Chapter 16
- Nator’ax -
I see how Riley stiffens beside me. She has no greater liking for this decision than I do.
“Keeping Riley here would seem unwise,” I state. “If you wish to find out about the flying saucer, you need us both.”
“If it’s true that the Borok tribe owns many of them,” Chief Hoker’iz says, “then surely an accomplished warrior like yourself will know all its secrets. You shall go with the men of Gar, and Riley shall stay here.” He sits down and places the hatchet beside him on the bench.
I want to protest more, but I can’t seem to care too much.
I want them to think that Praxigor the dragon will soon come and burn them all for killing me, and if I seem too eager to bring Riley, that could weaken that story.
And one of us going is better than none of us. So I shrug. “The chief decides.”
Riley and I return to the cave. She curls up and, in a soft voice, tells me what I need to know about the saucer and how to maybe make it fly, and I spend some time with the piece of wood and the small blade I made while I try to remember the things she tells me.
Finally, I hand it to her. “This is the main reason I spent the day at the forge.”
She takes it. “A spoon! It’s very nice. For me?”
“Only for you,” I confirm. “You don’t have a weapon, but you may soon need one.”
She weighs the wooden spoon in her hand. “It feels heavy.”
“May I?” I take the spoon back and flick out the hidden blade that turns the spoon itself into a wooden handle. “Something we boys would tinker with before we had real swords. The blade completely disappears inside the handle.” I give it back to her.
She gasps when she gets it. “It’s a switchblade! A secret knife that folds inside the spoon.”
“A sishbled,” I agree in her language. “Yes, that’s it. Use it to eat with by the campfire. Nobody will know that you are armed with a small knife. It can be used for many things. And the tribe’s spoons are too big for you.”
She gets up on her knees and embraces me. “Thank you. I do need one. It’s perfect.”
We lie back down and chat softly before Riley’s answers become so strange and so far apart that she’s clearly about to fall asleep.
I kiss her on her soft, cool cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she mumbles before her breath goes deep and steady.
- - -
I get up before sunrise. The men are gathering by the fire. They are experienced hunters, eating a lot of food for their breakfast so that they have to carry less with them. I join them, but I keep silent while we eat.
When the sun first kisses the tips of the tallest mountain, we start on the walk. The men carry their spears, and I keep my sword by my side. The risk of them really wanting me to come along so they can kill me is less than before, but still present.
“You’re keeping quiet,” a man says when we’ve walked for a while. “Are you worried about what we’ll find?”
“I’m worried,” I admit. “But not about myself. It’s only the Gar tribe and its honorable men that worry me, as well as its innocent boys. I didn’t know you before. Now I do, and the thought of you all burning bothers me.”
“You really think the dragon is coming?”
“He will come as long as Riley and I are being kept as prisoners,” I state heavily.
“And if he were to come after your tribe murders me, then it is the end for you all. I fear he will not let you die quickly and easily, but just burn you enough to give you terrible pain for hours before you all succumb, screaming, your scorched skin falling off you in black flakes. That would be his way.”
“He would do this to the boys, too?” another man asks. “Such a shameful deed, to kill the innocent! Does this dragon have no honor?”
“He is a dragon,” I explain, “and honor is beneath him. When you see him, you will know what I mean. For a little while, you will understand, before the end.”
“We shall fight that dragon,” a man says, holding out his spear. “He will regret attacking the Gar tribe!”
I shake my head sadly. “He will burn you from the air. Your spear will bounce off him like a leaf off the back of a stoka. Have you never seen an irox? Have you never seen how they come down on you with their claws first? How many of you have killed an irox?”
The men all look away. “We have seen them,” one mutters. “But only a fool fights them.”
“A dragon is much worse than an irox,” I tell them. “For where the irox is stupid and angry, the dragon is cunning and mean, like a shaman with scales, fire, wings, and talons.”
We walk in silence toward the glacier with the saucer. The men study tracks as if they were on a hunt, and of course we could take down some Smalls if we see them. I have brought some items of my own that I bury in the snow when the others aren’t looking.
I see the saucer in the distance, just a spot of darker white that contrasts against the snow and ice around it. It’s still up on its edge.
Only a couple of these men were part of Prak’ox’s hunting party that found Riley and me, so most of them haven’t seen it.
