Athel (13 page)

“It’s like
I told you,” Lukas says. “They’re distributed like the five stars in Cassiopeia.”

“They
are,” Athel confirms. “But it’s hard to read the map because there are no
cardinal points or other references since the city burned down. Tahari thinks
that Beacon Rock sits right here.” He stabs the map with his index finger,
pressing it somewhere in between the Ingenuity and Knowledge doors, the gamma
and beta stars in the Cassiopeia constellation. “If he’s right, then we should
be able to find the doors.”

“Which we
can’t open because we’re missing the
chavis
,”
I say, the thought stinging.

“You
couldn’t know,” Athel says. “Tahari told me you need a special engram to know
how to open those cylinders. If Yuri had the engram, then he did the right
thing to open it.”

Athel’s
answer shocks me. “But I’m the one who found it!” I protest.

Is he defending Metal Jaw now? After all he’s
done to us
?

“We’re all
in this together, Dottie. We find the five
chavis
and open the five doors, then the entrance to the Underground City will unlock,
revealing a safe haven to plan our war against the Gaijins and build our
weapons. If we don’t, then we’re doomed. All of us. You, me, Yuri and Cal
alike.”

I grind my
teeth. “You know I hate them.”

“I hate
them too,” he says. “But we’ll have to convince them to collaborate on this
one.”

“You said
Tahari already has three
chavis
?” Wes
asks.

“Yes,”
Athel replies. “And now Yuri and Cal have the fourth one.”

“Four
chavis
have been found but no door?” Wes
insists.

Athel
shakes his head. “It’s not that simple. Like I said, the map isn’t easy to
read.”

“But why
find all the
chavis
?” I retort. “All
we need is to unlock one door to gain access to the Underground City.”

“No,”
Lukas interjects. “It was all part of a careful plan. The city was to remain
secret and inaccessible under normal circumstances. That’s why no door will open
until all five are unlocked. So we really need to find the remaining
chavis
first.”

“And then
all doors?” I ask. “That’s insane. We’ll never make it in time.”

“Two doors
is all we need,” Lukas replies. “Once we have the location of those two, we can
figure out how the map is oriented and find the rest. In fact, if Tahari is
right about Beacon Rock, all we need is one.”

Lukas
stares intently at the map and brushes a finger from Beacon Rock all the way
down to where the Prudence door is marked. “This is where Akaela found the
chavi
,” he says. “I think the Prudence
door is in the vicinity.”

“How do
you know?” Athel asks.

“Because
now that I understand all this better, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it.”

Chapter Twelve

Athel

Day Number: 1,586

Event: Lukas claims the rocket’s not a
rocket

Number of Mayakes left: 428

Goal for today: Fix the rocket (or
whatever it is) and return it to the Gaijins.

Lukas works on the rocket late
into the night. Around one in the morning, Wes and Dottie lean against the hay
bales and doze off. I try to resist a little longer, taking occasional strolls
out in the paddock to breathe in fresh air. But I’ve already gone without sleep
for forty-eight hours and eventually I, too, fall victim to my own exhaustion
and pass out on the floor.

When Lukas
rouses me from sleep, pins of light poke through the shutters in the stable. I
blink, rub my eyes, and roll over, the smell of hay and horse manure tickling
my nostrils. Wes and Akaela are nowhere to be seen, and Lukas is yelling in my face,
“You’ve got to see this! You’ve got to see this!”

“Where are
the others?” I drawl, slowly sitting up.

“Went back
to the Tower before the moms would wake up to empty beds and freak out.” He
pulls my sleeve and points to the rocket, which now lies on the floor with its
belly—the frame—flipped open. “Come see this thing. I tell you,
it’s no ordinary rocket.”

Taeh peeks
at me from her stall and bobs her head, her way of saying good morning.

I rub my
eyes with the heels of my hands. “Did you figure out what’s wrong with it?”

Lukas
frowns as though disappointed I’d even ask. “Of course I figured it out.
There’s a huge dent in the tank that reduces the fuel area, causing the burn
rate to be too slow for it to reach high altitude. It’s fixable, but I need a special
wrench to do it. Akari has one.”

I stifle a
yawn and give him a blank stare. “What are you waiting for? Go get it, then.
Will it launch once you fix the issue?”

Lukas
shrugs. “I didn’t see anything else that could potentially cause problems.
We’ll have to test it, although it doesn’t have much fuel left. Not that it
needs a lot.” His eyes shine again, despite being tired from the sleepless
night. “Check it out. The oxygen ratio makes this engine the most efficient
ever—”

“Save it
for later,” I interject. I get up and stretch. The time stamp on the bottom
corner of my retina reads 6:29 a.m. “We don’t have much time. Once the rocket
is fixed, we’ll haul it back to the mouth of the gorge. I’m pretty sure the
droids will find it there and bring it back home to the Gaijins.”

