by Donald Brown
“Fine, Outsider,” he responded. “You ask Sanctuary allowed back inside?” It was clear that all the years in the tunnel had also diminished his vocabulary dramatically.
“Yes of course,” Jasper replied, rolling his eyes at Hadrian and Storm, “they said no again.”
The Chief heaved a great sigh. “No good,” he said, shaking his head.” No good, no good, no good.”
“I will be going now chief,” Jasper told him, cautiously advancing past the elderly man.
“O.K. but you bring fish next time, we have many rock.”
Jasper sucked in a sharp breath of air. “How many times have I told you, Chief, rock doesn’t mean anything to me. You have to get me something with a lot more worth.”
The Chief then turned his back to Jasper, annoyed. “O.K. fine,” he groaned. “Go then, we no need you. We can do without Outsider.”
Jasper shook his head and motioned for Storm and Hadrian to follow him.
31
In spite of the heavy rainstorm surrounding Zion, the crowd of people joining Dorothy to go back to Yara grew larger and larger as word spread throughout the city’s neighborhood. All of them were soaking wet, but they were determined to find out what had happened to the precious little girl.
From inside a house near the city gates, Alfred was looking at the scene through the kitchen window, standing on a chair. He jumped off the chair and rushed to his mother. “Come on, Mom,” he begged, “let me follow them, she was my friend!”
His mother walked over to watch the crowd file past, nearly invisible in the storm. “You want to go see a dead girl in this weather? It is too dangerous, Alfred!”
She stopped when her boy all of a sudden yanked the door open and called, “Thanks, Mom!”
“Alfred!” she cried, but the kitchen door had already been slammed shut. She merely collapsed onto the chair beside the window, hoping that her boy would return safely.
The racket caught Oliver’s attention, where he was still on guard duty at the city gates. He stood up on the battlements and saw to his surprise a large mob standing there, waiting for him to open the gates. He noticed that the sheriff was leading them and then he rushed to do his work on the heavy lever. Once again the gates flew open and clanged against the walls. Then Oliver hurried down the stairs, still clinging to his soaked cotton blanket.
“What is this, sir?” he called over the howling wind and pelting rain.
“We’re going out!” the sheriff replied, cupping his hands around his mouth to project his voice.
“Why,” Oliver responded, mimicking the sheriff’s hand-speaker.
“Yara has been attacked!” the sheriff shouted. “We need to go and see if she is still alive!” He walked through the gates and the crowd of two-dozen followed him, bent forward against the storm’s brutal force.
Once they were outside the city walls, the sheriff realized that it was pitch dark. Without the city lights, and with no moon or stars visible beyond the thick cover of black clouds, they could barely see four feet in front of them. “Oliver!” he called, pointing at the lookout point on top of the wall. “Do you have a lantern up there?”
“Yeah,” replied Oliver, “hold on!” He hastily made his way up the stairs again, returned in under a minute and handed two lanterns to the sheriff.
“Thanks!” said the sheriff, passing one of the lanterns on to Mr. Meyers “Stay on watch, Oliver!” he added, as everybody in the crowd had now gone through the gates.
Oliver closed the gates behind them and reassumed his guarding position under the wooden roof of the lookout point.
I should have been a farmer, he sullenly thought to himself.
The crowd marched away from the city and headed in an easterly direction, towards the forest. They were now flanked on both sides by the deputy sheriff’s six guard dogs, yapping about as if they had found something already.
Upon reaching the fenced-off area where the witch lived – on the edge of the woods they knew so little about – Ms. Kuttle sped past them, dashing through an open pedestrian gate. She knew precisely where Yara was.
The rest of them all came to a grinding halt.
The sheriff and Mr. Meyers started for the gate and then the sheriff turned around when he heard mutterings behind them. “What the… Oh, come on!” he moaned. “Look, even if she had magical powers, she can’t do something to all of us!”
“How do you know that?” one of the men asked, delivering the opinion of those around him.
