by C Lee Tocci
She grunted conversationally, almost as if to say “Good morning. Can we leave now?”
“Oh for the love of crows!” Exasperated, Todd rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Sarah, don’t do that again! Ever!”
He looked up as Sarah made a strange gurgling sound, her face split with a twisted grimace. It took him a moment, but then he realized that the little brat was laughing at him! After the week he’d had, this was the last straw. His temper flared. But as she looked at him with that goofy half-smile, he started to grin. His grin turned into a chuckle. He shook his head as he pulled himself to his feet.
His howl had brought Devon and Nita, always early risers, scurrying to his room. They stood in the doorway, dumbfounded at the sight of Todd laughing with his Seventh.
“It think Todd has lost it,” Devon whispered.
Nita looked even more confused. “Maybe it’s under his bed?”
Todd sighed. “Get the others up,” he said, “we’re going hiking this morning.”
Nita shrugged at Devon before darting off to rouse the others.
An hour later, the seven were dawdling up the Blue Mist Mountain. At this hour of the day, you could see where it got its name. The morning fog really did look blue in the first light of dawn.
They walked slowly because of Sarah, but Nita and Devon scampered ahead and back again like puppies, happy to be out on an adventure. Donny ambled at the head of the pack, content virtually anywhere, so long as no one was hurting him or being mean to him. The simplicity of his mind never led him to ask why they were hiking. He was told to get up and walk, and walk he would.
Jeff sulked along in the rear, listening to music on his MP3 player. The bass of the percussion leaked through his earphones as he grumbled behind. They would have been on the trail earlier, but Jeff had dawdled. It wasn’t until they threatened to go without him that he finally got out of bed.
Marla and Todd walked together behind the Sarah, watching her. More than a couple of times, she stopped to pick up a stone from the path, holding it against her cheek while she hummed to it. Sometimes she placed it back on the ground with a pat and a smile. And sometimes she put it in her pocket and carried it along. Once she paused by a large boulder and pulled out three stones from her pocket and clustered them around its base. Giving the big rock a friendly pat, she gurgled happily to herself before continuing up the mountainside.
Devon and Nita picked up on the new game and began looking for stones to give to Sarah. Usually she placed them on her cheek for a moment before gently finding a home for them along the path, but the game was won when she pulled the stone from her cheek and placed it in her pocket.
The sun was still rising when they reached a clearing near the peak of the mountain. They unpacked the lunch from the backpacks Donny and Todd carried. Nita and Devon watched, fascinated, as Sarah took out her stones and, gurgling and humming, arranged them on the ground where she sat.
Todd lay on his back and watched a brilliant white cauliflower cloud blossom over a distant mountaintop. The sun was warm on Todd’s face and the air was sweet. For the moment, he forgot all about the Callows and Monday morning and Ms. Burbank and the Hardwell Center. He fell into a peaceful doze.
A wet splat landed on his arm. Remembering how he’d been woken up that morning, he opened one eye just a crack, checking things out before committing himself any further.
Nita knelt beside him, pressing one of her leaf and mud “bandages” on his arm. Behind her, Devon stood grinning, his arms and face already plastered with Nita’s “cure-all-remedy.”
“Thanks, Nita,” Todd mumbled, looking down at mud dripping off the leaf onto his jeans.
“You got a mosquito bite,” Nita explained. “And this one,” she splatted another leaf onto his cheek, “will help you wake up so you’re not sleepy all the time.” Nita’s leaf and mud remedies could cure anything from a bad mood to an algebra exam. Or so she claimed.
He sat up and saw Jeff standing on top of a large boulder with his earphones on, playing air guitar. Donny sat on the ground by his feet, watching with rapt enthusiasm, a lone groupie. He too had muddy leaves plastered over his arms and face.
Looking around, he found Marla, frowning as she looked up the embankment.
“Where’s Sarah?” asked Todd.
With a jerk of her head, Marla indicated the slope rising behind him. Turning, Todd sighed as he saw the girl awkwardly climbing the slope towards the peak of the ridge.
