Chapter 28
Even before my friends and I exit the door, I can hear wings flapping faintly in the distance: Melanis’s. Their rhythm is distinct, even mixed, as it is, with the sounds of the other hunters. No doubt she’s here for the same reason we are: following the jatu. According to Sayuri’s spies, Melanis’s hunters have destroyed all but one group of them and they haven’t left the region yet. If we move fast, we can overtake them. Or, better yet, Melanis and her hunters can, leaving us space to hunt for my kelai at our leisure. After all, the Gilded Ones still don’t know that it might be here, or that I’m coming to look for it. If they did, this entire area would be crawling with every alaki and deathshriek at their disposal. As Melanis and her hunters are the only ones here, we still have time, although we have to be swift. If the ancient Firstborn is in contact with the goddesses, as I assume she is, it’s only a matter of time before they inform her that a door has been opened here. The moment she hears this, she’ll come searching for the group who opened it.
I give the signal to move out, ears cocked for any sign of Melanis’s group. Thankfully, she and the hunters have all but disappeared. They’re too busy pursuing the jatu to notice us.
“This way.” Keita brusquely motions us toward the thick copse of trees that marks the entrance to the jungle surrounding what remains of his family’s summer house. He’s been tense ever since we entered the door, as if he’s bottled up all his emotions so tightly his entire body has turned rigid. “If we use this path, we can overtake them.”
I quickly follow his directions, breathing out a sigh of relief when I see no trace of blood-eaters sprouting among the bushes; the throbbing, black-petaled flowers are the first telltale signs of the Bloom, the expanse of greenery that displays the extent of the Gilded Ones’ recovered power. Even better, I don’t hear any strange sounds coming from this jungle that might accompany one of the proxies the goddesses have created. The Bloom hasn’t stretched to here, visible confirmation that the goddesses’ power hasn’t recovered substantially since our confrontation despite, or perhaps because of, all the vales they’re opening. If there’s one thing I learned from my confrontation with Okot, it’s that opening vales requires vast amounts of power. It’ll take the gods time and numerous sacrifices to recover what they’ve lost.
But once they do…
I push the thought away as Keita beckons us over to a particularly thick stand of bushes. “The cave should be just around this corner,” he says, making his way through the foliage.
Before we left Ilarong, he explained that a system of caves lies under this area. He used them to flee to safety after his family was massacred. Today, we’ll use them to enter his summer house without being detected.
It would have been so much easier if I could open a door, but I can’t create doors to places I’ve never been. Now, more than ever, I regret not visiting with him when I had the chance.
“Are you certain the caves are this way?” I turn my attention to Adwapa as she examines the area, scowling.
As does her sister.
“Everything looks like overgrowth to me,” Asha says.
Keita turns to them, his eyes grim. “I’ll never forget this place. Never. Even if they razed everything to the ground and built a thousand palaces over it, I would still know where to go.”
“Well, that’s reassurin’,” Britta muses, glancing at me pointedly. She’s also worried about his state of mind.
I just shake my head. “Let’s get a move on.”
“I second that,” Belcalis adds. Then she suddenly stiffens, points up.
Wing flaps are sounding. Melanis is returning. Which means the Gilded Ones must have told her about the door.
What are we waiting for?Kweku motions using battle language. Move!
Into the jungle!Acalan urges us on, slipping so quietly into the bushes, only the leaves rustle.
Just that sound is enough to attract Melanis’s attention. “Intruders!” she shrieks, her voice so shrill, it bounces across the trees. “Where are you hiding?”
Prickles run down my spine at the sound. Melanis’s voice is harsher now, less human than when I last saw her. She’s becoming less the alaki I knew and more like one of the Gilded Ones’ many proxies, a creature of pure vengeance and fury, driven only to serve the gods.
“This is the territory of the mothers, Idugu scum,” she calls out, her hunters also screaming around her. “When we find you, we will rip you limb from limb, and then we will feed your entrails to the beasts.”
“Creative,” Britta mutters as we rush onward. “Ye have to give her that.”
“But did you hear what she said? Idugu scum!” Adwapa seems almost gleeful with triumph as she turns to me and very softly says, “The goddesses can’t distinguish who opens a door! They don’t know it’s you who came through.”
“And let’s keep it that way,” I whisper back, ducking beside a tree when a familiar winged figure passes overhead, a few others with her.
Katya swiftly does the same, the brown she’s painted on her bright red skin blending her against the tree trunks. Melanis’s hunters don’t even notice her as they fly past, but then, I should have expected that. Deathshrieks are naturally stealthy despite their massive size.
Once the hunters have passed, Keita beckons us over to what appears to be a huge cluster of vines. “It’s here!” he proclaims, wrenching aside the mass to reveal what looks to be the mouth of a cave.
It’s small and low to the ground. Child-sized.
Keita blinks. “A bit smaller than I remember. But it’s much bigger inside, I promise,” he says as he continues pulling at the vines.
