The Dove

by Sharon Sala

  At that point, guards came running.

  “Cayetano! Cayetano! The ground shakes. The gods are angry! What do we do?”

  Before he could answer, he heard Singing Bird calling his name. He pushed them aside and ran out into the hall just as she appeared at the far end of the corridor.

  “Get out! We have to get everyone out!” she yelled and began waving at the servants and guards within sight.

  Cayetano caught her on the run and headed to the nearest doorway as bits of the palace rained down upon their heads.

  Once they ran out into the sunlight, horror struck as they saw what was happening down in the city. Roofs on houses were falling in, walls were no longer standing, and because of thatched roofs and wooden walls, fires were spreading from house to house. People weren’t trying to put them out. They were just grabbing what belongings they could and running in every direction.

  Cayetano groaned. “We have to stop them. How can we stop them?”

  All of a sudden, a long, mournful bellow rang out across the valley. They looked down the road leading to the city and saw the twins. One of them was blowing the Conch shell and the other one was waving to get the people’s attention. They kept blowing and waving, and blowing and waving, until the sound superseded the earthquake’s roar, and when it did, people stopped running amok and ran toward the sound.

  “They did it!” Singing Bird cried. “They stopped the panic. Now we must get down there. They need to see your face.”

  ***

  Tyhen had been helping Susie doctor the gash under Yuma’s throat and had just turned around to wash the blood from her hands when the sight before her disappeared and she was back in Naaki Chava with her mother, watching it burn.

  She moaned and then swayed on her feet, and when she did, Yuma grabbed her.

  “What? What’s happening? What’s wrong?”

  She could hear him, but now she was standing in front of the palace watching her mother and Cayetano running down the hill.

  “It’s on fire. Naaki Chava is on fire.”

  “Why?” Yuma asked.

  “The earthquake. It happened there, too,” Tyhen said.

  Shirley gasped. “The cooking fires. The wooden walls and thatched roofs probably fell into the cooking fires. I hope the people got out.”

  “Run, run,” Tyhen whispered, watching the people fleeing the chaos.

  Yuma pulled her into his arms and pressed her face against his chest. “Don’t look! You can’t stop it!”

  The moment he touched her, the image was gone. She slid out of his arms and into the dirt at his feet and hid her head on her knees.

  Shirley squatted down beside her. “Sad things happen and eventually, everybody dies.”

  Tyhen sat without moving or talking for so long Yuma began to worry. The sun was halfway toward sunset and they had yet to start walking downhill to find a crossing. He looked around for Montford or Johnston to ask if they were ready to move, and when he turned around, Tyhen was on her feet.

  He reached toward her, then stopped and let his hand fall back to his side. She had that look in her eye again, the one where she stirred up a wind to do battle, but her face and voice were devoid of emotion.

  “The twins are fine. Mother and Cayetano are okay. They are leaving the city and we need to leave, too.”

  He nodded. “I’ll find Montford and tell him.”

  “I’ll get our packs,” she said.

  He turned around and grabbed her by the shoulders, his dark eyes as serious as the tone in his voice. “Don’t move until I get back.”

  She blinked as her sight began to refocus and laid her hand over his heart. “Ever my protector, the eagle in the sky watching over the little dove. Go find Nantay. I will wait.”

  Yuma grabbed her hand and kissed it, then ran off through the crowd. She shouldered her pack, checked to make sure her water jug was refilled, and then checked his pack as well before laying it beside her. And then she waited.

  Every so often they could feel a tiny aftershock beneath their feet. It reminded Tyhen of the lingering tremors running through her body after she and Yuma made love. But these tremors were warnings, where hers had been reminders of earlier joy.

  She glanced over at the river. The whirlpool was massive now, reaching from one side of the river to the other, leaving the riverbed below visible to the naked eye.

  If they walked far enough, they should be able to find safe crossing. She just wanted the people off this mountain and out of this country while they were still in one piece.

  A few moments later, she heard Yuma calling her name. She looked back and saw him coming toward her and felt a brief moment of lust. He was so beautiful in her eyes.

  When Yuma reached her, he took her arm like a child does playing a game when they run home to touch base.

  “They are ready,” he said. “They’ll bring the injured ones last, so it won’t slow down the walk. Are you ready to go?”

  “I go where you go,” Tyhen said, and in that moment, a memory emerged from Yuma’s life before Firewalker.

  It was one of the few memories he had of his mother. She was in his father’s arms and crying because they were going to have to move. He had seen the sadness on his father’s face because it was his job that had caused this. His mother had also seen the sadness, and it made her stop and wipe her eyes. Just as his father began to apologize, she put a hand over his mouth and said, Whither thou goest.

  He knew what it meant now, and in a world so far away from that one, in so many words, he’d just heard it again. It was a vivid reminder of how strong a woman could be, and how all-encompassing her heart was to the people she loved.

