Guardians of the Light (Book One of The Nebril Riverland Chronicles)

  Chapter 15

  We walked those first long hours mostly in silence, holding hands like we did when we were little girls. My stomach rolled over and over as I walked, churning around a hollow ache that wouldn't leave. We could barely even eat, and only nibbled at tiny strips of dried meat when we stopped repeatedly to check the map. The directions were simple enough; we had to follow the Nebril River east to Sandoff's Village. There was no real way to get lost as long as we kept the river in sight, but nonetheless we stopped often to make sure we were on the right track. Every twist in the path gave us a reason to worry, as we left familiar surroundings for the first time in our lives.

  And the noises, they were everywhere. Birds singing, animals rustling in the bushes, and the rush of the Nebril River assaulted my ears from all sides. The river grew wider and more turbulent the further we went and its immensity scared me. We couldn't have crossed it now no matter how much we wanted to. And, to my irritation, I couldn't shake the horrible feeling that somebody was following us. I checked over my shoulder every couple of minutes to ease my paranoia.

  "Damn, do my legs ever hurt!" Jalya said suddenly. We had been quiet for so long, that the sharpness of her voice startled me.

  "Jalya, you curse too much. You're starting to sound like Ashel."

  "What do I care. Who's gonna say anything about it now....nobody out here cares!" She threw her head back and laughed. "Damn....hell...crap, crap, crap!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "It feels good, Emerin; you should try it!"

  I shook my head. "You're unbelievable," I muttered.

  "What was that? What are you calling me now?" she said with a chuckle.

  "Jalya, you curse too damn much! You are going to hell!" We were both laughing now, ridding our bodies of some of the nervous tension that had been building in them during the past day.

  "Arggh, I wish I knew how much further we have to go," I said. "My legs really hurt, too." And they really did. I certainly wasn't used to climbing mountains, even small ones. I wondered if I'd still be able to walk by the time we reached Sandoff's Village. And we couldn't stop either; we were under strict instructions from the Lumeai to make sure that we got there by the end of the day, preferably before dark. Lovis warned us repeatedly not to trust anyone we met out here, to hide and avoid anybody that we came across until we reached our destination. I ran my fingers along the length of my belt until they stopped on the handle of my knife. It gave me a little comfort to know that it was there.

  "Are these knives sharp?" I asked.

  "They should be. Ashel was using them pretty recently." She pulled her knife out of the sheath and stopped to test it on a tree. I watched as she peeled the bark from a branch effortlessly. "Seems sharp enough to me," she said and blew the slivers of wood from the blade before replacing it in its leather casing. "Try yours."

  I slowly pulled the blade free and tested it in the same manner. The bark yielded easily to the knife's edge and I felt at least a little relief. "Do you think these will be enough to protect us out here?" I asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

  "I guess that depends on what we have to protect ourselves against." Jalya looked grim and began walking again. "Do you think that someone's found my father yet?"

  "Oh, I'm sure they have. It's been hours since we left. Towa wouldn't just leave him there."

  "I guess you're right." Jalya's sad look suddenly turned into a smirk. "I wonder how much trouble Salare's in."

  I laughed. "Probably a bundle. She'll probably be locked in her room until her wedding day."

  "Yeah, they probably will make her marry Bainie for this."

  "Poor Salare. I know how she feels, you know, waiting to find out. It's awful."

  "I imagine it is. I'm glad I don't ever have to go through it."

  "Yeah," I said, trying to hide the sadness in my voice. It would be three more months until Jalya turned seventeen and had her matching day. In three months we wouldn't be back; in all likelihood we would never be back. What would I be doing in three months? Would we still be searching for magic rocks and an elusive bei clu va? Or would the whole ordeal be over? And then what? Where would we go after that? We certainly couldn't go back home. I couldn't imagine what our lives would be like after this was over, where we would stay, what we would do. Part of me found the prospect of not knowing exciting, but most of me found it utterly terrifying.

  We walked in silence again for a long while, watching the path unfurl in front of us. We twisted away from the river and back toward it again, but we never were out of earshot of its furiously rushing water. I wondered if the fishing was good here. We might have to test it out; our stash of meat wouldn't last forever. Who knew just how long we'd be travelling.

  I wondered where everyone thought we were now. They would certainly never guess what we were involved in. I thought about my parents and what they would be doing now, but I couldn't think about it for long, as it hurt too much. I wondered about Callum, whether or not he was relieved that I was gone. He must have been. How long would it be before they made him another match? And Ashel, where the hell was Ashel? Was he even still alive?

