“In recent times, however, some of us” — he paused and raised his eyebrows to emphasize the “some” before going on — “have come to believe that the etchings came from before an event, not after it. This rock was found before the bridges had been built.”
“Wow,” I breathed. “I mean, surely that’s impossible.”
Joel nudged me. “I know,” he whispered back. “That’s what I always thought. It’s what many of us thought.” He shrugged. “I guess we were wrong.”
Saul put the rock down as he continued. “For a long time, I have believed that these pictures in some way foretold events that were to come.” He lowered his head. “I know that I have not always been patient with those who disagreed.”
The group shuffled and grumbled in reply. Saul tried to quiet the room, but the voices and the grumbles were becoming louder.
“Why should we believe you?” one man called out.
“Why should we follow you?” a woman asked.
Ella was standing near the door, next to a man with arms folded tightly across his chest. She reached up to whisper something in his ear. He listened, then gave a curt nod. Ella stepped forward and quietly waited in the center of the hut.
Gradually, the mumbling quieted down, and the shuffling ceased.
“This is a time for coming together,” Ella said softly. “No more arguing, no more strife. We all know that we are running out of time. We might have weeks. It could be a matter of days. We don’t know. But what we do know is that we will not get anywhere unless we agree to work together. We all know one thing: lives are at stake.”
She looked around at the room, silently challenging anyone to disagree with her. No one did.
“Good,” she said quietly. “So let’s listen to our leader.”
Saul gave Ella a quick nod of thanks. She stepped back as he continued.
“Those of us who have spent time discussing this have made various observations. One of the most striking things we found was that there was a marked difference in the frequency of certain drawings. Some appear only once. With most of these, we have yet to find an event worthy of note that they relate to. However, the ones we believe foretell events tend to be repeated over and over. And the more repetitions, the more important the event that they depict.”
Saul lifted another rock and held it out. “This is among the most repeated of them all,” he said solemnly. As he turned to show it to us all, I examined the picture. At first, I couldn’t make out what it was, but as I stared, it became more clear. A cliff, broken in half, right down the middle. One half of it falling into seething water below. People running, and others falling into the chasm. An ocean erupting.
“We have found this picture eleven times,” Saul said. “Eleven identical pictures. I assume that I don’t need to spell out to any of you what this picture means.”
The silence the room gave in reply confirmed that his assumption was correct.
“Occasionally, we have been puzzled by what we have found,” Saul went on. “We’ve seen a drawing of a small island beside our own — when we know there is no such island. Another one shows a fan of light at the end of a tunnel, when our tunnels lead only to the clear pool at the heart of our island.”
“How do you explain those then?” a man called out.
Saul shrugged. “One or two unexplained pictures are acceptable for me,” he replied. “I will be honest with you, though. This one puzzles me.” He reached down to pick up a long piece of bark.
“The drawing does not seem to show anything much,” Saul went on.
I studied the piece of bark. Saul was right. I could barely see what it was supposed to be. It didn’t look much different from the normal swirls found on a tree’s trunk.
“But this troubles me more than the others I’ve mentioned. If our theory is correct, this one should depict something of great value, as we have found this picture seven times.”
He picked up a dark, jagged rock etched with an engraving. “Here it is again. The same pattern. We still do not know what it is.”
The picture was clearer on the rock. I leaned forward to look more closely as Saul held it up.
My eyes followed the patterns around and around — and that was when my stomach started to swirl with it.
I recognized the pattern. I knew what it was.
I nervously raised my hand in the air.
Saul had opened his mouth to carry on, but Ella noticed me. “Saul,” she said.
“Can it wait?” Saul replied to Ella without looking at me.
Ella nodded in my direction. “I don’t think so,” she said.
Saul turned to me. “Emily, what is it?” he asked immediately.
“I know what it is,” I said, my voice coming out in a croak.
Saul’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?”
I swallowed. “Yeah,” I said.
“You’ve seen it?” Ella asked.
“I’ve more than seen it,” I replied, putting everything I had into keeping my voice steady. The swirling, the crashing, the mayhem of the underwater death chute. The spinning, spinning, spinning. I knew it.
I met Saul’s eyes and held them as firmly as I could. “I’ve been inside it,” I said. “It’s what brought me here.”
If there had been any remaining doubts about the Prophecy in that hut, it seemed my admission went quite a way to clearing them up.
Saul had reason to want them to believe him. He had staked his leadership on his belief in the Prophecy. Me, I was an outsider who came to them with nothing. No plans, no opinions, no power, and no need to try to convince anyone of anything.
And if the shakiness I felt inside was matched by the shakiness of my voice as I told them all what had happened to me, I guessed they would know I wasn’t sharing my story lightly.
“I knew it. I knew it!” Saul announced when I had finished. “This was the only significant picture we couldn’t identify as more than an abstract pattern. It was the only one that opened a tiny crack in my mind to let the doubt in. Now I am more certain than ever.”
The response was a round of grudging acknowledgment that turned into mumbles and chatter.
