by Inmon, Shawn
They dragged several of the logs back to the field, where Alex could measure them, and they could be prepared as the foundation layer for the cabin he envisioned. By the time they dropped the logs, it was almost dark.
“I think I can be the most use to you by hooking the logs up to my horse and dragging them here for you,” Reggie said. “Keep your beautiful horses in the stables. They are fast, but mine is a workhorse.”
Alex thought back on when he had traded his good workhorses for the beautiful horses and winced. He hoped he would not be in charge of negotiations anymore.
He released his workers for the day, but before they left, Senta-eh warned them, “Manta-ak likes to start early.” By then, everyone knew that about him.
“I want to go and check on Lanta-eh,” Alex said. “I know she’s fine, but I want to see her.”
They climbed up to the top level where Lanta-eh and her sisters slept. They met Niten-eh leaving their sleeping room.
“She still sleeps,” Niten-eh said.
“Is that unusual?” Alex asked.
“I’ve never seen anyone stay under for so long after ingesting the egg. It usually only lasts a short while, except for the first time, when some people stay in a trance for most of the night.”
“Is that what this is? A trance? Or is she asleep?”
“What’s the difference?” Niten-eh asked. “Her sisters are with her. One of them will stay with her at all times and let me know when she awakens. I would be more worried if it was someone else.”
“She’s still just a young girl,” Alex said.
“No, she is the chosen one. She will never be like the rest of us.”
The next few days passed in much the same way. Alex and his workers went out into the forest, felled and stripped cedar logs, and Reggie dragged them back to the building site.
At the end of the day’s labors, Alex immediately checked on Lanta-eh and each evening, the answer was the same—no change.
Finally, on the fifth night, when Alex returned to the open field, Niten-eh was waiting for him.
“She’s awake. She says she’s been away, but we know she never left the cliffside. At least her body didn’t.”
Alex and Senta-eh hurried up to the upper level of the cliffs but found she was not in her room. Instead, she had left word with her sister that she wanted to meet them at the site of their new home.
They found her sitting cross-legged on the spot that would eventually be their living room. Her eyes were closed, but she smiled happily at the sound of their footsteps.
“We were worried for you,” Alex said.
Lanta-eh opened one eye with a mischievous grin. When she saw their worry was genuine, she stood easily and let her expression fade to neutral.
“You never need to worry about me. My fate is predestined. I was not chosen to always be first at dinner, or to be last at chores. I was chosen for a specific purpose and now I know what it is. I always had some idea, but now I see it in more fullness.”
Alex glanced at Senta-eh, wondering if she might think the same thing that he did—that perhaps Lanta-eh had indulged in too much karak-ta egg. But Senta-eh just said, “How wonderful. I am so happy for you.”
The sunshine returned to Lanta-eh’s face and she dropped down into her cross-legged pose again. She made sitting on the soft, fragrant ground look so inviting that Alex and Senta-eh sat as well—three parts of a triangle.
“So what is it?” Alex asked.
“What is what?” Lanta-eh asked innocently.
For a moment, Alex felt as though he was speaking to Tokin-ak again. He reminded himself to ask questions more carefully.
“What is it that you were chosen for?”
“Oh, that. It doesn’t really matter, does it? Everything is in motion now. Nothing can be changed.”
“Things can always be changed,” Alex said with some force.
Lanta-eh chose not to disagree with him. She grew serious and a cloud passed over her fair features. She reached out and touched both of their knees. “Each of us has a role to play, and no one’s is more important than the other. For some of us, what is coming will be difficult.” She paused and looked up at the hazy clouds circling overhead. “Well, that is not quite true. It is difficult for all of us. There is much sadness ahead. Much loss, for all of us. But today the sun is warm on our faces and we are here together. For today, that is all that matters.”
She fixed Alex with a look of such sorrow that his heart sank. “Your path is the most difficult, Manta-ak.”
Alex didn’t like predictions of inevitable doom. As long as he had his strength and vitality and Senta-eh by his side, he felt he could change anything.
“I’m going to show our workers how I want to prepare our logs,” he said abruptly and hurried away.
“He would do anything for us,” Senta-eh said.
“Having to learn that there will be some things he cannot change will be the harshest of lessons for him,” Lanta-eh agreed.
Chapter Fourteen
Missing
Alex Hawk’s response to uncertainty had always been to lower his shoulder and focus on things he could influence. So it was with building their new home.
His dream was to build a simple home—no stama needed—but one that would last for many years. To that end, he elected to both strip the bark and hand-hew the trees. That process, especially hewing each log on two sides, was time consuming. In the end, Alex knew it would also make him happy as the winds of Kragdon-ah whipped across his sturdy walls and the rain and wind did their worst with no real effect.
Alex eventually felt the three Winten-ah men knew what kind of logs he wanted brought back to camp. They worked hard in the forest all day and Reggie worked tirelessly to haul the logs back to the field. Once there, Senta-eh and Kanda-eh, the lone woman assigned to the work crew, took off the branches and bark. Alex and Harta-ak hewed the logs using the superior tools. Harta-ak was used to building rafts that would withstand a windstorm on a river, so prepping the logs for the cabin came naturally to him. It was a good balance of work, with the four of them mostly able to keep up with the fresh logs brought from the forest every day.
