“Nothing but crystal here. Try the music store. Try the gift shop. Try....”
A bell pealed in his head, tolling the hours—Lizzie’s dying.
***
Lizzie was gone. Why was the bell still ringing? And why was its tolling so much deeper than he remembered?
His mind cleared and he opened his eyes.
Sunday had arrived at Glen Eagle Farm—the deadline. The weak light of dawn streamed through the clerestory, sending dust motes dancing above his bed. His smile widened. By now the plan should be complete. Kailani would have been turned over to Carlson.
So why the tolling of the bell?
He struggled to connect the clanging with the circumstance. He’d heard this bell before—a less frantic ringing calling farm members to meals, or a more joyous sound, rung by an exuberant artist to celebrate the completion of a painting, but never had he heard the temple bell rung with anger.
His smile turned to a frown. A tumult rose outside, loud voices, the stamp of running feet, and suddenly, a pounding on his door.
He threw off the blankets and swung his feet to the floor, but before standing he paused to let his joints remember how to move. He’d be of no use to anyone if he fell and broke a hip.
He stood, unfolding his body like cardboard that had been crumpled for trash day and stubbornly insisted on returning to its original form. Then he tottered, flexing his knees and letting his brain recall how to balance. Once he was stable, he thrust his feet into the worn slippers, pulled on the purple terry cloth robe, and opened the door.
Out of breath and angry, the blood drained from Carlson’s face.
“I waited an hour,” he said. “They never came.”
Sebastian grabbed his walking staff and followed him out the door.
Though a frost lay on the ground, the March air had warmed enough to raise a fog. As they rushed toward Kailani’s cabin, wisps of white swirled round his ankles and streamed off his staff, giving the four faces white moustaches. He moved as fast as the floppy slippers allowed, and tried to think.
He remembered the temperament of troopers left with nothing to do, far from home and in a harsh climate. Does dry tinder lie near fire for long before bursting into flames? The commander must have been itching to act. The secretary probably never trusted Carlson and suspected some subterfuge. If they’d decided to take Kailani by force, what better time than in the dim light before dawn?
When he rounded the corner, he was unprepared for what he found. Bleary-eyed farm members in various stages of undress were emerging from their cabins to watch. Benjamin’s men stood off to one side, stripped of their sticks and rakes and corralled by a dozen armed guards. A disciplined column of troopers poured through the pergola toward Kailani’s cabin.
Sebastian raced toward the sentinel tree to block them, slippers slapping at his heels and the untied belt of his robe flapping in the breeze. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Out of the way,” the commander of the column barked, “or you’ll be arrested for obstruction.”
Carlson raced up beside him. “But we had a deal.”
“Too late,” the commander said. “I have orders, direct from the secretary.”
Sebastian held his ground, fool that he was. He raised his staff, not like a weapon, but like a wizard’s wand trying to cast a spell that would hold back the tide.
The commander signaled his column forward.
At the last moment, Carlson grabbed Sebastian’s arm and yanked him out of the way.
The commander mounted the steps of Kailani’s cabin and tried the door; locked from the inside. At his signal, two sturdy men dragged forward a steel tube with handles on top. The commander stepped aside as the two men approached the door.
The nightmare unfolded before Sebastian, just what he’d hoped to avoid.
Carlson cried out, his voice a screech of despair. “Have pity on the child.”
The commander gave a hand signal, and the men swung the steel tube.
Thud! Metal smashed into wood.
The child. A voice in Sebastian’s head cried out from a place he’d nearly forgotten was there.
Smash! Splinters flew.
The dear, dear child.
Crack! The door swung wide, and Sebastian felt a wrenching in his heart as if Lizzie were dying again.
The advance guard rushed in with their body armor and their helmets with the faceplates and their weapons at the ready.
Sebastian waited for a cry of fright.
Nothing.
A moment later, the lead trooper stepped smartly out the door and approached his commander.
