The Dove Page 16

  “How do I feel? Thankful you are alive and grateful for the hot bread and Johnston Nantay’s jerky,” she said.

  He nodded. Tonight was a night for being grateful for many things, not the least of which was that Tyhen’s head was still on her shoulders.

  He finished his food and began banking the fire as Tyhen packed up what was left and crawled into the little tent.

  Inside, it was barely big enough for two adults to sleep in, but it was animal hide and waterproof, and there was a large sleeping mat that fit perfectly inside the structure so that they would not be lying on the ground.

  He crawled in behind her, using the glow from the embers of their fire to see his way. She was already curled up on her side, watching him.

  “Lay down so that your wound is away from my body,” she said softly. “I will lay behind you.”

  He didn’t argue. There was no way he’d be able to sleep with any friction against his chest at least for a couple of days.

  He did as she asked, and then sighed with satisfaction as she aligned herself with the curve of his body and slid her arm around his waist. He found her hand and clutched it close against his belly.

  “Sleep well, my love. Tomorrow is a new day,” he said.

  Her fingers curled around his wrist. “Yuma?”

  “What?”

  “I will never put you in danger again.”

  “You can’t make that promise. We don’t know what lies ahead of us. All we can do is the best that we know how and that will be enough.”

  She didn’t answer and he didn’t push for one. Exhausted by the events of the day, they fell asleep, wrapped in each other’s arms.

  ***

  It was the third day since their exit from Naaki Chava and there was a distinct attitude shift in everyone with regard to acceptance of their lot, even an eagerness to see what lay ahead. They’d been climbing in altitude since early that morning, anxious to get over this latest mountain that stood in their path, and it was the sudden absence of sound that first alerted Yuma something was wrong. He started to mention it to Tyhen, then saw her motionless by a tree just a few feet ahead of him. Her head was cocked slightly to one side, and he could tell she was listening.

  “What’s happening?” he asked.

  Her expression was just short of horror.

  “Earthquake, Yuma. There’s going to be an earthquake. We need to get everyone off this mountain.”

  Before she could sound the alarm, a loud boom rocked the jungle so loud that all the birds took to the air, so many it momentarily blotted out the sun. At the same time, Tyhen felt the first earthly shudder beneath her feet.

  Yuma grabbed her hand as people all around them began scrambling.

  “What do we do?” she cried.

  “We should be out in the open, but that’s not going to happen. Grab a tree and hold on.”

  The roar that followed the boom sounded like an avalanche as the ground began to shake. People were screaming; some were crying, but they’d all had the presence of mind to grab for the trees to stabilize their footing.

  Tyhen had a death grip on a tree and Yuma had his arms around her, but when a large limb broke off above them and came crashing down beside them, she lost her hold and was tossed to the ground. Before she could panic, Yuma yanked her up and pinned her up against the tree.

  “Hold on to me!” he said, yelling to be heard above the noise as he reached around her and grabbed hold of the trunk.

  Heart pounding, she locked her hands around his waist as he dug his fingernails into the bark.

  Unable to hold onto its perch, a monkey dropped from the canopy above, falling to its death only a few feet from where they were. Shocked, she quickly looked away, but when they began dropping with sickening regularity, they became another part of the nightmare.

  It wasn’t until wild animals began racing past them that they realized there was even more at stake. The animals weren’t running downhill to get away or running amok in every direction. They were all running west. That made Yuma nervous. They’d been climbing in elevation for almost half a day, and it suddenly occurred to him that something else besides the ensuing earthquake must be imminent.

  After watching yet another monkey fall to its death at her feet, Tyhen closed her eyes, and the moment she did, there flashed a vision of earth giving way above them. She staggered as she pushed out of Yuma’s grasp and began to shout.

  “There will be a landslide. The mountain is going to give way above us.”

  Before he could speak, Tyhen took a deep breath, and when she spoke, her words were amplified a thousand fold, spilling out into the jungle for everyone to hear.

  “Landslide! Landslide! Run to the West! Follow me! Do it now!”

  Even though the earth still quaked, Tyhen began to run, leading the way through the jungle with Yuma at her side and the New Ones at their heels. There was no trail to follow, no machete to cut the growth and ease the way, just people running blindly, slipping, falling, and getting up again with a heart-pounding leap, pushing past bushes and yanking away vines with no way of knowing what waited on the other side.

  When the shaking finally stopped, they were still running at full speed, and for good reason. There was a new sound now, a rolling groan that came up from the depths of the mountain as the face of the slope above them came apart, shredding earth, rocks, and trees as it went. Torn from ancient roots, the slope came down, gaining momentum every second.

  Tyhen ran with her pack bouncing against her back and her heart in her throat. She wouldn’t look back. Her powers were no match for a landslide, and she didn’t want to witness the inevitable. Some would not survive this.

  Yuma ran with his eye on Tyhen in constant fear they would not get far enough away to keep from being caught in the slide they could not see. All they heard was a heart-stopping roar that pushed them farther, faster.

