Sparks (26 page)

With my hand reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the ring to look at it as best I could in the dark, moonless night. Khea had charmed it, I remembered that much. It would block her from being able to read me, but I hadn’t worn it as long as she’d been alive.

It blocks all Readers.
Avis’s thought came pouring out as he revealed the significance. He produced images of Khasla locked in a stone restraint, the blow of a knife hilt to my head, Khea’s pulled below deck of the Chimalman ship, and the group of Nakben men that had found us in the deserted streets. Someone was still reading me, finding out what I knew about my group and our objective. The ring would block them all, and I quickly slid it on my finger.

After a moment of silence, I almost smiled at my own foolishness, but my heart was too heavy to go through with it. I pulled the ring off just in time to hear Avis grumble at my stupidity.
Noted.

Avis hated that Khea had been sacrificed, and that I would have to experience her loss for the rest of my life. It was somewhat comforting to know there was someone else who felt similarly affected by her death, but I knew it wasn’t the same. There was a consuming absence, a hole that seemed to spread as I lost all hope of ever seeing her again.

I let the tears fall into the darkness of the deck for a few minutes, before wiping away my despair. Avis sent me what comfort he could, but eventually changed his thoughts to the stone restraints, perhaps just to get me to think about something else.

He showed me the weak point at the left wrist of Khasla’s restraints that would allow them to be removed, as I went to find a hammer. Khasla had fallen asleep with the stone cuffs set on his chest, but he wasn’t upset when I told him why I had woken him. Just as Avis had shown, the stone fractured into two pieces when struck near the left wrist, and fell with a loud thud to the wooden deck. Khasla rolled his wrists in circles before standing and tossing the stone fragments over the side with satisfaction.

As I lay back onto the deck, I slipped my father’s ring back onto my fourth finger and thought about the irony of it. My thoughts had been the cause of Khea’s death, and now her charm on my father’s ring would help me prevent it from happening to anyone else. I kissed the cold copper in the only thanks I could offer her, and let my injured mind attempt to find some semblance of sleep.

Xiuhpilli

The little, green-sailed transport vessel that was confiscated from the docks in Chimalma was a sanctuary for the frightened and damaged crew. It turned out to not have a name inscribed on its hull anywhere we could see, and there was no indication in the single room on the lower deck. Captain Tototl decided to name it Layotl Xoco, or
Little Turtle.

He was quite pleased that he took to being captain so easily, but he regretted it had been at the cost of all the other members of his crew, including Captain Mitzli and a broad-shouldered young man he cared for quite a bit. Tototl proved to be an advantageous asset to our group. Without him, we may have never gotten out of Chimalma.

As I sat on the deck with my knees pulled to my chest, absorbing the sun’s heat and looking at the strange, violet water, Micha approached. I sensed he wanted to talk about her.

“Don’t,” I said in hopes of cutting him off before he gained any traction.

“Lark, you have to eat something. You didn’t eat breakfast or lunch, and you won’t go on much longer like this.” Again his heavy hand fell to my shoulder and squeezed in a mixture of worry and caring. It wasn’t as if I was trying to kill myself, but I just wasn’t in the mood to eat.

In the four days since leaving Chimalma, I hadn’t slept much. I guess I was still subconsciously waiting for Khea to come lay beside me, warm me with her heat, but of course she never came. Once I thought I saw Citrine circling past, but once she was gone I couldn’t decide if she had really been there at all. Maybe I was just losing it.

I could tell Micha was getting fairly anxious. After all, he had worked up the courage to come over and confront me about it. He sat down next to me and pretended to find the water as interesting as I did.

“Hey, man, I know you miss her. But skipping meals isn’t going to bring her back.”

“I
know
,” I answered more sharply than I meant to. Deep down I knew he was just trying to help me, being the good friend, but I wasn’t in the frame of mind to be helped. Before I could say anything else, Micha stood up and walked away. I would have to make amends for that someday. He didn’t deserve my anger or my pain, but there was just so much; I couldn’t help but let some out.

