Athel (17 page)

Chapter
Sixteen

Athel

Day Number: 1,588

Event: Tahari ordered an evacuation

Number of Mayakes left: 428

Goal for today: Hide in the forest and
prepare for the attack.

The sun hangs low on the horizon.
Pink clouds roll over the mesa, soon swallowed by the orange glow from the
Gaijins’ factory. Everything seems so normal, so ordinary. Yet the air is
tense, faces are grim, and the silence is heavy as people gather in the
clearing outside the Tower. Those of us who own horses bring them out into the
paddock and harness them. Some have small carriages, others bring out wagons
and load them with goats and cages crowded with chickens.

Hennessy
has just returned from the forest with Yuri and Cal. Yuri messaged me as soon
as they were back within our network.

Not found. Sorry, dude
.

First time
he’s ever said the word “sorry.” I wonder if he told his father about the
rocket, if he at least tried to convince him to let them keep looking, despite
the mandatory evacuation.

It’s too
late now anyway.

The two
brothers run off to pack their things while Hennessy joins the other Kiva
Members patrolling the premises outside the Tower. He scowls at the wagons and
orders them away.

“Be
reasonable, people!” Hennessy shouts. “We’ll be hiding in the forest. How do
you expect those big things to make it through the narrow trails?”

“I own
thirty goats,” a man complains. “What am I supposed to do with them? Leave them
behind?”

“What’s
more important?” Hennessy asks. “Your family or the goats?”

The man
bows his head and shuffles away, waving for his wife and children to get off
the wagon.

Dottie’s
eyes twinkle with emotion as she and Mom load the cart with the essential
things we’ll need: dry food, blankets, our TBC battery chargers. Our pets.

Kael is a
cyborg, so we could deactivate him before caging him so he won’t suffer during
the trip. But Ash isn’t, and now he mews and rasps his claws at the door of his
kennel, trying to get out. Dottie tries to comfort him as best as she can, but
the poor kitten is restless.

Taeh sways
her long tail and keeps her head low as I fit the bridle around her head.
 

We were so
close. We found two doors to the Underground City, and the rest were clearly
labeled on the map. Once Yuri gave up the Prudence key, we had four
chavis
—four doors we could’ve
unlocked. When Lukas and I returned from the forest, we were excited. And then
Dottie and Wes gave us the bad news.

The last
key, the one that was supposed to unlock the city, is missing.

Somebody’s
taken it.

I should’ve
run back to the forest to warn Lilun. But I couldn’t. The evacuation had
already started. People were swarming the stairwells and hallways of the Tower
carrying their things, shouting, holding their loved ones. Mom whisked me away
and told me to prepare Taeh’s harness because we had to load the cart.

I can’t
believe the last
chavi
vanished just
like that. Who could’ve taken it? And why doesn’t Tahari confront every Mayake
out there until the key turns up?

Lukas and
his uncle Akari bring a few more bags to load on our cart: tools, a few
essential supplies, and small robotic parts we can’t afford to lose. Akari
exchanges a few words with Mom, their voices low, the conversation kept to a
minimum: yes, no, we’re good. Nobody mentions tomorrow. It’s as though time has
frozen in this instant. The past is gone and the future stalled. Best to act
mechanically and not even think, load another bag on the cart and move to the
next item, as though all this were normal, a well-practiced routine, our eyes
cast away from the Tower, our home, our land, all we’ve ever known.

The
Mayakes don’t question. The Mayakes obey, endure, and move on.

Lukas
slides the satchel off his shoulders and watches me tighten the saddle girth
around Taeh’s belly. My blistered hands burn as I pull the leather straps,
making me wince.

“We did
our best,” I say, just for the sake of conversation.

“They
claim they never found it,” he replies.

It takes
me a second to understand what he’s talking about. “Who? Yuri and Cal?” I shake
my head. “Yeah. That’s what they said. The rocket flew too far and they
couldn’t retrieve it.” I buckle the loin strap of the harness. Taeh’s tail
brushes my side as she sways it gently back and forth.

“They’re
lying,” Lukas says, his voice firm. He sits on the grass with his legs crossed,
pulls a handful of weeds and plucks out leaves one by one. His lips are pursed,
his eyes narrowed.