“No one there,” he said as if it was another day at the office. “She’s gone.”
***
Benjamin crouched behind a row of gawking farm members, hidden from the troopers, one of the few benefits of being slight of stature. At the far side, in front of the sentinel tree, the commander had formed his men in a column and was preparing them for action. Beams from the spotlights reflected off the plastic face guards and made them gleam.
His Lemurians stood off to the side, subdued and silent. When the troopers had begun their advance, the Lemurians had crumbled like dry leaves, their faith so much weaker than his own.
The farm members had gathered to his right and left. Faces twitched with strain; eyes forgot to blink.
A voice near him whispered. “Will they attack?”
“What will happen to the girl if they do?” another said.
The commander shouted an order and the line began its march toward the Daughter’s cabin.
There was a flash of purple terry cloth—Sebastian bursting forward to block the way. At once, he was a dervish, slippers flapping as he dashed toward them waving his staff.
In their helmets and boots, the troopers looked like giants next to him, a foot taller and twice his girth.
Foolish old man, though he showed more courage than the Lemurians.
To no avail. The column surged forward.
Benjamin listened to the thump of boots on the stairs, the crash of steel on wood. Then the door splintered and gave way.
An odd silence, and then a trooper re-emerged. His words seemed amplified by the fog. “No one there. She’s gone.”
Benjamin raised his eyes to the heavens, and they filled with tears. A miracle at last, and where there was one, others might follow.
***
The troopers searched every cabin, including Benjamin’s, but found nothing.
He knew they’d come someday and had concealed his necessities in a carefully constructed compartment behind the wall.
Now, with their anger spent, the department men had retreated from the raw cold to their vans. Their commander had withdrawn to the great house to report back to his master and await further orders.
When Benjamin was certain they were gone, he returned to his cabin and locked the door behind him. He slid the bed aside and released the latch to the hidden store. From it he withdrew the pack, always ready with fresh supplies, the camouflage-colored hunting gear, and the Lightweight Stalker.
He’d trained for this mission his whole life. He finally understood the divine plan—why he’d been buried away at the farm for ten long years, why his faith had been tested, his soul tempered like steel. The time was at hand; the Lord would point His great finger at him and in a voice booming from the clouds, call his name. He was ready.
He peeked out the door into the gloom. Certain no one was watching, he gathered up his gear and headed out on a path he’d traveled once before, to Grandmother Storyteller and beyond.
Chapter 42 – In the Land of the Stranger
Jason set a frantic pace, insisting they get as far from the farm as possible before sunup. Kailani pranced along behind him as if she were on an outing to the Knob.
Helena brought up the rear. Her calves burned, and the improvised pack she’d made out of bed sheets and kerchiefs tugged at her shoulders, but they had only a few hours of darkness left before the dep
artment learned of their escape. She willed herself not to tire as the minutes and miles passed, refusing to slow them down. This was, after all, her plan.
How foolish she’d been to worry about Kailani. Afraid to frighten the child, she’d concocted a story.
***
“We’re going on an excursion, far from the men with the sticks and the guns. It will be a long walk, much of it in the dark, and we’ll have to camp in the woods overnight. Think of it as an adventure. Maybe we’ll find the ocean.”
“The ocean?” Kainali said, bouncing on her toes as if ready to leave that minute.
“Uh-huh, but only if you keep it a secret between the three of us, and you do exactly as I say.”
Her blue eyes widened and her brows became question marks. “What will I have to do?”
“Go back to your cabin and lock the door behind you. Then get some sleep. Shortly after midnight, I’ll wake you by knocking on the common wall, a distinct knock you can recognize. Three taps, then two, then three more. Can you remember that?”
Kailani nodded, engrossed in the game. “Three, then two, then three.” She went to the desk, bunched her tiny fingers into a fist, and rapped on its wooden top. “Like this?”