Then the man who had been standing silently next to Ella by the door unfolded his arms and stepped forward. The room hushed instantly.
“Dad!” Joel whispered next to me.
“Saul is right,” the man said. His voice was deep, smooth, and certain. “It’s time to put our trust in our leader and follow his instructions.” He held out a hand. Saul grasped it, and they shook hands almost fiercely. The man — Joel’s dad — turned to the group. “From now on, anyone who disagrees with Saul also disagrees with me. You hear me?”
Silence.
“Marc, thank you,” Saul said warmly. Marc stepped back into the shadows, and Saul spoke again, this time more softly.
“Go back to your day. Sharpen your wits. Gather all your resources. Prepare for whatever may lie ahead. Leave us to work out our next steps, and be ready to follow us when we take them.”
With those words, the hut responded with an awkward round of applause.
Gradually, people left the hut, until the only ones still there were Saul, Ella, Joel, Marc, and me.
Saul indicated for us to gather around. “OK, we have no time to waste,” he said. “Ella, take Emily on a walk through the forest and show her the drawings on trees.”
“Will do,” Ella replied.
“Joel, get a full inventory of the Prophecy’s drawings. We need to study them with Emily, fill her in on our interpretations of them, and arm her as fully as possible with knowledge of what will be needed from her.”
Joel did a kind of salute. “Got it,” he said.
Saul turned to Marc. “You and I will work together to sort and order the objects we already have.”
Marc nodded sharply.
“Let’s all meet back here in an hour,” Saul said. “And between us, we will form a strategy. Any questions?”
We all shook our he
ads. “OK, go! See you in an hour.”
I left with Ella and followed her along the track that led back into the forest. As we walked, she pointed out trees with odd markings and boulders with lines carved into them. Most of them didn’t mean much to me — or to her by the look of it, as she moved on from most of them quite quickly.
Then we came to a clearing with a large oval boulder in the middle of it. “You need to see this,” she said. “This picture, or a version of it, is the most common one of all.”
I followed Ella around the clearing to the other side of the boulder. “Here,” she said, pointing at it. “Like the picture around Saul’s neck, this one shows how we knew you could help us.”
I stared at the picture. And yes, at first, I agreed with her. The person on the picture, the tail, the water. It was all there, just like on the stone around Saul’s neck.
“How many of these are there?” I asked.
“We have found twenty pictures with this person in them,” Ella replied. “Unlike the other pictures, they are not all absolutely identical. But they are close enough.”
I took another step toward the boulder — and that was when I saw that Ella was right about the person not being identical. The eyes of the person in this picture were etched more heavily so they looked darker than mine. The body shape was different. The hair was shorter. The tail was a different shape.
“Ella,” I whispered as I realized what I was looking at.
Ella tore her eyes away from the carving to look at me. “What?”
“It’s not me,” I said, my mind racing. The markings on the tail — I knew those markings. I knew exactly who I was looking at.
“What? Of course it is.”
“No. It isn’t,” I insisted. “The reason why there are twice as many of these pictures is because they are pictures of two different people. I’m telling you, this one isn’t me.”
“Well, if it isn’t you, who is it?” Ella asked.
I took a breath before replying.
“It’s my boyfriend, Aaron.”
“Emily has something to share with us,” Ella said as soon as we had all gathered back at the hut.
I explained about the picture and Aaron.
Saul took a heavy breath. “Well then, we have to get him here,” he said, his words tumbling out of him. “If we’re going to stand a chance of stopping this disaster, we’ll have to find a way. We need him, just as much as we need you.”
I thought of what I’d been through to end up here. It was awful — I thought I wouldn’t survive. And yes, Aaron was a semi-mer like me, but he wasn’t the same as me. Maybe he wasn’t as strong. Look at how he’d gotten seasick on that boat. I wasn’t sure he’d survive coming through the falls.
Plus, there was the small matter of our being in a huge fight. Why would he do anything for me right now?
Ella answered the question I hadn’t even said out loud. She reached over and put a hand on my arm. “It’s not just for us, Emily.” Ella waited for me to look up and meet her eyes before adding, “It’s for your family. They are in danger. Everyone on the other side of this ocean is in danger. We are talking about thousands of people’s lives. You know that, don’t you?”
I swallowed.
“We understand how these things work,” she went on. “We haven’t studied only pictures; we’ve studied science, and we listen to nature. We have heard the rumbling, and if the cliff separates in the way the Prophecy warns us, the danger will be enormous. It will cause a tsunami that could threaten every coastline this side of the equator.”
“But . . .” I began. My voice sounded like a tiny mouse. I cleared my throat. “But what am I supposed to do? Say I get Aaron, and I manage to convince him. Say he agrees. Assuming he manages to get through the falls as well . . .” I looked from Ella to Saul. “Say we manage all of that,” I asked. “Then what?”
Ella looked at Saul. “Emily needs the full story,” she said. “She’s ready. We need to tell her.”
Saul nodded at Ella, then indicated for me to follow him as he went over to the objects that he and Marc had organized.
