“I wish you much success in all your future research on mineral theories.”
When we neared the orange glow from the seforium lamps in the clearing, I saw Alondra drop an armful of rope and Aaren and Brock set down a bunch of long sticks. The three of them looked at us with expectant faces.
I took the bag of Ameiphus off my shoulders and handed it to the mayor. “Thank you for saying yes.”
He nodded once and shook my hand. “And thank you for the medicine.”
I turned to Aaren, Brock, and Alondra. “Did you come up with a plan?”
They all beamed, which felt like flying all over again. I knew they’d invent something.
“Well,” Brock said, “first we thought about making some kind of carrier with wings. Or using the river. We even talked about using a hot-air balloon.”
Alondra cut in, her voice as excited as Brock’s. “But seforium is too heavy for flying, the river flows the wrong direction, and according to Aaren, hot-air balloons are unpredictable, don’t usually move forward fast, and only work in the morning hours.”
“The ruins were at the halfway point, right?” Aaren asked, and I nodded. “It took us nine days to get there, but it only took us a little less than four more days to get here. If we went home as fast as we traveled that second half of the way here, we’d make it in time.”
“We made it that fast because we weren’t pulling the trailer anymore,” I said. “But the horses will have to pull a cart on the way back. It’ll be just as slow.”
“Unless,” Alondra said, “you don’t have to use horses to pull the cart. Then they can go just as fast as they did that last part of your trip.”
“It was the sails on the Sky Surfboards that gave us the idea,” Brock said. “Well, that and talking to Luke by the river that one night.”
“The wind in Desolation Alley!” I yelled as my brain caught up.
Brock and Aaren grinned.
“Yep, Desolation Alley,” Aaren said. “The bridge to cross over the river isn’t far from here. All we need is a sail, and with the cart”—he paused and gave the mayor a thank-you nod—“the wind can push us home.”
“And the sail?” I asked.
“That’s what these sticks are for,” Brock said. “To make the frame. We can use the blankets from our bedrolls for the fabric. We won’t need the sails at night and we don’t need the blankets during the day.”
I guessed spending two hours a day in inventions class back home was a good thing. Even if I hated it.
The mayor walked over to the big metal gong by the tables and hit it six times—one long, two short, two long, then one short—as if he was playing a song, but then at the end, all the notes muddled together into one. I looked to Alondra and raised an eyebrow. She said, “That’s the call for the people who work in the lumber mill.”
Huh. “Do you have codes for every job?” I asked.
Alondra nodded. “One gong for everyone, two for only the adults, three for just the kids, and a song for each of the different places to work.”
“Wow,” I said. “A way to communicate. That’s pretty cool.”
Four people joined us on the grassy area, and the mayor turned to one of them. “We need a four-by-seven cart. They’ll need a post right in the center that they can connect this frame to.”
Brock jumped up. “I’ll help.”
The mayor nodded to Brock, and Brock dashed off with the four others to the lumber mill. Aaren and Alondra started laying out the long sticks they had cut.
The gong sounded, and Alondra looked up as her dad banged a song on it. “Mine workers. Probably to get the seforium ready.” A moment later, he banged a different song. “Doctor,” Alondra said before either of us asked. “She’ll probably want to talk to you, Aaren, about how to use the Ameiphus.”
Aaren looked at me, like he was wondering why I hadn’t started helping yet, but I hadn’t been able to move since I pictured everything together. The carts I’d seen here had a third axle in front. We could steer by having someone sit on the left and someone on the right, with our feet pushing on the axle, but Luke said that the wind in Desolation Alley didn’t go the whole way. For the last 125 miles, we’d need two horses to pull the cart, so they’d have to come with us. Two people to drive the cart; two people to ride the horses.
It wasn’t just that I wasn’t ready to give up on Luke—we needed him for the trip back. And I had no idea where he was.
I tried to think where Luke might have gone. His home in Arris was too far to go without supplies. Because of what I guessed he had in his saddlebags, Glacier and even the ruins were out, also.
Then it hit me. He went to Downwind. They made trades there, so surely he could get the supplies he needed. Alondra said it was about an hour’s ride away. It was risky to go searching for him there, but too much was at stake not to try.
“When do you think the sail will be finished?” I asked Aaren.
“Probably a couple of hours. We’ll leave as soon as it gets light enough to see in the morning.”
Then I needed to catch up to Luke right now.
I cleared my throat. “We have to have four people for this to work. We need Luke. I’ve got to go find him.”
“What?” Aaren squeaked. “Are you crazy? It’s dark and you don’t know where he is!”
“I’ll be careful, I promise. Keep working on the sails, and I’ll be back by the time you’re done.”
I hurried across the clearing, descended the stairs through the Bomb’s Breath, and raced down the pathway to the bottom of the mountain. When I got to the place where the horses were tied up, I saddled Arabelle. In only a few minutes, we were galloping toward Downwind.