“Lukas,
what’s going on?”

He keeps
shredding the weeds and won’t even look at me. “You had to tell them, didn’t
you? And then the rocket vanishes, and the fifth
chavi
gets stolen. You think it was all a coincidence?”

“What are
you saying?”

“Rice!”
some women call. “Hot steamed rice!”

They come
in groups, carrying baskets full of
fantuan
,
vine leaves filled with balls of steamed rice. Little children dip their hands
in the baskets and run around distributing the food, their naked feet padding
in the grass.

To be their age and unaware of what’s about to
happen
, I think as I take my ball of rice and sit next to Lukas.

“It’s too
late to take it back,” I say, pinching the rice with my fingers and filling my
mouth. “I took a bet and trusted Yuri and Cal. They already had one of the
chavis
. It was the only way to get them
to cooperate. They had nothing to lose. They’re stupid, but not suicidal. They
want to survive as much as we do.”

“I don’t
trust them,” Lukas replies, pulling another wad of grass.

“Look,” I
hiss, my mouth full of rice. “I had no choice, ok? It was the only way to get
the Prudence key.”

“They’re
lying about the rocket,” Lukas says, and this time there’s no doubt in his
voice. He knows.

“You know
something I don’t, don’t you?”

He bends
over and slides his data feeder out of his satchel. The screen lights up at his
touch and an image appears. It’s mostly dark and highly pixelated, except for a
tiny bright dot that keeps blinking at the upper right corner of the screen.

“That’s
the rocket,” Lukas says matter-of-factly.

The
statement makes me seethe. “You—” I shout, then bite my tongue and hiss,
“You knew? You’ve known all along where the rocket is?”

Lukas taps
the screen, closing the image, and puts the data feeder away. “Not all along.
It’s taken me a few hours to decrypt the signal.”

I open my
mouth, close it, then open it again. Words fail me. So I take the rest of the
fantuan
and gulp it down. I work my way
through the clump of rice grains and Lilun pops into my head—the funny
way she fills her cheeks and chews like she’s never chewed anything in her life
before.
 

Lilun is in danger too
, I think,
but somehow the thought gets buried under other preoccupations: the rocket, the
fact that it’s still in the forest, the fact that Lukas is able to trace its
position through his data feeder.

“Dude,” I
say. “We can still make it. We can still retrieve the rocket and bring it to the
gorge before dawn.”

Lukas
crosses his arms and juts out his lower lip. “We can’t ride there. And as soon
as darkness falls, the procession will begin.”

“Have you
ever seen four hundred people on the move? It’ll be chaotic. Nobody’s going to
notice if all of a sudden we go missing—”

He punches
me in the chest and brings a finger to his lips as Akari walks over with two
leftover
fantuans
.

“Did you
guys have enough food?” Akari asks, handing us more rice balls. “Eat more. It’s
going to be a long night.”

Dottie and
Mom secure our stuff on the cart, then together we fasten the shafts to Taeh’s
harness. The sun dips behind the mountains and long shadows envelop us, the
horses, the carts, the people coming and going from the Tower carrying bags,
babies, food. Dark clouds roll over the mesa, projecting the yellow glow from
the Gaijins’ factory onto the evening sky.

A mother
with a newborn gets to ride in one of the carts, together with a few elders who
can no longer walk, and children too small to keep up. The rest of us will hike
on either our feet or prostheses.

Tahari
gives an emotional speech. It’s short, not many words are needed. We are the
Mayakes. We are strong. We will protect our children. He doesn’t say why we’re
leaving or where we’re going. Nobody asks. That’s the thing with Mayakes. We
obey. It’s ingrained in us.

When he’s
done, he comes to me and asks me to lead one of the groups into the forest.
“You don’t need a flashlight, and the less light we use, the better. I’ll be at
the tail, while Hennessy will lead the caravan with the horses and carts.” He
looks at the people gathered in the clearing around the Tower. “Not easy to
move four hundred people, but we’ll have to make it work. We’ve got all night.
Let’s just hope all night is all we need to keep safe.”

Lukas
waits until Tahari’s gone, then turns to me and says, “Congratulations on your
promotion.”

