by K. T. Tomb
“I think you will find Khaera in the great city.”
Chapter Seven
The heated discussion concerning his going alone back into the dark world was still stuck in his memory as he slid back the stone slab covering the hole into the dark world inside of the kiva.
It was the strangest argument he had ever had in his life because he agreed with both sides of it and disagreed with both sides. In the end, it simply made more sense for him to go alone. He assumed that she would be with him in his mind, but quickly discovered that after swimming through the pool and descending the stairway into the cave that her thoughts were no longer with him. He was truly alone.
He hesitated as he looked down into the hole, holding the dagger in front of him. The ladder and the stone room below were dimly lit by its eerie light. A part of him wanted to turn back. He did not ever want to be separated from Naomi, physically or mentally. The thought suddenly occurred to him that they were not exactly alike emotionally. Though their emotions were sometimes communicated in their thoughts, reading her emotions had not come along with the package.
“For God’s sake, Parke, get on with this already,” he muttered to himself.
With a sudden boost of motivation, he placed his feet on the rungs of the ladder and started downward. He paused a moment, thinking that he had better leave it open. Returning with a baby and struggling to move the stone slab aside might not be a good thing if he happened to be in a hurry.
When his feet touched the floor of the dark world kiva, he paused once more, looking back up the ladder and through the hole. Though it was a little less frightening to be in the round stone room than it had been before, the understanding that he might soon lose his life in all dimensions suddenly struck home. His studio and even the constant torment of living with Melissa was easier to face than what he was about to undertake. He pulled his eyes away from the hole and relative safety and turned them toward the doorway leading out of the stone room.
“Let’s get this over with,” he whispered and started on his way.
As he started along the trail that the tall men had followed before, he noticed that there was the beginning of ambient light rising above the distant horizon. Maybe what Hosteen John had told him was true. Maybe the sun really did rise for a period of time, like winter in the lower portions of the arctic. He had never been to Alaska, but he had seen photos and understood the scientific explanation behind it. He wondered how it applied in the dark world, or the first world, as Hosteen John called it.
“Needing to know the answer to the questions of how and why is prison for you, Parke.” The words of Hosteen John echoed through his mind.
As the light began to increase little by little, he was able to make out deep red slopes and the sandstone table tops of mesas. There was some greenery along the valley floor, but mostly, it was dry sage and bunch grass with junipers scattered about, just like in its counterpart in the “real world,” wherever and whatever that was. Had Parke not accepted the fact that wherever he happened to be was the actual real world to him, he would have gone crazy long ago. Perhaps that was the reason he had been broken in slowly through visions and dreams rather than simply being whisked away by the power of the dagger.
He was over-thinking things again.
He concentrated on following the trail and trying to find landmarks which would help him find his way back to the kiva in case he got turned around somehow. He picked out unique stone features or particular trees or clusters of brush that were different than the others around them. If he couldn’t find his way back, then rescuing Khaera was useless. Having been a painter since he had first taken up a brush in an art class in junior high school, his eye for detail and picking out distinct features was very well honed, and those features which he locked in his mind were as good as a road map.
The sun first revealed a tiny sliver on the horizon and then slowly made an ascent until it was balancing like a ball atop the mesa at the head of the valley through which he was traveling. How far was it to the great city? Had he planned for enough light to get there, do what he needed to do in order to find Khaera, and return? He would have felt better to at least be able to make some sort of plan rather than just dive right in and start out on an unknown mission in a place that he knew nothing about.
He moved forward cautiously, scanning the surrounding hills and peering as far as he could up the valley, hoping to catch at least a glimpse of the great city that he was seeking. No longer needing the dagger, he slipped it into his pocket and kept a wary eye on his surroundings. He took note of the vegetation around him. He realized that if he had not come through such a strange portal to arrive in that place, he might have been walking any number of valleys or canyons in any one of the four corners states. In fact, some of the features of the land reminded him of Western movies that he’d loved as a child and which had never drifted far from his heart even as a grown up. Could this world be a mirror of the other?
He was overthinking things again.
As an hour passed while he was following the trail, he noticed that the glowing orb sitting atop the mesa seemed to have moved across the top of it for a distance, like a large ball rolling slowly on a large table. He picked out a particular piñon pine along the rim of the mesa to use as a marker and continued walking. Time dragged on and he saw no sign that he was any closer to the great city than he was before. He began to wonder if it was even real.
Many of the things that Hosteen John had told him had been prefaced by a couple of phrases that began to disturb him more and more; “many say” and “some say.” He was wandering in a strange land, hoping to rescue the child of the woman that he loved with nothing more than hearsay as his guide. The thought, however, was suddenly overshadowed by the thought that Naomi was the woman he loved. Was that possible? He was in love with Melissa, or had been anyway. Was he no longer in love with her? Had his loyalties changed? Things were certainly very strained between them, but had he stopped loving her and began to love someone else?