Todd knew it was pointless to call out to her, but he did anyway. The results were no more than he expected. She didn’t stop or even acknowledge his voice. With a resigned shrug, Todd stood and began to scale the mountain after her.
She reached the peak first and grinned crookedly down on him before turning towards the valley beyond.
It was just as Todd reached the summit that the trembling started.
Todd had felt a few earthquakes over the years, but there was something different about this one. It was as if the very rocks beneath his feet were flexing and writhing. He looked over to where the girl stood. The ground cracked and crumbled at her feet.
“Sarah!” he shouted. “Get over here! Now!”
Sarah looked puzzled by his yelling but not at all unnerved by the chaos. He ran to reach her but another, more violent tremor sent him spilling back down the slope.
Below, he heard the others shouting. Todd didn’t know whether to go back to them or to help the girl. In the next moment, however, he was too terrified to consider moving at all.
On the ground in front of Sarah, a fissure opened. The ground screamed as it wrenched apart and a huge shaft of rock, like a broad, rough-hewn finger of stone rose up from mountaintop. She stood, not moving, while the earth made that horrible sound and the obelisk-like stone climbed higher and higher.
When it finally stopped, it stood some thirty feet above her. The sudden silence was almost more frightening than the noise had been. A cloud of fine silt descended upon the mountain top.
Todd rubbed his eyes and peered through the settling dust to see Sarah reaching out to pluck something that glittered on the obelisk. He wanted to cry out to stop her, but the words caught in his throat. Her hand grasped the stone and pulled it from its crevice. For a moment, the world was still as she smiled down at the prize in her hand. Then, without warning, the girl began to scream.
Todd rolled to his feet. The others below could only hear her tortured screams echoing through the canyon, but Todd could see her body twisting in pain as she clutched the Fatal Stone. He leapt towards her, intending to wrench the Stone from her fist, but as his hand tried to close about her wrist, an invisible blow to his chest sent him flying back. He scrambled to his feet, helpless to do anything but watch her suffer and die.
In the midst of an agonized contortion, the girl froze, her body arching. Her eyes, glazed with pain, stared up at the mid-day sky. Then her body shuddered and twitched. With a sigh like a spent balloon, she curled into a ball, her body huddled around the fist that still clenched the stone.
Todd crawled over to her and found that whatever it was that had pushed him away before, was gone. He lifted her up as he would a load of laundry and carried her down to where the others waited below.
The others watched silently as Todd came down the slope and as he started walking back towards Dalton Point, they followed.
Beneath their feet, the People of Kiva felt a faint purr.
Men tending livestock, women working the fields, old men telling tales, children playing in the hills, all heard the hum of the stones.
The Earth was singing.
For ten centuries, the Earth Stone had been silent. Ten centuries since Korap, the last Stone Voice, had fallen into corruption. Seduced by the deceiver Syxx, she had betrayed her calling and now the Earth’s delicate balance was askew and extinction of all things living was imminent. Climates fluctuated, earthquakes and tidal waves wreaked havoc, diseases ravaged the pure of spirit while the decadent thrived and all tha
t was once held as precious, diminished. All the elements of creation, carefully nurtured over the eons, hung on the cusp of destruction and without the guidance of a true Stone Voice, all would soon be lost.
The people of the Kiva left their tasks and quickly headed down to the Crescent Courtyard. The totem that stood outside of the Gil-Salla’s hall was silent. The bear on the bottom slept. The thunderbird perched on the top with its wings spread and its beak turned towards Red Rabbit Ridge, was lifeless. Only the owl in the center seemed awake, but she merely blinked her eyes and said nothing as the people entered the Hall of the Flame Voice.
Gil-Salla sat on the dirt floor near the far wall, her hands splayed out on the soil, the soles of her bare feet pressed firmly against the earth. Her eyes were closed and her breathing, slow and heavy. She did not move or speak while the People entered the hall and formed a circle, three rows deep. They sat as she sat, with their hands and feet splayed, hoping to hear the words of their silent star.