“Yes. You respond with four taps of your own, so I’ll know you heard. Then count slowly to a hundred to give Jason and me a head start. We can leave out the front door, and no one will follow, but they’ll be watching you. So you’ll need to climb out the window, and then go down the path to Grandmother Storyteller. Go as quick and as quiet as you can. No need to bring anything with you. Jason and I will be there to meet you and take care of the rest.”
Later that night, Kailani arrived at Grandmother Storyteller only moments behind them, apparently too excited to count to a hundred. She disobeyed in one other way too: she bore a small bundle under her arm, wrapped in a pillowcase. When Helena asked what was in it, she grasped the bundle tighter and whispered, “It’s a secret. I can’t tell you now.”
Helena let it go. No time to dawdle.
From Grandmother Storyteller, Jason carried Kailani across the bramble to the dirt road that ran along the horse farm. Then he set her down, and they took off at a jog. Any concern Helena had that the child would have trouble keeping up quickly evaporated; she danced along as if lighter than air.
Half an hour later, they crossed the deserted highway and entered a narrow trail, barely visible in the moonlight. Soon thereafter they began to climb. Their pace slowed as the night deepened.
Jason trudged ahead, poking at the path with a stick he’d found in the brush, swinging it to the left and right in small arcs to probe for wayward stumps and rocks.
Kailani kept her eyes glued to his shadowy back, and Helena followed the child’s golden hair like a beacon in the dark.
After a few more hours of forced march, Jason brought the column to a halt. He found a downed tree, tested it with his stick for rot, and plopped down on top. As Helena and Kailani straggled over to join him, he broke out the water bottles.
Helena pulled out a bag of dried figs from her makeshift pack and distributed them to the others.
Once everyone had quenched their thirst and more or less sated their hunger, she turned her attention to Kailani. The euphoria of their escape had vanished, replaced by exhaustion. All three were tired, but Kailani’s shoulders drooped in a way she’d never seen before.
Helena draped an arm around her. “Are you all right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Can I see what’s inside your pillowcase now?” She reached for the bundle tucked between the girl’s knees.
Kailani yanked it away, hugging it to her chest, but after a moment, she gave in.
Helena untied the knot and peeked through the opening, then groped inside to confirm her finding. Neatly folded at the bottom were the chiffon dress her mother had made and the red ribbon with the bow. Nestled on top was the string of aquamarine stars.
She gaped at Kailani. “You figured out where we’re going?”
“No, but I knew we were never coming back. I didn’t want to leave these behind.”
“I’m sorry, Kailani. We had no choice. Tomorrow they were coming to take you away, back to the department.”
Helena felt a tremor run through the child. She wanted to draw her close but knew the question was coming.
Kailani faced her, eyes on fire as if lit from within. “Tell me, Helena, where are we going?”
She glanced at Jason, but this was no time for taking turns. This question was hers to answer. “To the land bridge.”
Kailani stood and stared off to the north as if trying to see all the way to the journey’s end. She stayed like that for what seemed forever, legs apart and back arched. The only evidence she was among the living was the blink of her lashes and the puffs of breath bursting from her lips.
Then she began to sing.
“In the land of the stranger I rise or I fall.”
“What does that mean?” Helena asked.
“It’s a song the sky used to sing to me. It’s from the Holy Book. I should’ve known. The land bridge is where my penance will end, one way or the other.”
Helena waited, watching.
Standing there in the dark, the child seemed like a phantom engulfed in a mirage.
“Why there?” she said so softly she could hardly hear her own words.
“Because,” Kailani said, “that’s where the sea met the sky.”
***
Jason paused to check on his fellow travelers.
Helena staggered along as if driven by will alone, and Kailani was barely awake on her feet.
He couldn’t let them rest until they were close to the asylum gate—close enough that when they awoke before dawn, they could still make the final dash under the cover of darkness.
He glanced back up the mountain, trying to gauge how far they’d come.
