The Divide Read online

  That’s why he sent me. That’s why I’m here.

  Plistim might be in charge.

  Salem might be their inspiration.

  But I’m going to lead them. And like the deer, they won’t even know I’m doing it.

  I hold my bound hands out toward Plistim, leaning on the basket’s wall to stay upright. “You have my word, I will not attempt to harm you, or any member of your family. Instead, I will do all that I can to ensure that you remain undetected, and safe.”

  It’s Shua who takes my hands, places a blade between them and then cuts me free. “I believe her.” He crouches and frees my feet next.

  “Are you sure?” Plistim asks, staring at Shua, who’s now staring me in the eyes.

  “She is opposed to most of what we believe, but she is not a liar,” Shua says. “Before, she would have killed us. And our son. But not now.”

  I tense at the word ‘our,’ but say nothing.

  Shua turns the blade around, placing the point against his chest, and leaving the handle for me to take.

  Plistim takes a step to intervene, but Shua holds out a hand, stopping him. Then he speaks to me. “I give you my life, to take or to spare.”

  I take the knife in my hand, looking him in the eyes. “You’re a brave man. Stupid. But brave.”

  I give the knife a push. The blade sinks through fabric and skin. There’s a flash of fear in Shua’s eyes as the pain reaches his mind, along with the realization that he might have made a grave mistake. When I pull the blade back, his fingers go to his chest, feeling the shallow wound.

  I offer him a merciless smile. “I didn’t want you to forget the moment I could have killed you but didn’t.”

  Plistim laughs and claps his son on the shoulder. “You’ve always had a wounded heart. Now there will be a scar to match it.”

  I turn the knife around and hand it back to Shua, a red spot appearing on his light brown, loose-fitting garb.

  I have another verbal jab drawn from my mental quiver and nocked on the bow that is my tongue, but it’s cut short by a high-pitched gasp.

  “Shoba,” Plistim chides, his voice an angry whisper, but then he notices her attention is not on Shua’s wound, and her gasp was not out of fear for his safety, but for the safety of them all.

  Distracted by my freedom, no one paid the fire any heed, and did not notice as it ignited the balloon. With the flames spreading upward, the balloon descends. I lean over the basket’s wall, looking down.

  The shaking forest revealing the Golyat’s presence is a good mile behind us now, still moving south.

  I feel a moment of relief that quickly turns to dread when the shaking stops. A loud thumping pounds through the air, like the chattering of a cold child’s teeth, and then the path turns west, pursuing our balloon as it plummets toward the forest and the horrible unknown.

  16

  “What do we do?” I ask, watching the flames lick higher, freeing the hot air from the balloon’s girth.

  “Hold on,” Plistim says, doing just that.

  I prefer to be actively involved in navigating life’s challenges, but right now, Plistim is right. With no way to combat the flames, and the inability to sprout wings and fly away, holding on is the best any of us can manage.

  But that’s not entirely true. If we survive our uncontrolled descent, the current one-step plan will help no one. Gripping the basket’s side, I take one last look and mark the Golyat’s progress. It’s still moving in our general direction, but it’s not gaining. Thankful for the ocean’s westward wind, I turn my eyes straight down. Two thousand feet, I guess. After watching our rate of descent for a moment, I estimate the time it will take for us to reach the ground. One minute. A quick glance back at the Golyat, and I think, two minutes.

  I let go of the basket and stumble across toward the other side, as a gust of wind punches into the side of our deflating balloon.

  Shua catches me by the arm. “What are you doing?”

  “We need to hit the ground moving,” I say, picking up the backpack holding my weapons, and slipping it over my shoulders. When he looks unconvinced, I say, “It’s following us!”

  Shua’s eyes widen. He hadn’t noted the Golyat’s course change. He takes a moment to stand tall, looking back to confirm what I’ve told him. Then he crouches down, separating the three remaining packs.

  “Father.” Shua tosses a pack to Plistim, who struggles to put it on.