With the People, came the Others Who Watched and Waited. The Knowing Crows flew in through the chimney hole and made their own circle in the center of the hall. Dogs, wolves, squirrels and rabbits padded in through the door and grouped themselves around the crows.
When all had assembled, Gil-Salla opened her eyes, looked up to the sun streaming through the chimney hole, and spoke.
“A new Stone Voice rises.”
A silent breath of excitement flooded the hall. Five years had passed since the last Infant Stone Voice had been lost to the Enemy. No one knows when the Creator will bless the People with a Stone Voice. One may rise once in a lifespan, or not for a dozen life spans. In these, the dark ages of the People, few Stone Voices survived infancy, murdered by the assassins of Syxx, the Deceiver, servant of the Decreator.
A new Stone Voice meant a new chance. The People rejoiced.
Gil-Salla clapped a command and the crows flew up the chimney hole while the wolves and squirrels scrambled out the door. They raced to the four corners of the land, seeking news of the new Stone Voice.
Keotak-se alone thought otherwise.
He did not believe in the coming of a new Stone Voice because around his neck he felt the faint trembling of Branken who, for five years, had lain still and dormant.
In his heart, Keotak-se knew Lilibit was alive.
He rose silently and left the hall to complete his mission.
The Ebony Slab shivered.
Deep beneath its austere veneer, a faint crack formed unseen by human eyes, yet Syxx was aware of that fissure and knew that he, the Deceiver, had himself been deceived. The child survived.
Before the sun set, eighteen corpses lined the bottom of a rude grave in the middle of a barren desert. Among them, Baxter’s sightless eyes gazed up at an impassive sky before being covered by a blanket of earth.
To deceive the Deceiver is never a good career move.
Chapter Seventeen
And From The Ashes
It wasn’t the burden in his arms that weighed Todd down as they hiked back to Dalton Point. Sarah was so thin, she didn’t weigh much more than a couple of bags of groceries. But Todd’s scalp was buzzing again and he couldn’t free his hands to rub away his alarm.
Looking down at the girl in his arms, he was surprised at her profile. Still curled in a ball with the disfigured side of her face pressed into his shirt, he could only see the undamaged side. He realized she had once been a pretty child. What happened to her?
The quake cast a pall over their spirits. Devon muttered softly to himself as he walked besides a silent Nita. Even Jeff’s sulking was replaced by a quiet uneasiness.
A bend in the path revealed Naircott City below. They stopped and stared, stunned into silence.
The city was in chaos. Hundreds of thin gray columns of smoke rose from everywhere and a huge cloud of black smoke mushroomed from the industrial section. Even this far away, the sounds of sirens were heard wafting up the mountain.
Todd quickened their pace.
As they got closer to Dalton Point, the distant alarms grew fainter and the clearing was eerily quiet. The dust had long since settled, and even the ever-present birds and insects that normally hummed a constant harmony in the canyon were still. They stumbled past the gate and stared.
Todd gently laid the girl, still unconscious, on a patch of grass and then turned to look at the wreckage of the Callow House.
The frame of the original house had imploded. The brick and mortar chimney rose forlornly from the rubble, an impudent finger ascending from the wreckage. The children’s wing faired a little better, but the ceilings collapsed in many places and splintered beams impaled the bedrooms where they’d slept only hours ago.
“Mrs. Callow?” Devon called as he started to run towards the ruins of the main house, his voice rising in panic.
Marla reached out and grabbed his arm and Nita’s too, holding them both back. She shot a look at Todd who flinched and forced himself to act despite the shock that numbed his brain.
Calling to Donny and Jeff to join him, Todd walked to the rubble and started to clear away the smaller debris. Donny was already as large as a full grown man and stronger than most. He grabbed a large beam and pulled it out of the wreckage. The three boys worked in silence. Marla joined them, but Todd told Devon and Nita to stay with Sarah. He didn’t want them to see what they might find.