Lukas sits
with his legs crossed and flashes a devious smile. “Sounds good, except for one
thing.”

I blink.
“What thing?”

“This,” he
says, patting the metal frame, “is no rocket.”

“Huh? What
is it, then?”

“A rocket booster.”
He leans over the thing, dips a hand inside one of the chambers and pulls out
what looks like a set of straps with buckles. “This puppy is the propelling
engine of some kind of capsule. It didn’t get here on its own.”

I blink at
that. Several times. Then I run a hand through my hair and sit back down on the
floor. “You sure about that?”

Lukas nods
emphatically, the straight hair at the back of his head bobbing back and forth.
“One hundred percent positive. Not a big capsule. Given the size of the nozzles,
I’d say it has enough thrust to carry about two hundred pounds, no more.”

“What
would you put in a two-hundred-pound capsule?” I ask, although my mind is
starting to form a clear picture of what happened.

Lukas
shrugs. “I’d have to be a Gaijin to know the answer. I dunno. A trap? A spybot?
Some kind of robotic machine, for sure, because we know the Gaijins will never
set foot in our land for fear of getting the Plague again.”

Right. Except someone did. Why risk it, though
?

And the
rocket…
booster
, according to Lukas…
That’s why she wanted it fixed,
not
to return it to the droids. But then, if not the rocket… what is it that the
droids want?

A trickle
of sweat runs down my cheek. If it’s not the rocket the droids want back, then
we’re in deep trouble. The Gaijins will attack in twenty-four hours and we
haven’t unlocked any of the doors. I wipe the sweat off my face and clamber
back to my feet. Taeh whinnies impatiently in her stall. “I know, girl. Time to
get you outside,” I say, while the memory of a girl with blue eyes and long
braids flashes before my eyes.

All I wanted to do was save her life
, I think,
opening the gate to Taeh’s stall.

What if I gave her the Plague and signed her
death sentence instead
?

I walk Taeh
to the prepping corner and groom her mechanically, my thoughts reeling. Taeh
keeps stomping her hooves and moving away from me.

“Athel?”
Lukas calls.

“What?”

“You seem…
um. Preoccupied.”

“What
makes you think so?”

“The fact
that you’re brushing your horse with a horseshoe.”

Taeh’s
finally had enough of me and walks to the door one second before it swings
open. Akaela pokes her head inside and finds herself face to face with the
horse.

“Good
morning Taeh,” Dottie says, hugging her. “You guys still here?” she adds, her
gaze straying from me to Lukas. She carries a basket that smells incredibly
delicious.

I quickly
hide the horseshoe behind my back and grin. “Lukas is almost done fixing the
rocket—or whatever the thing is.”

Dottie
sets the basket on the ground and walks over to take a peek inside the machine.
Lukas illustrates in detail all the functions and dysfunctions of the thing
while gushing in awe at the Gaijins’ technology.

I lift the
lid of the basket Dottie brought and take a peek inside. There are two bowls,
chopsticks wrapped in napkins, and two bamboo boxes. The scent of fried noodles
and sweet potatoes wafts to my nostrils, making my mouth water.

Dottie
slaps my hand and whisks the basket away from me.

“I thought
you brought us breakfast!” I protest.

“I did,
but I had to cover for you, Athel.
Again
.”

Lukas
smirks and looks away.

 
“Mom wanted to know where you were, so I
told her you’d gone out early to help at the riverbank.”

“Good.” I reclaim
the basket and hand a set of chopsticks and one of the two bowls of noodles to
Lukas. We both dig in with hearty appetites. “You’re the best, Sis,” I add with
my mouth full.

She
scowls. “No, I’m a liar.” Taeh dips her head and kisses my sister on the cheek,
making her giggle. “I wish I could go ride with you, Taeh, but there’s still so
much work to do.”

“Let her
roam in the paddock,” I say, pointing my chopsticks.

Dottie
gets up and brushes hay straws off her pants, nodding.

“And since
you’re there—” I add, but she cuts me off.

“No. I’m
not fetching you anything, and I’m not your servant. I’ve got work to do.” And
with that, she and the horse stomp out of the barn.

Lukas
sucks up the last noodle and scrapes clean the bamboo boxes filled with steamy
hot sweet potatoes. Despite my ravenous appetite, I eat only half of my noodles
and leave the sweet potatoes untouched. Lukas flashes me a supercilious glare.

“Not
hungry?”

