by A. L. Knorr
The light in the cave seemed to dim as a cloud either moved across the setting sun, or maybe we simply hadn’t noticed how much time had slipped away while we were discussing this find.
"I'll need to call our sponsor," said Ethan, looking around at everything except for me. It seemed to me that he was now deliberately avoiding my gaze. You're being paranoid, Petra, I thought. He just doesn't know what to think. The whole thing is freaky and supernatural. I'd be spooked too if I were hearing my story for the first time—in fact, I was spooked. Overall, he was taking it very much in stride, considering.
"Let’s get back to camp." Ethan held out a hand to Ibby to go up the ladder first. "We have some decisions to make."
But by the time we got back to camp, we were all emotionally and physically exhausted from the hike and the events of the last several hours. We drank more water and snacked on bread and jam sandwiches.
Ibby's jaw cracked as a huge yawn overtook her. "I don't want to miss anything, but I'm shattered." She looked at Ethan with watery eyes. "What if we talked more about what to do next over breakfast, when we're all fresh?”
Ethan nodded in agreement. Dark circles had blossomed under his eyes. "Sleep sounds wise. I couldn’t do a simple math problem right now with the way I’m feeling.”
Jesse gave me a small smile and squeezed my arm as we all said goodnight to one another.
I crawled into my tent and collapsed into my sleeping bag without changing into my pajamas.
Chapter 14
I was so comatose that I would have slept through a freight train. So, when strong hands grabbed me harshly and suddenly in the middle of the night, I thought at first I was having a very convincing nightmare. I tried to scream but it stoppered in my throat where it felt like some wraith had a chokehold on my windpipe. I’d had dreams where I was unable to scream before, but this one felt so real. My heart exploded in my chest and a sound of choking and suffocation filled my ears. My choking. My suffocation. My eyes searched desperately for something to purchase on in the blackness. The lack of oxygen in my body jolted me fully awake and I realized with a heart-stopping fear, that I was being taken from my tent in the dead of night. I began to thrash wildly, putting all the energy I had into freeing myself to breathe. My wrists and ankles were held in a vise-like grip and all my thrashing only served to exhaust my muscles and make every fiber scream and burn for oxygen.
There was the sound of a lighter being snapped on and the flash of a small flame. Black eyes shone from an intense face. Dark, angry eyes. The eyes were desperate and fearful. The owner of the eyes was almost completely silent, and only the sound of breath being sucked in through his nose made me realize he was on the edge of panic. A soft, suffocating fabric replaced the hand over my mouth and a hand cupped my skull and pressed my face into the towel, which reeked like ammonia.
All went sweetly black.
The weight of my body lying parallel to the earth and swaying up and down dragged me slowly to consciousness. The feeling of a bar against my wrist and my fingers trailing through air began to nudge away the fog in my brain. My head throbbed and felt like it was the size of a watermelon, full of heavy gel and pounding like a giant heart. I worked to open my eyes but they felt stuck, seamed together and fastened with glue. My mouth hurt, its corners pulled back by something jammed between my teeth and tied tightly behind my head. A gag, and the thought of being gagged and all the connotations that came along with it was the catalyst for me to force my eyes open.
The world was a blur of dim colors. A headache pulsed in my temples, different from the one I got from reading people’s thoughts. Terror nauseated me and I tried to scream for help around the gag in my mouth. I sucked air in through my nose so hard and fast that my sinuses burned and my eyes watered, blurring my vision. Tears leaked from my eyes and dripped back into my hairline. I squeezed my eyes shut in an effort to clear my sight.
I was on a stretcher, which explained the way my body was being jostled. My muscles felt weak and shaky, as though it was going to require all of the power I had to lift my hand off the edge of the stretcher and ease the pain of the bar pressing against my forearm.
Blurry figures moved against a hazy background and the smell of the air told me it was early morning. My eyes opened and my vision cleared a bit. I frantically looked around, desperate to orient myself. Men clustered around a campfire. Two camels curled up in the sand behind them, munching their cuds without a care in the world. Faces turned to me, over shoulders and above other heads. Eyes followed me. Tanned faces with dark brooding eyes. Two of the faces looked familiar.
