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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

The Moon by Night (22 page)

BOOK: The Moon by Night
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I got out of the trees without being attacked by bears and started up to the crest of the mountain. It was so high that the sun was still golden on the coarse grass, and the rocks were warm to touch, though it would be completely night by now down in the valleys. Whenever I saw a big rock I looked behind it, but I didn't see Zachary.
As I neared the top of the mountain I began to yell, “Zachary! Zach! Come on, the game's over, everybody's worried, it isn't funny any more. Come on, Zach, don't be a dope!”
By now I was panting and tired and my stomach was churning with worry. I was sure Zachary'd capsized somewhere. If he'd climbed up here it would be enough to give him a heart attack.
Suddenly I thought I heard something, as though a voice far away were calling, “Vicky!”
I scrambled up to the crest of the mountain and stood there, calling and looking. My stomach gave an awful jerk as I looked down, because it was much steeper on the far side, and I felt acrophobia-ey. I closed my eyes for a minute, and then opened them carefully. The sun was sinking, way below me. I turned around so I wouldn't have to look down the steep side of the mountain, and the tents were still bathed in light. I seemed to be standing on a mountain peak way above the sun, and yet with the sun's light still streaking across the rocks and grass, at the
same time that shadows were deepening and stretching out everywhere. I suppose light must be something like this in Alaska, or Norway, at the times when the sun doesn't set at all. Only this sun was setting swiftly, and I wanted to hurry back down to camp, with or without Zachary. Our tent roof was golden with sun, and then suddenly it was in shadow. I knew that John would be furious with me if I didn't get back before dark.
But just as I was ready to start down for the camp I heard it again, behind me, down the other side of the mountain. “Vicky!”
I shouted. “Zachary! Where are you?”
Silence.
I was sure that I hadn't been mistaken, that I'd heard him calling me, and that it wasn't John or anybody from camp calling me to say that Zach had been found, because their voices would have come from the opposite direction.
I turned around. The shadows were deepening again, and as I looked down the rocky mountain I felt a surge of acrophobia.
“Vicky!” The voice sounded lost, and far away, and hurt, and I knew that I would have to control my acrophobia and climb down. Of course what I should have done was to go back to camp and get Daddy. What earthly use would
I
be if Zachary'd had a heart attack or broken a leg? But I was so busy trying not to feel sick at my stomach, and so terrified of climbing down the mountain side, that I never thought of the logical thing. I gritted my teeth and started down, mostly backwards. Actually, backwards it wasn't too bad, because I didn't have to look down, even though I seemed to slip and slide a lot. It was getting darker every minute, but it wasn't that quick darkness that seems to come with a bang, and I was grateful; now, instead of being golden, everything was a soft grey.
“Vicky!”
“Hold on, Zach!” I shouted. “I'm coming!”
Not too far below me was a field, much bigger than the one where the camp was, and across the field a huge mound of rocks, and it was from these rocks that the voice seemed to be coming. I reached the field and started to run across it to the rocks. “I'm coming, Zach!” I called.
And then he came strolling out from behind the rocks, cool as a cucumber. “About time,” he said.
I was
furious
. I didn't know I
could
be so furious at Zachary. “What do you
mean
!” I shouted. “Everybody's been
look
ing for you! Your poor mother is
fran
tic! What do you mean, just
sit
ting down here!”
“Well, hey, hold it!” Zachary said. “How'd I know everybody was looking for me?”
“Didn't you hear us
yell
ing? Daddy went up to the top of the mountain and yelled. You
must
have heard him.”
“Sure I heard him,” Zachary said, “but you were the one I was waiting for.”
“You were so sure I'd come?”
“I figured if I waited long enough you'd appear.”
“So you just
sat
and let your mother get scared out of her wits?”
“What's all this worry about my
mother
? She ought to know by now not to have fits. She never knows when I'm coming back at home and it never seems to bother her. Why all this parental agony all of a sudden?”
“Because she
loves
you,” I said. “Because she thought you had a
heart
attack or something. Well, I'm going back to camp. You can come along if you feel like it.”
“No, you don't,” Zachary said. “Why do you think I waited down here all this time? I want to talk to you about this Andy.”
He made a grab for me, but I jumped out of his way. “Good-
bye
,” I said, and started across the field to the mountain. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Zachary shrug and go back to the rock pile.
Then the ground wiggled under my feet.
It was a most peculiar feeling. The solid ground under my feet gave a shudder. I stood still. It kept on feeling as though the ground were shivering. Then suddenly there was a jerk under me. It was something like when you go water skiing and someone cuts the motor and then suddenly speeds up again, trying to throw you.
The next jerk did throw me. It was a much bigger jerk, and I fell flat on my face in the soft grass of the field. Underneath me the ground seemed to heave the way your stomach does when you're terribly, terribly sick. I clung to the grass because there wasn't anything else to cling to. It was as though the whole earth, the whole planet, were jerking out in space, veering wildly out of course, and I was on its back, clinging to its mane.
Behind me there was a terrible noise. It was louder than thunder and it seemed to keep on and on until I thought my head would burst. Then the noise began to break into separate parts, a sound like thunder, a roar like the ocean in a storm, great crackings, crunchings, and finally all the noises got smaller and with spaces of quiet in between, and then they stopped. The silence was so complete that it was as frightening as the noise had been.
I managed to turn my head, and the top of the mountain wasn't there any more. It didn't seem to be anywhere.
