Chapter 1 #5
Pop looks at me furiously, then he opens up his Noise, bigger than I’ve ever seen it, and suddenly I’m drowning again, like in the dreams. The words and images and feelings all come down on me like a waterfall that I can’t move from.
And it’s not all negative and it’s not telling me I’m awful–the opposite, really, it’s filled with so much love for me I’m already crying–but it’s unbearable nonetheless.
STOP! Granddad says, so loud it cuts through.
It stops immediately. Pop is close to me now, his face near mine.
“That’s what it feels like in my head,” he says. “That’s what it feels like every day.”
I screw up all my anger and I look him in the eyes, though mine are still flooding. “But you chose it. You chose it and you think it’s better.”
“I knew what I was choosing,” he says. “You don’t. It’s too dangerous. That’s what I told your mom.” He turns an angry face to Granddad. “That’s what I told you, Ben.”
“He deserved to know,” Granddad says. “He’s old enough.”
“That is not your decision.”
“It’s not yours neither,” I say.
“The Land still won’t give it to you. The Sky agrees with me. So you just put it out of your head.”
“Pop–”
“Enough! You only want it now because I told you you can’t have it.”
And as true as this may be, I’m about to keep fighting, but every head of the Land, and Granddad’s too, turns suddenly to a Land scout who’s gone ahead and come back with news.
We’re here, Granddad says.
It’s not what I expected. There’s a massive rock, suddenly in the middle of the forest, like someone dropped it there, and there’s a lightning bolt–shaped cleft high in the face of it.
The cleft is pretty far above us, so it’s hard to tell exactly how big it is, but I think anybody in this party could walk into it without having to crouch down.
“All right,” Pop says. “A cleft in a rock. How do we feel about that?”
Noise whizzes all around me, fast as . . . I was going to say lightning, but that’s probably because the word was already there for the taking.
“What are they saying?” I ask Pop, as he’s clearly listening.
“They say it’s not a natural formation.”
“Kind of obviously,” I say.
“But . . .” He listens, his forehead crinkling in disbelief. He turns to Granddad. “Ben?”
“They’re saying there’s something wrong with it,” Granddad says.
“What do they mean, ‘something wrong’?”
“I’m not sure,” he says, as all around us, the Land are setting down the bags they carried on their backs and taking out the equipment they’ve brought: tools the color of bone, leaf vials that carry different kinds of chemicals and liquids, quartz viewers, Land science in a wide array.
They’ve also got some human tools, too, including a Geiger counter for radiation, and I see Ess take out a box I think is used for pushing soundwaves through rock to see what composition it is.
They’re all at the rock face, making tests, securing climbing ropes, setting up their machines.
And that’s when the god screams.
The sound seems to come from nowhere and everywhere. It’s as horrible as it was before: a giant creature in extreme and agonizing pain. Pop immediately steps in front of me, but I’m not even sure if that’s the side that’ll protect me. The scream gets louder and louder–
And then it falls away.
“We have to go,” Pop says to Granddad. Then he sends it out in his Noise to the rest of the Land. We have to go! Now!
The Land start packing up their gear, not nearly as fast as I’d like them to, and Pop keeps turning around me in a circle, watching the trees, looking for where it’s going to come out–
Wait.
A word, coming through the Noise. A word in human language, but not from Granddad.
“What do you mean, wait?” Pop yells. “You haven’t seen these things. I have!”
Another flash of Noise. Both Pop and Granddad turn immediately to the rock face.
“What’s going on?” I say, feeling panicky. “What are they saying?”
The scream comes again, louder this time, like a siren blaring right in your face but filled with terror and pain. I can’t help it, I clamp my hands over my ears, moaning in fear. I squeeze my eyes shut, and I’m basically waiting for the end, waiting for the god to emerge and kill us all–
It takes a second to hear Pop’s voice. “Max!” he’s saying. “Max, it’s okay!”
“How is it okay?” I manage to yell back, forcing my eyes open.
And I see everyone but him looking up at the cleft in the rock, and that’s only because Pop is looking at me. “It’s the wind,” he says.
“It’s not the wind!” I say, eyes wide.
“It’s coming through the hole in the rock,” he says, pointing up.
A few plants and lichens have grown around the lightning-shaped slash there, and I can see them now, shimmering a little, like in a breeze.
They shimmer faster as the screaming sound starts up again.
They lean out from the hole as the sound increases and slowly move back in as it dies.
“There must be another entrance,” Pop says, “and the wind blows through the cave, making that sound.”
“It’s exactly like–”
“I know,” he says, frowning. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Granddad comes over to us, eyes way up high on the rock face. “I don’t know about there being another entrance,” he says. “One of the Land has already done a circle of it. There’s nothing on the other side.”
“And what’s it doing in the middle of the woods anyway?” I say, still not at all convinced that a burning giant isn’t going to crawl out of that rock face and smash us. “There isn’t anything else like it around here.”
And there’s not, and nothing on the way in either. Just this rock.
“Where a town once was,” Pop says, guessing the rest of my thoughts.
The scream starts up again, like an alarm sounding, but for who? And why?
Pop’s Noise is troubled. This is not what we expected.
“What did we find?” he asks, looking up at the rock.
And no one answers him.