The sheriff sighed and reached out, pulling the man towards him. “Are you telling me you are afraid of that scrawny little woman?” he asked though gritted teeth.
The man shook his head and the sheriff’s courage seemed to bring some sense to rest of the people in the crowd. Following Mr. Meyers and the sheriff through the pedestrian gate, they resumed their hunt again. By now, the rain had diminished somewhat but the weather was still far from what Zion usually experienced. A thick mist was creeping in from the forest and the strong horizontal breeze hastened it on, like waves pushing sand up the shoreline.
After walking for about eighty or ninety yards, they found Ms. Kuttle, kneeling beside what could only be her daughter, the child’s head resting against the thick trunk of a Willow tree.
Even through the mist, they could see that the toddler had been badly messed up. Her tiny body was covered in reddish two-inch puncture marks, where the blade had presumably pierced her clothes and her skin, and she was sprawled in a small pool of blood. She was almost unrecognisable.
“Oh, Yara!” Ms. Kuttle cried, taking hold of her daughter’s almost lifeless hand.
“Is she breathing?” Frieda asked in a panic.
When Ms. Kuttle didn’t reply, the sheriff approached them and crouched with his ear against little Yara’s tight, purple lips. “There is a faint breath,” he said after a short while. “Is Doctor Ron here?”
“I’ll go get him!” one of the teenage boys shouted, turning around and bolting back to the city. But most of the people thought it was a futile exercise. Based on the severity of Yara’s stab wounds, she was going to die long before Doctor Ron would be able to save her.
All of a sudden, lightning struck quite close to them, casting a bright glow over the little girl and everyone recoiled in horror. There were carvings on her face, unrecognizable markings, which most of them had at first mistaken for smears of blood. Even the dogs seemed too scared to approach her, instead opting to hide behind the people and howl at the invisible moon.
The people of Zion just stood there and watched hopelessly, knowing that there was nothing they could do for Yara. Her wounds were far too great.
Even Frieda, who had initiated the hunt, now understood that there was no way this child was going to survive. She had lost too much blood and – judged by the position of the ten or so stab wounds in her torso – her internal organs had to be severely damaged. Frieda was staring at Yara, her eyes filled with tears.
Much to every one’s surprise, Yara then opened her eyes slightly, perhaps prompted by her mother’s touch, and started stirring. She noticed her crying mother next to her, who was still oblivious to the fact that she was now conscious.
“What…is the…matter? Is it something…something with which…I can help?” she gurgled. This caused Dorothy to squeeze Yara’s hand tenderly, somehow trying to encourage her to keep on living.
The child’s wounds clearly made it difficult for her to speak.
Tears were now flowing freely over Dorothy’s cheeks.
“I am fine! Don’t worry about me darling I am fine!” she yelled.
Soon thereafter, Yara closed her eyes for the last time in her life. Her chest stopped moving and her tiny heart stopped beating. This left Dorothy, after being somewhat hopeful at first, in the same state as the day by the lake when her husband had died.
“YARA!” she hollered into the night sky, her arms outstretched, and then she succumbed to pitiful sobs.
Most in the people in th
e crowd bowed their heads while Father Dennis sent up a quick prayer for Yara’s soul. The women were openly displaying their emotions, some crying profusely and some wiping tears from their red eyes, whilst the men fumbled awkwardly at the sight.
“What is that engraving?” the sheriff wondered aloud.
Upon closer inspection, they realized that the marks on her face were actually made purposefully, to show a symbol. It was the letter W, which the Black Knight had declared was a mark for their enemy, the white people. They all turned to look at each other, trying to understand what had happened. Why had a little girl like Yara been killed? Who had killed her? And why the violence, why the marks on her forehead?
The weather did little to dull their fear and the people of Zion did not know it at the time, but that day would be the last time they would ever see sunlight in Zion again. The storm had at last found its sanctuary, as the dogs hunched their backs and let out long, mournful howls.
32
Jasper escorted Storm and Hadrian through the crowd of eerie people, all three of them trying their utmost best to avoid eye contact with the Lost.