The first stretch had been as expected—the dirt road he’d jogged down the day before. He had a sense of the trail through the woods, at least before it began to climb, but the hike up the mountain had been steeper than expected, a lung-busting ascent to the top of the ridge. For a time, the path became so cluttered with fallen trees and dead branches that navigating in the dark became a matter of faith.
By the time it crested, the sun had come up. From the summit, he could see an embankment of fog rolling into the valley below. It looked suitably spiritual, a scene he could imagine some god conjuring in one of his lesser miracles, a barrier between worlds.
From there, downslope and daylight had made for steady progress.
Now twilight approached and the sun faded to a pale glimmer through the mist. Moisture clung to everything, beading on his skin and dampening his clothes. The temperature was dropping.
“Where are we?” Kailani said.
He bent down and brushed back a lock of damp hair matted across her cheek. “You’re doing great. This was harder than I thought, but we’re almost there. See the tops of the trees?”
She nodded.
“They’re not sloping downhill anymore. That means we’re near the bottom, and at the foot of the mountain—the land bridge.”
“But when will we be there?”
“Not tonight. We’ll get some sleep here in the woods and go there just before dawn. First I have to make sure we’re close.”
He eased his arms free of the pack and let it slip off, then searched for a tree with branches low to the ground and easy to climb. He found one nearby. Fighting the ache in his limbs, he scrambled up high enough to see.
The light was fading but a glow on the horizon remained. Using the setting sun as a guide, he turned to the north. Not far ahead, the forest ended and a stark hill took its place, a circle of brown earth perfect in its perimeter, as if measured by a surveyor. An imposing wrought iron fence surrounded it, broken on the near side by a gate.
He breathed a sigh. Now to find a safe place to camp for the night.
He shifted his gaze to the south.
From that vantage, he could make out gashes in the mountainside where runoff from melting snow had formed brooks. He followed them to where they merged into a larger stream. A hundred yards along the stream lay a natural clearing, not far from where he stood and out of sight of the trail.
He started to climb down, but stopped at the scrape of sliding scree. He peered into the distance.
High up on the trail, he spotted what appeared to be a solitary man walking toward them, moving with the gait of a hunter.
Jason shook his head, knowing how the light of dusk could play tricks. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, blinked twice, and then looked again.
Nothing. If someone had been there, he’d either vanished or blended in with the trees.
***
Helena rested on the pine needle-strewn ground, huddled beneath the blankets she’d taken from their cabin. She squeezed her eyelids shut and tried to calm herself, her customary ritual when preparing for sleep.
Jason snored softly beside her, and at the far side of the clearing, Kailani lay still.
She should be sleeping as well, but though exhausted from the trek, no sleep came. She worried about the upcoming dash to the land bridge and their acceptance into the Blessed Lands, but strangely, she suffered little anxiety about leaving the land of her birth. Tomorrow a new day would dawn, and though her life would change forever, she was unfazed.
Growing up, she’d always had a sense of living someone else’s life in a place she didn’t belong. The months on the farm had confused her more. Gods and spirits, reason and logic—all had merged into a blur.
She drew in a breath too intense for sleep, and let it out slowly as every citizen in the Republic had been taught, to quiet her passions and see her situation through the clear lens of reason. As her breathing slowed, reason faded, replaced by an unreasonable calm, a feeling that she was about to find her place in the world. Maybe this was what Benjamin had been trying to tell her. Maybe at the center of that calm was what she’d sought all along—her own spirit, and with it a connection to everyone else who had ever lived, to Jason, to Kailani, and to her father.
She breathed in and out again and stretched her mind to reach for the eternal. She could sense something larger than herself, but whether it was the Spirit or the soughing of the wind through the trees, she couldn’t tell. Would she find what she was missing in the Blessed Lands, that final leap of faith? She may never know, but of one thing she was certain: once she crossed the land bridge, she’d no longer be the Helena her father had envisioned.
The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky Page 26
