“Oh, what more is there to see?” asked Mills. “It’s all just different rocks and trees, isn’t it? It’s hard out here.”
“It’s harder than the cliffs, but it’s really living!” said Anaxis. “Why would we have this capacity to survive in so many places, this push to explore, just to stay put for our whole lives?”
“Don’t you think that you’d tire of the hardship?” asked Mills. “Or is that what it means to be really living to you? Struggling?”
“Well it’s struggling out here or struggling at home, isn’t it? At least out here it’s fun. The whole world isn’t a desert, either. There’s Gnirean! And forests to the south, and lakes to the north. Haven’t you ever longed to see them for yourself?” asked Anaxis.
“I’ve always been content dreaming about them,” said Mills.
“If you truly wish to see Gnirean, Anaxis,” Orn said, “It might be possible.”
“You shouldn’t say such things, Orn,” Laquin said.
“And why not? Anything’s possible, Anaxis,” said Orn. “A trip to Gnirean is more possible for you than most.”
“Have you ever been?” Anaxis asked him.
“No,” Orn replied. “There are a set of conditions that make it very difficult to enter Gnirean. Practically impossible for someone my age. But someone your age, well, that’s a whole different story.”
“Don’t listen, Anaxis,” said Laquin. “It wouldn’t be worth it.”
“Wouldn’t it?” Orn asked Laquin, “Even if he could take the amulet to the Keeper?”
Laquin stopped what she was doing to stare at Orn. After a while she turned her stare to Anaxis, then back to Orn. “You don’t mean to say…”
“What good would our having it do, if we didn’t try?” Orn asked her.
“What amulet?” asked Mills. “What are you guys talking about?”
Orn gave a look to Laquin that implored her to say no more.
“Never mind,” said Orn. “It’s not wrong to dream of more, Anaxis.”
“He’s right about that, Anaxis,” Xala said. “If you want to see the world, I say, do it. I would await with bated breath your return, to hear of your wild adventures!”
“I think you should just come home, Anaxis,” Mills countered. “We’ll be out of school soon enough. Those stupid bullies will grow up. Or, if they don’t, forget them, we won’t have anything to do with them. And you’re the smartest in town, we need someone like you.”
Anaxis lowered his head to think. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think I can travel and still come home, can’t I?”
“Not if you never make it back,” said Mills. “Or decide you never want to.”
Anaxis scratched his head. “Who knows,” he said. “For now, anyways, I’m hungry. Can I help with dinner?”
“Please,” said Orn.
The locating of a fortuitous pass made travel out of the Allovastian Valley easy for the group. When they reached the other side, they entered into the sparsest desert of the trip so far. There was the occasional tree, but the vast majority of the landscape was white dunes, raked by the wind into such perfect lines that they appeared to not ever have been disturbed. There were no animals in sight, not birds, not even any tiny scitterchats, which had been present in every other environment along the way so far. The new desert was so unvarying in its perfect whiteness that progress was impossible to measure. The team plodded along, stumbling up one dune and then sliding down the back of another, for hours, with no remarkable thing to interrupt the perfect white flow of the seemingly endless desert.
“Well this is boring,” Mills said, expressing what the others were all thinking.
“It really is,” Anaxis agreed. “Beautiful, but so monotonous.”
At the top of yet another dune he had reached before the others, Orn turned around and said, “Not so fast, friends.”
“We need to slow down?” asked Mills.
“No, I meant, don’t be so quick to say our day’s hike is boring. Come; see what’s waiting for us on the other side.”
As the others came to the crest of the sandy peak, each was equally surprised to see what Orn had found.
“An oasis!” Xala shouted. “Oh, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!”
Surrounding a crystal-clear pool of water were lush green palms and thick ferns. The oasis shone in the sunlight like an intricately jeweled broach.
“Did you know this was here?” Laquin asked Orn.
“I had no idea,” he answered. “What a happy surprise!”