Then I remembered the town of Frank in Alberta, the mountain that had fallen on the town. I pressed my face into the grass of the field, and, as the earth heaved beneath me, I thought I was going to throw up, too, from terror. But I didn't.
I looked around again. The top of the mountain was still gone. Everything looked different. I realized that most of the mountain had fallen into the field, because the mountain was much closer to me, the field was much narrower, than it had been before.
I lay there, clutching the grass, not daring or even able to move, even if the rest of the mountain should fall on me. But after a while I realized that the tremors were less violent, that the earth was becoming quiet again. I staggered to my feet. The ground seemed quite solid beneath them. I looked for Zachary. The pile of rock was still there, but it was a different shaped pile. I didn't see Zachary.
I simply accepted the fact that he was dead, that he was buried under the rocks. I didn't want to scream or anything. All I felt was a terrible, resigned calm, as though something in me were dead, too.
“Vicky!”
It was Zachary's voice. It was quite strong, and it was coming from the rocks. I ran across the rest of the field. Now the dark was on top of me. I couldn't see anything except rocks and shadows of rocks. “Zach, where are you?” I wasn't sure whether the heaving came from me, my chest racked with gasps, my heart pounding, or whether the earth was still shaking. I thought it was mostly me.
Zachary's voice came from inside the pile of rocks. “Vicky! Here!”
I couldn't see him, but I could hear his voice, coming from somewhere inside the rocks. “Are you hurt?” I called.
“I don't think so. How about you?”
“I'm okay.” I kept looking for the voice, and finally, in the darkness, I saw two great rocks leaning together, with a space about a foot wide at the bottom. I got down on my hands and knees and tried to peer in.
Zachary's voice came from the darkness. “Here, Vic.”
“Are you all right? Are you sure you aren't hurt?”
“I'm all right. But I don't think I can get out.”
I tried to keep my voice from shaking. “What happened?”
“Must have been an earthquake. I got whammed down to my knees, and then two rocks shifted and fell against each other, and I'm in a sort of small cave, trapped, but good.”
I pushed and shoved at the rocks, but they were huge ones and they wouldn't budge.
“It's no use, Vicky,” Zachary said. “Don't exhaust yourself. You might as well try to move the mountain.”
I shivered. The mountain. “Are you sure this is the only hole?”
“No, there's some sky above me. I can see a star. But it's too high. There isn't any place I can get a toe hold to try to climb up. I tried until I got a pain.”
I stood very still there by the pile of rocks with Zachary nothing but a voice in the darkness. He sounded a great deal braver than I felt.
“I never thought I'd die this way,” Zachary said. “I always planned to have a certain amount of control over it. Are you
sure
you're okay?”
“Yes. Zach, what'll we do?”
“You'd better go back and get the others. Maybe they can get me out.”
“Zach,” I said. “The mountain. It fell.”
Zach's voice sounded too reasonable for comfort. “Yeah, I figured something like that must have happened from the noise. How about the campgrounds?”
“I don't know.”
“Vicky,” Zachary said quietly. “Did the mountain fall on this side?”
“A lot of it did.”
“Then they're probably okay.”
I didn't answer.
“Listen, Vicky,” he said after a while. “I'm stuck in here. There's not a thing I can do to get out. I tried. I've still got a pain. I don't dare try anymore and I don't think it would do any good anyhow. You've got to go back. I'm sorry, darling, but you've got to try.” His voice was gentle.
“I don't want to leave you.”
“I'm all right. There's nothing you can do by staying here, and your parents must be having fits about you.”
My voice almost went out of control. “If they're okay.”
“If the mountain fell on this side they're okay.”
My voice galloped towards hysteria. “When I climbed the mountain to look for you only John and the little kids were in camp. The grown-ups were all out looking for
you
. I don't know where anybody
is
.”
“All you can do is go look for them. Vicky, you have to try.”
I knew he was right. “All right.”
“Have you got your flashlight?”
“No. It was still light enough when I left.” I looked up at the sky. “There's going to be starlight, anyhow.” My voice was back in control.
“It's full moon time,” Zachary said. “That'll be up later. Can you see your watch?”
I tried to squinch my eyes so I could read my watch, but it hasn't an illuminated dial, and I couldn't see it. Zachary has a very elaborate watch, so I asked, “Can't you see yours?”
“It seems to have been broken in the sturm und drang,” Zachary said. “It's probably about nine. Not that it really makes much difference at this point.”
I looked up at the sky. It wasn't completely dark around the edges. There were green bands of light stretching across the horizon. Up above it was night, with more and more stars coming out every minute.
“Vicky. Go on,” Zachary said.
“All right.” I stood there by the rock pile without moving. Then, “I'm off.”
I started to walk across the field. Every step I took I expected it to start jerking under my feet again, but it didn't. It was solid and very slightly springy, the way a field ought to be. I tried not to think about the top of the mountain that wasn't there. Most of it did seem to have fallen on Zachary's and my side, because the field was less than half the size it had been, and if I'd been further away from Zachary's rock pile when the earthquake started I might have been under the mountain just like the people in Frank. Zachary would have blamed himself, and if Andy ever heard about it I thought he'd be sorry. I kept thinking about things I knew
hadn't
happened, so I wouldn't have
to think about the possibility that all the mountain hadn't fallen on our side, that some of it might have fallen on the campgrounds, that the tents might be hidden under rocks like the town of Frank. I couldn't think about this and keep on going.
BOOK: The Moon by Night
12.3Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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