A gagging noise from Jeff alerted Todd that his fears were justified. Dropping the timber he was tugging, he sprinted to where Jeff stood green-faced, gazing blindly into the debris. There, among the broken timbers, they found the Callows, dead in the living room, their lifeless eyes gazing into the blackened television.
As Todd stumbled to where the three youngest sat, he heard Jeff vomiting behind a shrub. His legs buckled as he sat and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to push the image out of his mind. Donny stared at the corpses without understanding, as if waiting for them to wake up. Marla stumbled around aimlessly, as if looking for someone to comfort her, but then she stopped, realizing there was no one beyond Dalton Point who cared.
Silently, they gathered around Todd and waited. He knew they expected him to tell them what to do. He shook his head as if to jump-start it.
“We’ll have to wait for someone to come from the city with help. Until then, we’ll need food and blankets to get through the night. Marla and Jeff, you two go into the dorm wing and see what you can scavenge. Throw what you find down to Devon and Nita, who can pile it over there.” He pointed to a spot near the grassy area where Sarah still lay, curled into a ball, not moving. “Donny and I will try to dig out the kitchen and search for some food and other supplies.”
When night came, they’d built a small campfire and huddled around it. In the distance, the valley below was black. The quake had knocked out the power and the only lights seen were the glowing embers of homes and buildings still on fire. Occasionally, the breeze turned and the sounds of the sirens drifted hauntingly up the canyon and with it came an oily dark smoke that smelled of unclean things burning.
Todd glanced to where Sarah curled on the ground and was surprised to see her eyes open, staring at the fire. Focused on the flames, you could see from the furrow in her brow that her mind was working hard. In her eyes, there was a gleam of awareness that hadn’t been there before. Todd watched her in silence and wondered.
Deep within her mind, the girl felt a responsiveness that had been missing for a long time. She stared into the fire, her memories, patchy and elusive. She grabbed at them but caught only wisps of smoky dreams.
All that long afternoon she had lain without moving, her damaged brain cells rebuilding themselves. Synapses rejoined with a snap causing her entire body to twitch and spasm. Neurons revived with a gentle murmur, sending a buzz of warmth down her spine, making her sigh with relief.
Still she stalked through her thoughts for clues to re-fill the void of her mind. Elusive glimpses of faces and places, revealed out of context, only taunted her. She
could not remember her name or her past.
“Sarah,” she heard a voice speak gently. “Wake up, you need to eat.”
The dark haired boy, Todd, was offering her a wafer of food. She stared at it and focused on his words, trying to understand his meaning.
“Sarah?” he repeated.
She took the bar and, as she nibbled it, she heard slurring words spoken by a slow, raspy voice. Then she realized that it was herself speaking.
“My name is Lilibit,” her voice broken and sputtering, “and I want to go to Kiva.”
The others watched her in alarm as her eyes began to fill with tears. She cried harder and harder until her breath hiccupped painfully. Marla put her arm around her and wrapped her in the blanket until her sobbing subsided.
And then, at last, she slept. A deep and dreamless sleep.
Todd stared at the girl. Something in her words tickled an old memory in the back of his mind. As they settled to sleep under the stars, he was determined to hear more about Kiva.
In the morning.
Chapter Eighteen
Dreams
“No time to sleep! Time to fly! No time to sleep! Time to fly!”
A strange voice cawed at Todd. Opening his eyes, he saw a large black bird sitting on his chest, its beak several inches from his nose. When the bird saw Todd was awake, it flapped its wings and repeated its call. “No time to sleep! Time to fly! Time to fly!”
As Todd sat up, the bird hopped off his chest and strutted around the clearing. It looked like the raven, Grey Feather. He stared at it and then looked around to see if the others could see (or hear) the visitor.
He was alone with the bird in a strange clearing on the peak of a tall mountain. Below, he saw a carpet of rolling clouds with an occasional mountaintop cresting through the mists. He looked around anxiously, trying to find the others.
Grey Feather cawed again, “Time to Fly! Time to Fly!” and launched itself into the air, heading into the rising sun.
