by Jake Halpern
“Let’s go,” said Bilblox as he stepped down into the boat. He had two very large packs on his shoulder.
“What’s in there?” asked Resuza.
“Some supplies that I found,” he replied. “We’re gonna need ‘em.” Resuza nodded, moved to the stern of the boat, and pulled a small rusting lever on the side of the winch. The entire boat jolted and then began to slide down the rope toward the ground below. The boat operated like an open-air cable car. Everything was going quite well until everyone heard a sudden pop, which sounded like metal snapping under pressure. Suddenly the cockboat began to build speed. Rope whizzed out of the winch at a dizzying speed as they shot down toward the ground below.
“You should have listened to me!” Naomi shouted. Bilblox did not reply. He knew they were going too fast, but he had no interest in having an argument – especially right now, when they were hurtling towards the frozen tundra with absolutely no way of slowing down. Hill, Resuza, and Naomi gripped onto the gunnels of the cockboat in stunned silence. “We’ll be fine,” Bilblox shouted above the howling of the wind. “Just hold on tight. The snow will cushion our impact.”
“This wasn’t the plan!” Naomi shouted.
At that moment, the wooden basket hit the ground and the sides shattered. Pieces of wood flew off into the distance and the occupants all tumbled heavily to the ground. Tiny particles of snow rose into the air around them and seemed to hover there, like instant fog.
Chapter 33: Seal the Ship
As soon as he heard shouting from the fort, Leif sprang to his feet in a fit of panic. Korgu reacted even quicker. The wolf sprang through a small open window and started running towards the fort. Leif followed seconds later, and Nathalia – with Kolo in tow – followed on his heels. As they ran towards the fort, two teenagers burst out of it and began running towards them. Momentarily confused, Leif and the others quickly realized they were Marta and Alfonso.
Korgu narrowed the distance to them quickly, and greeted them with a wagging tail. They all came together on the wind and snow swept plains in front of the fort.
“What happened?” demanded Leif.
“Going to the fort wasn’t the best idea after all,” said Marta. “And we didn’t make any friends.”
“We have to leave for the forest now,” gasped Alfonso. “The Dragoonya in the fort are after us. We have to leave now!”
They all started running back to the ship together.
“It’s dark!” yelled Kolo, as he ran. “We can’t enter the forest. I won’t! Go, and leave me with the airship.” He paused to gasp for air, as he struggled to keep up with the others. “I’ve kept my end of the bargain.”
“Be quiet,” said Nathalia.
“But we had a deal!” Kolo protested.
“We still do,” said Nathalia. “You’ll get it, once we’re done using it.”
As they continued running back towards the ship, they heard more shouting; it sounded as if it were coming from the roof of the fort. It was the Dragoonya, who had spotted them and were quickly closing in. Korgu turned and raced directly towards the Dragoonya. They wavered at the sight of this monstrous wolf coming towards them. Clearly, they were also spooked by the presence of wolves. Korgu leapt onto the closest Dragoonya soldier, who screamed in terror. That was enough. The rest of the Dragoonya bolted back to the fort. By the time Alfonso and the others had returned to the airship, Korgu had caught up with them.
“Good pup!” yelled Leif. They soon got into the airship. Nathalia began working the controls and the airship lifted into the sky.
“Where to?” asked Leif.
“Dargora,” said Nathalia. “I’ll try to get us as far as I can, but we don’t have much fuel left.” A blast of wind rattled the ship. Nathalia struggled to hold a steady course. Below them they could see the Dragoonya fort. A group of men were running around on the roof of the fort, but it was impossible to see what they were up to. As they drew closer to the stone forest, the ship began to pitch and yaw erratically. Everyone looked at Nathalia, who was visibly struggling to maneuver the ship.