As Melissa had steadily gotten more and more critical of him, he had at first resented her, but he later came to a point where he pitied her. She had been such a sweet, giving and caring woman before Corporate America took her away from him. She had been his dream, she had been the only person he could think about when they were apart, and she had been the one that he longed for. He had never stopped believing that the Melissa that he loved and married would someday return. Their trip to the Grand Canyon had been a part of that lingering hope. For a while, it had worked. For several days, she had let go of her busy, critical world and revealed that a tiny ember of the old Melissa was still burning. But then the ember had been snuffed out and with it a portion of his hope. Was this “quest” a search for new hope? He had no more chance to overthink things, because in the same moment that the idea entered his mind, he heard the sharp command of a voice very near him.
He did not understand the words of the command, but as he turned in a full circle and watched more than a dozen of the tall, slender men with the large eyes and claws on their fingertips rise from the brush all around him, the meaning became very clear. He was captured. The raised assortment of rifles and pistols also brought him another revelation; they were stealing more than baby girls from the world above.
Not exactly sure what the protocol for being captured was in the first world, Parke simply raised his hands and placed them on top of his head and waited. There was no point in attempting to run or fight. They had him dead to rights and he was still alive. Staying that way was his only chance. Fear began to take a deep hold on him as he wondered what they would do with him. He had heard horror stories of Native American torture rituals and seen some of them portrayed by Hollywood. Would these other-world creatures be even worse? For all he knew, they might be cannibals and he was on the evening’s menu.
They ran a pole over his shoulders and trussed his forearms through it with leather strings that cut deep into his arms as they wrapped them tightly
. One of the men even snatched the dagger from his pocket and stood in front of him, staring at it and drawing a crowd around him. The words they spoke were entirely foreign to him. In fact, they did not seem like any form of language at all, merely a series of grunts, groans and occasional ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’.
Parke watched to see their reaction when the dagger heated up, but it seemed to remain cold in the observer’s hands. He has lost his way. The thought entered his mind and it caused a brief smile to spread across his lips.
The one with the dagger saw the smile and snapped a string of what Parke could only assume were expletives at him and then pushed the barrel of the gun he was carrying into his chest.
Parke assumed that the end had come and closed his eyes, awaiting the feeling of the steel missile traveling at high speed to rip into his chest and explode his heart. The missile never came, neither did the report of the firearm; instead, there was only the hearty laughter of the men gathered around him as they enjoyed their ability to intimidate him.
Their fun ended when one of the men who seemed to be in charge snatched the dagger away from the one who had been examining it so intensely and then ordered the group to start their captive up the trail. It appeared as though he would be spared for the time being. The only positive that he could bring out of the experience was that he would likely be given a full escort to the great city. Reaching for a thread of hope, he realized that as badly as things had turned out, he was still moving in the right direction and was still alive. Perhaps it was better not to over-think things after all.
The sun moved well past the piñon pine that he had marked out on the mesa as he and his escorts kicked up dust on the trail at a slow, steady pace. They rounded a bend in the trail and the great city began to appear before them. It looked nearly identical to what he remembered seeing when he and Melissa had visited Mesa Verde. There were several miles of the sandstone caves pressed back into the slope of the mesa and within those sandstone caves were the stone dwellings stacked one atop the other. Many of them were in disarray, just like the ruins at Mesa Verde, but as they continued further along the widening valley, many more of them were in much better condition.
The first sliver of the glowing orb was beginning to sink below the top of the mesa when he was abruptly shoved toward a large opening and then roughly escorted inside. Without a watch or any other measure of telling time, he guessed that the sun had taken about an hour to rise and had stayed atop the mesa for maybe four hours. Six hours of daylight. Not that knowing what time it was would do him any good.
The interior of the room that he was pushed into was much larger than anything that he had seen at Mesa Verde. It was like a large assembly hall, with tall ceilings, thick wooden columns and beams for structure and plenty of space for a very large number of people to assemble. At the far end of the great hall, Parke thought he saw something like a large stone throne with one of the tall figures sitting upon it.
It was only a few moments before he was brought face to face with perhaps the ugliest single being he had ever seen in his life. Where the others seemed to be little more than mere skeletons, the king – or at least that was what Parke was wont to call him – was grossly obese. The large eyes and deformed head that sat atop his body made Parke think of Jabba the Hutt. Stifling the laugh that was suddenly fighting to burst from his chest, Parke was quickly brought back to reality as one of his captors shoved him to his knees in front of the throne and the grotesque figure sitting upon it. The figure was all the more grotesque when Parke looked up and saw the long, spiraling claws, which protruded at least 18 inches from his toes.
Unintelligible shouts and commands were directed at him, none of which he understood or was able to respond to. His captors became more and more violent as they tried to force him to understand and respond. It was of no use. He understood nothing.
“I don’t understand you!” he finally screamed out, not knowing what else to do.
