by E L Stricker
A jolt of fear shot through his stomach. What if something terrible had happened? There should have been some activity: children laughing, distant arguments, and people coming and going at the gate.
The day was warmer than it had been in a long time, and with the exertion of the hike, he was sweating and stopped to catch his breath. He watched a line of ants crossing the ground, filing into a mounded hole in the earth. The wind picked up, just a bit, cutting through the stillness of the air and chilling his sweat-soaked skin. He shivered.
“I don’t see anyone.” Samuel was standing at the gates. They went to the central fires but found them entirely deserted.
There was a dull banging sound coming from a little way away. They followed it and found Ban Johnstead working behind his hut on the homemade forge he had inherited from his father.
“Ban.”
“Healer,” he said and nodded to Samuel and Illya.
“Where is everyone?”
Ban leaned his hammer against the forge.
“River. They went through everyone’s places this morning and didn’t find anything. Someone thought that if everyone went and dug, they were bound to find some cattails. Something that had been missed,” he said.
“Everyone? You didn’t go?” Illya asked.
Ban shrugged. “No point in it,” he said. “I already been, I know there’s nothing out there.” He was taller and broader than anyone else. If anyone could have ignored Jimmer and the rest of them, it was him.
“But the river…” Illya trailed off. A jumble of thoughts and images suddenly came together in his mind: the shifting bogs of snow and meltwater, the warmest day yet, the red sky, the moon, and something else that had triggered his memory but he hadn’t stopped to think about it.
Ants. Ants in a row. After the part about red skies, there had been a few more “Old Wives’ Tales.”
Insects can predict the weather too! Spiders will leave their webs, and ants will head to ground, often in a straight line, just before it rains.
Every sign was there. Rain was coming and a lot of it. In the spring, storms blew up unexpectedly and could be massive. His heart sped up. The images of ants in a row were swiftly replaced by the memory of Benja going underwater after they had been fishing yesterday and an older memory of his father, yelling as he grabbed Illya by the waist and threw him to higher ground before he was swept away.
The river was already swollen and would have risen even more, fed by the streams of runoff through the day. Rain would mean flooding, maybe coming swifter than anyone could predict.
Except him.
Illya dropped his pack and ran without a word of explanation to Ban and Samuel. Everyone had gone, pushed by the fear of the crowd and not wanting to speak against it. That meant his mother, and Molly and Benja were out there too.
***
“Everyone has to get out of here!” Illya shouted between gasps as he reached the mouth of the river gorge, waving his arms in the air. The people were spread out all along the river, bent to their digging. A few close by looked up and stared at him.
His belly clenched as belatedly he realized just what he was doing.
There was nothing else to do though, he had already hollered it at the top of his lungs, and the threat had not changed just because he was beginning to realize that he hadn’t thought this all the way through.
“Listen! Everyone listen!” he yelled.
More people looked up, and then, like a wave, more and more. They nudged their neighbors and pointed until, as one, everyone was staring at him.
His throat had gone dry, but he saw his mother and Molly a little distance away. His mother had stood up and was coming towards him. He swallowed.
“A storm is coming, going to be a bad one. We can’t be caught out here without warning. You … you know what can happen,” he said.
“A storm? But there are hardly any clouds,” a woman said.
“I know, I just… I just know that there is one coming,” he said.
How was he going to explain how he knew, and who would even believe him if he told them? No one had read in a hundred years or more. Even if they did believe him, to actually admit that he had read a book would be asking for disaster.
“You have to believe me. If it rains, with the melt already coming in … if the river floods it could fill up the gorge faster than you can run,” he said.
There was silence at this. He saw a few looks of pity on the faces of those nearest him. His mother had caught her breath and looked down. Her face was screwed up as if to hold back tears.
“Oh son…” Marieke Polestad was standing nearby. She came over and put a hand on his shoulder. “It was right around this time, wasn’t it, that we lost your da?”
He looked at his feet and nodded the affirmative.
“Well, come on,” she said, loud enough to reach those farthest away. “Maybe there is a storm coming, and maybe there is not, but it’s not like we are finding anything out here anyhow.”
His ma came up and reached out tentatively. He turned to her and let her enfold him in her arms. Sabelle was halfway down the gorge. For all appearances, she had just seen him have a complete breakdown in front of the entire village. His stomach felt like lead, but at least they were all leaving. Everyone would be safe. He should have been relieved that they had assumed such a good explanation for his outburst and he wouldn’t have to come up with anything more awkward or dangerous.
He should have been, but he wasn’t, not really. Not as she walked past between her parents and looked back over her shoulder at him in pity.
The sun moved past quarter-down and no rain came. The wind had picked up slightly, but it was a far cry from the storm he had promised. People sat around the central fires talking, shooting looks at him. He saw Jimmer and his friends muttering in a group beside Jimmer’s hut. Impiri was sitting with Elias beside the fire. They were all looking at him too.