There was no way in this section of Kragdon-ah to produce glass, but Alex wanted windows, anyway. He didn’t want the interior to be unbearably stuffy and filled with still air year-round. So, he chopped windows-sized holes in the logs that allowed for a nice cross-breeze, then built shutters that fit tightly on the exterior. To stop drafts in the winter, he built wooden blinds.
It took them several weeks to get the basics of the frame up, but when it was mostly complete, everyone in the tribe agreed it was not the horrible eyesore they had feared it would be. Sekun-ak even said that several other tribe members had asked if Alex might help them build their own version.
“I don’t want to change the way we live,” Alex answered, “but I will always help anyone who needs it.”
“I’m not worried about changing the way we live,” Sekun-ak answered. “The first time we fall under attack, our cliffside will look very attractive. Caves do not burn.”
One evening, Alex took inventory of their remaining logs, and measured how many would be needed for his roof. He told his work team they would only need a little over half the logs they had been bringing in every day.
He was surprised, then, when the shadows grew long and the work crew had not returned.
Reggie had taken his horse on what he thought would be the final log retrieval of the day, but came back empty-handed, hurrying his shaggy horse along as fast as it would go.
In his excitement, he shouted, “Alex!” then remembered himself and said, “Manta-ak!”
Alex abandoned the log he was working on and ran to meet him in the field.
“They’re gone. They’re all gone. They were working on the last logs we would need when I left them, but when I got back, they had disappeared. I looked around for them, but they are just gone.”
Alex sprinted toward the c
aves and ran up the zig-zag path, looking for Sekun-ak. He found him at the uppermost cave, looking out over the horizon.
“We need to go look for my workers. They went out this morning, but when Untrin-ak went to bring back the last of the logs, they were gone. Their tools are there, but they are gone.”
Sekun-ak didn’t hesitate. He called for six warriors to arm themselves. Alex, Reggie, Harta-ak and Senta-eh did the same.
The team had originally taken logs close to the cliffs, but had slowly moved away in search of the perfect trees. When they approached the first guard in the tree, Sekun-ak hailed them. “Did the workers go by this morning?”
“Yes,” the guard answered.
“Have you seen them since?”
“No.”
They hurried on in the fading light. They arrived in a small clearing where unnatural silence reigned. A tree was down, and another had an axe buried in an open cut. Tools were scattered on the ground. Beyond that, there was no sign of life. Sekun-ak, Alex, and Senta-eh scattered around the clearing, looking for signs of an attack by man or beast. The light in the glade was filtered in the glade, even at apex. Now, the darkness was closing in.
Monda-ak put his nose to the ground and followed half a dozen different trails, but always came back to the clearing.
Alex put a hand on Monda-ak’s head to settle him, then looked up into the near-dark sky. “Should we send runners back for torches?”
Sekun-ak considered. “This is not natural. It looks like they went for a drink of water and never came back.” He picked up an axe laying on the forest floor. “They were taken by someone or something.” He kneeled and felt the ground in several areas. “But there is no blood. No sign a creature attacked them.”
Alex waited as Sekun-ak worked through things.
“Someone took them, but they managed to sneak up on them and didn’t even alert the guards in either direction. We don’t know how long ago they were taken, or by who. I don’t think torches will do us any good. If whoever took them is still around, all the torches will do is make targets of us.”
“If I had been taken,” Alex said, “I would be hoping you would be looking for me.”
“If someone had tried to take you, there would be signs of a struggle, blood, and the bodies of our enemies here. We will return home, put search parties together, and return here just before dawn.”
It rankled Alex to think of his friends spending a night in captivity, held by people unknown, but he knew Sekun-ak was correct. In complete darkness, with nothing more than a torch to give visibility, they could easily walk right past an important piece of information.
Sekun-ak sent a runner in each direction to tell the guards to be extra alert that night, that it was possible they were under attack.
They returned to find much of the tribe gathered at the bottom of the cliff waiting for them. Torches burned cheerily, but the mood was somber.
Sekun-ak called a meeting of the entire tribe in the largest chamber.
When everyone was gathered, he said, “Someone has attacked our people working in the forest.” Like always in the cliffside, word of this had spread before Sekun-ak had a chance to announce it. Still, it caused a stir of conversation.
“We have to be smart about this. They may be hoping that we will send everyone out looking for them, leaving the cliffside undefended.”
Ganku-eh, who was no longer chief, but was still a respected elder, stood and said, “We made that mistake once. We will never do so again,” then sat down.
“We will take two dozen men to search for them,” Sekun-ak continued. “We will march together to the spot where they were taken, then we will divide ourselves into four teams. We will spread out in all four directions from there. If we discover who took our people and there are too many of them for our small group to overwhelm, we will come back here for reinforcements. To start, we will leave the bulk of our warriors back here to defend the cliffs. We will keep the children up high until we know what is happening.”
