Violet (21 page)

I hang my head in defeat. David holds my hand.
Ramla continues, “You must leave the village. I will take you
somewhere safe.”

We get up to go. There is nothing else for us to
do; we have already failed. When The Vox learns that a piece of The
Cube is here, they will stop at nothing to get it. All of these
people may be massacred.

Ramla leads us out of The Elders’ room and back
into the sunlight. She does not speak. We follow her past the line
of houses and leave the village. We have now reached a grassy
plain. We pass over two hills, and Ramla looks back at her village.
Then, slowly, she looks at us. “My people know that I am a seer.
They want me to tell them what I see, but they do not listen. I
know what you seek. The Great Tree gives life to all of Amara.”
Ramla gestures to a gigantic tree with wide branches at the other
end of the meadow. I know that we are not looking for a tree, but
we don’t have any other option, and maybe there will be some kind
of clue about where the shard is hidden. Silently, the three of us
walk toward The Great Tree.

When we arrive, I am struck by its size. I could
see that the tree was large, but standing next to it is
overwhelming. The trunk is so wide that if all three of us spread
our arms around it, our fingertips would not touch. The roots are
large and gnarled; to reach the trunk, one must climb the roots.
The branches are full of lush green leaves that do not fall, even
as a strong wind blows. This tree is certainly full of life, and it
has certainly been here for a very long time, but this is not what
we are looking for. I circle the tree in the hopes of finding some
hint about the shard’s location, but I do not find good fortune.
There is nothing.

Ramla speaks. “What you seek is not The Great
Tree itself, but what gave The Great Tree life.” I look at her.
Does she know about The Cube? “Adanech taught me many things. She
trusted my vision. She taught me to speak as you do. She told me
that someday her people would come.”

She begins to walk around the tree. Suddenly,
Ramla is gone. I walk around the tree to see if she is standing
behind it, but I don’t see her. We are on an open plain, so if she
had run I would still be able to see her. I look around, unsure.
David sees me and tears his attention away from the trunk of the
tree. Now he realizes that we seem to be alone. He looks at me
questioningly and says, “Where did—” but he is interrupted by
Ramla’s voice.

“I am here.”

I spin in a circle trying to locate the voice,
but still I do not see her. I hear her laugh. “
Here
.”

I feel something thump on the ground near my
feet and jump, startled to see a human hand. Ramla peeks her head
out from below one of the gnarled roots. “Come,” she says, and her
head disappears again. I look at David for reassurance, but find
his expression tentative. I shrug. Then, I sit down and slide into
the hollow, legs first.

The opening itself is small, but I find that
after I’ve passed through it, the space beneath is much larger. I
slide down an incline made of dirt and stone and find myself
standing next to Ramla in a hollow almost the size of the kitchen
at my father’s house in Eligo, though the ceiling is only an arm’s
length above our heads. A moment later, David squeezes through the
opening and slides down to stand beside me.

The hollow is dark, but my eyes adjust and I am
able to see more detail of the room around me. The Great Tree is
supported by an underground rock formation as well as thick roots
grown deeply into the solid dirt walls. As I look up, I can see
some of the smaller roots dangling down. I can touch the bottom of
the tree’s root formation. As I move my hand along the roots in the
center of the tree, a faint bluish glow begins to emanate from
within them. I turn sharply to look at Ramla.

Sensing that I would like an explanation, she
begins to speak. “As a small child, I played near The Great Tree
often, as my mother was dead and I was very alone. One day, I found
this hollow beneath the roots, and that is the day that I became a
seer. This is where The Great Tree gives me sight. Many of the
things I do not understand; they are of a world that I do not know.
Some of the things are about my people.” She pauses. “Some of the
things are about your people.”

“Who else knows about this?” David asks.

Ramla shakes her head. “Though I wished to show
my people the wonders of The Great Tree, I saw what would happen if
they knew; people would begin to quarrel. They would all fight for
what The Great Tree could give. I knew that I could show no
one.