The group bounced and tumbled down the sand, then pressed through the heavy growth on the periphery of the oasis to the pristine water within, which tasted fresh and felt cool on their sun-scorched skin.
“I’ve never been so happy to see water in my life!” Mills said joyously, splashing Anaxis and Xala.
“It’s magnificent!” Xala cried. She drank from her cupped hands and laughed.
“It really is,” Laquin agreed. She started to fill her canteens. “And all the better for how unexpected it was.”
A small school of silvery fish swam through the water, darting about in synchronicity.
“Anyone for fish?” Mills asked.
“I could have one or twelve,” Anaxis answered.
“Coming right up!” Mills said. He waded into the water and started stalking the fish, plotting out how he might catch them.
“Don’t catch them all,” Orn advised. “It’d be a shame to leave the pool empty.”
“There are plenty,” Mills said. “Besides, I’ll be lucky if I can catch one. They’re so fast!”
“Don’t worry if you can’t catch anything, Mills,” Laquin said from the brush. “It looks like we’ve got gligs and tunnis growing here, too!”
“The shade…” Xala said, stretching out beneath a palm. “The glorious shade! It feels so good!”
“I wonder why those people in Allovast haven’t come out here,” Anaxis said. “It seems much nicer than the valley.”
“Maybe they have,” Orn said. “We wouldn’t be able to know; the wind would wipe away any trace of their footsteps.”
“Funny you should say that,” Laquin said from where she was crouched in the bush. She stood up, holding a basket weaved of etral fronds. “Look what I found. It looks like someone has been here before us.”
“Most likely the Allovastians. I imagine this is an important food and water source for them,” Orn said.
“I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if we shared it for a bit,” Laquin said.
The team languished and played for an hour or so, enjoying the shade and the water. The sun rolled lazily through the sky as they relaxed, watching over their recreation.
Xala ducked into the deep brush to relieve herself. When she stood back up to rejoin the others, she was startled by what she saw coming over the surrounding dunes: a group of a dozen or so of the inhabitants of Allovast. “Heads up,” she said, “I think we’ve got company.”
“What are we going to do?” Mills asked, leaving his fishing behind and running up to where Orn was trying to assess the situation.
“As much as I hate to say it, we should probably leave,” Orn said. “As quickly as possible.”
“Oh, but that’s not fair!” Mills said. “We just got here!”
“True. But we weren’t expecting to be here at all,” Orn said. “We are lucky to have been able to get more water, and whatever food Laquin has collected. Remaining here and facing possible conflict wouldn’t be worth it.”
“Really?” Mills whined, looking to the others for a contradictory opinion.
“I think he’s right,” Anaxis answered. “It’s theirs. I mean, they have so little. We should leave it to them. I’m feeling much better now.”
“Great, just great,” Mills said, sulking.
“I’m no happier than you about it, Mills,” said Xala. “But Orn is right.”
“Get your shoes back on,” Orn said. “We can still make the Wash by nightfall
.”
The team had just reached Orn’s intended stopping point for the night in the Great Wash when the dark blue twilight sky was overtaken by viscous purple rain clouds.
“I’ve never seen clouds move so fast,” Xala said, watching them flood in.
“This is exactly what I was worried about,” said Orn. “We’re in the worst place for this to happen. If the clouds break, we’re in serious trouble.”
“Why?” asked Mills.
“See the walls of the canyon?” Laquin asked. “How they look carved by the flow of water? They were. We’re in the flood zone. An ancient river channel. If it rains too heavily, we’ll be flooded out, most likely after having drowned.”
A flash of bright white lightning split the sky, the clouds opened up, and the rain fell in an instant torrent.
“It’s here,” Orn shouted over the noise of the rain smacking the rock. “We can’t escape now. Just, do your best to stay alive.”
“What does that mean?” asked Mills.
“Whatever it must,” Orn answered. “Keep an eye on where the flood is taking you, and try not to get stuck in any of the pockets or indentations in the canyon walls.”