  As they ran, there were moments when he would lose sight of her, and each time a piece of him died until she popped back into view. He’d heard her say that Windwalkers did not die, but he didn’t see how anyone—even a Windwalker’s daughter—could survive a falling mountain.

  Behind them, the New Ones were in a panic. Older people were lagging behind, and others were getting their packs caught in the undergrowth and losing precious time tearing free.

  Montford Nantay was running right beside Johnston and Shirley, just as they’d run from Firewalker. Either they’d all live together or they’d die together.

  Nona, the young woman Tyhen had found crying in the woods, had a large bloody gash across her nose, but it hadn’t slowed her down. She didn’t want to die.

  Her husband was running a few feet ahead, trying to clear a path through the heavy growth impeding their escape. And despite everyone’s fear, the race for their lives was eerily silent. There was no breath for screaming.

  When the first boulder finally reached the runners, it hit the ground, bounced over one man’s head and landed forty feet away, taking out an entire family. They never saw it coming. One second they were breathing and then they were not. The landslide had arrived, greedily collecting bodies as it went.

  The horror of still being alive when the person running behind you had disappeared in mid-step would not be real to the survivors until the panic was over. After defeating Firewalker, it was a hell of a way to die.

  ***

  Despite their frantic need to keep running, it all ended with an abrupt stop at a river’s edge. Even the riverbed had been cracked by the earthquake, and they watched from the shore at the massive whirlpool forming. The water was still flowing downhill from its source up the mountain, but the huge crack in the riverbed had formed a vortex and was sucking the water back into the earth from whence it came.

  Tyhen turned around and looked up, half-expecting to see the mountain coming down upon them, but to her reli
ef, it was still there. They could hear the rumble of the massive slide, but it was far below them now. When she realized they were actually far enough away to be safe, she threw herself into Yuma’s arms.

  “We did it! We’re still alive!” she cried and kissed him hard and fast.

  Yuma’s heart was hammering to the point he could barely breathe, but like Tyhen, momentary elation took them past the reality of what had happened.

  All those who had escaped were on the ground, too exhausted to move. Tyhen and Yuma began going from one group to another, looking for the wounded, moving them all to one area so they could be treated together while watching for the last of the stragglers as they came out of the jungle. Healers came forward without being asked and began administering medicine to stop the bleeding or helped in setting broken bones.

  Yuma worked right beside Tyhen, unwilling to leave her own her own. The area was too unsettled, and the aftershocks were constant.

  The landslide had literally cut the face from the highest point on the mountain, revealing the iron-rich earth beneath as a red, seeping wound. Many hundreds of years of tree growth, and the thousands of years it had taken to create the mountain had been destroyed in seconds. A river had been rerouted to nowhere, and precious lives had been lost.

  Once the survivors had regrouped, they began trying to figure out how many they’d lost. But they had not started out with a head count or a list of names, and Tyhen quickly realized there was no way to determine the size of the loss. The deaths would go unrecorded save for the friends and family who knew they were gone.

  The Nantay brothers were the closest tie Tyhen had left to her mother, and she had been looking for them for almost an hour when Yuma suddenly grabbed her arm and pointed.

  “There they are!”

  When she saw Shirley and the brothers alive and breathing, she clenched her teeth to keep from bursting into tears.

  Johnston saw her first and stopped what he was doing and headed toward her. Without speaking first, he just picked her up and held her, her feet dangling off the ground. Then he began to praise her.

  “We heard your voice! We heard the warning! You saved us, Tyhen. You saved us all.”

  She shook her head, still choking back tears.

  “Not all of you.”

  “We knew when we left that we would not all make it. Nature is not always kind.”

  Montford and Shirley were right behind him, and they hugged her as well while repeating what Johnston already said. It wasn’t an easy thing to live with, but Tyhen was beginning to accept that there would be things she could not prevent.

  A Windwalker’s daughter was not a god.

  Johnston grasped Yuma’s arm in a gesture of greeting, then pointed to the river.

  “The earthquake did this, I think.”

  Yuma swiped at a streak of blood that kept running down his belly from a deep scratch beneath his chin.

  “I agree, and it’s not safe to cross here,” he said. “Maybe farther downstream where the water is no more, but not here. The force of this whirlpool would pull anyone down into the belly of the earth.”

  “Is it safe to stay here until morning?” Montford asked.

  Tyhen could still feel an occasional shudder from the earth beneath their feet. When she closed her eyes, she saw a broad expanse of land at the foothills of a mountain, and knew that’s where they needed to be.

  “No. We need to get off the mountain, and the fastest way to do that is to walk downhill along this river until we find a safe place to cross.”

  Yuma quickly agreed. “There could be an aftershock that might bring down more of the mountain. As soon as we get the injured ones bandaged, we’ll figure out a way to bring them with us.”

  “We can make a travois, like in the old days,” Montford said. “I will get some men started on them.” He hurried away.

  “What is a travois?” Tyhen asked.