  Tyhen was motionless, waiting for him to speak. She could tell something she’d said or done had triggered a memory because he had that faraway look in his eyes. She never liked to see that look because it meant he was in a place she’d never seen. So instead of waiting for him to speak, she slipped her hand into his.

  “We go,” she said softly.

  He curled his fingers around her hand in a won’t-let-go grip and then kissed her knuckles and nodded.

  When they started walking, the others followed. Soon, all of the survivors were walking downhill, following the bed of the dying river and silently grieving the dead they left behind.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Everyone from the palace went down to meet the people running up from Naaki Chava. The earthquake had done something that nothing else could have ever done. It had put them all on equal footing. The people from below had the clothes on their backs and what belongings they had rescued from the fires, and when Singing Bird and the servants rescued what they could from the wreckage of the palace, they would be no better off.

  There was much crying and screaming until, at Cayetano’s bidding, Adam blew the Conch shell one last time. When he did, the crowd went silent, waiting to hear what came next.

  Before Cayetano spoke, Adam quickly whispered in his ear.

  “We have to leave. This mountain will die within the next three days. This earthquake was a warning.”

  Cayetano’s eyes momentarily widened, but it was the only sign he gave of the shock. He glanced down into the city that was afire behind them and then began to speak, shouting loudly to be heard.

  “As soon as we recover what we can from inside the palace, we will leave. The gods have shown us mercy. Shaking the earth was our warning to leave. Sometime during the next three sleeps, the mountain will die.”

  There was a long moment of silence as the people tried to come to terms with the concept of an earthquake and a fire being a merciful stroke of fate. The city was in flames behind them, but the mountain was still silent. They decided the chief was right, took a collective breath, and waited for what came next.

  “What do you want me to do?” Singing Bird asked.

 
; Cayetano hated to let her out of his sight, but he knew she would be insulted if he didn’t let her go.

  “Take the servants, find our packs, and bring them outside of the palace. If they have been destroyed, just take what you can find and hurry.”

  Singing Bird spun on her heel and waved to the servants.

  “Come with me,” she said and started running back up the hill. They followed without hesitation, anxious to get away from such devastation.

  When they reached the palace, seeing the destruction was shocking, but in a way made leaving less painful. What had been was gone. What would be was yet to come.

  She could see the servants were hesitant to go inside, fearful something might still fall down upon them.

  “We have to hurry,” she said. “Grab what you can of your belongings and come back out here to wait.”

  She led the way through the fallen blocks of stone and the broken tiles, and when the others scattered to their own places to find what they could, she started down the hall toward the chief’s quarters.

  Making her way through all of the debris was not only slow going, but dangerous. Once she slipped and fell, cutting her knee deep enough that it bled, but she kept on going. When she finally reached what had been the entrance to their rooms, the doorway was but a pile of rock. She had to go around through a connecting room, and then in through a broken wall to get into the space.

  Once inside, she began moving through rubble, trying to remember where she’d left everything. There had been a large pack apiece for her and Cayetano, and a small one that she’d meant to carry in her arms. It had medicines and healing herbs and things she could not leave behind. Aware that they would be waiting on her, she began digging through the rubble in haste.

  ***

  Because it was a shorter distance to their room, Adam and Evan entered the palace from the back entrance, only to find that the palace had not suffered as much damage as the front. But once they reached their room, the interior was a different story. It was in shambles.

  “Where did you leave our stuff?” Adam asked as he set the Conch shell down on small table that had survived.

  Evan frowned. “I’m not sure. I think it was at the foot of our beds, or maybe beside that table by the door.”

  “There is no longer a table by the door, and I do not see our beds,” Adam muttered as they began to search through the debris.

  Once they located their packs, they began checking to make sure everything they intended to take was inside. Adam opened his up and put the Conch shell into a space he’d made for it just this morning. He was trying to remember what he’d taken out in an effort so that the Conch shell would fit, when all of a sudden, it hit him.

  “Oh no, no, no! The portal cube! The bird necklace. They’re gone! I have to find it! It’s the only way we have to find Tyhen and Yuma again, and it’s not in my pack. Help me look! She told me to take care of it,” Adam cried. “She said she wanted it back. She will kill me if I’ve lost it.”

  “No she won’t. She can’t kill us if we never see her again,” Evan said.

  Adam stared at him. “Did you hear what you just said?”

  Evan shrugged. “I stated a truth.”

  Adam rolled his eyes. “Shut up and help me find the necklace.”

  “I already know where it is,” Evan said as he dug through his pack and pulled out the box with the portal cube. “If it’s in with the cube, then it is here. I saw it this morning and put it in my pack.”

  Adam wiped a shaky hand across his face and held out his hand.

  Evan handed it over with ceremony. “You’re most welcome,” he said.

  Adam rolled his eyes as he checked to make sure they were both there. And they were.

  “Thank you. Now let’s check on Singing Bird and see if she needs help.”