Within moments, he’s fully uncovered the entrance, which is barely more than a cramped hole in the ground. A look of dismay flashes over Katya’s face when she sees it, but she quickly hides her unease.
“I’m sure we can make it bigger,” she whispers, as if convincing herself. “We just have to dig a little.”
Britta steps forward, cracking her knuckles. “Allow me,” she says and breathes in deeply.
The hairs rise on the back of my neck as I feel her power rising to the occasion, the Greater Divinity’s swirling around it. All my friends—the ones who were with me in the pathways, that is—have been practicing using it to amplify their power.
Li moves to stand beside her. “Let’s do this together?” he asks.
Britta grins. “Together.”
They gesture at the same time, and slowly, quietly, the dirt at the base of the cave’s opening moves aside, heeding the call of their combined power.
Ixa help too!A scaly body muscles past the pair. Ixa begins quietly but enthusiastically digging, dirt and stones moving under the force of his claws. In less than a minute, there’s a hole big enough for me to crawl through.
Not that Britta and Li needed the help, but Ixa is too pleased with himself for anyone to mention it.
See, Ixa help,he says with a happy little wriggle.
Thank you, Ixa,I reply as I crawl my way in.
To my surprise, the cave is massive.
I expected a cramped, dark space, but no, rays of sunlight stream down from the ceiling, which soars so high into the air I can only glimpse portions of it from where I’m standing. Ferns and vines of all sorts fill the cavernous expanse, which is at least the size of a small field, and there’s even a tree or two in the center.
“Would you look at that….” Kweku whistles as he crawls in after me. “It really is huge.”
I don’t reply, too busy craning my neck around to take in my surroundings. No wonder Keita assured us the cave was sizeable.
I turn back to the entrance, where the others are now wriggling in one by one, aided by the mounds of dirt Britta continues slowly and stealthily to move, Li and Ixa by her side. “Will we have any problems entering any other parts of the cave system?” I ask, gesturing to the still relatively small opening, which Katya is just now struggling through. “For her especially?”
Keita shakes his head. “She’ll be fine,” he replies when she finally makes it through. “That should be the smallest space we encounter.”
“I hope so,” Katya grumbles, signing so Keita can understand her.
You’ll be fine,he signs back swiftly. Promise.
Katya nods, but her eyes are still doubtful. Not just about what Keita said but about him as well.
There’s a strange air around Keita now, a brittleness almost. And it’s coupled with heat that pours off him as if from a furnace.
He grunts. “We’ll be safe here. The caves look like hills from above, so no one suspects they’re here, and even if they did, no one would ever come here—at least, no human would.”
I nod. This portion of Gar Fatu was once a common route for deathshrieks journeying to the N’Oyo Mountains to worship the imprisoned goddesses. That’s the very reason Gezo sent Keita’s family here: to put them in the deathshrieks’ path.
That said, Keita heads for the back of the cave. He doesn’t even check to see if the rest of the group has made it through safely.
I follow worriedly after him. “Keita, wait,” I call, concerned. “Britta and Li have to seal the entrance.”
The pair are just now extracting themselves from the entrance, which has flattened back to its previous state, obeying the call of their gift. They also manually rearranged the vines outside as best they could before they entered. “There,” Britta announces, dusting off her hands. “It’s not perfect, but it should fool all but the keenest eyes.”
“Well, here’s to hoping Melanis’s hunters have much worse eyesight than they do hearing,” I sigh, turning back to Keita.
I’m not surprised to find he’s already made it to the other end of the cavern. “Everyone get moving,” he says brusquely to the group as he bursts into a run. “We have half a day to get there, and the jatu are already in the lead.”
Nodding, I follow behind him, picking up speed. From here, it’s a race all the way to the summer house.
After all, we have a kelai to find.
The rest of the cave system remains as bright as that first cave, even when we travel deeper into it, crossing over an underground river using a long-abandoned bridge whose stones are so stylistically carved, there’s no way it was made by nature. Between the sunlight streaming in from those tiny holes in the ceiling and our ability to see almost as well in the dark as we do in the light, it’s easy for my friends and I to navigate even the darker, gloomier areas of the cave. The entire time, we maintain a swift run, an easy feat for us. Back in the Warthu Bera, we used to do it for hours every morning.
“Think some ancient civilization lived here?” Adwapa asks, not the slightest bit out of breath, as she peers at the soaring walls around us, which have what look like cleverly hidden windows embedded in them all the way up to the ceiling.
“Without a doubt,” Acalan says, his voice loud and excited now that we’re in so deep, there’s no chance Melanis can hear us. “There’s those sun-holes in the ceiling and then the windows as well. But none of it seems human made,” he muses, squinting. “I don’t see any stairs, so how did they get up there?”
“They flew,” Keita says curtly. When we all turn to him, he continues: “Aviax used to live here. Some other creatures too. I would look at the carvings they left on the walls when I got frightened.” Then he falls quiet. “I looked at them a lot. Especially when the deathshrieks searched the mountain.”