“Don’t know what’s happening,” she muttered. “It’s some sort of wind surge that’s getting stronger as we near the forest.” That was an understatement. Wind began pounding the aircraft, shaking it violently. Leif held on to the couch, which, thankfully, was nailed to the floor. Kolo clung to a chair and screamed. Nathalia braced herself in her seat and worked the levers that controlled the ship. Just then a monstrous gust of wind slammed into the ship causing it to plummet downward. Another came moments later, and it felt like a giant hand had slapped the side of the aircraft. Parts of the ship that had been tied down were knocked loose.
Suddenly, the ship lurched again,
“Turn us around!” screamed Kolo. He was trying to wrestle the ship’s controls away from Nathalia. His eyes were ablaze with panic. “We’ll never make it!” Nathalia was trying to hold him at bay with one arm and steer the ship with the other; but it wasn’t working and the ship quickly went into a nosedive.
Alfonso, Leif, and Marta watched on helplessly. The ship was now spiraling downward and the g-force had pinned them to their seats. Suddenly, the petrified forest came into full view. Directly in front of them was a vast field of stone pillars. The pillars were massively thick, and hundreds of feet high. It almost looked as if someone had ripped the ceiling off the biggest temple in the world and now all that remained were the giant support columns – millions of them. Many of these trees, perhaps as many as a third of them, had a canopy of branches at the top, which looked like intricate spider webs made of stone. The ground of the forest, rather curiously, was not visible because it was shrouded in a heavy blanket of fog.
The ship screamed downward, riding a rollicking downdraft of wind, shooting in-between two massive stone pillars and into the Petrified Forest. Nathalia finally managed to free herself of Kolo’s grip by kicking him in the stomach. Kolo fell to his knees and began to vomit. Nathalia regained control of the ship momentarily, slalomed around several pillars, and managed to navigate the ship back out of the forest. For a moment, it looked as if she might even avoid crashing, but then the wind took hold of the vessel again and slammed it down into a huge bank of powdery snow. There was an explosion of snow spraying everywhere and then, as the ship skidded along the ground, the snow crashed through the front windshield of the ship and poured into the cabin. Nathalia was knocked to the floor. For a moment she lay deathly still, then, gingerly, she stood up.
“Is everyone okay?” she asked.
Kolo sat huddled in a corner, staring vacantly at the wall. Leif was massaging his head and appeared bruised, but very much alive. He had a gash on his forehead that was bleeding, but not excessively so. Alfonso and Marta slowly got up as well, but looked to be in no worse shape than Leif.
Leif went outside and struggled to get his bearings. They were currently situated just inside the Petrified Forest amidst the first, neat row of giant stone pillars rising up into the sky. About a hundred feet further in, a blanket of fog obscured what lay beyond. It appeared to be around seven feet tall, and it covered the entire forest floor like a vast gauzy blanket, which undulated with the wind. To his right, Leif saw a great sprawling open field of snow stretching back to the Dragoonya Fort.
Leif turned to Nathalia and asked, “Any chance this ship can still fly?”
She looked doubtful. “Hard to say,” she eventually replied.
“Well we should...” began Leif, but he was interrupted by the sound of a lone distant howl – a piercing, mournful cry – the kind of awful noise that sucks the wind from your lungs. Leif, Nathalia, Alfonso, and Marta looked up. The lone howl lingered in the air, ringing in their ears even after the sound itself had died. Then came a chorus of howls. These weren’t the calls of coyotes or wolves. They started off deeper, rich with base – almost like the growl of a tiger – and gradually became sharper and more horribly shrill. They all looked at Korgu. She was intently alert, every hair on end. But she
also seemed a bit scared, which was the most frightening of all. Korgu was never scared.
“What in God’s name is that?” asked Leif.
“The fog wolves,” said a voice from behind them. It was Kolo. He was still huddled in the corner and the vacant look was still very much in his eyes. “They’re running from their caves and into the forest – that’s what they do at night.”
“We need to seal the ship,” said Alfonso.