Traveling was much slower without Khea’s wind to continually push us in the right direction. For a three-day stretch, we lost the wind completely and sat idly in the midst of the purple expanse just waiting for the end. We were running low on food and water and had no bows or arrows to catch a meal. Khea was gone and could provide no freshwater rain. We knew if it lasted much longer we would have successfully escaped Chimalma for nothing.

On the fourth day since the wind died, a light breeze picked up and it was just enough to get our Little Turtle to limp along to the north. The silhouette of the third island came into view that night. We had no choice but to pull in and get supplies despite the late hour. I laughed at the irony that we should end up there after all, though immediately the laugh felt wrong, a luxury reminiscent of a less caustic past.

Tototl managed to get his novice crew to tie down the sails and get the ship in close enough that Khasla could walk it in to the beach. It took all of us to bring it up to shore enough that the tide couldn’t reach it. Unlike the beaches of the Andover, these had sand I was sure was black even in the light of day.

“Dangerous Silver Spring,” Tototl said as we caught our breath from the exertion of carrying the small ship ashore; it looked much lighter than it actually was. He brought to mind images of several large animals that occupied the island, one with orange and white stripes, one silky black, and a snake with a diamond on its head. I passed along the message to the others before we split up to gather supplies.

Jhoma, Khasla, and Tototl set out to get water. It would take all three of them to get the large container to and from the spring. Micha volunteered me to accompany him in the search of something to eat, but I sensed he had ulterior motives. He fashioned a bag out of a bit of fabric from one of the sheets in the lower deck and slung it over his shoulder as we headed out.

“Back at dawn.” Khasla said to the group as we went our separate ways. The three men heading for water would follow the island inward until they found the spring Tototl had seen as a boy, though I found myself wondering if he still wasn’t one. Fifteen summers was a short time to become a man, but he had proved himself useful and knowledgeable time and time again, so who was I to doubt him?

Micha and I began to move towards the interior of the island on the eastern side in hopes of finding some small game that would last us the rest of the way to Uxmal. Our only protection was the long-bladed knife I carried; Khasla had taken the spear with the other group.

Just as I had suspected, Micha didn’t waste any time laying into me about Khea and my lack of interest in anything. “You haven’t eaten in days,” he started.

“Since when are you responsible for feeding me? I thought I left that to Avis.” I made no attempt to hide my annoyance.

“He’s not here, and you’re clearly not capable of making that decision yourself.”

“You should be glad. If I had been eating as much as all of you, we would have run out of food days ago.”

Micha had nothing to say to that and thankfully let me walk through the midnight jungle in peace. The trees were taller than any I had ever seen and perfectly straight as they shot over one hundred feet in the air without a single low branch. They had narrow, flat canopies with broad leaves that limited what little moonlight there was. There wasn’t so much as a bush or a vine on the ground, only the dead, decaying leaves that had drifted down from the trees. I couldn’t figure out how we were going to find anything in those conditions.

Micha found the first sign of life, a series of deep cuts into the paper-like bark of a tree. There were four lines that resembled claw marks, but they were larger than any leopard I’d ever seen. I thought back to Tototl’s warning and wondered just how big those animals really were.

An hour later, Micha reached down to pull a strange looking rabbit off the leaf litter and placed it in his bag. It was already dead with a broken neck but didn’t show any other signs of damage.
Only Micha could find an abandoned kill in the middle of this empty jungle.

Several hours of walking pushed the limits of what my tired, starved body could handle. A few times, I forgot we were supposed to be tracking and began to look around, admiring the scenery as if I was on a day trip to the city. Micha would periodically stop to pick up a dead animal he found on the ground, but I found I didn’t really care where they came from. He pulled me back into place behind him more than once, and I could tell he was getting tired; whether he was tired from being up all night or just tired of me I didn’t have the energy to find out.

The trickle of light through the trees eventually told us the sun was on its way, and I had still found nothing that could serve as a meal. No fruits, no kills, nothing.

