CHAPTER 12 - ALEX
I woke up early that first morning in this village, the third I’d been to in the last two months. The family I was staying with was already up and about when I cracked my eyes open and rolled over in the already oppressive heat. Sleeping outside meant you’d have to be up before dawn or the sun would act as your alarm clock; it occurred to me that giving me a spot inside was a great honor normally reserved for the elderly and guests.
I got up and took a drink, trying not to waste any of it, before asking the head of the family what I could do to help. She smiled and shook her head, handing me a plate of food. I ate in silence, frustrated that I couldn’t refuse without insulting her but knowing that I was eating more than I was giving back.
Just then the middle daughter of the family announced that she was leaving, a large empty jug in her hands. Her mother nodded, and inwardly I was proud of myself for starting to understand their language after weeks of trying. The subtle differences in dialects between villages, even though they were speaking the same language, made things especially tough.
“Where’s she going?” I asked her mother, haltingly. It was still a chore to speak their language, but with each passing day I was starting to understand a little more of it.
She laughed and took my plate, giving me a look that I understood. I shook my head that I didn’t want more, and she replied, “To get more water.”
I jumped up. “Let me help,” I said, and before anyone could say anything I jogged out of the hut and caught up with the girl.
It was already blisteringly hot, and the heat rose up off the barely paved road in sizzling waves that reminded me of mirages in the desert. We walked silently side by side. I tried to practice speaking with her, but the girl didn’t want to speak with me for whatever reason, which I could respect.
I was so different, and I was here in their world. I was here to help, of course, but that didn’t mean I belonged. They didn’t need saving; they could use help.
It took us 4 hours of steady walking before we crested a hill and the smattering of huts surrounding the area’s prized piece of infrastructure, a roughly dug well. There was a line of people with buckets and jugs of their own on the ground next to them, and we got in line at the end.
The girl pulled some food out of her pocket and after looking down at it for a moment, broke half of it off and gave it to me. I smiled and nodded gratefully; I was starving and there wasn’t enough for her, let alone the both of us, but she gave me half of hers without thinking about it for a more than second or two.
For the thousandth time I was struck by the generosity of people who had nothing to give, giving all the same, because it was the right thing to do, whatever the consequences.
After it came our turn to fill up the jug, the girl hoisted it on her head and we started on the way back. I gestured to her and spoke in my slow phrasing that I wanted to help, and after a mile of my asking, she let me carry the heavy jug for a ways down the torturous road back to the village, just when the sun reached its peak for the day, raining down spears of heat on all below it.
I tried to carry the jug in front of me at first, but my arms got tired way before my spirit flagged, and the girl shook her head disapprovingly before lifting her arms above her head, motioning like the other women had done with their containers when they were filled.
I nodded, and with a little help, and a few tiny splashes hitting the floor, which caused me great pain now that I knew how difficult it was to actually move water around this place, I managed to get the jug onto my head and stable, after taking off my shirt and coiling around my head like a combination heat shield and flattener to stabilize the jug.
It took us an extra hour to get back to the village weighed down by the water jug, and when we were about 30 minutes out, the girl stopped and wouldn’t continue walking until I had given her the jug back, speaking rapidly in words that I kinda-sorta understood to mean, “It wouldn’t look good if we arrived and you were carrying it.” I accepted that reasoning and gave the jug back to her, and she balanced it expertly on her head and we were off.
When we got back and set the jug down, the girl gave me a tiny smile before her mother admonished her for standing around and not helping. Before I knew it, the girl was right back to doing more chores.
The day didn’t end till after the sun had gone down.
And then the next one was just like it.
This was the opposite of that. In Africa I couldn’t get cool enough as the sun beat me down from above, but here I couldn’t pull my jacket around me tight enough to keep the cold wind from finding every nook and cranny and making its presence known, like a game of tag with an opponent that knew your favorite hiding places and taunted you mercilessly each time they found you.
I was headed in the right direction, and just as importantly, I was making progress — the footprints in the snow I was following were getting deeper, which meant less time between Naomi making them and me finding them. That was a good thing.
I still couldn’t make any sense of this, though. What had possessed that girl to wander off out of the inn in the middle of a storm like this, that didn’t look like it was planning on getting any better any time soon?
