The Rift - Howard Chris - Страница 30

Alpha was already swinging herself down from the mammoth’s shoulders. She dropped off the side of the beast, and we each broke through the crowd until we were wrapped up together, holding one another in the sparkling night.

Both mammoths roared, making a sound like a victory blast. And the Kalliq bustled around us as their friends came back from the cold.

“Let me look at you,” I whispered to Alpha, and I took her in. All of her. The golden-white skin, her golden-brown eyes and her busted nose. The beautiful face you’d never be able to draw right but you’d always remember.

“We got word you’d be here,” she said, glancing past me at the ice-sculpted trees. “But I was almost afraid to believe.”

“They healed me,” I told her. “Pop, too.”

“You mean the saplings?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

She quit smiling, then shoved at me like she was supposed to be angry. Only then she busted out grinning again. “Thought you weren’t gonna leave me, bud?”

“Guess you should have come on down the mountain.”

That made her smile even bigger. She stuck her thumb over her shoulder, pointing at the mammoth. “And miss out on all this?”

Crow appeared beside us. Wobbling ten feet in the air. “Good to see you, little man,” he said, putting his hands on my shoulders to keep himself steady. Or maybe it was to show that he cared.

“You, too.” I stared up at him, then I stared at his legs. “You been walking?”

“Nah. Too busy riding.” He nodded his head at the mammoth, and I saw Zee make her way through the crowd to join us. Her face wind burned, her long hair a tangled twist.

“You okay?” I said to my sister. It seemed like she’d maybe quit wheezing so bad.

“Barely,” Kade answered for her, because suddenly he was right there beside me. His face had healed from when I’d busted it up for him, and he made that handsome smirk of his as he put his arm around my shoulders. “We’ve been all over these mountains.”

Kade took his other arm and slid it around Alpha’s waist.

I tensed up. Saw Kade’s eyes twinkling.

“You gonna tell him, compadre?” he said to Alpha. “Or shall I?”

“Tell me what?”

Alpha’s face turned grim. She took my hand in hers, squeezed my fingers. “We’ve seen them.”

“Harvest?”

“Oh, plenty of him.” Kade glanced about at my forest. Then he shrugged with the sub gun on his shoulder. “These people were supposed to be hunting for salvage, but we ended up fighting one Harvest after another, while you’ve been building your little trees.”

“Not just Harvest, bud.” Alpha shoved Kade in the gut, but not hard. Just in a way that was friendly. “We went south once this lot figured we seemed to be on the same sort of team, and they could use us in a battle. They showed us the route through the lava. The way through the Rift.”

“Aye,” Crow rumbled. “Channel of black rock, half a mile wide. But what about the trees, man? They all right?”

“Yeah.” I moved away, shrugging Kade’s arm off my back. “They’re here. With me.”

“That’s what we heard,” Zee said. “Though talking to these people hasn’t exactly been easy.”

“Well, you heard right. And the trees are safe. They’re growing.”

“Growing?” Kade laughed. “That’s better news than we bring.”

“The route south is blocked,” Crow said. “The way back be full of agents. Hundreds of them.”

“An army.” Alpha pointed up out of the rocky basin, where the fiery glow of the Rift flickered behind the peaks to the south. “The Army of the Purple Hand.”

“Yeah.” Kade nudged her. “Even this pirate’s not crazy enough to take them on.”

“Don’t tempt me.” She finally pulled his arm off her, grinning at him the whole time. But then she gave her smile back to me and pulled me close, resting her head on my shoulder.

I stared up at the mammoth they’d ridden in on, and its sad old eyes met mine.

“Don’t matter,” I said. “I don’t need a way back, anyway.”

“How’s that?” Kade couldn’t help but sound serious.

“Right here is Zion,” I told them. “And I ain’t leaving for no place at all.”

When both mammoths raised their trunks to the moon and let out a wail, the Kalliq quit chattering and shuffling around, and they all stared up at the sky.

And folk weren’t looking south, where the red globs of the Rift glowed along the tops of the mountains. Instead, they were looking north, where a new set of colors had begun burning the night.

Green waves of light came cresting and spinning out of the heavens, sketching patterns against the blackness and turning blue as the patterns stretched and ebbed.

Looked like clouds of color, swirled quick on invisible winds.

Damn right, this is Zion, I thought. Mammoths and moss. Saplings growing in the mud below, and now a kaleidoscope above. I had my girl, and my sister, and Crow at my side. Place was beautiful.

The Elder’s voice rose as the lights turned pink and white above us. And when she quit speaking, there was silence. Everyone just gazing at the billowy flashes of light.

The Healer found me in the crowd. “Friends?” she whispered, nodding at Alpha. She stared up at Crow, smiled at Zee and at Kade.

“Most of them,” I said, but I pointed to the strange lights that splashed in the heavens. “What is this?”

“The North Lights,” she said, peering upwards, and I watched the glow as it danced in her eyes. “Lamplight of Kalliq.”

“It’s amazing.”

“Elder says for you. Says the Burning Wheel shines for the Tree King.”

Kade had overheard, and he busted out laughing. “Tree King? Well, aren’t you special?”

He laughed so hard, the Kalliq around us joined in with the laughing. I saw Alpha bust a smile, too. “Like your new duds,” she said, smirking as she tugged at my shaggy pink vest.

And I mean, what the hell? Were they even happy to see me? Because I sure weren’t in the mood to be the butt of some joke.

“We need to talk, Banyan.” Crow’s voice boomed above me.

“What about?” I snapped, trying to pull away through the crowd. Alpha grabbed me, though. Kept me beside her.

“About you talking about Zion,” Crow said.

“Oh, right. You gonna say I’m crazy cool?” I made my voice deep as his was, scowling up at him.

“More I’m thinking you just be crazy.”

But I didn’t have to answer him. Because behind us, rising up out of the crater, came the banging of drums.

The Festival of Lights, they called it. And a big old party is what it was. Right inside that big chimney crater, everyone lining up on the ledges and steps, from the mud-pit bottom to the star-filled sky. The North Lights bloomed overhead and lit the insides of the earth, their colors flashing and surging as the Kalliq let loose.

Steel drums chimed and pounded, each beat ringing out all the way to the moon. And it weren’t just drums these people had crafted. Folk banged and clattered on old hubcaps, oven doors, and copper pipes. They blew down glass-bottle flutes, struck mallets on racks of tin cans. And the night came undone as the music untwisted, reverberating into the mountains and making everything sing. It was beautiful. Music like nothing I’d heard. Chants and tunes tumbling from the lips of all the Kalliq around me.

I was stood on the steps with Alpha, midway down the crater, staring up at the luminous sky. The air was thick, and the steam was sour. The whole night seemed to be rolling and sinking, the songs shattering like fireworks.

Alpha grabbed my hand and pulled me to the edge so we could see the bodies moving above and below us. Everyone dancing and jumping. Shaking their butts and waving their hands in the air.

There was a girl on a high ledge spinning a hoop made of fire. Dudes swinging ropes they’d turned into flames. I pointed up at the girl with the hoop, nudging Alpha.

But Alpha had started to bounce herself free.