Freda: Volume III in the New Eden series (7 page)

CHAPTER 7

Hours later, the eastern sky is tinged a pale rouge and the valley has brightened behind us, and I whisper thanks that the snows we thought were coming have held off. Tom, Dane, and Patrick huddle together a little way ahead while the rest of us relish a short rest. They peer at a folded paper that Dane carries, a hasty scribble copied in a rush from the ancient map that Tom exhumed from the Subterran libraries.

“Another half mile, and we should be safe,” Tom declares. “From what we know of the Bomb, the mountain itself should protect us from the Radiation.  See how the road bends around these peaks and starts descending?”

Descending. Descending into what, I wonder. The word crawls under my thick coat and skitters all over my skin. That unknown terrifies me, but I am so sick of climbing this mountain and so consumed by ache that anything other than up sounds blissful. Even Dane and Patrick droop with weariness. But it’s better not to think of fatigue.

I turn to one of the little boys nearby. He briefly but gratefully took his turn riding the horse an hour ago, though he’s kept pace with the leaders the rest of the night. “Descending,” I say to him. “Do you know what that means?”

He looks up, startled at my voice. Dawn on the mountaintop is as still as death, silent apart from a light breeze in the tops of the pines and the grinding breaths of the families around me. The little boy scrunches his face, thinking.

“Um... it doesn’t mean falling apart, does it?”

“That’s a good guess, but no,” I reply with a smile. “Perhaps you’re thinking of deteriorating or decaying.”

He’s probably too little to know those words, too, but if he asks what they mean I only have to point to this ancient road we’re following. Over the past three hundred years, it’s been doing both. Sometimes we lose the road, or it’s so overgrown or crumbled with landslides we have to leave it a while and find it again farther up. Most of the time, though, it’s carved a smooth and winding ascent from the valley floor to the mouth of the pass.

“Descending,” I teach, “means going down. Take a look there,” I say, pointing at the expanse of the valley below us. “See how high we’ve come? Tom says we’re near the top, and soon we can start going down the other side. Descending.”

He grins at me, his face brightening just as the thick clouds above us crack and show us a brief peek at the pale blue sky beyond.

When the clouds tumble themselves shut again, the boy frowns. “I wish the clouds would go away,” he says. “I want the sun! It’s cold.”

Dane glances at me, and we share an unspoken thought. Warmth, we would welcome, if only it didn’t come with sunlight.

Dane straightens, folds the paper and shoves it in a pocket, and barks out a command. “Two minutes. In two minutes we move.”

No one groans or begs for a longer rest. Although we can’t see him, we all know that Darius has likely already made the final connections. That one snap of sunlight is either God’s warning for us to keep moving, or the final brush stroke in Darius’ apocalyptic mural. Perhaps both.

Two minutes. That’s all I have left to look at our valley, to lock away a memory. This sight will be lost forever when we stagger around the rocks ahead. I stare out across the view, trying to seal it up in my mind like a secret to be kept safe but never forgotten. Later, I will unseal it and embroider the memory onto a cloth for the children to see.

The road we’ve trekked curls steeply down and away behind us to disappear along the curve of the mountainside. Directly before me is a cliff, a sheer fall hundreds of feet to a steep slope that drops to the valley floor. The valley, a hundred miles long and sixty wide, is an oval punched down flat amid the peaks. We sit in the southwest curve of that oval, overlooking Southshaw’s grazing lands. I can see the village, away past the forest, but I cannot see my own house amid the trees. Beyond the village lies the lake, an ashen mirror reflecting the sullen clouds that clog the sky. I can see the southern shore and not much more; the curve of the mountainside blocks the rest of the valley from view. If I were just a few miles farther north, I might be able to see Darius’ boats. But I’m glad I can’t.

Slowly I rise, my thighs and knees burning with agony. When I move, the little boy hops off the rock he’s sitting on, and he grins at me, erect and apparently ready to walk another fifteen miles.

He asks me, “Has it been two minutes?”

“I think it has,” I reply. “It is time to go, now.”