There was nowhere for the rain to permeate the hard rock of the ancient sea bed, and so immediately it began to rise as murky floodwater. The rock ledge the travelers were on looked ready to be overtaken in minutes.
“Secure your things as best you can,” Laquin said. “It would be wise to tie them to an arm or leg, if possible. But watch that they don’t become lodged anywhere. If they do, untie them. Let them go. They are only things, which can be replaced.”
Mills clung to Anaxis. “This is really scary,” he whispered.
“I know,” Anaxis said. “But we can get through it, okay? Just keep your head above water.”
“After all this time in the desert that I’ve been wanting water, I can’t believe how much I don’t right now,” said Mills.
“Here we go,” Orn announced. “Get ready, everyone.”
“I’ve only got three flotation devices,” Xala said.
“You three go ahead,” Laquin said to those from Talx.
“Hurry, hurry,” Xala said as she handed a device to Anaxis and one to Mills.
The rising water lapped up over the lip of the ledge the travelers were on. The rain coming down harder every second brought it over feet, then ankles, then knees.
“Alright, go ahead and float,” Laquin said. “Don’t try to stand up, don’t fight it. It’ll be easier to control your direction if you just go with it.”
Anaxis fell down on top of his flotation device into the water and was immediately swept away from the ledge. The water wasn’t moving too fast, and he found that if he floated on his back and directed himself with his arms, staying above the flood wasn’t difficult.
Looking back, he saw that the others were all floating down the canyon after him. Coming around a bend, Anaxis noticed a large waterfall pouring down into the flash river ahead. He took a deep breath and readied. The volume of water pouring down from the side of the canyon was so great that it wrenched his flotation device away and forced him deep underwater. He scraped against the bottom of the wash in a confusion of bubbles before he was able to get leverage and push himself forward. Propelled out from beneath the downward push of falls, he popped back up from under the water to see Xala and Laquin had overtaken him.
Through the loud noise of the rain and the roar of the flash river, Anaxis heard Mills crying out. He flipped over onto his stomach and saw his friend stuck in a log jam. The current was dunking him in and out of the water, and Mills screamed every time his head returned above water. Anaxis tried his hardest to swim against the current, to go back and help free Mills, but he was helpless against the massively powerful flow of the water.
The flash river took a sharp turn around a bend, which threw Laquin into the rocks. She yelped and disappeared under the water. When Anaxis hit her with his leg as he just barely managed to make it around the bend without smashing into the wall himself, he felt Laquin’s hand wrap around his ankle. Feeling her downward pull, Anaxis couldn’t help his instinct to try and shake her off. She only let go when the swirling undertow returned her to the surface.
“Sorry,” Laquin said as she gasped for air.
“It’s okay!” Anaxis answered.
The wash grew much wider after the bend, and the turbulence of the flash river slowed. Anaxis was able to spin around again now and see that Orn and Xala had survived the narrowest stretch of the canyon, though Mills was still nowhere to be seen. Anaxis saw a recess in the rock ahead, and, against instruction, angled himself toward it. He grabbed the side of the pocket as he went passed, and pulled himself into it.
“What are you doing?” Laquin asked as she floated past.
“I can’t leave Mills behind!” Anaxis answered.
Laquin said something in response, but Anaxis couldn’t hear her.
The water was still rising and the rain hadn’t relented for a moment. Soon, Anaxis thought, the water level would reach the top of the wash, and spill over. As he crouched in the rock, struggling to find any trace of Mills up the way, he knew that if he stayed too long that he would be trapped there and drowned. The pocket started to fill with water. It was at Anaxis’s waist seconds later. Realizing that waiting on the possibility of Mills’ reappearance wouldn’t do anyone any good, he reluctantly moved to push himself back out. Just before he did so, he saw Mills come spinning around the bend. Anaxis waited longer than he should have, until Mills was nearly beside him, to push with all his might and escape the flooded recess.