“These are the main points of the Prophecy,” he said. Pointing at a large, round rock, he said, “We think this is one of the earliest markings.”
I stepped forward to take a closer look. The carving on the rock seemed to depict a storm. Raindrops covered the top half, and a swirling sea was below. In the distance, a figure loomed halfway into the sky.
“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing at the figure.
Saul looked at Ella. She nodded at him. He took a breath, and then he replied.
“That,” he said, “is the giant.”
I stared from Saul to Ella and back again. “The giant?” I asked. “What giant?”
“The giant is at the heart of everything,” Saul replied. “He appears on many of the drawings.” He pointed at the picture in front of us. “We believe this one depicts the start of our life here as we know it.”
Joel came over to join us, picking up a piece of old tree bark from the floor as he did. “This is an early one, too, isn’t it, Saul?” he said.
Saul took the bark from Joel. “It is indeed. We’ve found three of these.”
I studied the carving on the bark. The same man again. This time, he was sitting on the edge of a cliff, tears falling from his eyes, growing bigger and bigger as they fell down a steep canyon.
“We all grew up being told stories about the giant,” Saul explained. “It is a story that each generation has passed onto the next.”
“They terrified me when I was little,” Joel put in. “Finish your dinner, or the giant will eat you! Don’t be late home, or the giant will catch you. Work harder, or the giant —”
“Enough, Joel,” Ella said. “Let’s not frighten Emily.”
“The giant is part of our folklore,” Saul went on. “Most generations have believed he is a myth.” He pointed at Joel. “A made-up figure designed to teach children to behave.”
“But you think he’s real?” I asked.
“If the Prophecy is to be believed, he is,” Saul replied simply. “And thanks to you, we now know more firmly than ever before that the Prophecy is to be believed.”
Ella picked up the story. “Our tales of old say that he suffered a great loss, after which he cried for a hundred years.” She took my hand and pulled me around to look at an obelisk-shaped boulder. Again, the large figure loomed — this time over a waterfall. “The myth says his tears created the falls. The falls created the clouds that hid our island for so long. And the cycle kept going.”
“If that’s the case, how come the falls are still going now that the clouds have disappeared?” I asked.
“Good question,” Ella replied. “This has been the topic of many of our conversations in recent times.”
“And?”
“And the truth is, we do not know,” Ella replied. “We believe there is something beyond our control going on. Beyond our understanding. Perhaps something magical. And perhaps it is the final key that will allow all to become clear.”
“But we do know enough without it. And we know what has to be done,” Saul added.
“And that involves me and Aaron,” I said. “And a giant.”
“I’m afraid so, yes,” Saul said as he moved onto another picture that showed the giant lying by a lake. The giant looked as big as the lake itself. “However the falls were created, the giant is part of our life here, as much as the trees and the birds.”
Ella came and looked over my shoulder at the picture. “He is the part of our folklore that bridges myth and reality. We have never seen him — but most of us have always believed he exists. Somewhere. And as much as we were scared of his wrath, we have always been comforted by his promise.”
“His promise?”
Ella smiled wistfully. “The promise is so old we hardly know where it began,” she said. “But it is at the heart of our life here. It fuels our belief in a future.”
“So wha
t is the promise?” I asked.
Ella met my eyes. “That he will return. That he will save us.”
I swallowed hard. “OK,” I said, my throat tight. “So what’s the next move?” Saul beckoned me to the other side of the hut. He pointed at a tree stump that I’d previously thought was just a stool for sitting on. I looked more closely and saw there was a carving on it. It was the most intricate picture of them all.
The left side of the drawing showed a tunnel with a tail disappearing inside it. On the right, someone else was coming out from the other side of it. A wide fan of light shone on them as they came out of the tunnel. It wasn’t the tunnel that had led me here and brought me to a pool low down in a well. This one led out to a larger lake and an open forest.
“We always thought this was just one person of land and sea,” Saul mused. “I thought it was showing this person entering and leaving the tunnels. After what you’ve told us, I believe it is two. They are on the journey together. A journey that can be taken only by those who can live both on land and in water.”
“Wow,” I said, mesmerized by the picture.
“Here’s another one,” Ella said, bringing me a stone with a picture on it.
Two figures. One with a tail.
“We thought it was you,” Ella said. “But you are right — this is the other person of land and water.”
“Yes, it is,” I agreed. This was definitely Aaron. And the other figure, towering over him, was the giant. The two figures were gazing at each other, a lightning bolt crackling through the middle, like electricity zinging between them.
“We don’t know what the lightning bolt means,” Saul admitted. “Perhaps it is connected to a storm. Perhaps it is merely representative of some kind of energy. But look.”
He reached behind the tree stump and brought out a smooth, flat, round stone. “We believe this is another scene of the story.”
I looked at the carving on the stone. It took my breath away. An island — this island — ripping down the middle. Stones and rubble all around. People fleeing in every direction, running for their lives. Bridging the gap — feet on one side of the island, hands on the other, body stretched between the two, and a face tight with effort — was the giant.