A wall of canvas cut off the faces and I fell into shade. It took all the effort I had to roll my head from one side to the other, and the muscles in my neck screamed with agony. How long had I been unconscious? Where was I? The apathy that I had woken into began to clear away as a humid morning mist burns away under the heat of a fat sun.
I sucked in a breath as fear knotted my intestines. My eyes rolled as my thoughts cleared–I had been taken from my bed. Drugged. Abducted. Fury began to build in me. Indignation that my rights had been snatched away.
Just as my eyes were gaining purchase on the two men who had carried me into this tent, the stretcher was lowered and then upturned.
With a shocked squeal through the gag, I rolled off the stretcher and landed hard on my chest and stomach in the sand. The breath was knocked out of me and I began to struggle to breathe again. My desperate gasps for air filled the tent. My arms were yanked behind my back as my body was jerked backward and upright. Sharp pains in my wrists made me gasp and finally, oxygen filled my lungs again.
Voices spoke in Tamahaq, fast and fearful. I could recognize that it was Tamahaq because I had heard our security team and our laborers from Ghat speak it.
Fear clouded my thoughts and my heart raced and burned in my chest, even my left arm was burning. Stress. I clenched my eyes shut, wondering if I might actually have a heart attack. It was that difference that I had noted in the cave that calmed me, the steady, powerful pulse of energy in my chest that reminded me that I was not completely helpless. Without opening my eyes, I reached for any thoughts near me that were not my own–probing and seeking. Who were my captors, and what did they want?
Opening my eyes, I glared up into the face that hovered just over mine. He startled at my snapping gaze and said something with urgency to whoever was behind me. They fastened my wrists together to the tent pole behind me.
I tried to say ‘What do you want?’ but the words were only a muffled croak against the gag.
The men began to speak rapidly, and were clearly in a hurry to get away from me. I lifted the barrier of my mind to see if I could glean anything from their minds. Their thoughts flew about the tent like bats, difficult to catch and fueled by terror. Why were they so afraid of me? I had no intention of hurting anyone. I gave up speaking and tried to catch one of these flying mental clues, but caught only words in a foreign tongue, meaningless.
In a final argument and with a spray of sand over my lap, the men left the tent as though it was on fire. They left me panting through my nose, confused, and angry. They closed the flap and blocked out most of the sun, leaving me in only a line of dim light.
I brought the barrier back down, wincing at the new headache which was building on top of the old one. My thoughts, which had been shattered and blown apart by the drug they'd forced on me, began to roll slowly back together like beads of mercury.
Three of the faces I had seen at the fire came back to me. Members of our security team. Their names pelted me in the head like someone throwing snowballs. Mifta. Abu. Hassan.
The memory of the people scrambling for the Jeeps and yelling Euroklydon! in the same tones you'd yell bomb! came tumbling back. These people were terrified of me. So terrified that they weren't content to just run far away and leave me be, they had to return and apprehend me in the dark of night, like thieves. They had to have me in their control. What for? Whatever it was for
, it wasn't going to be good. Did they think I was the Ghibli personified? Responsible for burying their cities and suffocating the desert people over the centuries? It seemed too bizarre to be true.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the tent pole. My body ached but my head hurt most of all. I was so thirsty. My mouth felt pasty, my tongue swollen. The fabric between my teeth was stealing any moisture from my mouth. I bit down on the gag hard and in anger. The sound of my teeth grinding against the fabric was loud in my ears.
My thinking was clearing but still felt slow and sluggish. Here I was, powerful enough to lift many tons of stone with just the energy living inside me, yet I was tied up like a goat to a stake. I looked around. The tent was barren–a simple canvas sheet draped over two posts, its edges pinned down into the sand. There was nothing in here with me save the sound of my own breathing and whatever insects were living in the sand beneath me.