Sekun-ak walked around the room, laying a hand on one warrior, then passing many by before choosing another. When he was done, he had selected twenty warriors and appointed Alex, Senta-eh, and himself as leaders of a party. For the final group, he approached Ganku-eh. “Before you were our chief, you were one of our best hunters and trackers. I’d like you to lead the fourth group.”
Ganku-eh, who had been slowly sliding into oblivion in the upper chamber, straightened her spine and Alex could see the woman who had run the tribe for many years emerge.
Sekun-ak said, “Good,” and laid a hand on her shoulder. He turned to his daughter, who was still young, but had been shadowing her father since he had become chief. “Kinta-eh, come sit with Alex and me. We will want to make some changes to our defenses.”
There would be no sleep in Winten-ah that night. Alex, Sekun-ak, and Kinta-eh walked the perimeter of the cliffs, deciding what would work best if an all-out attack came. As they did, Alex cast a wary glance at his half-built home, wondering if it would be destroyed before it was even finished.
If so, there are many more trees in the forest. The only thing that matters is our lives. Everything else can be rebuilt.
Before the first light of dawn crept above the cliffside, the twenty-four warriors gathered at the open field and marched silently toward the forest.
Their initial journey was short. Before they reached the place where the trail branched north and south, Monda-ak took off at a run and stood over a lifeless form. He tipped his head back and gave a mournful howl. Alex and Senta-eh ran toward the form, with Senta-eh beating him there.
When Alex reached the form, he could see it was human, but only just barely.
It was a body, but it had been burned almost beyond recognition.
Sekun-ak arrived at the still-smoking, charred body. The head was thrown back and the mouth was permanently fixed in a rictus of endless pain. Gently, he turned the body over and saw that a small necklace with a sharp tooth was caught beneath the body.
“Tranta-ak wore a necklace like this. There’s no way to know if this is him, but it feels like it is.”
Alex took a deep breath, trying to suppress his anger.
“What do we do? I feel like mounting our horses and tearing off in every direction, looking for whoever did this to him, but that is not smart, is it?”
“No. That will only result in more bloodshed. We have to hunt who did this. And, they put this body in the most obvious place imaginable.” He turned and pointed at two of the warriors who had accompanied them. “Run to the guards in each direction and see if they saw anything.” The two men peeled off, one north, one south.
“We also have to remember,” Senta-eh said, “that they have three more of us, unless they’ve also killed them. We need to be smart about this and see if we can rescue them.”
Alex did his best to push his anger at how his friend had been treated down deep.
Both of the warriors Sekun-ak had sent to the guards came pounding back down the trail.
The runner from the south arrived first, gasping for breath. “There is another body, just the same.”
The runner from the north panted, “And two more this way.”
Sekun-ak counted off two sets of six men. “Run to the guards. Make sure they are all right.” He pointed to the burned body on the ground in front of him. “But be watchful.”
When the groups ran off, Sekun-ak turned to Alex. “Why? Why would anyone be interested in kidnapping and killing our work crew? What benefit does it give them?”
Alex searched his brain for an answer, but came up blank. “More important right now—how can we catch them? How can they move past our guards without being spotted?”
The remaining Winten-ah set up a small perimeter around the burned body and discussed possibilities but came up with no satisfying answers.
A few minutes later, the group from the north returned at a run. “They didn’t sneak past the guards. They killed them.” The ma
n held out a short bolt. “This was in the throat of the guard, but he had been shot by two more arrows like this.”
Alex held his hand out and took the bolt from the runner. It was small—only about half the length of a normal arrow, but thicker, with a greater heft. Alex had seen arrows like this before. He held it out to Senta-eh.
“It is like the arrows the Denta-ah shot at us.”
“Right. One and the same,” Alex answered. “But we were just in Denta-ah. We know there is nothing there.”
“Who else might use this stama?” Sekun-ak asked.
“I think I might know,” Alex answered. “Senta-eh, come with me. Everyone else, stay here. I’ll be right back.” He snap-turned and ran back to the caves, calling for Harta-ak as he ran. They met at the base of the caves.
Alex held the bolt out. “Have you seen this before?”
Harta-ak took it and examined it closely, turning the bolt in his hand, examining the metal arrowhead, the neat way the feathers were attached to the haft of the arrow.
He met Alex’s eyes and said, “This is a Lasta-ah arrow. I’ve used them and carried them as cargo for years.”
“Then the Lasta-ah are here. This was pulled from the throat of our guard in the forest.” While Harta-ak absorbed that, Alex added, “And they killed and burned the bodies of our workers.”
Harta-ak winced at the thought. “Burned them? Why would they burn the bodies?”
Alex’s eyes looked haunted. “What did I do to Lasta-ah?”
Without thinking, Harta-ak said, “You burned it,” making the obvious connection.
“Do you think they would travel thousands of miles for revenge like this?”
Without hesitation, Harta-ak said, “Yes.”
“Do you know who took over Lasta-ah after I killed Draka-ak?”
Harta-ak looked unhappily off into the distance. “His son, also known as Draka-ak. He is very much like his father. Strong. Ruthless. Ambitious.”