  He pushes the other to Shoba, but she just glances at the pack and doesn’t move, her fingers locked onto the basket’s edge.

  Shua moves to help his father, and I crouch walk to Shoba, thinking, thirty seconds.

  “We can’t waste a moment,” I tell her, and I hold an arm strap open for her. “One arm at a time. You can hold on while you do it.”

  Shoba looks at me with the petrified eyes of a girl who believed life beyond the Divide would be easy, or noble, or anything other than plummeting from the sky while being pursued by the one thing in the world we were all taught to avoid. As obsessed with the past as the Modernists are, even they understand that the Golyat is a threat.

  I’ve never had much patience with the idiocy of youth, including my own, so I shake the bag at her. “Now!”

  When she doesn’t move, I pry one of her hands away from the basket and force the strap around her arm. I slide around her body and repeat the process with her other arm, but this time she helps.

  “See,” I tell her. “You can—”

  An impact jars the basket from below, but my eyes move upward. Half the balloon is missing and the thick ropes holding what’s left together, which attach the basket to it, are burning bright.

  A second impact is punctuated by a dead branch punching through the basket’s side in the small space between Shoba and me. As the flaming balloon is carried past us, I can see what’s about to happen: the balloon will pull the basket up and over, dumping us into the forest below. Still more than a hundred feet up, we will either be torn apart by branches as we fall, or die upon impact with the ground.

  “Back!” I shout to Shoba, drawing my machete. Just as the still-burning ropes go taut, I bring the blade down. The basket begins to flip, but the branch falls away, and instead of being flipped over, we’re spun around.

  Our descent through the forest canopy is still violent, but the brunt of every impact is absorbed by the thick basket.

  And then, all at once, we’re still. I take two breaths while looking at the others, each of them frightened and bruised, but alive. The balloon is above us still, snagged in a pine tree that is starting to smolder. The scent is marvelous, and reminds me of childhood winters, snuggled in furs, warmed by the fire, listening to my father. But then the basket lurches down as a fiery band of rope snaps.

  We’re not on the ground.

  I inch my way up to the basket’s edge and look down at a fifty foot drop.

  “We made it,” Plistim says, smiling, unaware of the danger.

  “Not even close.” I point at the fire above. “We have maybe thirty seconds before the ropes give way and we fall to our deaths. And another thirty seconds beyond that before the Golyat arrives.”

  Another downward lurch and the sound of distant snapping limbs conspire to support my assessment.

  “We can’t—” Shoba is looking over the basket. “How—”

  I grip her shoulder hard enough to make sure she forgets everything but my voice. “The trunk is narrow. Hug it tight, then loosen to descend.”

  “But—”

  “Did you not teach your people how to survive in the wild?” I snap at Plistim, and then I redirect my glare at Shua. “Perhaps a little less time spent learning how to kill people and a little more time preparing for—”

  “If our lives were not constantly at risk, we might have been able to—”

  A tree snaps, creaks, and crashes to the forest floor. It’s still too far away to see, but there is no doubt: the Golyat is approaching. The fiery beacon above us and the pungent s
moke are easy to follow.

  Shua slides out of the basket, wrapping his arms and legs around the tree, clinging to it like a bear cub to its mother. “Like this,” he says to Shoba with far more patience. Shua slides down and pauses, waving the girl on. I’m tempted to pitch her over the side, but she begins moving, trusting Shua’s demonstration far more than my words.

  When they’re both sliding down the tree’s rough bark, I motion for Plistim to follow. He squints at me, suspicious.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” I say. “Nowhere else to go but down.”

  He climbs onto the tree, looking nearly as uncomfortable as Shoba. I pause to watch their descent, hiss a quick, “Faster!” and then turn my eyes up. The tightest of the ropes, the one bearing most of the basket’s weight, is burning just a few feet overhead.

  Machete in one hand, I slip out of the basket, and onto the tree, gripping with both legs and one arm. I could do this with just my legs, but I’m not going down. Not yet.

