Encala (10 page)

“
Emily,” Mark said,
touching her arm.

“
Don’t touch me!” she
yelled, and he quickly jerked his hand back. She ran over and took
Allen from Kralen, and then grabbed a small bunch of bananas with
her other hand.

“
If anyone follows me…
you’ll be ash before you know it,” she said, backing out of the
cave.

“
Don’t go. Tell me what
happened,” Mark said, taking a step towards her.

“
Last warning,” she yelled,
as she turned toward the trees and ran off.

Emily pulled from her fear and kept running
with Allen clutched closely to her side. He asked several times for
Kralen, but she ignored his questions and kept moving. She knew she
was running north, and kept the steep mountain peek at her right so
she wouldn’t end up going in a circle.

***

Kyle stumbled into the cave and fell to his
knees a few minutes after she left, “Where is she?”

Mark glared at his Commanding Officer, “What
did you do?”

“
I said… where is she?” he
snapped.

“
She left, and threatened
to turn anyone to ash that followed her,” Kralen said, standing
beside Mark.

“
How could you?” Mark
asked, accusingly.

Kyle straightened up and ignored the
lingering burning pain, “I am still your Commanding Officer, and
you will treat me as such.”

“
Yes, Sir,” Mark said, his
voice full of loathing.

“
Now, go find her,” he
ordered, but none of them stood. “Now!”

Still none moved.

“
Did you hear me?” he
asked, angrily.

“
Yes we did. But, we aren’t
going to bring her back here, so you can do what you want with
her,” Mark told him, and sat down on the cave ground.

***

As far as Emily could tell, she’d been
moving quickly through the forest for a few hours. She could see
the sun touching the horizon, and she knew in the dark she wouldn’t
be able to move as fast.

“
Ew,” Allen said, holding
his nose.

Emily smelled it too, a sharp, stinging
scent. After sitting Allen down and giving him a banana to eat, she
wrinkled her nose and looked around for the offensive smell. She
knelt down by a large yellow flower and smelled its petals, wincing
at the repugnant aroma. Suddenly, she had an idea. She dipped her
fingers into yellow goo in its center and began rubbing it onto her
skin. Once she was covered in the flower’s nectar, she moved to
Allen and did the same with him, even slicking back his black hair
with it.

“
No, that smells,” he said,
fighting her.

“
Don’t fight me Allen, not
now,” she said, and covered every inch of him with the
nectar.

By the time she covered them in the stinky
mess, she finally felt that maybe their scent was masked. She took
Allen’s hand, and the bunch of bananas, and kept walking. When
Allen got tired, she carried him, afraid to stop moving. By
morning, she came to the northern beach and headed back toward the
rocky cliffs. She was hoping to find another cave they could stay
in until help arrived, if help arrived.

Allen was awake again and eating a banana as
he followed Emily up the rocky cliffs. She could see a shadow above
that she hoped was some kind of shelter. She also saw that the face
of the cliff was full of the smelly yellow flowers.

***

“
Then I’ll go find her
myself,” Kyle said, and started for the mouth of the cave, but
found his way blocked by his own cavalry.

“
We think you better stay
right here,” one of the recruits said to him.

“
I’m ordering you to let me
by.”

“
That’s funny, because it
seems all rules are null and void out here,” Mark said, and crossed
his arms.

“
She can get hurt out
there,” he snapped at them.

“
She could get hurt here,
too,” Kralen said, not moving from the cave entrance.

“
When we get back, you are
all released from the Cavalry,” Kyle yelled, and sat down against
the wall.

“
I think not… I think once
we tell the Elders what we saw, it’s you that will be released,”
Mark said.

“
However,” Kralen added,
“as a unit, we stick together. So if you want to sit calmly and
wait for a rescue, then we may keep it between us.”

Kyle nodded, he knew they had won. He sat
quietly in the cave and watched the other guards closely.

The rain stopped just as the sun rose above
the ocean. The cave had been quiet all night. As the Cavalry kept
an eye on him, Kyle stayed against the wall. There was some
lingering burning in his chest.

“
Someone’s coming,” Mark
said, standing up.

“
Maybe she came back,” Kyle
stood up and gasped, wide eyed, when Chevalier appeared.

Chevalier smiled when he saw them,
“Finally!”

His smile fell when he looked around at the
serious faces, most of them watching the ground. Chevalier looked
around the cave and reached down to pick up the torn shirt from the
floor. He saw the two palm leaf beds and turned to Kyle, “Where’s
Emily?”

“
She took off yesterday
morning with Allen,” Kyle said, avoiding Chevalier’s
eyes.

He took a step toward Kyle, “Why did she
leave?”

Kyle looked over at Mark, “We aren’t
sure.”

“
You aren’t sure? Then
what? You just let her go?” Chevalier asked,
suspiciously.

“
She threatened to turn us
to ash if she saw us,” Kralen added.

“
You are keeping something
from me, and I will find out,” he hissed.

The guards all looked at one another
nervously.

“
First, find her. She can’t
be that hard to track,” he ordered, and Kyle and the guards
scattered across the island.

Chevalier picked up her scent just outside
of the cave and followed it as it wound through the trees. He had
to move slowly, too fast and he risked losing her scent. He came to
a small clearing and saw where the grass was pushed down. He
frowned and grabbed her bikini top from the moss. He tucked it into
his pocket and scanned the clearing. Once he found no other scent
trail, he surmised that she must have headed back to the cave.

Chevalier heard a voice on the wind saying
they found her trail going north. He quickly arrived at the cave
and passed it, following the scent of the other heku. By late
afternoon, he caught up with them as they walked around an area
full of flowers.

“
Why have you stopped?” he
asked, still suspicious of them all.

“
We lost her scent,” one of
them said.