I look once more at the grim eastern peaks and think about what the Book of Laws says about them.
Venture not beyond the eastern range, for the Radiation in the East will last ten thousand years, and ten thousand more. Destroy all creatures emerging from those hills or they will Contaminate the people and destroy Southshaw.

“Do you think Reverend Timothy stood here?”

The little boy stands beside me, his hands on his hips, gazing over the valley. It’s not the big-eyed boy with the lisp who seemed so rapt by the story of Timothy last night. This one sat in the back, listening quietly.

“Perhaps,” I reply. “How do you think he felt when he saw this valley?”

The boy frowns and contemplates. “I think he was probably happy,” he says at last. “They were starving, and tired. God led them to their new home.” Then he looks up at me. “Will God lead us to a new home?”

I pause, unsure why I’m surprised at the question, and I find myself searching my heart for the answer.

Dane appears next to the child, and he smiles at me. “Of course He will,” Dane says, then playfully slaps his gloved hand on they boy’s back. “Come on. It’s time to get going. Can you help me get the others moving?”

I’m about to answer when I realize he was addressing the boy, not me. They hustle off toward the others, some of whom appear to have fallen asleep in the few minutes we’ve been here.

How did Timothy feel that day? Did he know he’d reached his destination? Will I know when we reach ours? How will I feel when—if—we ever do?

I heft my pack onto my shoulders and allow myself one final glance. The land is beautiful and majestic, but cold and distant. The scars of war persevere in places, like along the shore away east, where the rubble of a disassembled city stains the snow. The Founders took the city apart, bit by bit, and disposed of it; still, they left some as a reminder of the sins of our ancestors. Gregory lived near there, as did many of the Scouts who prowled the eastern ridges to keep that eastern border clean. Closer to us, a long, straight gash mars the forest where the Runway lies. I have never learned what the Runway was for. We don’t go there.

The others stir and gather up their sacks as they stand and stretch and groan.

How will we recognize our new home? Will it be beautiful? Lush? Will it have a lake, or a river, or an ocean? How interesting it would be to see an ocean. Will there be buildings from before the War? Will we encounter technology? Could other people, like the Tawtrukkers and the Subterrans, exist out there in the unknown, waiting to be discovered?

“Come on, dreamyhead,” Dane says as he grasps my hand. “We have to move. Where did you go, anyway?”

“What?” I let him guide me to the head of our wilting line, ignoring the aches that assault me with every step. “I’ve been right here.”

“No, I mean in your thoughts. You were clearly off somewhere else.”

I like that he was watching me. I feel warm from his attention, but I don’t want to sound too sentimental right now. I need to look strong. I need to be strong. “I was just thinking about... all those people who stayed behind.”

Dane nods, suddenly grim. “Me, too,” he says. “It still makes me mad. I wish they’d come with us.”

I squeeze his hand and walk beside him. The aches subside a bit as we shuffle along behind the horses led by Patrick and Tom through snow that reaches halfway to my knees. In five minutes we’ve rounded the corner, and the lake slides out of view. I don’t look back. There is nothing to see there anymore.

After a few more minutes, during which Dane continues to hold my hand, he leans closer to me and whispers, “You know, Darius could fail. Southshaw might live on.”

I’ve searched my heart. I wish that could be true, but I don’t believe it. I smile at him anyway. It is a nice thing for him to say. “Perhaps.”

We both walk on in silence, and I wonder if he’s also thinking that even if Darius does fail and we return to Southshaw, it will never be the same place we knew even just a year ago.

In twenty minutes, we’ve ventured so far into the pass that the peaks on either side rise up sharply a hundred feet or more. Our descent begins, and in another half hour we are walking smartly through shallower snow, no higher than my ankles. With each step we get farther away from danger. The young parents behind us know it, and the chatter of their children indicates they sense their parents’ unease waning.

Suddenly the clouds break open for real, and bright, sunny blue sky opens above us. The sun’s warmth fills us, and although our breath still fogs into the frozen air, the brightness feels lovely.