He could imagine what they were saying. “That one’s always been funny. Lost the gift, hasn’t he? All those Olders’ things he brings in. He should be the first we throw out.”
Then it happened.
With almost no warning, the wind picked up. The clouds that had been scattered around the edge of the sky drew together, thick and low, and then boiled up into thunderheads. Then the rain came. It poured out of the sky, drenching the earth in moments. The wind howled, driving the raindrops sideways in massive gusts and tearing off tree branches. The people ran for shelter.
One of the derelict huts on the north side of the village was torn right off the ground and went tumbling away. At the sight of it, some turned away from their huts, heading instead for the stone house to take refuge.
Illya stood in the rain, staring up at it, his heart going so fast that it felt like it would fly out of his chest. The drops streamed down his face like tears. He was getting soaked, but he didn't care. It had been right. The book had been right!
If he had not warned them, everyone would still have been down there. Already, the paths in the village had turned into muddy streams. There was no doubt that the gorge was flooded.
He shook. All of them could have drowned; his mother, his sister, Sabelle, Benja. The noise of water pounding on the earth was thunderous. The rain hammered his head and shoulders until his shirt was saturated, clinging to his body. The water ran down the backs of his legs, filling his shoes.
He stood in the rain and laughed.
CHAPTER NINE
OVER THE FOLLOWING days, Illya tried to keep out of sight as much as he could. Everywhere he went, he was followed by whispers and stares.
“How could he have known?”
“There’s something not right about it.”
“It’s not natural.”
“But he saved everyone.”
He stayed in Samuel’s hut as much as he could, helping the Healer lay out the willow bark to dry, boiling, steeping and grinding to replace the missing stores. They combed apart cattail heads for bandaging.
Samuel continued a steady stream of information, stopping every once in a while to quiz Illya on what he had learned.
“Tell me the uses of stoneroot,” he said.
“Soothes cough,” Illya said, distractedly.
“And what else?”
Illya looked up, staring blankly.
There was a soft knock at the door. Samuel opened it to reveal Conna Duncan.
“The same thing?” Samuel asked him.
Conna started to speak but then looked into the hut and saw Illya. He shut his mouth and gave Samuel a terse nod.
Samuel took a jar off the shelf at the back of the room. It was one of the few that had remained intact during the raid. Illya tried to look busy, rearranging the same willow shavings he had just laid out on the table. He felt Conna’s stare as if it was a physical thing. He looked up and the look on Conna’s face took him off guard. There was a new quality, along with the usual disdain. It wasn’t the awe or fear he had seen lately on the faces of the more superstitious. It was calculating, as if Conna was trying to decide what he thought of him or maybe what to do about it. Illya looked back down, his neck pricking.
“If this doesn’t do it, I will have to see him myself,” Samuel said. Conna nodded wordlessly and left with a slam of the door.
“Your mind might as well be as far away as the sea,” Samuel said after they had worked for a while in silence.
“I’m sorry, really I am—”
“Would I be wrong if I were to guess that this all had something to do with that storm and how you knew it was coming?” Samuel asked.
Illya’s mouth gaped stupidly. The Healer had not mentioned it until now, and Illya had assumed that he had just taken the convenient explanation that mostly everyone had. It had been ravings brought on by grief, followed by coincidence. A strange coincidence to be sure but still coincidence.
“I just had a feeling,” Illya said.
If there was anyone in the village who he could have talked to about the book, it was Samuel, but still, something stopped him.
“A feeling, is that what it was?”
Illya nodded and fixed his eyes on the dirt floor of the hut.
“Well, the sun’s nearly half up. I am due at the wall to teach the littles. I’m guessing that you wouldn’t want to come along?”
Illya blanched. Sitting in full sight of the rest of the villagers, helping Samuel wrangle the littles sounded like the very last thing he wanted to do.
“Go on then, I think you won’t learn any more today anyhow.”
***
The next morning, before dawn, Illya tapped a quiet rhythm on the door to Benja’s hut. His cousin emerged a few minutes later, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“Fishing?” Benja asked and yawned. He looked at Illya with an odd expression, a mix of wariness and curiosity. It was, in fact, a lot like the way everyone else had been looking at him since the storm. Illya frowned, shaken. He had not expected it from his cousin too. He beckoned for Benja to follow him and led him around the side of the hut.
“Something better than fishing,” he said and rolled the bicycle out from a cluster of bushes. A broad smile broke through the uncertainty on Benja’s face.
“Is it dry enough then?” he asked.
“I think so. Not everywhere but enough that we can get through,” Illya said.
With the distance they could get on the bicycle, there was a good chance of finding food in new territory. They decided to go as far as the broad path would take them, even past the furthest ruin they had explored, if the path was clear. As long as they turned back before the sun was at half up, they would be back before dark, and it seemed like the best chance of fresh hunting would be as far from the village as possible.