“I was trapped!” Mills shouted when he saw Anaxis come rushing up next to him.
“I know! I tried to come back to help you, but I couldn’t! I didn’t know what to do!” Anaxis shouted back.
“I lost my pack!”
“Me too!”
“This is terrible!” shouted Mills.
“It can’t last forever, can it?” Anaxis shouted.
The two dipped around another bend, which the other three already had, and saw a great drop-off ahead. Before they could say anything more to each other, they fell over a towering falls into a churning pool. They spun around the pool multiple times, until it shot them out through an extreme narrows into another, larger pool. They were pulled immediately to the edge of this pool, over another falls, and into a new channel, that continued undeterred down the wash.
Without any sign, the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started, and the clouds started to flee. The water level started to drop instantaneously.
“I think it’s over!” Mills shouted.
“Is it?” Anaxis asked, searching the sky.
Orn, Laquin, and Xala came back into view when the flash river slowed. The whole party sank down the walls of the canyon with the diminishing water level, to where they could touch the rock bottom with their feet, and then a few long, hard scrapes later, the flash river was completely gone, and the five were left gasping in puddles on the slick rock of the wash.
“Is it over?” Mills was the first to ask.
“I think it might be,” Xala answered.
“We’re all alive?” asked Orn.
“I think so. More or less,” answered Xala.
“Then we need to climb,” Orn said. “We need to get out of here before the rain starts again.”
The rain never did start again, and the five were dry when the sun began to climb into the sky the next morning.
“Great, another day,” Mills sneered at the sunrise with a scowl.
“Not just any day, Mills. Today’s the one we’ve been waiting for,” Laquin said with a happy sigh. “At last.”
“Oh? And what day is today?” asked Mills.
“Our last day of travel,” Laquin answered.
“Really?” Mills asked tentatively.
Laquin nodded and grinned.
“Whoo-hoo!” Mills cheered. “Oh, I can’t believe it! I really thought we were going to have
to walk forever!”
“How much longer do we have, anyways?” Xala asked. “I busted my knee pretty badly during the flood.”
“Not more than an hour or so,” Laquin answered.
“Oh, alright,” Xala said. “I can make it another hour.”
“That’s it, huh?” Anaxis asked. “It’s over?”
“What, are you sad? Please, Anaxis. I can’t wait,” said Mills.
“Don’t worry,” said Laquin. “You won’t have to.”
11
Rocks started to crop up from the desert floor not long after breakfast, accompanied by spiky little plants which came in all colors. Their vividness of their rainbow increased under the rising sun as the team trekked through their last day of hiking.
“And here we are,” Orn announced suddenly.
“Where?” asked Mills, looking around. “I thought you said we were finishing today?”
“We are. What we’re seeking is below us,” said Orn.
Mills looked down. “Oh.”
“The passage is tight, at first,” said Orn. “But it opens up quickly.”
Mills was about to ask another question when Orn slipped away through a patch of the rainbow shrubbery.
“Wha…Where’d he go?” asked Anaxis.
“Home,” said Laquin. “Home at last. We’ve reached Haven. Here. Come. I’ll show you.”
The three visitors from Talx watched Laquin squeeze down through the hole in the ground hiding in the bushes, then followed after. It took a moment for eyes to adjust to the subterranean darkness, but as they did, sparking striations in the ceiling and walls started to glitter.
“It’s beautiful,” Xala whispered in awe.
“Sure is,” agreed Laquin. “And all the more because it’s home.” She whistled.
A whistle came back from somewhere in the pitch-black depths.
“There he is,” Laquin said. “Follow closely after me. And watch your footing!”
The team crept along after Laquin into a much darker chamber.
“I’ve got just the thing for this,” Xala said, reaching into her bag and producing her bioluminescent lamp.
Legend of Alm -The Valor Saga Pt 1 - Falling Star Page 10
