imprisoned previously and escaped before the minefields were quite so dangerous.” Razhan paused to check her cell phone and shook her head.
They arrived as predicted, around midnight. Razhan knocked on their safe house door and they were welcomed by their drowsy host. Hot, sweet tea was prepared, and they rested in a semi stupor. Cleo and Ash sprawled shoulder to shoulder on the floor. Mac was propped in the corner, her cup at a perilous angle.
Cleo must have drifted off, for she was dreaming of motorcycles when Ariya gently squeezed her shoulder. She startled awake to find Mac and Ash already up and heading through the door to the kitchen.
“Razhan has news and asks you to come quickly,” Ariya said in hushed tones.
The news had arrived in person rather than by phone. A woman looking as though she’d been on the road all night—Cleo could sympathize with that—sat by the kitchen stove drinking coffee and eating toasted pita with cheese. Razhan was barking out questions in Kurdish with occasional pauses for the messenger’s responses.
Mac translated quietly. “We’ve had word that there will be a raid in two days on a village farther into the hills than usual. Not for military purposes but solely to capture women as slaves.” At Ash’s questioning look she added, “We have sources, in this case a young man converted by the enemy and serving with them, but still with family ties to that village.”
The newcomer swiveled to look them over, first Cleo, then Ash, and back to Cleo. Her leather jacket, weathered face and windblown tangle of graying hair reminded Cleo of something… “Hey, did I really hear a Triumph Thunderbird out there, or was it a dream?”
The woman’s face remained as impassive as a face could be while chewing on toast, but her eyes flickered. She looked toward Ariya, whose puzzled look switched quickly into translator mode. She addressed the woman in Kurdish, but “Triumph Thunderbird” clearly needed no translation. After a brief exchange, Ariya turned to Cleo. “Ilham asks what you know of motorcycles, and what model do you think you heard.”
This was a familiar game, one Cleo played well. She tilted her head, pulling up the memory of her dream. “Triumph 6T Thunderbird, 1952, Brando’s ‘Blackbird’ in The Wild One. Or maybe,” so as not to sound too cocksure, “a year or two later.”
Ariya began to translate, but the older woman waved her words away and spoke again. Ariya turned back to Cleo. “She wishes to know what experience you have of motorcycles.”
“I learned to repair classic models when I was ten years old, helping in my uncle’s garage. Rode them whenever I could, but never had a chance at a Thunderbird. The one out there sounds a bit overheated, but otherwise in good shape.”
Ilham shrugged when Ariya translated, stood and zipped up her jacket, then held out one hand tilted sharply downward.
Cleo nodded, not needing any translation. “Yeah, sure, it’ll be okay going downhill. Mind if I have a look before you go?”
“Sure thing. Go right ahead.” Ilham grinned at Cleo’s surprise that she spoke English. She gestured expansively and headed for the door. Cleo followed, and so did Ash, with Ariya hurrying after carrying the parkas they’d left in the hall. The morning was cold and cloudy and felt like there’d be snow soon.
The motorcycle was still warm. Cleo stroked the front fender as if it were a horse’s muzzle. “Beautiful. It’s great that you’ve kept her going all this time.” No need to mention that not all the parts were originals, or even from the same model. It was still a Thunderbird.
Ilham grinned, nodded, and then waved a hand toward Ash. “You’re Shadow Hand.” It wasn’t a question. She swung her hand toward Cleo. “You’re Shadow Hand’s right hand.”
“Um, left hand, maybe. Just call me Cleo. But how—”
“YouTube. That stuff real?”
Ariya giggled. No wonder she’d hesitated before beginning to translate. Ilham needed no translator, and Ariya knew it. In fact, Ilham’s accent had a trace of New Jersey about it. Ilham had travelled.
“Yeah, the action is totally real, but made to look its best by our filmmaker.”
Razhan and Mac had come out by then. “How about a demonstration?” Mac looked at Ash and then at Ilham, who nodded, but took half a step forward as the Thunderbird’s front tire lifted from the ground, higher and higher. For a moment the motorcycle looked like a rearing horse, then settled gently back down.
“So,” Ilham said, regaining her composure, “Shadow Hand will tear down the great gate, and you, Cleo, will lead the prisoners across the sea of landmines.”
“That’s the plan.” Mac looked relieved. She also looked like she was suppressing some secret excitement.
Ilham gave a thumbs-up, then patted the bike’s long seat and looked at Cleo. “Going my way?”
“Sure, just let me grab my pack.” Cleo looked to Razhan for approval.
“Good idea,” Razhan agreed hurriedly. “Ilham can take you to the mission camp, and we’ll meet you there after I check in with my transportation fleet commander.”
Mac followed Cleo inside. “Good going. That’s a load off my mind. If Ilham says you’re okay, there’ll be no problem with the others. They’ll follow you when the time comes. Ash and I have other business to attend to, but she doesn’t know that yet.”
“She does now,” Ash said, just coming in to give Cleo a goodbye squeeze. “But Cleo and I will get together again before the major push begins. That’s non-negotiable.”
Ilham was a magnificent driver over the rough territory she clearly knew well. Still, even though Cleo had had only five or six hours of sleep, she
knew Ilham hadn’t had any, riding all night to get to them.
When they made a brief pit stop a few hours later, Cleo didn’t suggest switching drivers. She just looked the bike over admiringly, asking with a glance if it was okay to straddle the saddle. Ilham waved her permission, and then, while Cleo sat there enjoying the feel, climbed on behind. “Wanna see how she handles?”
Half an hour later, Ilham shouted into her ear, “Wake me up in two hours at the big crossroad,” and leaned her head against Cleo’s back. When they stopped at the crossroad, Ilham gave muttered instructions for the rest of the way and went back to sleep, and on arrival at the mission camp late in the day, the faces of the observers wore uniform expressions of shocked amazement.
One came forward, a pretty girl about Ariya’s age, sure enough of herself to give Cleo a dirty look, but when she reached out to touch the Thunderbird, Ilham growled, “Hands off!” and slapped her fingers away. Mutters interspersed with laughter swept through the gathered troops.
An older, more seasoned soldier asked in English, following Ilham’s example. “Who is this you allow on your precious machine, Ilham? And even to drive?”
Ilham swung herself off the passenger seat. “This is Cleo, who’s gonna lead you through the minefield. She drives because she’s a skilled driver.” She said a few words in Kurdish, grinned, and thumped Cleo on the shoulder. Cleo dismounted to take her place in this staged scene. Whatever her place was. From the looks she got from some of the onlookers, they weren’t at all sure about that, either, but at least they knew now that she had Ilham’s approval and, if it came to that, protection.
There were about two dozen women in makeshift uniforms. Several tents stood at one end of a field, along with a battered metal trailer. The woman standing in its door gave the impression of being in charge without any noticeable difference in uniform. Cleo went right up to the cinder block steps, considered saluting, and settled for standing more or less at attention. “Cleo Brown, ma’am.” She’d learned quite a bit of Arabic during her time in the desert, and knew Kurdish-speakers were likely to know Arabic as well, but it seemed best to stick with English.