  They shouldered their packs and didn’t look back, leaving the room that had been their home for the past fifteen years as easily as they’d left Landan Prince to die on Bimini Island without them.

  ***

  Singing Bird had finally located the last of their things, but there was no way she could get all of it out in one trip. She was just about to go look for help when she heard voices. Someone was calling her name.

  “Singing Bird! Where are you?”

  “I am in here,” she yelled back.

  To her relief, it was the twins. They came in the same way she had through the hole in the wall.

  “What do you want us to carry?” they asked.

  She pointed to the large pack she’d made for Cayetano.

  “That belongs to your chief. You can take it to him.”

  Adam grabbed it with one hand while Evan picked up the other.

  “That one is mine. I can carry that,” she said.

  “After you get outside,” Evan said and pointed to her knee. “You are already bleeding. Cayetano is not going to be happy.”

  She didn’t argue because she knew they were right and took the small one, instead. He tended to lose rational thought where she was concerned and she was grateful for the unexpected help.

  “Thank you, my sons.”

  They nodded and then glanced at each other.

  She knew that look. They were keeping something from her, and the moment she thought that, she knew it had to do with the others—with Tyhen and Yuma and the people who’d gone with them.

  “What happened?”

  “First you need to know that Tyhen and Yuma are okay,” Adam said.

  Singing Bird’s stomach knotted. “Which means others are not. Tell me what you know.”

  “The earthquake caught them as well. They were halfway up a mountain when it struck.”

  Evan picked up the story. “They were holding onto the trees to keep from falling down when Tyhen sensed a more serious danger. The quake caused a large landslide above them. She sounded the warning as they began trying to outrun it. Most of them made it, but some of them did not and she is very sad.”

  She moaned. “They lived through Firewalker and then died like that? It isn’t right. It isn’t right.”

  Adam shrugged. “Life isn’t fair. Why then should death be any different?”

  His words struck her as cold, but when she looked at them, she remembered what the existence of their life had been like before, and realized they were right. Nothing was fair. People are born. People die. It’s what they do and how they do it in between those times that matters.

  “You are right. I’m sorry. It was just a shock. But you are sure Tyhen and Yuma are safe?”

  “Yes, we are certain,” Evan said.

  “Good. Then we go.”

  Once they exited the rubble, they began counting off the names of the servants who’d gone inside, making sure everyone was present.

  As predicted, Cayetano immediately saw the blood on Singing Bird’s leg and stopped everything to make sure she wasn’t seriously injured.

  “I am fine,” Singing Bird said and smiled as she stroked the side of his face.

  He knew he should not have let her go inside on her own, but after a look at the cut, took her at her word.

  “Is this my pack?” he asked as Adam handed it over.

  Singing Bird nodded.

  He slipped his arms through the straps, shifted it one way and then another until it felt comfortable on his back and then turned to the vast number of people awaiting his word.

  They were scattered around the grounds of the palace and all the way down the hill, carrying only what they’d been able to rescue from the fire. His warriors had retrieved plenty of weapons, but it was not the way he’d planned their exit.

  He turned to the twins.

  “Is there more to know?”

  “There will be more shaking, but nothing like before.”

  He looked down into the city and tried
not to think of what was gone. They’d lost so much already, but nothing could matter but people. Everything else could be rebuilt.

  A few more people emerged from the jungle. They’d been there when the earthquake began. There were more wails and more cries of disbelief when they realized what was lost but were soon calmed by the realization that they were lucky to still be breathing.

  “Adam, send the signal. We leave now.”

  Adam pulled the Conch shell out of his pack one last time then blew it, sending the signal they’d been waiting for.

  People began getting to their feet and gathering up their things, and when the chief lifted an arm into the air, swung it south, and started walking, they followed. There was no need to look back. Naaki Chava was already gone.

  ***

  Wesley Two Bears trip to the river was uneventful, but upon arrival he found two large water birds feeding in the shallows where he usually tossed out his line, so he moved a short distance downstream. He had just thrown his line into the water when he heard what sounded like an explosion.

  Startled, he turned toward the city as the big birds took flight. They were in a panic to be airborne and he was focused on the people he could see who were running, and he didn’t see the birds flying toward him until it was too late.

  The largest bird flew into the side of his head as it took to the air; knocking him off his feet. There was an intense pain and a loud snap as his hip gave way. He fell only inches from the water, unable to move and in terrible pain.

  He shouted for help, but there were so many people screaming and yelling that they did not hear him. When the ground began to shake, it threw the water up into his face. He tried to crawl away, but every time he would move, he would faint from the pain, only to be awakened by the water sloshing in his face.

  The last time he passed out, the water kept splashing, and his face was underwater and so he drowned.

  After the shaking stopped, the water returned to its normal place. Smoke was blowing in Wesley Two Bears’ face as he lay near the river’s edge, his fishing pole crumpled beneath him.