Chapter 10
A few light clouds crossed the sky and made patterns on the surface of the lake. Amber let go of her creeper and dropped to the ground. Wink landed at her side just as Melanie and Wit strode out of the forest. Amber wore the woven leather and fiber tunic of the Eblians, but Melanie still wore the dark indigo jump suit she had on when the Mixtidelin dropped them off on Eblian.
Amber’s eyes widened. “Where have you been? We’ve been worried about you.”
Melanie gasped. “Amber, look!”
Amber followed her gaze toward the lake, and she caught her breath. Tina and Arno walked side by side along the shore. They stopped occasionally to exchange a few words and gaze out at the view before moving on.
“What happened?” Amber whispered.
At that moment, Natalie appeared from between the trees. She looked back and forth between her two friends. “Hello. I wondered when you two would show up again.”
Melanie nodded toward the lake. “What’s going on, Natalie? When did Tina start moving around and talking?”
Natalie came to her side, and the whole party watched Tina and Arno together on the bright beach. “I don’t know when it happened, but she only does it when no one else is around. I spotted them together this morning, but when I went out there to talk to her, she sat down and went back into her catatonic trance. She won’t talk to anyone but Arno.”
“At least she’s talking to someone,” Melanie remarked. “This could be the beginning of her recovery.”
Natalie nodded. “I hope so. That’s why I went back to the village, to leave them alone together.”
Amber glanced over her shoulder at the brothers. “Maybe we shouldn’t go out there, either. If she won’t even talk to us, she probably won't respond well to strangers.”
Natalie laid her hand on Amber’s arm. “Don’t leave. Kyan and I were just planning on coming out to search for you two.”
Melanie snorted. “Well, you found us.”
Natalie smiled at the brothers, but she was too polite to ask what they were doing together. “Kyan wants to take us up the mountain. He says you can see the whole continent from up there.”
“What? The mountain?” Amber pointed to the peaks across the lake. “You mean up there?”
Natalie nodded. “What do you say? Do you want to go?”
Amber and Melanie exchanged glances. Then they looked at the brothers. Melanie laughed. “All right. I’m game if you are. We’ll just have to get some supplies, and…..”
“No, you won’t,” Wit told her. “We have caches up there, and I’m sure Kyan will have his own preparations made.”
At that moment, Kyan strode out of the forest. “Yes, I do.” He held open a pack. “I’ve got food and water and emergency supplies, but we won’t need them. The observers don't travel anywhere on this planet without laying down emergency caches for use later on.”
Wink smiled. “We’ll come along with you. I don’t mind a stroll on a summer's day.”
Natalie beamed at him. “Great. Let’s go. The more time Arno and Tina spend alone, the better.”
They turned to follow the lake shore to the east, but Arno trotted over to catch up with them. “Wait a minute. We’re coming, too.”
Natalie stared at him. “We?”
“Tina wants to come, too,” he replied. “I explained to her where you were going, and she wants to come.”
The group exchanged glances.
“She’s still a bit standoffish,” Arno went on, “so we’ll follow behind you. We won’t get out of sight, but she’s not ready to travel with the group yet.”
“Well, I guess we don’t mind if she comes, do we?” The others shook their heads. “Then let’s go.”
Kyan shouldered his pack and led the way. Natalie followed him, with Wit and Melanie, and Wink and Amber in the rear. They crossed the gravel beach and set off through the trees. In a second, the canopy closed over them so they couldn’t tell where they were going, but Kyan kept on with unfaltering steps.
Wink and Amber chatted away at the end of the line and paid no particular attention to where they were going. Melanie looked all around her, but she and Wit didn’t talk. Natalie kept up with Kyan, and the effort of climbing up hills through thickening undergrowth gave her a pleasant charge of power.
The track grew steeper and more treacherous. It wound through the forest and at last broke out onto a sheer field of jagged shingle rising against the mountain side. The peaks beyond the lake towered over them, and the carpet of forest lay smooth and tiny far below.
Kyan paused, and the whole group looked back. Far in the distance, wisps of smoke rose from the canopy to show where the Eblian village was. No other feature interrupted the view. All of a sudden, Wink pointed down the hill. “Look.”
Arno and Tina were following them, and Tina was in the lead. Natalie’s spirits soared. If only Tina would snap out of her trance and engage with her new surroundings, their future here would be secure. None of them could fully break with their past as long as Tina lingered somewhere between the lake and the vacuum of space.
Down in the trees, Tina turned her face toward the sky and noticed her friends watching her from above. The sun flashed across her face, but then she and Arno disappeared into the trees again before Natalie could catch her expression. Was she happy? Was she thriving on this time outdoors in the beauty of nature? Or was she brooding and depressed? No one could tell except Arno. She wouldn’t talk to anyone else.
Kyan started forward again, and the group picked its way across the shingle field to a path on the other side. Back and forth they went, higher and higher. Then the path wound down the other side of the mountain and into dark forest again.
The sun angled to the other side of the sky before they came into light again, but this time, no trees separated them from the mountain top. Only a treacherous winding trail crisscrossed the brittle rock. Kyan stopped at the treeline and opened his pack.