Following a struggle of nearly ten minutes, they eventually passed the sea of Frankenstein-like creatures and now the Lost were merely empty husks that were ambling around behind them, watching them with blank expressions.
After all that had happened so far, Storm thought he couldn’t possibly be further depressed, but that scene really saddened him. The sight of complete hopelessness was heart-breaking and demoralizing to the soul. In an effort to direct these negative thoughts away – the same way he had learned to survive in Sanctuary – he decided to focus on something else, like extracting more information from the Outsider. “What were you doing inside the temple?” he asked.
“Oh, me?” Jasper replied, swiping a large mosquito away from his face. “I have been supplying the Sanctuarians with metals and weaponry for years.”
“That can’t be true,” Hadrian stated. “Everything can be found in Sanctuary and everything is made of the best quality there.” It sounded shallow to Storm now, as he had first-hand experienced the advanced technology of the Outsider. He nodded absentmindedly in agreement nonetheless, remembering the teachings of Mr. Walrus.
“Right, kid,” Jasper said in a sarcastic tone of voice. “You guys are the real experts.”
Hadrian took offence to that. “What are you trying to say?” he snapped. “That we can’t mine and process any metals ourselves?”
“Obviously you cannot,” Jasper replied. “Seeing as you do not have all the raw materials available in order to do so.”
This left Hadrian flabbergasted. “How can you say that? How can you differ from the Sanctuarians?” he spluttered, vexed by the conversation. Sanctuarians were not used to debates, especially not ones that questioned the word of their own people.
“Well, I guess… because I can think, I suppose,” Jasper replied. “I have a brain, so that means I will sometimes disagree.”
“But we shouldn’t think, that’s selfish!” Hadrian declared.
“Not thinking is precisely what is wrong with Sanctuary,” Jasper retorted. “The few right decisions you have made is because you thought about it and ignored what the other Sanctuarians would have said, like escaping or killing your brother.” Jasper paused to take a breath and then continued. “Sanctuarian bosses don’t want you to be unique, because then you become a threat to them. That is why they force all those rules and orders onto you; to butcher a makeshift conformity into your society.”
“Well, you are wrong,” Hadrian sulked, folding his arms across his chest.
Storm thought Jasper was onto something. His brother had after all saved him, because he had hesitated. He had thought about it. Although, something still bothered him…
“But if those were the right decisions, why did it make us so unhappy when we made them…?”
“Because everyone there treated you like you were making the wrong decisions and also fundamentally, you believed you were making the wrong decisions. You allowed yourself to be miserable, if you want to be happy…”
“…you have to soar above the rest.” Storm finished.
Jasper looked at him in surprise. “Yes, essentially.”
Jasper started walking again and then added, that is probably why Sanctuary is so many years behind us Outsiders in technology.”
Storm wasn’t that easily convinced and he tried one more objection. “Perhaps you stole all that advanced stuff.”
“Yes, precisely!” Hadrian chipped in. “How do we know you haven’t stolen those items?”
“Perhaps I did,” Jasper entertained the notion. “But it couldn’t have been from your bunch of people. Have you ever seen any Sanctuarian use any of the items I’ve used so far?”
The two brothers did not have an answer to that. Neither of them had ever seen the weapons Jasper had used on the Peacekeepers earlier. But the conversation had at least succeeded in driving the fears away from them.
Increasing his pace, Jasper said, “Let’s hurry up. We still have a stretch to cover.”
“Where exactly are we going?” Storm inquired.
“To Pandemonium,” Jasper replied vaguely.
“And what is this Pandemonium?” Storm continued, unabated.
Jasper glanced at him, annoyed. “You ask a lot of questions.”
Storm shrugged his shoulders. “A lot of people say that.”
“Don’t lecture our brother,” Hadrian hissed, even though he had reprimanded Storm on numerous occasions about the exact same topic. It seemed like he was still in a foul mood and that he was hell-bent on blaming the Outsider for their current predicament.