“So it is real,” one marvels, and he puts his hand on it. “I wasn’t sure what to believe.”
It looks much the same as before. The crevasse hasn’t cracked open, and the ice hasn’t melted around it.
“It’s not supposed to be like this,” I tell them.
“It’s supposed to have this side down.” I slap the underside.
“We must push it so it stands correctly on the ice. You and you, go to this side. No, keep your mittens on. You, stand here and push at this. You, here.” I organize the men so they can push at the saucer in the best way.
It would be even better to push at the upper edge, but the men aren’t tall enough.
I take up position so that I can make my larger bulk as effective as possible. “When I say ‘now,’ push with all your might,” I instruct. Then I take a deep breath and put my shoulder at the saucer. “Now!”
The men push, and the ice creaks. There’s some movement in the saucer, but it slowly comes back. “Let it come back. Only push for a heartbeat when I say so. Then back.”
“Now!” I repeat as we all push, then “back!” as the saucer returns slowly, lazily, and we simply let it. “Now!” I say when it has reached its first position.
“Now! Back! Now! Back!”
Each time, the saucer goes further the way I want, but each time it comes back, also a little further. I don’t like that—it must land on the right side.
“Now! Back! Now!” We all push as hard as we can. For a moment, the saucer hesitates as if it intends to come back once more. Then there’s a hard crack from the ice, and the saucer slowly drops down with the right side up, with a hollow sound that neither metal nor wood could make.
“Good work,” I praise the men. “Now we can see if—”
My feet suddenly slip, and I fall backwards on the ice. A little trickle of cold water runs from under the saucer, making the ice slippery. I frown as I get back up. “What is this?”
A man yelps and yanks his hand away from the saucer. “It’s hot!”
I try with my own hand without quite touching it. Indeed, the saucer is heating up fast.
The men pull away and out of the water that’s pouring over the ice where it melts. “Is this what should happen?”
“It can happen,” I tell them truthfully, because it’s happening right now. “But this is what Riley and I wanted to avoid! Oh, why would the chief not let us bring her? The folly!”
They all step further back as the saucer slowly sinks into the ice. “Why does it do that?”
I step back, too. The saucer is clearly too hot to touch, and now it’s melting into the glacier. If that continues, it will be impossible to get inside it.
As we watch in silence, the saucer melts its way down until the top of it is below the surface of the ice. The meltwater rises quickly along the saucer as it descends, and soon it’s beneath the water’s surface as it keeps going, making a sucking sound on the way down.
My heart sinks in my chest. That saucer is our only chance to get away from this land of ice and snow. And now it’s sinking to the bottom of the glacier.
“It’s obviously trying to get away from all the strangers and outtribers that are surrounding it,” I growl.
“If only Riley had been here! Then the saucer would have seen that all is well. Now it thinks that Riley is already gone to her Ancestors! Oh, the idiocy of the Gar tribe, and their chief, and their mindless council! Now it may be impossible to avoid the coming of the dragon!” I make it up on the spot, but I’m feeling too much despair to try to make it sound smarter.
“Is it alive, then?” a man asks as the saucer sinks further and further down. “If it can see things and escape?”
“Did it look like a tent to your eyes?” I snap. “A rock? A drift of snow? Of course it’s alive!”
I turn away. Things just got much more difficult and desperate. There are mountains in all directions, all far away, all looking black with snow on the peaks. Escape will be just about impossible.
I turn back to the big hole in the ice. “This has happened before. Another saucer got angry and vanished in the jungle. We found it later, in a clearing. Chief Korr’ax talked to it, for he knew it best. Softly and kindly, he whispered, explaining to the saucer why certain things had happened.”
The men all listen with great attention.
“After a short while,” I go on, “the saucer opened its hatch. Our chief stepped in, and the saucer flew again. The same must happen here! Riley must talk to it, for she knows it best.” I’m making this up, too. But it sounds to me like it could be true.
“How will she talk to it if it’s under the ice?” a Gar man asks. “She would have to yell down into the hole.”
I shrug. “She will know what to do. And we should get her here tomorrow.”
I lean over the big hole the saucer has melted in the ice. I can see it there, at the bottom of a deep layer of clear water, still making a sucking noise as it sinks.
“We can go. There’s nothing more for us here.” I start walking back toward the village, and the Gar men follow, one by one.