“Lost my
appetite,” I lie, placing the leftover food back inside the basket. “Shall we
head over to the Tower?”

He lines
up his tools on the ground next the rocket and nods. “What if fixing the rocket
booster won’t be enough? What if they want the capsule, too?”

I push the
barn door open and Taeh immediately comes trotting toward us. “Why sending it
over if now they want it back?” I ask.

Lukas
shrugs. “Maybe launching it was a mistake?”

I sweep a
hand across Taeh’s auburn back, pondering.

What if it
was
all a mistake
?

“You go
ahead and get the wrench from Akari,” I tell Lukas. “I’ll meet you back here in
half an hour.”

I wait for
him to jog out of the paddock and then whistle to Taeh. “Come on, girl. You
were eager to ride, weren’t you?”

She
understands immediately and trots to her prepping corner.
 

Less than a day and still so many things to
find
,
I think, sliding the underpad onto her back.

A capsule,
five keys, and one door.

And an
underground city buried and forgotten for years.

*
 
*
 
*

At the bank, men and women are
nailing together the fishing platforms and raising them back into the riverbed.
Once I reach the forest, the bangs ebb off and quiet envelops me. Taeh’s hooves
thump softly on moss-covered paths, and leaves whisper in the breeze.

The main
trail shows the signs of the loggers from yesterday. Split branches and overturned
terrain riddle the way, while the scents of resins and pinecones tinge the air.

A flock of
jays bathes at the edge of the creek. Taeh dips her head in the water to drink,
and the birds storm away in a flutter of wings and screeches. I duck under the
moss beards dangling from the branches and crane my neck for signs of the girl
with the silver braids.

“Lilun,” I
hiss, but all I get in response is the gargle of the water rushing downstream,
and the gentle hoots of the spotted doves. I dismount and walk the distance to
the girl’s hiding spot, where I found her the first time. The contorted
branches of the old tree bend all the way to the ground, and the wild vines
along the slope are still torn and flattened from yesterday, when I rolled the
rocket up the hill in order to load it onto Taeh’s saddle.
 

“Lilun,” I
call again, peeking under the roots of the old oak tree.

The small
cave is cold and empty. Mom’s old prosthesis is lying on a blue blanket rolled in
a corner, one edge spotted with dried blood. I lift the blanket, and the empty
bottle of medicine I brought yesterday rolls away, clinking against a hard
surface. Half-buried in the dirt at the back of the cave is a shiny white box
with rounded corners.

A voice at
the back of my head tells me to leave the box alone because it’s none of my
business. I tell the voice at the back of my head to shut up and dig the box
out of the dirt. As much as I try, turning it over in my hands and shaking it,
I can’t find a dent or a groove where the thing would open. So I place the box
back where I found it and walk out of the cave.

Grazing
near the oak tree, Taeh sways her long black tail to shoo away the flies
swarming around her rump. I open my mouth to call Lilun again, but change my
mind. If Tahari or Aghad are out here looking for the
chavis
, they might hear me and then I’ll have a lot more to explain
than a non-working rocket. So I climb back up, my thoughts shifting between
hope that the girl has found her way back home and fear that something bad may
have happened to her. And as I keep thinking about the girl with the silver
braids, my left foot slips over a sheet of dead vine leaves sending me rolling
down the incline.

I hear a
chuckle, and when I look up again, her blue eyes are peering down at me,
looking amused.

“Great,” I
groan, propping myself up on my elbows. “The clown has come to town.”

Her face
is suddenly serious. She chews on her lower lip and then hesitantly holds out
her one hand to me.

I wonder
how hard that gesture might be for her. A Gaijin girl holding her hand out to
help a stupid Mayake boy who fell on his bum. And then I wonder about the
Plague, and whether my own hands are dirtied with the contaminated stuff that
killed most of her people.

If she gets the Plague, she’s the one to blame
, cynical
me blabbers in my head.
What is she doing
here, anyway? Doesn’t she know any better
?

Cynical me
keeps jabbering nonsensical thoughts in my head, while all along the knot in my
throat doesn’t let go. So I shake my head and get up on my own, brushing off
the bits of leaves and dirt smeared all over my pants.

Lilun
seems upset, at first, her injured arm snuggled against her ribcage, but her
smile resurfaces as soon as she spots Taeh grazing by the oak tree. She strides
over and after a moment of hesitation, she finally reaches out and pats the
horse’s auburn neck.

So much for worrying about the Plague
.

“Well,” I
say, sliding the backpack off my shoulders, “since you’ve reached the point of
no return, how about this?” I pull a green apple from a side pocket of my pack.
Taeh smells it almost immediately and walks over baring her teeth. I gently
push her away and give the apple to Lilun.