“I wasn’t lecturing anybody,” Jasper retorted. He was clearly losing his patience with these discussions.
“Yeah, well… you better not,” Hadrian mumbled.
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence and continued walking through the tunnel at a rather brisk pace.
Storm was afraid that Jasper might abandon them. In his mind’s eye he could already see himself ending up as one of the Lost. He was pretty sure that the only way they would make it through this was with the help of Jasper.
As they went through the twisting and curving tunnel – still guided by Jasper’s lantern – Storm realized for the first time that it was much quieter here than in Sanctuary. Back there, the sound of the howling wind or superiors barking instructions or just those at work could be heard everywhere. In this tunnel, the almost absolute silence acutely enhanced their senses, allowing them to pick up the faintest plop of water or the scurrying of some insect. The only constant sounds were coming from their boots on the hard rock, and the splatter of bare feet from some of the Lost, who were still curiously following them.
“When are they going to stop following us?” Storm asked Jasper.
“They are afraid of the light. When we reach the end of the tunnel, they will remain behind.”
Storm believed Jasper’s mood had softened once again, so he continued his previous line of questioning. “What was that thing you used to kill the Peacekeepers?”
“Oh, this thing?” Jasper replied, tapping the object holstered on his belt. “It’s commonly called a gun, but it has a variety of names, depending on the shape and size: pistol, revolver, rifle, shotgun...” His voice trailed off as he focused on traversing over a collection of medium-sized boulders.
Storm stared at the gun, fascinated, but Jasper did not provide any further information.
“So, are you from this Pande…” Storm began, fumbling with the word.
“Pandemonium?” Jasper said. “Yes, I was born there.”
“What is the place like?” Storm asked eagerly.
“Kiddo, I’m sure you will find out as soon as we arrive there,” Jasper replied.
Silence followed.
After another hundred yards or so, Storm couldn’t keep his curiosity at bay anymore. “How long does it take to get there?” he asked.
&
nbsp; Jasper sighed. “A couple of days, depending on the speed of travel.” He turned to glare at Storm. “Are there any more quest–”
Then Storm remembered. “What about the guards?” he demanded, suddenly alarmed. The words of Jamie and the other boys had just returned to his mind, hitting him like a sledgehammer.
“Which guards?” Jasper asked, concerned.
“The guards at the end of the tunnel,” Storm told him. “There are supposed to be guards there, keeping the thousands of Outsiders out of Sanctuary.”
Jasper gave a loud chuckle.
“What is so funny?” Hadrian asked, plainly looking for a reason to start a fight again.
“Nobody from the outside wants to live in Sanctuary, I can assure you of that,” Jasper said, still smirking a little. “There are no guards there. I would know, having travelled this road many times before.”
“That can’t be,” Hadrian declared. Storm was equally unconvinced.
Jasper only shook his head and continued walking.
The Outsider is going to get us killed, Storm now thought. It will be up to me and Hadrian to do something about the guards.
Around the next bend, the air around them began to turn from pitch-black to a yellowish glow. This perked Jasper up. “There we go!” he exclaimed, putting out his lantern. “That’s the end of the tunnel.”
Both Storm and Hadrian had stopped walking upon seeing the faint light. They were both enthralled and scared at the same time. Accompanying the source of light was also an increase in temperature. For the first time in his life, Storm was actually feeling too warm in his clothes.
Jasper, realizing that he was only hearing the sound of his own footsteps, turned to see what was going on. “What is it now?” he asked. “Please don’t tell me you are still thinking of going back to face those angry Peacekeepers?”
Storm shook his head slowly, half in a daze as his eyes were still adjusting to the natural light.
Then they heard a hollering behind them. The lost were jumping up and down in fright at the sight of the light, waving their arms in unison. Storm decided to ignore them and continued walking forward slowly, his brother close on his heels. The light grew brighter as they neared the exit of the tunnel and Storm felt his feet leave the rocky surface, finding a much softer, mushy texture he had never experienced before. “What is this?” he asked, halting and looking at this new beige floor in distrust.