I inhale,
trying to get past his hostility. “This means you, Wes, and Dottie will have to
retrieve the rocket.”

He narrows
his eyes. “You forgot one tiny detail. The three of us can’t see in the dark.”

“Then come
up with something,” I snarl. “You’re not giving up, are you?”

He looks
down at his shoes and scuffs the ground. “We’ll have to take the trail north,
toward the Wisdom door. I think that’s where the signal is coming from. It’s
feeble, and not very stable, but it’s been emitting for the past hour or so.”

“Lukas!”
Akari calls.

“Coming,”
Lukas replies, but as he shuffles away, I call him back.

“Hey.”

He glares,
still miffed.

I swallow.
“That idea you had of putting a tracer in the rocket? Brilliant. I wish you’d
told me.”

He nods,
wind blowing his hair astray, and leaves.

Chapter
Seventeen

Akaela

The last sunrays fan over the mountains
and then dissolve. The sky lights up with the glow from the Gaijins’ factory. A
handful of stars dapple the night, blinking through a veil of passing clouds.

Hennessy
claps his hands and directs all the carts and carriages across the solar fields.
Because the vehicles won’t make it through the narrow and uneven trails that
cross the forests, Hennessy will lead them upstream along the river until they
find a wide enough clearing to get into the woods and meet us on the other
side.

Mom was
going to let Athel drive our cart, but now that Tahari’s made him lead the
procession, we all agree she should be the one to drive it. At first she
resists the idea, and a film of tears shows in her brown eyes.

“But I
want us to stay together,” she says softly. “And now that Athel’s being forced
away…”

I throw my
arms around her neck and hug her, inhaling her familiar scent of summer grass
and soap.

“We’ll be
fine, Mom,” I say, caressing her white-streaked hair. “We’ll all be together
again soon.”

She nods,
looks away to hide her tears, and climbs onto the cart. I hug Taeh, whisper in
her ear to take good care of herself and Mom, and then watch them vanish in the
dim light of dusk, the cartwheels creaking and squeaking as they wobble down to
the river.

Tahari splits
the rest of us into groups, each led by two Kiva Members. I feel a little knot
in my throat as I pick up my bag, take one last look at the Tower, and then
take my spot in line. I bite my lip and watch as the first group—led by
Athel—starts off toward the forest.
 

When our
turn comes, we set off at a brisk pace. There are other children in my group,
but none of my closer friends. The woman walking right behind me is Lamira, one
of the older women who’s been making dinner for everyone over the past few nights.
She huffs along and sweats profusely.

A pale
moon shines through the clouds, easing our passage. We all slow down once we
enter the thick of the forest. It’s harder to follow the trail now, despite the
milky light glimmering over the broad leaves of the wild vines.

Boughs
creak, night birds hoot, and coyotes howl in the distance. As we proceed,
everything falls silent, and all we can hear is the muted thud of our steps.

Behind me,
Lamira whimpers.

“Are you
ok?” I ask.

“This is
so scary,” she says, her voice so low I can barely hear her.

“It’s ok,”
I tell her. “It’s just animals.”

I soon
realize how much harder the trails are when there’s not enough visibility to
see where we’re going. More than once the uneven terrain surprises me with a
rock or an unexpected dip. Lamira trips often and every time I stop to help
her.

“Keep up,”
a harsh voice from farther down the trail admonishes us. “You don’t want to
lose the lead, do you?”

“It’s ok,”
Lamira whispers. “I’m good. You go ahead.”

Five
minutes later she’s already lagging behind, so I call for the people ahead of
us to wait, generating another wave of protests from the tail of the
procession. I spot brisk movements in front of me, somebody hiking back along
the trail.

“Come on,
Lamira,” I call. “People are w—”

“Shh!”

I blink. A
shadow flashes before me, its finger raised to its lips.

“Let her
lag behind,” the shadow hisses. I can’t see his features, but the voice I do
recognize.

“Wes? How
did you get out of your group?”

Another
low hiss, Lukas’s voice this time. “Move, you guys!” he says, grabbing Lukas’s
hand and sneaking into my group. As much as I think we’re all going to get in
trouble for this, a huge grin sprawls on my face.