I knew there was something important to her in the wreckage of the bus, Naomi had made that abundantly clear, but hadn’t all she’d seen on our way to the inn and since convinced her that now was not the right time to go off half-cocked on some sort of adventurous trek through the middle of a blizzard?
I shook my head as the bitter cold enveloped me. How could she do this? Did she not see how dangerous it was to be walking around here?
Even if she made the decision to go back to the bus for whatever the fuck she’d brought with her but couldn’t live without…wouldn’t it have been wise to reevaluate 5 or 10 minutes in and, you know, turn the fuck around and come back to the inn?
Hell, the bus had probably fallen off the cliff by now, and I smiled acidly as I thought of her standing there trying to see if she could climb down, get what whatever bauble she needed and bring it back.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d tried it, not after pulling this kinda stunt.
Almost as soon as I let my anger out, I reigned it back in — this was no time for me to lose my cool. That prompted another laugh — seemed the cold managed to bring out my icy humor.
No, I just had to find Naomi and make sure she was safe - I could figure out what had possessed her to do this later, once we were back inside where it was warm and, you know, not subjected to the elements all around us.
And then, just like that, the footprints stopped moving forward. I was about to step into the next one, as I had all along, following where Naomi had walked not a too long ago - I’d come around a corner and then…nothing. There was no more trail to follow.
What the fuck?
I stopped in the last of her prints, letting my hands fall to my waist as I tried to figure out where she’d gone. The road kept going around further turns in front of me, snaking down toward the cliff and the bus.
But no sign Naomi had kept going in that direction.
Where was she? The snow was coming down even faster now, and as I turned to look back the way I came I noticed that my own footfalls in Naomi’s earlier prints were already tough to spot.
This rescue mission was about to get a whole lot tougher since I didn’t have guidance anymore.
And then something caught my eye — something off in the distance, not too far away under normal weather conditions, but right now what felt like miles away. A lone tree on the side of the road.
And…something huddled underneath it, just off to the side. Something seeking shelter.
My breath caught in my throat as I surged toward it, gritting my teeth at how difficult it was to start moving again after letting my inertia break down. This was the only lead I had, I had to follow up.
As I got closer I could see the snow-covered thing shaking, moving slightly every few seconds as if to brush away the snow that threatened to accumulate on it.
“Naomi,” I croaked, the first time I’d spoken in what felt like forever. I must have sounded terrible, but I was thrilled to see the thing stir, and then Naomi’s dark eyes looked at me.
“Hey, Alex,” she said, just loud enough for me to hear. “Fancy seeing you around here. Come for the weather?”
“What the fuck, Naomi?!” I shouted at her as best I could, as I closed the short distance between us and wrapped my arms around her. “Why the fuck did you come out here?”
She laughed a little, just under her breath and gave me a wan smile as I pulled her into me, trying to warm her up. “It was a little too hot in the inn, so I figured I’d cool down out here,” she joked with another laugh. “Clara’s got lunch ready, eh? Is that why you’re here?”
I frowned. “This is no laughing matter! You could have died out here!”
“Nah, I’m all good.” She stopped smiling. “Hey, where’s the bus? Couple more turns, yeah?” She tried to stand up, moving slowly but surely. “I can make it there and back to the inn by lunchtime,” she said, a look of determination spilling out across her face.
My jaw almost hit the snow. “Are you fucking crazy? You want to keep going?”
Naomi stepped out on her feet before almost falling down. I moved as fast as I could and caught her just before she hit, and she braced herself on my shoulders, standing up. “You wouldn’t understand, Alex. You don’t want anything. You don’t save anything.” She stood up fully and brushed herself off. “You don’t treasure anything.”
“You say that like you know-“ I sputtered before catching myself. “This is not the time nor the place to have this discussion, Naomi! We have to get out of here.”
“Just point me in the direction of the bus.” She walked to the edge of the tree’s cover. “I’ll go the rest of the way myself. I just need the dia-” Her words got cut off in a sudden gust of wind that whined through the hills as it raced around trying to remove all heat from the area. All I could make out were a few words like “Clara” and “soup.”
Before waiting for me to answer, she took her first step back out into the storm.