Chevalier inhaled deeply and could smell the
faint trace of her. He walked north and lost the scent, growling in
frustration, “She can’t just disappear.”

“
We just need to find her
scent again. It has to be around here somewhere. Even Allen is old
enough to leave a trace,” Mark said, obviously
irritated.

“
If she’s alive,” Chevalier
said, turning to him.

“
She’s alive,” Mark assured
him.

“
You better hope so, and
you also better hope she tells me what happened. It’d be a lot
easier than if I have to force it out of you,” he said, heading off
to the north to see if he could find her scent again.

Chevalier found a few broken branches and
smelled them. There was still no sign of Emily or Allen, just a
horribly strong smell that assaulted his acute senses and made him
recoil from the branch. Having no other options, he followed the
broken branches until his eye caught something on a bush. He
reached down and picked up a banana peel. He smelled it and again
caught the stench.

“
Mark?” he called, and
waited for the heku to arrive.

“
Yes, Sir?” Mark asked,
walking up to the Elder.

“
She’s masked her scent
with this,” he said, holding out the banana peel. Mark smelled the
peel and dropped it, his nose wrinkled.

“
That’s awful.”

“
Yes but it’s working. It’s
coming from those yellow flowers that are all over the island. Now
we’re tracking a smell that is everywhere,” he sighed.

Mark winced, “How do we track that?”

“
We don’t,” Chevalier
hissed. “Tell me what happened. It had to have been bad for Emily
to go to these extremes.”

Mark looked squarely at the Elder, “You can
punish me after we find her, but I’m not saying a thing.”

Night fell on the island and a strong wind
came up from the ocean, making tracking nearly impossible.
Chevalier could hear the heku around him calling for Emily. He
hoped she would hear them and try to ash one, then they could at
least know a general location.

***

Emily curled up next to Allen under the
small overhang. The wind was fierce and she felt the toddler shiver
in the cold. She unbuttoned her shirt, and pulled him close to her,
wrapping it around him so her body could keep him warm. They had
grown used to the smell, and there were enough flowers around that
they could keep themselves covered. The nectar turned sticky after
a few hours, and after lying on the dirt floor, both of them were
brown from the gooey mud. She hoped that would help them, a kind of
camouflage.

She cringed as her stomach growled. They had
so few bananas that she hadn’t eaten since she left the cave three
days before. Allen complained, but she rationed him to two a day.
She hoped the wind might knock some more down off of the high
branches. There was a fresh stream nearby that poured directly into
the ocean, now they just needed more food.

Emily hadn’t been able to sleep. She spent
the nights holding onto Allen and listening to the sounds of the
trees. As soon as she started to drift off, she would hear a twig
break or a bird chirp and the fear would keep her awake. During the
day, they played different games Emily would make up with twigs and
rocks. Allen asked often why they couldn’t go back to Kralen, but
she had no good explanation for his young understanding.

“
Emmmmily,” she heard a
heku yell in the distance.

Emily’s body tensed and she reached over to
cover Allen’s mouth as he stirred. Her heart pounded in her chest,
and she fought to control her breathing, unsure if they could pick
up her trace from it. She wasn’t surprised they came looking for
her, but she couldn’t risk letting them know where they were. She
was on an island full of thirsty heku.

“
Emmmmily, we’re rescued!”
she heard another voice call from far away. A ruse, she was sure, a
ploy to get her to reveal her location, and it wasn’t going to
work. She felt Allen wake up and try to talk, but she kept her hand
over his mouth and softly shushed him.

Allen fell back asleep and Emily heard no
other voices through the rest of the night. She jumped several
times as she heard noises nearby. When the sun came up, she sat up
stiffly and looked around the tiny area. She cursed herself for not
seeking better shelter, but at the time, this was all she could
see. A rock overhang kept them from the sun and rain, but it wasn’t
as hidden as she first thought it was.

When Allen woke up, she handed him a banana,
“You stay here, ok?”

He nodded.

“
Promise me, don’t move at
all,” she whispered.

Again Allen nodded.

“
Stay here and I’ll give
you another banana,” she promised, smiling at him and trying to
sound as calm as she could.

After she was sure he would stay, she
crawled out of the safety of the overhang and into the trees. She
hoped that on her knees, she wouldn’t be seen if the heku were
close by. The stream suddenly seemed too far away as she crouched
low in the brush and tried to get to it quickly. Emily froze when
she heard footsteps just on the other side of a row of bushes. She
fell flat against the ground and listened.

“
We haven’t seen anything
since the footprints on the north beach,” one of the heku
said.

“
Keep looking,” Kyle
replied, and she heard them walk off away from her.

She waited a few minutes and then finally
made it to the stream. She slipped off her shirt and dipped it into
the water, soaking it. The trip back to Allen seemed to take
forever, and she was relieved when she saw him sitting where she
told him to stay. He was building something out of the remaining
bananas.

“
Mommy!” he shouted, and
she quickly went to him.

“
Shhhhh, Allen, we have to
whisper,” she said, quietly.

Allen tilted his head back and opened his
mouth as she squeezed the water from her shirt into it. He drank
until the shirt was no longer full of water, and then she pulled on
the cold shirt. Her fingers ran across the Equites crest on the
pocket and her heart sank. She wondered if she would ever see
Chevalier again, if she would see the palace or the stables.

“
Emily!” she heard someone
call from above her on the cliff. She quickly covered Allen’s mouth
and looked up. Whoever was calling her was standing on the rock
outcropping over their heads. She held her breath and wondered if
she should ash him. It sounded like Kralen, but she couldn’t be
sure. She knew if she ashed him, she would have to kill him. A
warning would only tell the others her location.

She heard more footsteps on the rocks above
her.

“
I thought I smelled
something, but now it’s gone,” the voice said.