My stomach twists as I realize what he’s saying. The horror he experienced. “Oh, Keita,” I whisper, hurrying toward him. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to be only nine years old, parents just slaughtered, and to have to hide in these caves as groups of deathshrieks mad with bloodlust searched the area above him, their shrieks splitting the skies.
Worse, it sounds like he was here for quite some time, much more than the day or so he initially told me. I can’t tell if it’s that he doesn’t truly recall, or that he doesn’t want to let on—not just to me and the others but to himself—how terrifying the experience truly was.
One of the things Keita hasn’t been able to change, even after all our time together, is his need to always be the protector—even if it’s just himself he’s protecting.
He runs faster, a deliberate attempt to evade my touch. “We have to keep moving,” he says brusquely, doubling his pace. “Can’t dawdle and risk the goddesses sending more pursuers.”
“Or worse, losing Deka’s kelai,” Acalan adds, following after him.
As I sigh, keeping pace with them, a soft footstep falls beside mine: Belcalis’s. “Think he’s going to be all right?” she asks quietly, her eyes on his back.
Somehow, I’m not surprised she’s the one who’s asking. Belcalis may be solitary by nature, but she and Keita have become close in the past few months. More so than anyone else in the group, the two are brutally practical—sometimes, even to the point of being callous, like White Hands so often is.
I shrug. “I don’t know. This place, it’s filled with all his worst memories.”
Belcalis nods. “Losing his family, and in such a brutal way.”
I nod. “I can’t imagine how devastating it must be.” I lost my parents more recently, so I can only begin to guess what it felt like for Keita at nine years old, the disorientation and loss.
“That why he’s emitting so much heat?” This question comes from Adwapa, who’s now beside us, her brow slick with sweat. “He’s like a gods-damned furnace, that one.”
I sigh. “I’ll talk to him,” I say.
But Belcalis shakes her head. “Let me.” When I slow to glance at her, she explains: “I know he’s your sweetheart, Deka, but he’s also my friend. Perhaps the truest male friend I’ll ever have.” She seems almost pained to admit: “I…care about him.”
A shocking development. Belcalis is not what you would call friendly to those of the masculine persuasion. Or to people in general, for that matter.
But perhaps she is Keita friendly.
I nod. “Of course.”
Belcalis runs forward. Much to my surprise, she puts her arm around Keita’s shoulder despite the heat still pouring off him. I’m even more shocked when he doesn’t shrug it off or move faster. Instead, he slows to half lean into it, allowing her to comfort him. A pang shoots through my heart.
Keita won’t accept my comfort, but he will accept Belcalis’s. He’ll lean on her the way he won’t lean on me. I can’t help but feel injured by that.
“Let them have their moment.” When I turn, Adwapa is watching the direction of my eyes, her gaze shrewd.
“I know, but—”
“It pains you?” Adwapa nods. “Except it’s not that he’s rejecting you—he’s pretending to be strong for you.”
“But I can be strong for him too.”
“In good time,” Adwapa says. “But you have worries of your own to sort out.” Her eyes are sharp in the gloom as she gazes at me. “I heard what you said to Karmoko Thandiwe earlier. About being afraid to fail.”
When I glance up at her, startled, her expression is gentle now.
“You’ll be a wonderful god, Deka,” she says. “And an attractive one too. Have you seen the Idugu? Hideous, the lot of them.”
As I laugh, startled, she nods at me, so much love in her eyes. “Everything will be as it should be,” she continues.
“And if it isn’t?”
“Then you’ll have me. And Asha, and Britta, and the uruni, and Belcalis, and Katya, and even Keita—even though he’s being a bit of a pissfart at the moment. I know you’ve been in pain and fear and anger this past month, but I’m here with you—”
“As are the rest of us.” This comment comes from Britta, who has stopped running and is now walking up to me with Asha and Katya by her side, all their eyes filled with compassion.
My tears begin flowing again. “Oh, you,” I sniffle. “I love you all.”
“And we love you,” Adwapa says calmly. “If everything goes to shit, you’re not alone, Deka. You have us.”
“To the end of the world an’ back,” Britta says.
“And even if it’s just to the end of the world, I’m fine with that, honestly,” Adwapa adds. “As long as I get a glorious death, Mehrut at my side, I’ll go into the darkness smiling.”
“Speak for yourself,” her sister sniffs beside her. “I’d rather have a quiet death in my own bed.” Then she smiles at me. “But if it is the end of the world, I’m with you, Deka. You’re not alone.”
“Never, ever,” Katya says in her soft rumble.
“None of us are,” Britta agrees.
By now, my heart is so full, it’s heaving with sobs. “Thank you,” I say to my friends, enfolding them in my arms. “Thank you all.”
And then I continue running, moving even faster now than I did before. Britta is right, I’m not alone. No matter what I may think, we’re all in this together. And if being a god means I can save my friends, protect them from the other deities, then it’s well worth being alone. And who knows: perhaps it won’t be as bad as I think, perhaps I’ll be so busy being a god, I won’t even know how lonely I am.
I hold on to this thought as we continue further into the darkness.