“When Adanech came and began to teach me, I saw
her as my mother. I showed her the power of The Great Tree, but she
did not like it. The Great Tree showed her something that made her
very afraid.”

“What did it show her?” I ask.

Again, Ramla shakes her head. “This, I do not
know. She would never speak of her time beneath The Great Tree. She
said only that I must never show anyone again.”

I can see that Ramla’s loyalty to my mother is
unfaltering. This leads me to ask, “Ramla, why have you brought
us
here?”

“The Great Tree showed me that you would come,
and that you would tell the truth. I know that your people, these
people—” As she says this, she leans down to draw in the dirt with
her finger. She draws a capital V with two floating orbs. She
continues, “These people will come to find what you seek. The Great
Tree has shown me what they will do with its power.” She looks up
at me, strong but afraid. “These people must
never
possess
the heart of The Great Tree.”

I nod my head in agreement. The Vox must never
find The Cube. However, something occurs to me. “Ramla, why give it
to us? Why not just keep it hidden?”

She shakes her head vehemently. “If you do not
take it now, then when they come, they will know where to find
it.”

“How?”

“Someone tells them.”

“Who? Who could know?”

“I do not know. I have shown no one else its
location. The Great Tree has not shown me who. It has shown me only
that they will know where to look, and my people will not be able
to protect it. This is why you must take it now.”

I look toward the bluish glow. I hesitate. I’ve
finally found what I seek, but still I falter. Ramla puts her hands
softly on my shoulders and looks into my eyes. “You do not know yet
what you are. It is only you. You are the only one who can protect
our people. You are the only one who can stop what The Great Tree
has shown me.”

I shake my head. It can’t be me. Surely I’m not
the
only
one. “No, Ramla. No, that can’t be right. I do not
know what to do. I do not know how to do it.”

She smiles slightly. “When the time comes, you
will do what needs to be done. As I told you, I have seen it. Now,”
she says, gesturing toward the blue glow, “you must take the heart
of The Great Tree.”

“Wait.” It’s David. Ramla and I turn to look at
him. His expression is pained. “Ramla, if we take it… The Great
Tree will die. All of Amara will wither and die. Where will your
people go?”

This is true. I feel that I have acted
selfishly; I had not even considered what would happen to the
people living in Amara after we remove their life source. Is
keeping The Cube away from The Vox worth sacrificing the lives of
an entire village?

Ramla nods. “Yes, I know that The Great Tree
will die. It has shown me. But there is no other way. I have sent
scouts into the desert; there are other places, though not as
plentiful as Amara, where we could settle and survive. We cannot
risk the alternative. We will have a little time before everything
is gone. By then, we will have found a place.”

I shake my head. “Ramla, I can’t… I can’t do
that to your people, I can’t—”

“You must!” she shouts. She takes a breath and
calms herself. “You must, or you sentence us to death.”

I begin to understand Ramla’s desperation. If
The Vox comes to Amara, they will sacrifice the villagers to find
the shard. They do not see value in the lives of people who live on
Earth. If Amara is gone and Ramla’s people have relocated, they
will live in harsher conditions, but they will live.

I nod in understanding and reach up toward the
bluish glow. I tear away some of the small roots, and now I can see
it. A chunk of bluish-grey stone with a smooth, rounded corner.
This piece is roughly the size of my palm. I pull my sleeve over my
hand so I do not touch it directly; I do not want to see what Ramla
saw. I am afraid The Cube will show me what The Vox might do to her
people. The Cube shard is held in place by roots twisted around its
edges, but I am able to push them away and pry it free. I use my
knife to cut a piece of the cloth from my long outer robe and wrap
the shard inside it. For some reason, I do not feel the elation
that I anticipated upon finding a piece of The Cube.

Without speaking, we all turn to go. Ramla exits
the hollow first, showing us the easiest way to climb out. I motion
for David to proceed in front of me. I have not had a vision, but I
feel strange. As David climbs through the opening, for some reason
that I do not understand, I unwrap the parcel containing the shard.
Quickly, I remove it and place it in my survival pack. I pick up a
rock from the dirt floor and put it in the cloth, re-wrapping the
parcel. I follow David and Ramla out of the hollow.