My mind scrambled to lay purchase on a plan of some kind. I had abilities, but they were abilities and powers I didn't fully understand. I had shattered the glass in the cave accidentally by matching its frequency with my heart. Could I do something similar here? But shatter what?
The sound of angry talk outside made me cock my head. A woman's voice could be heard amidst the men's chatter––soft and appealing, only to be interrupted and cut down. Were they talking about me?
I tried to twist my palm so that I could lay it against the tent pole, but the best I could do was press the side of my first knuckle and the pad between my thumb and forefinger against the wood. I closed my eyes and tuned in to the pole. Its frequency was dull and slow but detectable. I took a deep breath and slowed the drum in my chest to match it. The wood began to buzz and vibrate, sending out a strange din, but it didn't shatter. Of course it didn't. Glass shattered because it was brittle and inflexible. Wood didn’t have this same quality. I opened my eyes and let the oscillation in my chest return to normal. The wood went still and quiet. I wouldn't be able to shatter the rope, either.
I looked down at the sand between my bent knees and gave it a mental shove. A long gouge blew through the sand, blowing particulate toward the tent door with a dry spatter. An idea took hold. I looked up at where the tent pole lifted the canvas up in a point. Focusing on the tent pole, I took purchase on it with my mind and directed the pole upward, out of the earth. Nothing happened. I frowned, confused. I could lift a huge block of rock but I couldn't lift a tentpole out of the ground? This wasn't making sense.
I repeated the experiment with the sand, this time hitting it in another direction. The sand responded and I left another gouge in the dirt floor. A pile of sand blew against the canvas wall, punching it out. I froze. That punch would have easily been detectable from the outside and I didn't want to draw any additional attention to myself. I listened, my heart pounding, but the voices had moved away from my tent and were just a murmur in the distance––and calmer now.
I looked up at the tent pole again. So why did the pole not respond to my mental command, but the sand did? I tried again, wrapping my mental fingers around the wood and applying a command for the pole to move up and out of the earth. The result was the same. Nothing. I snuffed a frustrated breath out of my nose but in the same moment, I realized that I had a solution anyway. If the tent pole wouldn't budge, but the sand would, then I could simply dig my way into the sand at its base until it toppled and I could free my hands.
And then what? Crawl out of the tent and run away across the sand? In which direction? For how long? This was the Sahara. It was the largest desert in the world. Aside from the men and at least one woman clustered around a firepit, and the camels, I took in no more information about my surroundings. I didn't know if I was near a city, like Ghat, or if they'd taken me farther into the Acacus, or across the dunes to some remote camp.
I had power, but what was I prepared to do with it to secure my freedom? I couldn't understand their thoughts or anticipate their actions, at least not unless I could find one of them who thought in pictures, but even that wouldn't provide much of a defense. I might only be able to anticipate their actions seconds before it happened, which was not enough of an advantage. And the whole time I'd have to fight the headache that came with mind-reading.
I should at least wait until dark.
What if they have plans for you before dark?
Then I'll blow sand in their eyes, try and commandeer a vehicle of some kind, and run, in any direction.
Not much of a plan, Petra.
It's all I've got.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back against the tent pole again, to wait.
Chapter 15
The sound of night insects roused me and I opened my eyes to the dark inside the tent. I grimaced as I moved my head, my neck muscles protesting having been bent in an unnatural position for so long. My hair tickled my face and lips and I shook my head to move it away, immediately regretting it as my neck spasmed. I wished I hadn't fallen asleep. Now I had no idea what time it might be. I listened and heard no movement, only the sound of the wind and of fine particles of sand occasionally hitting the side of the tent.
As I was struggling to my feet, the sound of the tent zipper being slid open nearly sent me into a fit of panic. I gasped and lurched back against the tent pole, bruising my shoulder blade and knocking the back of my head against the wood.
A slender-fingered and pale hand thrust itself into my vision, followed by a familiar ghostly face.