  Johnston began to explain. “Two long poles with a blanket or an animal skin tied between them to form a bed. Our ancestors moved belongings, as well as the sick and injured with them in the old days. The travois was pulled behind a horse, but we do not have horses here, so people will pull them and it will work. Yuma, you and Tyhen get your packs and come back to us. Shirley has medicine for your cuts.”

  “They are nothing,” Yuma said.

  “No, in the jungle they are something,” Tyhen reminded him as she tugged on his hand. “Let’s hurry. I want to get moving as quickly as possible. This place doesn’t feel right. I don’t think it’s over.”

  Yuma nodded and broke into a jog with Tyhen right behind him.

  ***

  Naaki Chava: same day

  One of the vendors in the marketplace was setting out flat cakes baked fresh that morning. The vendor on the opposite side of the street had trays of fruits and vegetables set up for trade. Several women were walking toward the fields with baskets on their heads to gather food ready to harvest.

  Wesley Two Bears was sitting outside, watching the woman next door making new fire to cook a morning meal. He looked down at his hands, joints knotted with arthritis and wrinkled with age. He was tired of this life, but he was still here. His wife was gone and every other member of his family had gone on the long walk with Tyhen.

  He glanced up at the mountain and then stood, stretching his bare legs before grabbing a fishing pole and heading to the river. He was tired of fruit and vegetables. He wanted fresh fish.

  Little Mouse was already anxious about leaving Naaki Chava and all that was familiar. She had gone into the jungle early that morning to gather healing plants and roots to take in her pack and had no other thought in her head but her daily routine.

  Adam and Evan, accompanied by a couple of guards, were coming back from one last trip to the temple to make sure nothing valuable would be left behind. The only things they’d taken were a couple of small statues, and the Conch shell they’d left there the day Tyhen and Yuma left the city. Although the twins were uneasy, it appeared to be business as usual, just on a much smaller scale. Their sleep had been restless the night before with flashes of people running and crying, but that had not seen any volcanic eruption, and nothing else specific enough to pinpoint.

  Still, they were certain enough of impending trouble to mention it to Singing Bird, but she’d only nodded absently and walked away. In her world, everything was wrong, so their warning was no big deal.

  “Do you feel it?” Evan asked as they passed a vendor sleeping in the sun.

  Adam held up his arm. “All the hair is standing up on my arm.”

  They’d taken only a couple more steps before they heard the guards whispering behind them.

  Adam stopped and turned around. “What’s wrong?”

  “Listen,” the guard said.

  The twins listened. “We don’t hear anything,” they said.

  “And that is wrong,” the guard added. “No birds, no monkeys, no sound at all from the jungle.”

  Within seconds all the birds took to the sky. The moment that happened, Adam grabbed Evan’s arm.

  “Earthquake!”

  And to punctuate the prediction, a boom so loud that it popped the twins ears echoed within the city like a cannon shot, followed by tremors so strong it knocked them off their feet.

  Down in the city, people began screaming and crying, throwing up their hands and praying to the gods not to let them die. Some fell to their knees, while others ran back inside their homes only to have the walls collapse. Some houses fell in around the people, while others came apart, falling onto the cooking fires outside.

  Adam and Evan had dropped to their hands and knees, and when the guards got up and started to run for shelter, they stopped them with a shout.

  “Stay outside! It’s safer.”

  The guards stopped and dropped to their knees, but they were not con
vinced it was safe anywhere and knelt clutching their spears and shields as if they would do battle to defeat this madness.

  The twins grabbed each other for support, and the moment they touched, flashed on the day that Firewalker had finally come to Landan Prince’s island. Everything was shaking then, like it was now. The only difference between then and now was Firewalker and the heat. The twins looked toward the mountain, which was an earthly form of Firewalker, and when they did, knew this was their warning. When this earthquake was over, they had to get out of Naaki Chava. There would be another earthquake sometime within the next three days, and they had to be a long way gone when it happened.

  ***

  The palace was in the same sort of chaos. Guards ran into the halls looking to Cayetano for orders. Servants were screaming and praying to their gods to save them.

  Singing Bird was in her quarters when the shaking began. She knew the safest place during an earthquake was to get out of a building, but instead of jumping out her window to safety, she ran out into the hall shouting Cayetano’s name only seconds before things began falling in behind her.

  ***

  Cayetano was in the throne room with the map the New Ones had given him laid out on a table. He had studied them until the drawings were firmly fixed in his mind. He knew the shape of the mountain to watch for, and then to follow the coast until they came to a large, sheltered bay. That was where ships would come in, they said. That was where they needed to build a new city, they said, a place to show their unity as a people with power to stand firm against the strangers’ promises and demands, they said.

  As chief, it was hard for him to follow other people’s directions, but this was an event out of his experience, and he couldn’t make a mistake about relocating an entire city of people.

  He was rolling up the map when he heard a noise so loud it made the walls shake, and when the floor beneath him began to move, he looked down in horror. What was this magic that made rocks dance beneath his feet?

  And while he was looking down, a chunk of the ceiling came loose a short distance from where he was standing, splintering the tile floor behind him into pieces.