A hush fell over the group as they each looked at one another in search of an explanation for the sounds they had just heard come from his mouth. A whisper began to spread into a soft chatter between the lot of them, and then the leader of his captors stepped forward with the dagger and presented it to the king.
After examining it for a moment, the king swept his arm to one side and spoke as though he was issuing a command. The leader of the captors took Parke into a long, narrow passageway and through what seemed like a maze of tunnels and narrow hallways. Parke had to turn sideways in most of them in order to pass through with his arms trussed up the way they were on the pole. Finally, he was pushed into an empty stone room and then shoved very hard with a heavy foot.
Trussed up the way he was, nothing prevented Parke from hurtling headlong into the stone wall on the opposite side of the small room. As his head made contact with the solid wall, all sorts of colors exploded in his head, and then everything went black.
Chapter Eight
Parke had no way of measuring how long he had been out.
He thought that he remembered hearing sounds and fading in and out of consciousness for a while, but he wasn’t certain if a great deal of time had passed or if he simply made it all up. For a moment, he wasn’t even sure where he was until he felt the numbness of his trussed up arms and the tightness of the leather strings cutting into his flesh.
He strained his ears, listening for any sound in the darkness. It was the same depth of darkness that he remembered from the stone room. How long ago had that been? Had two days passed, or more? He remembered the sun beginning its descent before he was “interviewed” by the king. Very likely it was dark once more.
He recalled how he had come up with a solution for finding the stone room, the columns in the middle and the ladder. He remembered little about the room he was in at that moment, however, but could recall the twisting labyrinth they had followed as he was being escorted to where he lay. How would he get out of this mess?
“Jesus, Parke, the dagger,” he muttered his disgust in himself. “I wish I had the dagger.” In the very same instant, it appeared in his hand.
Gripping it with his numb fingers in order to cut through the leather strings took every ounce of his concentration and he nearly dropped it twice before he was finally successful in getting one of the strings cut. With one hand free, he worked his fingers until he had more feeling in his hand. The heat of the dagger helped considerably and he quickly cut the other bond loose and worked the fingers of his other hand to bring it back to life.
Using the dim glow of the dagger, he gathered up the leather strings, coiled them and stuffed them into his pocket. He reached for the pole as well and then stood. The rush of blood to his head and the splitting headache made him stumble. Dropping the pole, he braced himself against the wall which had so rudely welcomed him into the room. Parke waited until he was a bit more steady before he retrieved the pole again and moved quietly toward the doorway.
He had no idea where he needed to go or who might be lurking around any of the dozens of corners that he had turned while being taken to his cell. It didn’t need a door. A man with his arms trussed up the way his had been would never be able to maneuver back out of the labyrinth without alerting the entire city. Without his arms trussed up, however, he could move slowly and quietly along, being led by the glow of the dagger.
He hoped that it was nighttime and that they would all be asleep while he made his escape. If he was lucky, he would escape and live to face another day. Then his conscience took him in its grasp. He had to rescue Khaera. He silently cursed his sense of duty, but was unable to fight off what he knew was right. He was in the city. He was exactly where he had set out to be. He had assumed failure when he was captured, but something was beginning to grow inside of him that had eluded him before. At that moment, his confidence began to take root.
Circumstances had occurred in his life and he had always tried to determine if they were good or bad. What he was beginning to discover, however, is that cir
cumstances were neutral. What came into your life in any particular moment could be applied to whatever situation was available to create a new circumstance. At that moment, he understood Hosteen John’s words. His need to know the answer to how and why had indeed become his prison.
Where would Khaera be? Likely, she would be somewhere near the “throne room.” If the plan was to raise her to be bred and produce offspring, then they would surely keep her in the most central and most active portion of the city. It made sense, though it was entirely possible that she was in any number of the thousands of dwellings, and he could spend a lifetime looking for her. He suddenly realized that he hadn’t thought this part of the rescue through at all.
He began a slow, methodical search along the labyrinth of corridors, again taking in details that might later help him recall where he had been. With the pole as a weapon and the dagger as an eerie source of dim light, he searched the small rooms one by one. Several times, he had to duck inside of an empty room and slip the glowing dagger into his pocket as a sentry wandered by. The fact that they were guarding something encouraged him for a moment, but then he realized that they might be guarding him.
As he searched, he wondered if anyone had noticed that the dagger was missing. It was unlikely. Unless the king was actually holding it in his hand when it disappeared, they would not even be aware it was gone. Even if it had it disappeared in his hand, he would have assumed that there was some sort of magic in it, but they would not necessarily make a connection to assume that it would have been returned to Parke’s hands.
He was hiding from a sentry in an empty room when the first, faint sound of a crying baby reached his ears. It was so faint at first, that he wondered if he had simply imagined it; however, after the guard passed and he was able to slip down another corridor, he heard the sound again. He could only guess the direction from which the sound was coming, but he had to at least make an attempt.