"Molly," I gasped as she freed the cloth from my mouth. I flexed my jaw and touched my dry, cracked lips with my tongue. The sides of my mouth felt like they had cracked at the seams. I took a breath to still the aching thrum of the battery in my chest.
"I’m sorry it took me so long,” she whispered. “I saw them bring you in, but I couldn’t get away earlier. We have to move. Quickly." She pulled something from her pocket. A dull gleam of metal from the moonlight spilling in through the tent door told me it was a utility knife, the kind you'd use to cut open boxes. She freed the blade from where it was hidden in the handle.
I swallowed hard and went stiff as she moved behind me and cut the binds at my wrists. After several moments of sawing, my wrists came free. I stifled a groan of both relief and pain as agony bolted through my shoulders and arms. I rubbed my shoulders and upper arms, moved and rotated them to increase circulation. I crossed my arms in front of my chest and hugged myself to stretch my cramped upper back muscles.
Molly tucked the blade away into a pocket and clasped me by the shoulders. Looking me in the eye, moonlight illuminating only half of her face, she mouthed unnecessary words: "Be very, very quiet."
I nodded. My mouth felt dry as sawdust and just when she'd given me the directive to be silent, there was a dry tickle in my throat and I fought the urge to cough. The blood pressure in my head increased and I covered my mouth to keep the cough in. Fine time to have a hacking attack.
She splayed her hands on her chest, and then down to her hips, as though looking for something. A hand disappeared into a back pocket and she retrieved a small bottle. She unscrewed the top and handed it to me. "Drink."
I snatched at the bottle, my throat convulsing against my will to keep silent. I swallowed greedily and the dryness in my throat washed away in a flood of cool water. I finished the whole bottle and wished for more. I gave her a look bursting with gratitude. Gesturing for me to follow her, she poked her head out of the tent and looked about. She stepped out into the sand and reached back a hand, which I took. I allowed her to pull me along, and our feet padded nearly silently on the sand of the Sahara.
Under a half-moon, I was able to see my prison for the first time. Haphazard clusters of tents and shacks crouched under the starlit sky like hulking trolls sleeping under blankets. Jeeps and other vehicles were parked seemingly at random. The firepit I had been carried past earlier loomed like a black hole in the sand. Dark blobs of rocks for chairs formed a circle around it like it was the site of some ancient megalithic c
onstruction. Beyond, in the far distance, a yellow glow lit the sky and a thin line of twinkly lights crouched low over the desert horizon, disappearing behind dunes.
Following my rescuer, my heart in my mouth and my throat crying out for more water, I slunk from shadow to shadow until we reached a Jeep on the outer edge of the encampment.
"Get in," she whispered. "Door is open."
I couldn't have been happier to oblige. I hooked my fingers into the seam behind the door and pulled it open silently. Slipping my butt onto the seat, I realized then that my whole body was shaking with fear and adrenalin.
Molly was already in the driver's seat. She looked over at me in the dark with a broad grin of white teeth. "Don't close the door yet," she said, and I nodded, holding the door open a crack with my hand, the way she was doing.
When she started the engine, I held my breath, half expecting an angry mob to materialize out of the sand and chase after us, waving machetes and rifles in the air. Thankfully, that didn't happen. We closed our doors as she rolled the Jeep in a half-circle, the lights off, and then straightened the wheels until we were heading down a sand dune. The camp was swallowed up in darkness behind us.
She flicked on the lights and illuminated the desert ahead. Tire tracks led away into the distance over rolling dunes, as far as the lights could show us.
I swallowed and then coughed. "Do you have any more water? I'm parched."
She jabbed a thumb at the back seat. "Behind you.”
I twisted to look in the back seat and saw a cluster of bottles. I grabbed one and had the cap off and was gulping greedily before I'd even turned around.
"Poor thing." Molly made a clucking sound, then barked a disbelieving laugh of relief. She shook her head. "I've seen some things in my day." She didn't have to add that she'd never seen anything quite like my kidnapping.