He passed around a container of chickalock. They’d all eaten it before except Melanie, who turned up her nose at it. But after Amber, and Natalie, and finally Wit himself assured her it was delicious, she tried it. Then she liked it well enough—after she stopped coughing.
Wit and Wink laughed and elbowed each other, and Amber and Natalie grinned. “What’s that spicy taste?” Melanie asked.
“That’s the spike berries,” Wink told her. “You better get used to them if you want to spend any time with Wit.”
Melanie took a drink of water. “It’s good. I like it.”
Wit chuckled. “You had them last night. Don’t you remember? I used them to flavor the rock moggie.”
Amber and Natalie looked at each other, but no one said anything more. After their meal, they went on. Tina and Arno hadn’t caught up with them. “We wouldn’t see them anyway,” Wit remarked. “They're still in the ravine.”
The going was much slower up here. Every other step they skidded on the loose stones, and the path became so steep they used their hands and knees to climb. At the top, Kyan stopped again. “This is it. We can’t go any further.”
From that height, the curve of the planet showed clear on the blue horizon. Far beyond the forest, the open sea shimmered under the sun. Savannahs of golden grass dropped to the south, and icy mountains ran the length of the continent to the north.
“It’s spectacular,” Natalie murmured. “I never dreamed it would be so beautiful.”
“Let’s go all the way to the top,” Wink suggested. “We’ll be able to see the whole view from up there.”
Amber craned her neck. “I thought this was the top.”
Wink pointed to a tower of rock next to them. “That’s the very top, up there.”
“But you can’t walk up to it,” Kyan added. “You have to climb. It might be too precarious.”
“We can handle it,” Amber told him. “If there’s more of the view to see from up there, let’s go for it.”
Melanie stood up. “I’m willing to give it a try. I want to see everything.”
“Me, too,” Natalie added. “I’ve been itching to do something really strenuous—the harder, the better.”
Kyan frowned. “I never said you couldn’t do it. I just said it might be dangerous.”
“I hope it is.” Melanie squinted up at the rock. “How do we get up there?”
Wit stepped forward. “I’ll show you. Wink and I go up there all the time.”
Wit put his hand into the rock and his foot into a crevice. He hauled himself up and clung to the rock like an insect. Melanie stepped forward and put her hand where he had, but Wink held her back. “One at a time. Wait until he gets up before you go.”
Amber shielded her eyes from the sun. “Be careful, Wit. Don’t fall.”
“He won’t fall,” Wink replied. “He’s done this a thousand times.”
Wit scooted up the rock from one handhold to the next foothold. He scaled the pinnacle with no trouble, but at the last moment when he threw his arm up to drag himself to the top, a gut-wrenching groan rumbled out of the mountain. The ground trembled, and something disconnected from the rest of the planet.
In front of their eyes, the entire rock edifice dislodged from the mountainside and teetered over with Wit still clinging to it. A block of stone bigger than a house leaned over on its knee. Its weight hung suspended over the group, and its shadow blocked out the sun.
“Out of the way!” Kyan bellowed.
But it was too late. The rock toppled the rest of the way off its base with a sickening crunch. Wit couldn’t move an inch. He could only hang on. The rock tumbled from its moorings and plummeted down the mountain side. It sailed through the air with Wit stuck to its bottom. It fell straight toward the group standing frozen underneath it.
Amber raised her arms in front of her face, as if that could protect her from it. It would land on top of them and flatten them all, and there was nothing they could do. Melanie took a step back to get away from it, but it was too big and the ground was too uneven to move fast enough. Its shadow covered all of them in a perfect imprint of where its body would cover them in a moment.
Wit fell back toward Melanie. He glanced over his shoulder, and their eyes met. He would land right on top of her, and they would die together in the fullness of their union. Her body relaxed at the thought. She’d found her place, and nothing could take that away from her. She watched him fall closer. Her heart called out to him to come to her, to come into her arms.
Only Natalie found a voice to scream with. She jumped away, but there was nowhere to run. The rock was falling too fast, with too much weight behind it. She shouldn’t be jumping anywhere except into Kyan’s arms.
All at once, a blinding streak of light split the air. It streaked up the hillside, and in slow motion, Melanie recognized the white-hot energy of a blaster shot. It hit the rock just inches from Wit’s head. The rock turned greenish-white, and the next instant, it vaporized into thin air.
Wit continued to fall, and he landed right on top of Melanie, right where she knew he would land. His weight knocked her flat on her back, and her arms instinctively wrapped around him and clutched him against her heart. A powdery shower of rock dust settled over them, and the sun warmed the spot darkened by the shadow.
Everyone stared down at the two lovers caught in their eternal embrace. Both of them kept their eyes closed against the shade of death hanging over them, and to keep the dust out of their eyes. Wit’s head fell to one side, and he rested his cheek against Melanie’s arm.
Natalie opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Then Amber turned, and there was Tina with her blaster upraised, pointed where the rock used to be. Natalie and Kyan, and Wink and Amber, stared at her. She kept her eyes and her blaster trained on the mountain, alert to any other threat. Then she blinked.
She glanced at Natalie. “Are you guys all right?”