There weren’t as many trees here, so I could see Downwind, the metal of the buildings glowing silver in the moonlight, almost the entire way. The closer I got, the more remnants of homes I came across. A few even had all four walls intact. I wondered if people lived in them. Probably not—people needed towns for protection from bandits. Then I wondered if bandits lived in them, and suddenly all the deeper shadows looked spooky. I pushed Arabelle faster.
I headed for the area where a lot of buildings lay on top of each other with space in the middle—that was probably where they lived.
After nearly an hour of riding, I went around the first building in my path. It was flat on its side, like a tree that had fallen over. Except it was forty feet high lying down. I looked up in awe of how tall it was—of how wide it used to be before it fell. I zigzagged around the next few buildings.
Everywhere I looked, I saw some strange black rocks that were flat on the top. Wherever a building lay, the big black rocks were around it. Always flat. When I came upon a building where there were a ton of the rocks, some of them almost as wide as me, my curiosity got the best of me. Even though I was in a hurry, I pulled Arabelle to a stop and jumped down to get a better look. I squinted in the small amount of light. It wasn’t one big flat rock. It was a bunch of pebbles, held together by blackish stuff that was similar to a rock, but softer.
I gasped when everything clicked in my mind. “This is pavement!” I said to no one.
Mr. Allen, my history teacher, had told us that the roads used to be covered with this stuff before the bombs. I wished Aaren and Brock were here to see it. I picked up a broken chunk and shoved it in my bag, so I could get a closer look when it was light. Then I took off riding again.
For a mile or so, the fallen buildings were easy to go around. Then I got to the part I’d seen from Heaven’s Reach—the buildings formed a wall around where the people lived—and I couldn’t find a way past it. The buildings were so big, I couldn’t go over them. Because of how they had all fallen, I couldn’t go under them, either. And they were touching, so I couldn’t go around them. Only the moon lit my path, which didn’t help matters at all.
After almost an hour of going around the perimeter, I finally saw an entrance. One building had fallen on another, and the bottom building was squished, bu
t not all the way. It left a triangle of space underneath the top building that was about five feet at the highest point. But the building that had smashed the other was so big! I looked up at it. “What do you think, Arabelle? If we go under, is it going to fall on us?” She sidestepped a little and snorted. Was that a yes or a no? I looked farther along the perimeter, but this was the only way in that I could see.
I slid off Arabelle and patted her side. “It’s going to be a tight squeeze, but don’t worry. You’ll make it through.” I hoped. I held her reins, and went into the opening first. Arabelle had to drop her head to fit in behind me.
The building seemed even bigger once I was under it. I tried to not look up—to only focus on the moonlight at the end of the tunnel, if you could call it a tunnel. “Fifty more feet,” I told Arabelle. Then, “Twenty more feet and we’re out. Keep coming. It’s okay.”
A wave of relief washed over me once we made it through and back under a starry sky.
And then someone grabbed me.
“Let go of me!” I yelled. There were four of them, all dressed in brown leather and holding guns. “I’m not a bandit!”
One of the men, who looked as though he might be the boss of them, said, “Who are you here with?”
“Nobody. It’s only me.”
“How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“You expect me to believe that a twelve-year-old girl came here, in the dark, all by herself?”
“I’ll be thirteen in a few months!” I called out, hoping it would help.
“Take her to holding. Keep a good eye out for whoever she came with.”
“I’m looking for my uncle! I think he might be here. His name is Luke.”
Two of them grabbed me by the arms and started pushing me down a pathway that bordered enormous gardens while the fourth guy—the boss—went over to Arabelle and grasped her reins. They steered me along a dirt road next to one of the buildings, and I tried to explain why I was there.
I stopped talking when we walked out of a grove of cherry trees. A large building came into the moonlit view that was unlike anything I had seen before. It was made of cement, but not solid cement. A row of cement lay on the ground, then a row of emptiness above that, then a cement row, then an empty row—five layers of cement high, and each of the layers was held up by cement pillars.
I said to the nicer of the two men, “What is that?”
“It’s a parking garage.”
I blinked at him a few times.
“People used to park their cars in there before the bombs.”
“You don’t worry about it falling?”
“No. It’s all cement—it’s as sturdy as they come, which is why most of us have built our homes in there.”
The other man glared at him and pushed me toward a stone and brick building at the back corner of the square.
Four giant columns stood in front of the building, with lion heads carved into the stone at the top of each one. I could tell this wasn’t just built before the bombs, it was built a very long time before them. We walked into a lobby with floors made of flat stone and mammoth pillars holding up a high ceiling. This was a fancy place. Not somewhere to take prisoners. I expected them to let me go sit on one of the benches against the back wall to wait, but the man shoved me down a hall at the left.
“I don’t have much time!” I begged. “I have to find my uncle. My entire town is depending on it.”
Both men ignored me, even the nicer one, and shoved me into a room. I tried to run back out before they shut the door, but they were quick, and I heard the click of the lock. I waited a moment, hoping that they had walked away, then tried the knob.
Locked.