No one needed any more convincing than this. They began to seal any and all possible entryways. The ship’s doors, both the one in front and the one in back, were intact. Nathalia closed both doors and locked them. Marta pulled up a loose floorboard and used it to block off the ship’s largest window. Meanwhile, Leif and Alfonso ripped the couch from the floor, carried it to the cockpit, and pushed it into the gaping hole where the front windshield once was. Luckily, it was a decent fit, and with a few good kicks, the couch was wedged in very tightly. Because of the crash, much of the ship was actually buried in the snow, leaving them fairly well protected.
Then they sat still for a quarter of an hour. The minutes ticked by with excruciating slowness. It was very quiet in the ship. The snow was a good insulator and it effectively muffled any and all sounds from the outside world.
Chapter 34: Into the Fog Tunnel
“I don’t hear anything,” said Alfonso finally.
“You usually can’t hear the fog wolves,” replied Kolo, in a dry monotone.
“So how will we know when it’s safe to go out?” asked Marta. “Or should we just send you outside?”
Kolo smiled sourly, the first sign of any expression or emotion that he’d shown since the crash. “You won’t know when it’s safe,” he said tightly.
“Tell us,” said Leif quietly. “A while back you told us there was something wrong with the trees in the Petrified Forest – that they were dead, but not quite dead. What did you mean by that?”
“They’re dead because they’re made of stone,” said Kolo, “But they’re not completely dead, because you can hear them.”
“Hear them how?” asked Leif.
Kolo grimaced. “I only entered once,” he explained. “It was when I first tried to follow the slavers. The fog was so thick, I couldn’t see the trees, but I could hear them in my head, you know... talking to me.”
“What were they saying?” asked Nathalia skeptically.
“They kept saying, “Don’t touch us, boy, don’t touch us.”
No one spoke after this. Everyone seemed to be deep in thought, mulling over what Kolo had just said. Several more minutes passed until Korgu started to whine. She seemed nothing like the frightened wolf from before. Instead, she seemed ready to run around. She went up to Leif and licked his hand, as if she wanted to play.
“Korgu wouldn’t behave this way if the fog wolves were still around,” said Leif.
“I’m going outside to look around,” said Nathalia. She walked to the rear exit, slid the bolt that unlocked the door, and stuck out her head. It was eerily silent. Korgu slid around her, and bounded out of the ship. She immediately ran toward the fog and disappeared within. She emerged a minute or two later and let out a sharp, playful growl.
“She wants us to get going,” said Leif.
“Then let’s do it – we probably don’t have much time before the fog wolves return, and if there’s anyone I want on my side against them, it’s Korgu,” said Nathalia. She jumped out of the airship and headed towards the fog bank. Everyone else followed quickly behind. Korgu took a winding route to enter the fog bank and once inside, it continued to veer in inexplicable ways. The fog was so thick that it was impossible to see more than a foot in any direction. Eventually they entered a tunnel that cut through the fog. The ground in this fog tunnel was well-beaten, revealing a path made by others – namely, the fog wolves. The animals apparently knew, either by instinct or by memory, the way through the snow, because the snow beneath the path was very firm and easy to tread upon.
The fog was cool and wispy to the touch but so opaque that it seemed strange it didn’t have more substance. As they trudged quietly through the tunnel, Marta ran her fingers through the whiteness. It disappeared where she touched it. The tunnel was likely made by the very act of walking through the fog – nothing more than that.
They walked quickly – at times breaking into a run – for a long time. No one had any idea where they were, and all hoped Korgu knew what she was doing. It seemed foolish to suddenly pin their hopes of finding Dargora on a wolf, but she had come through for them in so many ways that it seemed strange not to do so.
Alfonso found himself in the back of the group, right behind Kolo. He wondered how that had happened – Kolo should not have been with them. But in the confusion of the crash and their sudden dive into the Petrified Forest, no one had stopped and ordered Kolo back. And for some reason, Kolo had decided to join them. Perhaps it was simply a matter of self-protection. He didn’t want to be by himself in a badly broken airship. Alfonso hoped this was the case, and that Kolo did not have any other plans.