  With a quick swing, I sever the rope at the basket, which lurches down. The sudden tug is too much for the burning ropes to support. Free of flames, the basket falls, drawing a shout from Shoba and wary glances from Shua and Plistim. With the still flame-free severed rope in hand, I scale up the tree several feet, reach out with the machete and cut away a six foot length, three of those feet burning.

  Fifteen seconds, I think, and I loosen my grip on the tree. The bark’s rough surface scrapes against me, and the effort puts Grace’s stitches to the test. If the skin had not already begun to heal, the wounds would have torn back open. Even if that was the case, I would not have slowed. A thousand such wounds would be preferable to even laying eyes on the Golyat.

  I hit the ground just a second after Plistim, who eyes the rope hanging from my hand, like a flaming whip.

  I point uphill and whisper, “Go! Now!”

  Without waiting to see if they comply, I drag the rope over the forest floor of orange, dry pine needles. Unlike the lush green tree tops that are more likely to smolder and smoke, the forest floor ignites with just the briefest touch, flames and smoke rising into the air. I pause by the basket, setting it ablaze, too. Then I drag the rope across the ground, creating a wall of fire between the Golyat’s approach and the direction I told the others to run.

  It’s a minor barrier. I don’t expect it to stop the Golyat, only to mask our presence. If we’re lucky, the flames will conceal all traces of anything human—the basket, our footprints, our scents—and the chase will end before it truly begins.

  When I stop, an unimpressive wall of fire is sending up a curtain of smoke thick enough to conceal the forest on the far side. The basket crackles and snaps as its tightly woven fibers burn hot and high.

  That will do it, my conscious mind says, at the same moment my unconscious mind declares, one second.

  Time is up.

  Breaking branches lock me in place. The sound came from just beyond the wall of smoke.

  The ground shudders.

  An earthquake?

  Two more rumbles roll beneath my feet, equally timed.

  Footsteps.

  The Golyat is as massive as we feared.

  I crouch down low, each movement slight and measured. If a shifting breeze, or the Golyat’s own movement, thins the smoke, swift motion could make me easy to detect. Right now, since I’m still alive, I think the wall is working.

  A deep rumbling chatter, like trees snapping, thumps through the forest loud enough to quiver the smoke and send my hands to my ears. The sound is primal, communicating raw, frenzied hunger.

  It’s followed by a deep huffing, like the way a dog tastes the air in quick bursts before puffing it back out.

  Once again, the smoke is concealing my proximity, but the Golyat is not fooled. It knows the fire isn’t natural.

  I’m assigning intelligence to something for which I still have no direct observation, but I have trouble believing a completely mindless force of nature could push the human race toward extinction. Then again, the Golyat seems to have been stymied by a vast gorge, and a deep, swift-moving river that I managed to cross, and now again by a wall of smoke.

  Intelligent, maybe, but not very.

  Then what is it? What made this creature so dangerous?

  A flare of orange light, fifty feet up and behind the wall of smoke reveals a second tree has caught fire. The blaze might very well spread into a forest fire stretching hundreds of miles. I feel a pinch of sorrow for the destruction that could ensue, but if the Golyat remains on the inferno’s far side, I will feel grateful.

  The orange light grows brighter, cutting through the curling smoke.

  And then, it moves closer.

  That’s not a fire, I think, taking a slow step back.

  The luminous glow expands, following a winding path back and forth, like a bright snake emerging from its den. Just as something of a form begins to emerge, the ear-splitting chatter thumps through the forest, and at this range it’s nearly enough to make me shout in pain.

  Sensing the Golyat is about to push past my smoke wall, I have no choice but to drop the fiery rope and make a mad dash behind a foliage-cloaked tree just thirty feet away which, if the stories are true, is still within arm’s reach. I want to dive, or slide out of sight as fast as possible, but I force myself to tip-toe and crouch, each movement a whisper.