On an open, flat surface, riding the bicycle was as close to flying as a man could ever get. It was pure joy to feel the wind rushing through your hair. Their speed was nearly unhindered as they went down the broad path, and they hardly felt the vibration on the metal wheel rims rolling along the hard earth.
It was a little bit eerie how flat and straight the path was, with only gradual curves. If there was a hill, the way cut straight through it more often than not. At one place, there was a rounded tunnel lined with perfect square-edged stones that went all the way through a mountain.
Taking turns riding on the handlebars and pushing the pedals, they zipped along, dodging occasional roots and broken ground with ease.
“It's that curve,” Benja said. He pointed to the bend in the road just ahead. “We passed this place just before we got to that ruin with the jars. It’s the farthest we have been.” They stopped to drink from a little stream and switch places on the bike. Benja looked at the curve with barely suppressed glee. He glanced at Illya, who returned his grin.
Illya hopped on the bike to pedal, and Benja got up on the handlebars. They bumped and jostled back onto the path. When they rounded the curve, the last ruin, or what they had always called that, came into view, and they flew right past it.
After a short while, they came to another ruin. It had been subjected to a far greater degree of destruction than the ruins closer to the village. There was hardly anything left. Illya slowed his pedaling.
The exertion of pedaling wore on him and he felt his muscles shaking, but he pressed on, driven past his hunger and fatigue by curiosity.
Then there was another ruin then another. The ruins started to appear closer and closer together. After a long while, they came around a bend and then to the top of a hill. The forest opened up before them, and they looked out over something astounding.
The word for what it was came to him unbidden. It was a city.
For as far as they could see, buildings sprawled, both flattening out the land and pushing it up into tall, jagged mesas. It was a far cry from the underground cave dwellings with blinking, stupid inhabitants that he had imagined as a little. It was like an enormous village, but he thought a hundred of his villages could fit into this place, or even more.
The city looked big enough that to cross it could have taken an entire day. They would barely be able to start exploring. But the possibilities of what they could find, given enough time, seemed truly limitless. A jolt shot through his chest. There could be food, tools, anything at all, maybe even another bicycle.
They switched places on the bike and rolled down the hill. They did not stop at the first house. By silent agreement they went on, wanting to see as much of the city as possible. They passed many houses then strange buildings that grew taller and taller as they went further in. It was like a maze of metal, with path after path leading away from the one they had ridden in on.
“Weird, isn't it?” Benja asked from the handlebars.
“What?”
“This whole place. I bet you could find anything you wanted in this, and I think we are the only people here,” he said.
Illya considered it. “It's been abandoned for a hundred years, maybe more.”
“Yeah, that's just it. Why? It would be a great place for people live. As long as you weren't so far in that you couldn't get out to forage. Everything you could ever want would be right here. You could probably have a bunch of bikes and who knows what else.”
“I guess,” Illya said.
“So why aren't there any people here?”
Illya shivered, looking around. The buildings flying past them had suddenly taken on a sinister, looming presence, despite the sunshine on their walls.
“Maybe there are,” he said after a minute, panting a little from the exertion of pedaling up a hill. “We haven't looked through it all to make sure, right?”
Benja shook his head. “If there were people here, they would have lookouts, like our Patrollers. There isn't much that goes on near our village that we don't know about right away.”
“They could know we are here, but they just haven't come out yet,” Illya said, starting to feel more nervous by the minute.
“Or there could be something that keeps people from living h
ere,” Benja said seriously.
Illya swallowed. “Like what?”
Benja did not answer immediately. He shifted his weight on the handlebars and glanced back over his shoulder at Illya.
“Something like the Calamity,” he said.
Illya stared at him and for a moment forgot to look where he was pedaling. The front wheel hit a raised edge on the side of the road. Benja flew off his seat, and Illya followed, tumbling over the handlebars and crashing into Benja where he had come to rest on the ground.
“Ouch,” Benja groaned. “Your elbow's in my eye.” Illya disentangled himself from his cousin and stood up gingerly, brushing himself off.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Benja shook himself and cracked his neck to the right then the left. “Yeah.” He stood. “You didn't have to overreact like that, you know. It's just weird is all.” Illya took stock of himself. Besides scrapes on his elbows, he seemed to be okay. He shrugged experimentally and thought he would probably feel the effects of the fall tomorrow.
“You're right. There's something not right about it,” Illya said and hesitated, not wanting to sound cowardly. The buildings looked taller than ever, looming, seeming to draw closer together at their tops, as if they could close over them.
“The Calamity couldn't still be around, though, right? No one has had it in forever,” he said, sounding much surer about it than he felt.
“It's probably nothing. Maybe anyone who has come through here already had a place to live,” Benja said. Illya squinted against the afternoon sun, looking down the long row. It was truly massive. Even with lookouts to challenge their presence, there could be people here who they simply hadn't reached yet. The idea of running into people made him just as nervous as wondering why there were none.
“Maybe we should go back,” he said.