After we’ve walked an hour, Dane calls another rest to examine the map. While he and Tom mumble to each other and point in different directions, I watch the children. Two duck and dodge behind trees, laughing as they throw snowballs at each other. Two have cleared a nearby boulder of snow and lie atop it, basking like lizards in the sunlight. Everyone has dropped their burdens wherever they stopped, and some have found dry patches under trees where they sit, heads resting on their knees. The horses stand motionless, as if carved of brown granite.

Our narrow, tightly tamped trail snakes away behind us, disappearing among the trees that cover this side of the mountain. Have we really crossed over? I know we’ve been descending for an hour or more, and the peaks rise behind us. I’m not sure what I expected, but they look so... normal. Maybe I expected the back sides of the peaks to be like the rear of a house—or maybe like the back of a person. All these years I imagined the mountains were keeping watch over us, facing Southshaw with their backs turned against the desolate, charred world beyond. But they’re just mountains, and I’m embarrassed by the mild wonder I feel at how natural it all looks.

“We turn north here,” Dane declares after a long consultation with Tom and then with Patrick. He points into the wilderness, indicating we will be walking along the backside of the mountain range rather than downhill. “This is the way to the meet-up.”

The meet-up. It seemed inconceivable when we planned it out on Subterra’s faded, ancient maps. Lupay and Fobrasse would lead the Tawtrukkers and Subterrans over the ridge and south through the appropriately named Desolation Wilderness, to a friendly-sounding place called Aloha where a lake used to be. It was the strangest feeling, looking at those maps. No one in Southshaw had ever seen a map with markings from before the War. Cities, roads, bridges covering miles and miles and miles... all my life I had thought of it only as blackened, burned craters glowing with the Radiation.

“Grab your stuff, everyone,” announces Patrick as he heads over to check on the horses. The two children in the trees throw one more snowball. The two on the boulder slip down to the snowy ground. All around, people retrieve their belongings to continue our trek.

It’s a wonder that the land has healed so well, at least up here in the mountains. Has the whole world healed like this? Or has this land in particular been touched by divine grace?

When we reach the meet-up, Dane and I will read Prophecies. No one living has read it except Darius, though Linkan told my father about parts of it through the years. Linkan said that Prophecies tells the thirteenth Semper to lead his people west, where we will find a paradise cleansed of evil and full of—

The whole sky above us flares bright white for an instant and then pales back to cloudy gray-blue, as if the very sun had come to Earth for a single second and then retreated, leaving all as it was. We all gasp at the sight, and some of the children point as they watch the sky in case it flashes white again.

I look to Dane, who frowns as his eyes meet mine. I can see what he’s thinking, and we both glance at Tom, who looks as confused as we are. But that couldn’t have been the Bomb. Bombs are supposed to make incredible noise and tear great holes in the Earth and send smoke and fire to incredible heights. None of those things happened. The flash was silent. An instant of whiteness.

Perhaps it’s a sign. Perhaps God is telling us he stopped Darius, that it’s safe to return to Southshaw. I start to smile at the thought and begin to speak this to Dane just as he starts shaking his head in a dark “no” motion.

Then I see it, rising slowly over the peaks to the northeast. Right about where Lower Tawtrukk would be.

An enormous, tumultuous cloud of steam and fire, miles and miles wide, writhing up from the valley toward the heavens. It grows as it climbs, leaving a pillar of tortured smoke and ash as it rises. It looks like the very air is on fire.

The children stop pointing, mouths agape. It’s like the pit of Hell has opened up, and the Devil is taking shape before our eyes, uncoiling and growing like it will never stop, like its fire and smoke will swallow up everything, will consume the heavens and mountains and the entire world.

Beneath my feet the Earth shudders, and an indistinct rumbling fills the air. It’s a little like standing in the bed of an empty wagon as the horses are hitched up. The ground does not split open. Trees do not fall. The cloud of fire burns a few seconds more and then grays to ash and smoke. But it’s a cloud now. Just a cloud. Within a few more seconds as we watch, it stretches eastward on the high winds, flowing across the valley.

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