I follow
their steps as they crunch ahead of me, Lamira’s huffs now a distant echo
farther down the trail.

“We’re
almost there,” Lukas whispers a few minutes later.

“Almost
there where?” I ask.

The screen
of his data feeder glows briefly in his hands before he hides it away.

“Athel
didn’t tell you?” Wes asks.

“Tell me what?
I haven’t had a chance to—”

“Koru
five!” a voice calls from the lead.

“That’s
our group’s call,” I hiss. The signal we’ve agreed upon to make sure no one got
lost. “Koru five,” I shout when my turn comes and, a few seconds later, I hear
Lamira’s voice echo me from a few yards behind.

“Perfect
timing,” Lukas whispers, and as the people ahead of us hike around a bend in
the trail, he grabs my hand, drags me in the opposite direction, and we all
leave the trail.

“Down,” he
says, motioning Wes and me to stay low among the ferns.

I watch
the rest of our group pass by, black silhouettes framed by faint moon rays
twinkling from the treetops, and the occasional flashlight, used sporadically
to check a rock or scrutinize the trail.

When the
rustle of footfalls fades in the distance, Lukas hands me a walking stick.
“Ready?”

“You never
said where we’re going.”

“I thought
you knew. To retrieve the rocket.”

*
 
*
 
*

The deeper we wade into the
forest, the colder it gets. The moisture collected by the low vegetation seeps
through my boots and soaks my feet. I struggle to see now that we’re off the
trail and away from the people, their voices and footfalls a distant lull in
the dead of night. Lukas shines a feeble beam from his data feeder, enough to
make sure we don’t trip on roots or a fallen tree. The walking sticks help.
Lukas instructs us to use them to hit the trail ahead of us, scanning for rocks
or potholes, and to scare away animals.

Wes groans
at the idea of animals lurking in the darkness. “Can you make the light
stronger?” he asks.

“Gotta
save batteries,” Lukas replies.

Thick
blackness swallows everything past Lukas’s shallow light. As my vision falters,
it seems that sounds come alive: the rustling of leaves, the scuttling of a
rat, the creaking of the trees. Our strained breathing, the snapping of twigs
under our feet, the hoot of an owl.

“Did you
hear that?” Wes gasps.

“An owl,”
Lukas replies. “Stop fretting.”

“I’m
no—”

Something
flutters above us and screeches. Wes grasps my arm, squeezing so hard my hand
goes numb.

“What was
that?” he cries.

Something
tickles my face. I pluck it off and feel it between my fingers. The texture
makes me smile. “Hey, Wes,” I say, dipping the feather I just found under
Lukas’s light. “Look who was going to bite your behind.”

“Jays,”
Lukas says, recognizing the iridescent blue of the feather in my hand.

I can’t
see Wes’s face but I’m sure he’s blushing.

Lukas hits
the trail again, chanting, “Hmm, what’s that thing I smell? Wes? Did you just
shit yourself?”

“Shut up, Lukas,”
Wes snorts.

Lukas
chortles. “It’s ok. I think I shitted myself a little too. Good thing Akaela
keeps us grounded.”

“The
darkness really doesn’t bother you?” Wes asks, his long blades glinting on and
off as they fall under the beam from Lukas’s data feeder.

“Well, I
wish I could see better,” I say, tripping for the umpteenth time over a root.

“But,” Wes
objects, “doesn’t it make you feel like you’re being followed? Or worse…
stalked?”

“Of course
we’re being stalked,” Lukas replies. “The forest is home to owls, bats, toads,
rats and wolves, to mention a few—all nocturnal animals.”

“And
they’re all following us,” I say, chuckling. I slam into Lukas, sending him
against a tree.

“Careful!”
he protests.

“Why’d you
stop?”

He
swallows and doesn’t reply. Wes stretches an arm and snatches the data feeder
from his hands.

“Hey! Give
it back!”

“Where’s
the dot?” Wes asks, keeping the data feeder high above his head.

“What
dot?”

“The dot
showing where the rocket is.”

Lukas
jumps and gets his data feeder back. “It’ll come back.”

“What?”
Wes yells.