I shook the handle and pulled and kicked at it, and even ran my shoulder into the door. I looked around. There wasn’t a window to try to escape through. Not a single piece of furniture, either. Nothing! I banged against the door and yelled “Help me!” I banged and screamed until I was so exhausted I collapsed onto the floor. Then I stared up at the ceiling, wondering how I was ever going to get myself out of this mess.
I sat up straight at the sound of the door opening. Someone heard me!
It was the boss man. Then he opened the door wider and I saw Luke standing next to him. A rush of so many emotions hit me, I couldn’t even tell if I was happy or mad. I got to my feet.
The boss man left and Luke gave me a half-smile. He kind of looked amused. I didn’t know if he was amused that I had come—that I had known where to find him—or that I was locked in this room. But he also looked sad. Maybe he was sad that I came.
“I should’ve known you’d figure out where I went,” Luke said. “You’re a smart girl.”
“I’m smart enough to know that running away isn’t the answer.”
Luke stood still and silent.
“You used me. And you didn’t care if the consequences hurt my town.”
“I cared, I just—”
“But we still need you.”
He shook his head. “You’re better off without me.” He walked toward the door. “I’ll get them to let you out of here so you can head back.”
“Remember that day we talked by the river?” My voice came out quietly enough that I wondered if he heard me. But then he froze, his hand on the door.
Still facing the door, he said, “Yeah.”
“Because of you, I used my needle-nose pliers.”
He spun around and looked at me.
“I talked the mayor into giving us the seforium and a cart.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You’re going to try to make it back in time?”
“We are going to make it back in time, if you come with us. Aaren, Brock, and Alondra are making a sail. We have everything we need to go back home through Desolation Alley, except a fourth person.”
“You can’t rely on me, Hope. I’ve never been someone anyone could rely on.”
“But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re family, and family doesn’t give up on each other. Everyone makes mistakes. You didn’t think of giving up on your sister when she made a mistake, so why should I give up on you?”
“You’d get in a lot less trouble without me.”
I shrugged. “Probably.”
He looked at me for a long while. Finally, he let out a deep breath and said, “You know how I told you that you’re persistent?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t like it when you use it on me.”
I held my breath, trying to figure out what that meant.
“Let’s get you out of here,” he said. “We need to go back to White Rock.”
Luke got us back to Heaven’s Reach on a much faster route than the one I’d traveled.
At the top of the mountain path, in the clearing before Heaven’s Reach, he reminded me that the mayor didn’t want him there, and told me he was going to sleep with our horses.
When I stepped around the building and onto the grass, I saw the others working under the orange glow of the seforium lamps in the grassy area. Brock and Aaren rushed forward to meet me.
“Don’t do that again,” Brock said.
I crinkled my forehead. “What?”
“You left! All by yourself, and you were gone for hours! We didn’t know where you went, so we didn’t know where to start looking for you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t want you to be worried—”
“Not knowing was much worse, because then we had to worry about everywhere you could be,” Aaren said.
“Hope, if something had happened to you …” Brock let his sentence trail off, which made me think about all the terrible things that could’ve happened. And if I was wrong and Luke hadn’t been in Downwind, I’d still be locked up there, and they wouldn’t know where to find me.
I swallowed. “It would’ve been bad.”
“Did you find him?” Aaren asked.
“Yep. He’s with the horses. He’s going with us.”
“That’s good,
” Brock said, “because …”—he drew out the word and motioned to the sail with a flourish—“we finished!”
The sail was on the grass, all of our bedding laid out like puzzle pieces across it, with rope tied to the frame but not yet tied to the corners of each blanket.
“And …,” Brock said, motioning toward a cart filled to the top of its two-foot sides with the orange mineral. “Ta-da!” A wooden shaft rose from the center a few inches above the seforium, to slide the sail frame into.
“We have the seforium,” I said. We all took a moment and stood around the cart, feeling light enough to fly. After the past few days—or really, the past thirteen days—I couldn’t believe we actually, finally had it.
“And food, too,” Brock said as he gestured to two bundles nestled among the mineral.
“We leave first thing in the morning,” Aaren said.
I could hardly wait.
The sky was barely beginning to lighten, and I was wide awake. We were heading home today!
After we ate breakfast, we tied our bedding to the straps on the sail’s frame. The sun hadn’t yet risen when Brock left with the cart down a small canyon near the mines that had a road wide enough for the cart to go to the base of the mountain. Aaren, Alondra, and I carried the sail down the path we always used.
By the time we made it through all the switchbacks in the path and got to the bottom, we heard a rumbling from the other direction, and turned to see Brock and a man from Heaven’s Reach riding the cart down the incline. They sat on a bench the lumber workers had added to the front, and each had their feet on one side of the axle. It came to a stop not far from us.
Luke came out to meet us, holding the reins to both Ruben and Buck.
I gasped. “We can only take two horses! What are we going to do with the other two?” There had been so many problems to worry about, I hadn’t even thought of this one.
“We’re taking Luke’s horse and Arabelle with us,” Aaren said. “The people here are going to take care of Ruben and Buck.”
“We’ll treat them well,” Alondra said.
Sky Jumpers Book 2 Page 15