And immediately fell flat on her face. I rushed toward her, but by the time I got to her, Naomi had already started picking herself up off the ground, trying to take another step.
I’d had enough. I helped her up and wrapped my arm around her torso, pulling her back under the tree and sitting her down as gently as I could against the tree. She was babbling about finding the bus, not leaving someone behind, none of it made any sense.
I knew what I had to do — if not now, then some other time.
Now would have to do.
I crouched over her and unzipped my jacket, slowly, taking it off and feeling my teeth start to chatter as a fresh wave of cold hit me now that my outer layer of protection was gone. “Listen,” I said, reaching my arm around Naomi’s head and pulling her close enough to hear me. “I’m going to have to go away for a little bit. You’re going to stay here and wait for me to get back.”
Naomi’s eyes were closed. “Hey!” I shouted at her till they fluttered open and she looked at me, unfocused, till she blinked a few times and I could tell she recognized me. “You don’t move till I get back. You got me?”
She nodded. “I got you,” I heard her whisper.
I pulled her forward and slid my jacket around her shoulders, picking up each hand and threading it through the sleeve in turn, before zipping it up. “You’ll be warm enough in there,” I whispered and stood up.
“Alex,” Naomi whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Come here,” she said. I sighed and crouched back down till I was close enough.
“I didn’t mean it. What I said about you not caring about anything.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Yeah, Naomi, you did mean it.” I smiled. “And maybe you’re right.” I leaned forward and gave her a quick kiss, which lasted a lot longer than I’d expected it too. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
I pulled away and stood up soon. “Come back soon,” I heard Naomi whisper, but it sounded more like ‘come back soup.’
And then I headed back out into the snow.
I don’t know what possessed me to turn away from the inn and walk slowly toward the cliff and bus, but I knew that if I didn’t save whatever it was Naomi needed from there, she’d come back some other time and probably get herself into some serious shit.
It was now or never. I started walking down the hill, toward the curve in the road. I knew that there were only two more turns till I got back to the cliff and the bus — it was impressive just how close Naomi had gotten in her quest for that…diary, was it?
I didn’t know why she needed it so bad, but somehow, under that tree, her quest had become my quest, and I was going to make sure that she got what she needed.
Even if it was the last thing I did. For some reason now it mattered to me.
She mattered to me.
I dug my hands into my pockets, flexing my fingers to try and keep them warm as I moved as fast as I could through the snow piling up. It was bitterly cold, and eerily quiet, but also very bright all around — not a combination I was in a hurry to get back to.
I passed the time as I walked trying to avoid thinking about my teeth hitting each other constantly, or the cold soak I could feel in my shoes as the snow got under the legs of my pants and into my socks before melting.
I was miserable. I flashed back to all the places I’d been, the long walks I’d taken under terrible conditions, and for a while that gave me strength; I remembered the happy faces of the people on the other ends of all those walks, greeting me, welcoming me, thanking me for anything I could bring them.
It made the trip bearable.
After two more curves in the road ran quickly downward and I could see the cliff a few hundred feet in front of me just to the right of the sharp turn. The bus was still there, shockingly, and still in almost the same position we’d left it, propped up by the twisted and mangled remains of the guardrails that had saved Naomi’s bus from going over the cliff the first and second time.
I closed the distance to the bus quickly, renewed vigor pushing itself out all over my body as I saw my goal in front of me and getting rapidly closer. Once in front of the hulking ruin of a powerful machine I walked around it, slowly, hesitant to get too close for fear of disturbing it and causing that final fall off the cliff and into the oblivion below.
It didn’t look like anything had been disturbed. The bus still lay upside down and the windows were blown out, the front of the bus almost off the cliff. There was a healthy covering of snow all over it which gave me pause - I didn’t know how the weight distribution of all that snow had changed how close the bus was to tipping over.
I just knew that I didn’t plan on being on it when that happened.
I would, however, need to get aboard to get Naomi’s bag, and after walking around on my inspection run, I stopped in front of the blown out window that we’d used to escape the first time.
Sure enough, Naomi’s bag was there, suspended from the seat she’d been in — the bag’s strap must have gotten caught somewhere, leaving it hanging from the bus’ former floor. I watched it sway in the wind for a mesmerizing moment before shaking my head.