As he ran, Alfonso remembered the picture frame from Imad’s library – the one that could be assembled into a stick – and he pulled out the piece of the stick which had the strange-looking compass embedded in its base. He glanced quickly to see where, exactly, the compass’ hand was pointing. It was pointing straight ahead, down the tunnel. Then, as Alfonso continued to run, the hand of the compass turned to the right; moments later, the tunnel turned to the right. This happened again and again. It was as if the compass knew exactly which way the tunnel led and where they were supposed to go.
“What are you looking at?” asked Leif at one point, as he circled back to check on his son.
“The compass,” said Alfonso. “It’s like it knows exactly where I’m supposed to go.”
“You mean where Nathalia is supposed to go,” said Leif. “You better give it to her soon. She’s the one going to Dargora.”
“I will,” said Alfonso, but he simply continued on his way with the device in hand.
They continued running for as long as they could, following the fog tunnel as it wound its way through the forest. There was no way to judge how far they had gone or see which way they were going because the fog surrounded them on all sides. Occasionally, they came upon pieces of bones lying across the path, all of which were meticulously picked clean.
Alfonso thought back to his conversation with the prisoner in the Dragoonya fort who told him that the wolves entered the forest for meat; presumably, these bones were the remnants of whatever meat the wolves had eaten. Alfonso wondered where the meat came from. Was it possible that the wolves traveled all the way to Dargora to get it? No way to know. It seemed possible, however, because despite the twists and turns that they had taken, they appeared to be headed steadily north.
They kept going for what seemed like hours. The path itself was very narrow and, in places, slippery. On one occasion, Marta slipped and actually toppled over through the wall of the fog tunnel. Instantly, and with great speed, she began to sink into a powdery drift of snow. By the time that Leif reached out and clasped her hand, which was just a matter of seconds later, Marta’s head was submerged. Leif hauled her back onto the path. Marta appeared more dazed than frightened, too exhausted to betray much emotion. They all stopped for a second and caught their breath.
“Where is that dog leading us?” asked Kolo.
No one answered. Korgu had circled back when she realized they had stopped. She sat patiently a few feet away, her tongue out and her sides heaving with exertion.
“How long do we have before the wolves come?” Marta asked.
“Probably not very long,” said Kolo, “They move very quickly – much quicker than us.”
“Can they climb?” asked Alfonso.
Kolo shrugged.
At that moment, Korgu sprang to her feet and looked intently up the tunnel. She advanced a few feet, and then retreated. She growled quietly, and then louder.
Within seconds, the growls had become defeaning. She began to run back and forth in front of them, as if trying to protect them on as many sides as possible.
They were all thinking the same thing, but only Marta spoke.
“They’re coming,” she whispered.
Chapter 35: One Last Thing
Hill tried in vain to stand up but his body wouldn’t respond to orders from his brain; and then his vision began to dim – as if night were falling. He was suddenly very cold and he felt snow pressing down on him at every angle. I am buried, he thought to himself. Hill stopped struggling and focused only on one goal: keep breathing. He lay motionless for what seemed like a long time, and only when he felt ready, did he start moving his fingers and toes. They worked. He began trying to move his arms when, all of a sudden, he felt someone or something grab hold of his legs and pull him upward. Snow cascaded off his body.
“There you are!” boomed a loud voice.
It was Bilblox.
“We didn’t know what happened to ya!” Bilblox bent down and grabbed Hill’s outstretched hands. With one easy movement, he lifted Hill to a standing position. Hill stood there motionless, amazed that he was standing on firm ground. And most importantly, nothing appeared to be broken. Hill glanced around quickly, but all he could see were snowdrifts and, in the distance, the pillars of Dargora.
“Where is everyone?” Hill asked wearily. Clumps of snow still clung to his eyebrows, cheeks and beard. Bilblox shrugged his head over to his left. Standing huddled together were Naomi and Resuza. Hill walked over to them.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“I guess,” said Naomi. She was clearly still shocked by their hard landing.
“I told ya!” said Bilblox. “I told ya it’d be fine. I knew if we took the other elevator-boat we’d land smack in the middle of downtown Dargora – and what a mess that’d be!”