As I stand and brush myself off, I have a great
feeling of sadness instead of accomplishment. In order to save
Ramla’s people as well as the people of Cerno, we must cause her
tribe great hardship. Ramla squeezes both of our hands in turn, and
then draws a drawstring bag from the pocket on the front of her
dress and hands it to David. “For your passage.” Then she adds
quietly, “I must go now. As Adanech would say, good fortune on your
journey.” She smiles slightly and as she turns, I see her brush a
tear from her cheek. I watch her until she disappears over the
hill.

David puts his arm around me, rubbing my far
shoulder as we watch the empty space of meadow where Ramla
disappeared. I lean against him, and he draws my body to his,
pulling me into a tight hug. He sighs. “I thought this would feel
better.”

“Me too.”

He leans down and kisses me on the top of the
head. We begin to walk. I have already put my survival kit on my
back when I realize that I am still holding the parcel containing
the rock. David has removed his pack to place Ramla’s gift inside,
and volunteers, “Oh, here, I’ll take that.” I hand him the parcel,
wondering if I should tell him what I have done. I decide against
it. Something told me to keep the shard’s exact location to myself;
I decide to follow that instinct.

We walk until we reach a flowing stream, and
decide to stop and rest until the sun sets. I fill our ration
containers with water from the stream, and David opens the
drawstring bag to see what Ramla has given us. We both perk up when
we see her gift: the bag is full to the brim with dried fruits and
strips of dehydrated meat. We eat some, but decide to save most of
it for the trip. To fill our stomachs, we pick fruit from a nearby
tree. This fruit looks similar to something that we have on Cerno,
so we are confident that it is safe to eat. David slices it open
with his knife and we compare it to some of the dehydrated fruit.
It seems like a match, so we are convinced. We gorge ourselves on
the fruit until we cannot eat another bite, rinsing our sticky
fingers in the stream.

After we eat, we spread our cloaks on the soft
grass and lie down to take a nap before we begin walking. As I lie
in the crook of David’s arm, resting my head on his chest, he leans
down and presses his lips to mine. My pulse quickens and I feel a
tingle in my abdomen. Instead of moving away after a moment, I
lengthen the kiss and reach up to put my hand on David’s neck. He
kisses me hungrily and I return his kiss.

After a little while, David pulls away and
smiles bashfully, saying, “We’ve got to get some sleep.” I want to
keep kissing him, but I know that he is right; we must rest. We
cannot afford to move sluggishly on our journey. We do not have the
luxury of time. I settle back into the crook of David’s arm, and
just before I fall asleep, an image enters my mind.

Me, in my father’s office, holding the animal
skin open on my palm. I looked at my father’s Cube shard. I was
fascinated by it. It was long, and tapered into a point. Suddenly,
I understand what my mind is showing me. Again, I call to mind an
image, this time of myself pulling the Cube shard from the roots of
The Great Tree. This piece is more stout with a rounded corner, not
a long point.

I was right in the assumption that my father
believed that there was a Cube shard giving life to Amara, but I
was wrong about something else. This piece was intertwined in the
roots of a tree that has lived for perhaps hundreds of years. My
father could not have placed it there; he only speculated its
location. We have found a Cube piece, but we have not found my
father’s.

By the time we wake, the sun is already set. We
must begin walking immediately; we cannot afford any setbacks.
David uses the navigation device to direct our path south—back in
the direction of the transport. We take our final sips of the sweet
water running in the stream and we begin our trek.

It does not take long to reach the edge of the
grasslands, but now we must pass through the jungle. This place is
much more haunting at night than it was during the day. When we
first entered the jungle with Saul and Foster, we were weary but
invigorated by the bright vegetation and colorful blooms that we
had never seen before. There is nothing like this on Cerno.
However, now that we make our passage at night, the jungle is dark
and full of shadows. Every breeze rustling the leaves is a predator
waiting to pounce. Every hanging vine is a poisonous serpent.