“Sun’s coming up,” Micha offered as an explanation to turn back. We would have to run to make it the last few miles around the outer edge of the island as it was, and I was sure I didn’t have the stamina to make it. I would go back as fast as I could, but if they left without me, then so be it. I didn’t care about Uxmal or Myxini or a pendant or any of it.

“Come on. Let’s go back,” Micha said when he noticed I wasn’t following. I turned and began to trudge through the thick leaf litter behind him, kicking up a storm of leaves and wondering how long I could go on.

A mile or so later, the force of a boulder struck me from the left and threw me to the ground with a searing pain in my shoulder. I didn’t see what happened, but I lay there as something tore into the muscles and released my warm blood into the leaves.

“No!” Micha shouted loudly from somewhere as the weight lifted and left me staring up at the sunlight beginning to stream through the canopy. Rolling to my right to spare my shoulder, I was just in time to see Micha standing before a large, orange-striped cat that stood nearly as tall as his ribs and looked to weigh at least five hundred pounds. He was looking at the cat and the cat was looking at him, just locked in the moment.

I quickly drew Micha’s thread to experience the connection between him and the giant cat, just as I had with the bear so long ago. He expressed gratitude for the animals in his bag and asked her to continue hunting. It was amazing to see him speak freely with a powerful predator without fear or anxiety, only total calm and control.

In a flash, the large cat disappeared between the tree trunks and Micha stood over me to pull me up. “Lark, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think she’d actually try to get you.”

“Well, I am rather tasty,” I replied nonchalantly as I pulled off the leaves that clung to my sticky blood; I held my tattered shirt pressed against the wound to limit any more loss. My head was too blurry to register how badly it really hurt.

“She’s supposed to be catching us a meal. Not catching
us
.”

“You knew?” Of course Micha knew. He could sense any animal in a wide area.
I must really be out of it
. And he was bright enough to use his Spark to win us a meal.

“Yeah, she’s been hunting all night. Come on, we need to get you back to the ship and clean this shoulder up.” He looked at my torn shoulder with more concern than I would have thought, and I sensed it was much worse than I knew.

Micha tried to hurry me along between the narrow trunks to get back to the Little Turtle before the others feared the worst and left without us. The ground began to shift beneath my feet and the trees started to run together. A moment later, my knees gave out and threw me down while my vision closed in. My mind returned to the darkness.

~~~~~~~~~~

The sun was shining through a small window when I woke, illuminating the large bed in the small room. I was back aboard the ship and someone had put me in the bed and pulled the sheets up to my chin. When I moved my hand to push them away, my shoulder reminded me of the pain under the makeshift bandage that covered it.

I wandered up the ladder to find something for my complaining stomach. Micha and Khasla saw me first, calling my name and offering me huge smiles and outstretched hands.

“We were starting to get worried,” Jhoma said, handing me a plate of what looked to be some sort of rodent and some amberberries.

“How long was I out?”

“Over a week. You lost a lot of blood,” Khasla said as he handed me a cup of cool water.

“And it didn’t help that you wouldn’t eat,” Micha chimed in with a chuckle as he watched me shovel in food like old times; I hadn’t felt that hungry since I was a boy in Lagodon.

“Well, I’m eating now.” Out of habit, I sent a thread out to find Khea but sensed only silence. A part of me had hoped it was only a bad dream, but the stinging emptiness couldn’t be wrong.

“What happened? Since I went out?”

Jhoma described the scene excitedly and I watched it unfold as he relived the memory. “You wouldn’t believe it if we told you. Micha comes walking out of the jungle just after dawn with the largest cat I’ve ever seen, with you laying over the back. Like you were a grain sack tied to a horse. And he had several little furry things with big eyes slung over his shoulder.”

“She was hunting for you, wasn’t she?” I asked Micha between bites.

“Yeah. There was no way we were going to catch anything. They all live way up in the canopy and jump from tree to tree, never going to the ground. It’s too open for anything small to live down there. She got up into the trees and pulled them down for us.”