“Shh!” I
hiss. The two are making so much noise they’ll attract the big animals. Or the
adults. How long until someone realizes we’re missing from our assigned groups?

“How do
you know the dot was the rocket anyway?” Wes’s voice is starting to crack. He’s
clearly regretting leaving the main trail, but there’s no going back now.

“I left a
transmitter,” Lukas explains, resuming the hike. “The signal comes and goes.
It’s normal.”

“And where
are we supposed to go while the signal is gone?” Wes insists.

I pat his
arm. “C’mon, Wes. It doesn’t matter where we go. We just can’t stop now.”

I wish I
could give him a better answer, but that’s all I have for the time being.

He follows
Lukas but won’t shut up about it. “And what are we supposed to do, even if we
do find the rocket? It’s not like we can haul it on Taeh’s saddle like Athel
did when he first found it.”

“A little
late to worry about that, don’t you think, Wes?” Lukas retorts. He’s been
speeding ahead while I’m stuck behind Wes, who keeps dragging his blades. If
the two of them don’t stop bickering, we’ll end up getting caught.

“I can fly
the rocket back to the gorge,” Lukas explains. “We just need to find it in time
to st—whoa!”

“Lukas!”
both Wes and I yell at the same time as the light from his data feeder
vanishes.

“I’m
here!” he calls. “I just…”

I shuffle
toward his voice, groping with my walking stick.

“Wait for
me!” Wes whispers.

The light
from the data feeder comes back suddenly, beaming upwards from underneath a canopy
of ferns. It reveals a half arch, much taller than any other ruin I’ve seen in
the forest before. It’s completely made of stone, its side gnawed and gnarled
by time. I step closer and slide a hand over its cold and brittle surface,
following the engravings with the tips of my fingers. They depict stories from
different times: cows gathered in pastures, rice workers bent over the fields,
and fishermen pulling their nets from a river.

Lukas
climbs out of the hole he’s fallen into, shifting the beam away from the arch.
I blink as my eyes try to readjust to the darkness. Up above, the clouds move
and the moon peeks through. And right there, in the dim light of the moon, I
finally see it. Not just the arch, but a whole plaza sprawling behind it: a
flight of stairs to nowhere, a slanted wall, the scattered limbs of a broken
statue, and then more arches jutting out of the earth and hanging unfinished
like interrupted dreams.

The trees
are sparser and shorter. Crawling vines choke the walls and dangle to the
ground.

“What is
this place?” Wes asks, gazing in wonder.

Lukas
brushes dirt and leaves off his clothes and then taps on his data feeder.

“I think,”
he says, chewing on his lower lip. The blue light from the screen makes him
look like a ghost. I step closer and look over his shoulder. He’s pulled up a
picture of the map Tahari gave to Athel. He presses a finger on the lower left
corner and says, “Here. That’s where we are.”

“The
Foresight door?” I ask.

Lukas
nods. “Definitely.”

I frown.
“It doesn’t make any sense. Neither one of the other doors has been out in the
open. The Ingenuity door was in a hole, the Prudence one under a tree. Now
you’re telling me this one’s been out here in the open for decades?”

“Not quite
in the open,” Lukas replies. “We’re still in the forest. And we haven’t found
the actual door yet.”

Wes sighs.
He shuffles to a log and sits down. “Great. We were supposed to find a rocket.
Instead, we found the last door. Isn’t this the one whose key went missing? So
why does it matter anymore, anyway? We don’t have the
chavis
to unlock the Underground City. We don’t have the rocket.
And now we’ve lost our people.”

He drops
his face into his hands and sobs. “I shouldn’t have listened to any of your
stupid blabber, Lukas.”

It breaks
my heart to see him like that. I shuffle through the ferns—their leaves a
pearly white under the moon glow—and wrap an arm around his shoulders.

“Maybe you
shouldn’t have, Wes. But we’re here for one another, remember? And we need you
because you’re a brave friend, a friend whose legs can take us anywhere, as
fast as possible.”

He
sniffles. “I guess so.”

Lukas
steps under the half arch, his silhouette framed by the mellow rays of the
moon. He walks though the ruins and holds his data feeder high above his head,
shining it along the pillars, some half standing, some lying on the ground.