  The Golyat is a predator, I tell myself, taking a moment to look for the others. With no sign of Shua, Plistim, or Shoba, there are no deer to protect. I can remain hidden. I peek between a shield of leaves, watching as the orange light moves back, the ground thumping.

  Is it leaving? I wonder—and hope. The ground shakes again, closer, two impacts so close together they feel like one.

  What’s it doing?

  When the smoke wall bulges outward, I know.

  And then, I see it.

  17

  The shape emerging from the smoke, has been colored by it. The dry black surface resembles a dark stone, if stone were made from stretched canvas. The gnarled shape slopes down, coming to a jagged end, below which are two holes, each twice the size of my head. As smoke rolls up and over a large, still-concealed form, the oversized dog huffing repeats. Smoke is pulled into the twin holes in quick repetitive bursts.

  It’s a nose, I realize. A nose that is larger than my whole body. But it’s also deformed.

  It’s the nose of a corpse left to dry in the sun. The tight skin has pulled back against the bone structure. Sheets of blackened husk curl up where the too-dry layers have begun to separate.

  Is the Golyat suffering from some disease? A kind of leprosy?

  Curls of smoke spiral into the nostrils. A lung full of the brush fire smoke would cause even a regular pipe smoker like Jesse to cough, but the monster simply exhales from its unseen mouth, the sound of it dry and ragged. The breathed-on flames glow brighter, the inferno spreading outward, my wall growing thicker.

  Did it smell us?

  Does it know we’re here?

  The nose pulls back, the wall sealing itself with fresh smoke.

  Heavy thumps shake the earth. The creature is on the move once more.

  When the landscape falls still, I know it has stopped. Slithering along the ground, I move around the tree, still concealed with brush, hoping for another look.

  But when I get it, I wish I hadn’t bothered.

  Though my view is obscured by forest, there is a clear sliver of space between myself and the burning balloon basket.

  Four black fingers—bones wrapped in stretched, cracking flesh—each of them six feet long, poke through the smoke and grasp the fiery basket. Paying the hot flames no heed, the hand draws back, taking the remains of our transportation with it.

  Though I haven’t seen much of the monster beyond the smoke, what little I have seen provides enough for my imagination to paint a horrible picture, one that I hope to never see in completion. That, combined with the fact that the monster is inspecting our crash site, demonstrating
signs of intelligence beyond that of the average predator, makes me slink back and plot my escape.

  If I move without making a sound and am always careful to keep a tree, or a dozen, between myself and the monster, I should be able to escape undetected…assuming the Golyat remains behind the smoke wall.

  And since I have no reason to believe it will, the sooner I leave, the better. I move on my hands and feet, like a true creature of the woods, distributing my weight between three limbs at all time. When I’ve put fifty more feet between myself and the monster, I get to my feet and creep away, careful to avoid dry twigs and brush that might scrape against my body.

  The Golyat’s exterior might be deformed and desiccated, but the way it used its nose to inspect the smoke resembled a hunter accustomed to tracking with all its senses.

  A chattering so loud and frenetic that it causes me to stumble rips through the air. I catch myself against a tree and hold my breath. In the absolute silence that follows, I can hear the blood rushing past my ears.

  Maybe it can, too.

  The ground shakes twice.

  Silence.

  The chattering repeats and I can’t help but exhale.

  Once again, silence settles over the forest. Even the wind, which has fallen still, seems to fear the Golyat’s wrath.

  Two more quakes and I find myself looking back. Aside from a sea of trees ending at my wall of smoke, I see nothing.

  Did it leave?

  I look back and forth for any sign of it stepping around the sooty barrier, but the forest is clear.

  Did it give up?

  An orange glow, subtle at first, but then pulsing, reveals the monster’s presence. The glow is much lower to the ground now than it had been.

  It’s crouching, I think, picturing something like a human form, arms and legs, a torso and head.

  The orange blob of light trails downward again, racing back and forth, following a lumpy course that, when it stops growing and intensifies, I recognize as surely as I did its fingers.