OK, that was the target. In, out, lickety-split, no need to wait around. I leaned over, psyching myself up, and reaching into my pocket to pull out my pocket knife, flicking the blade open.
No time to see what the strap was caught on or to root around in the bag for some piece of jewelry. Just get in, slice the strap, get the bag out of there and sort it all out later, preferably after throwing myself into the fire back at the inn.
Easy. Done it a million times.
As soon as I set foot onto the former ceiling of the bus it shook underneath my weight, and I knew that I had even less time than I thought. I frantically looked to the left, out the front of the bus and had to swallow at the view out the giant hole where the windshield used to be — a view into open air, and no ground beneath for hundreds of feet.
No time for that, Eames. Life or death, here and now. I’d always looked for something to help me feel alive, yeah? This was one of those times.
My other foot hit the floor of the bus and it shook again, and this time it didn’t stop. “Shit,” I muttered under my breath as I dove forward, just barely keeping my feet under me as the bus lurched forward, sliding down the hill toward the edge, Naomi’s bag getting tantalizingly closer to me for all the wrong reasons.
I wasn’t going anywhere — the bus was doing all the work for me, and that was a bad thing.
I took one giant step more forward and reached up, snagging the knife on the bag’s strap while pulling it closer to me with the other hand. The strap took a few seconds to cut through, and as soon as I felt the bag’s weight sag into my hands, I turned around and ran as fast as I could toward the window turned exit, jumping out and landing face first in the snow.
The bus kept moving, and I turned around with enough time to see it teeter over the edge of the cliff and then it was gone.
An eerie pall of silence fell over my ears for a few seconds before I heard the crash of mangled metal as the bus hit the ground far below.
I stayed there for at least a minute feeling the adrenaline coursing through my body. I’d been in some hairy situations before, but this was the closest I could remember to getting myself killed. Finally, I calmed down and looked over the bag that I’d just barely managed to escape with.
For this? Really?
I hesitated before opening it — something about opening a woman’s bag just sounded wrong to me on so many levels, but I felt how cold I was and changed my mind quickly, tearing the bag open and searching around inside to find the warmest thing I could.
It was a sweatshirt. Bright red and fluffy, bordering on pink. And it was way too small for me.
At least, I realized, I’d be easy to see. It took me a minute or so to get it on me, and I knew that Naomi would never be able to wear it again, but at least I felt warmer.
The bag was full of stuff, but I kept on searching, and eventually, in a small pocket, I found plastic zip lock bag. In it was a small notebook, a diary — this must be what all the fuss was about.
I pulled it out of the bag, beating back the voices in my head that shouted that this was private and that I shouldn’t pry. Fuck that, I’d risked everything to get here, I was going to make damn sure this had been worth it, even though I already knew that no matter what I found I’d have trouble believing it was.
My fingers took way longer to open the zip lock than they would have under normal conditions, and I could barely feel the leather of the book cover as I pulled it out and pulled the old lock open, fanning out the pages. A necklace fell out from in between the pages, and I grabbed it before it hit the ground. Staring back at me from the inside of the cover was a picture of a beautiful girl, maybe the same age as Naomi. Underneath the picture was written, in flowery letters, “Naomi.” T
Only the girl in the photo was definitely not the same girl as I’d left under the tree a little while back.
What the hell was going on here?!
I shut the notebook, angry at myself for not knowing what was happening, who she was, or why I had come all this way just to find out I was getting the run around. I stuffed it and the necklace back into the zip lock bag and deposited that in my pocket before hefting Naomi’s bag and starting back up the hill toward the tree and the inn.
I got about a hundred feet up the hill before I realized the bag was just weighing me down. “Fuck it,” I said to no one in particular, and dropped the bag right there, feeling a lightness that energized me as soon as I did.
I didn’t owe that girl anything; especially not if she wasn’t going to tell me the truth about who she was.
I felt duped; I felt deceived. I felt lied to. And that anger fueled me, gave me strength to hike back toward her so I could find out answers.
And answers were in front of me.
One foot in front of the other.
That’s all I needed right now.
Easy. Done it a million times before.