  I looked at Jalya's face as she trudged along the pathway and concluded that she was probably thinking the same thing. At least I knew that my family was safe, even if I might never see them again. Why did this have to be so hard? We were doing a good thing, a brave thing, but it felt like we were being punished. My neck began to stiffen up and I braced myself in anticipation of another headache. Just what I needed.

  Morning turned into afternoon; afternoon turned into evening, and still no sign of Sandoff's Village. We stopped three more times to eat by the river's edge, looking down into the water to try and spot some fish. By our last break, I was actually starting to feel hungry from all the walking and managed to down a large strip of deer meat. The sun was low in the sky and its orange beams danced across the surface of the river. The nervous feeling began to bubble up in my stomach again, as I contemplated the possibility that we wouldn't make it there before dark.

  "My head is really starting to hurt," I informed Jalya.

  "I was going to ask. It seemed like you had a headache."

  "Yeah, great timing, isn't it?"

  "Do you want some facion bark tea?" Jalya asked, untying her bag. "I could make you some."

  I smiled, happy that she'd remembered to bring the dreaded remedy. Even though it didn't work well, at least it knocked me out so I could get some sleep. But now wasn't the time to sleep.

  "No," I said. "You'd have to make a fire and boil water, which would take too long and then someone might notice us. Besides, if I drink any of that stuff, you'll have to carry me the rest of the way. I can tough it out until we get there." I rubbed the back of my neck hard to release some of the tension.

  "Okay, you're probably right. We'd better keep going then."

  I stood up and followed Jalya back onto the path. The next hour or so was brutal, my head pounding with every step. But then we came around a huge bend in the path and it suddenly started to feel better. Yet that odd pulling feeling was back and as the pain started to pull from my head, it felt like it was pulling a part of me with it. Luckily it was pulling me in the same direction that we were going. I no longer felt the tiredness in my legs and picked up my pace, not even noticing if Jalya was keeping up with me.

  "Emerin, wait," she called. "Slow down! Why are you running away from me?"

  I looked down at my feet and sure enough, I was running. It seemed dangerous to do so in the growing darkness, on an unknown path speckled with rocks and tree roots, but I didn't care. I was exhilarated. I turned around to face Jalya and skipped backwards with no regard for what I might be running into.

  "He's here Jalya; I feel it!" I panted. "It's pulling me here. I can find him again...he's this way!"

  "Are you sure?" Jalya sprinted down the path to catch up.

  "Yes!" I jumped up and down with renewed energy. "He's this way, I know it, I know it, I know...
"

  At that moment, my heel caught on a rock and I sprawled backwards, landing on my backside. I laughed hysterically as Jalya finally reached me and helped me to my feet.

  "Be careful, Emerin. You don't want to kill yourself before you find him, do you?"

  I stood up, brushed myself off and prepared to walk forward this time. And then I heard it. I looked at Jalya, who was frozen to the spot because she heard it too. Music. Very lively music. And shouting, the happy kind. Did that mean that we were close? There were definitely people up ahead.

  "Do you think that's the village?" Jalya asked.

  "It must be," I said, the words tumbling out of me breathlessly. It seemed that stopping made my head begin to hurt again, so I started moving forward to find relief. Every step I took seemed to make me feel better, the pain released its grip on my head and a warmth covered my body. I opened up my wool shawl so I could feel the breeze pass over me.

  "He's here. He's here! Oh, Jalya, do you think he's in the village?"

  "I sure hope so. It would be great to cross one task off of our list."

  We quickened our pace and the music grew louder. Cheerful voices hooted and screamed and sang along. It sounded like quite the festival. We had festivals at harvest time, but never anything quite so loud and exuberant. I wondered what Sandoff's Village would be like, what it would look like, what the people would be like. But mostly I wondered if I would find the man from the hill, my bei clu va. My stomach flitted about in anticipation and I had to hold myself back to keep from running again.

  The path was straight for a long time, and I walked almost blindly down it, partly because of my excitement, partly because of the setting sun. So I didn't even notice the sharp curve that turned quite suddenly to the right. I kept walking the way I was being pulled and crashed through the underbrush down the little hill to the edge of the river.

  "Emerin!" I barely heard Jalya's scream over the bubbling rapids. Even the crunching of her feet as she barrelled down after me was only faintly perceptible. "Emerin! What are you doing? Why did you come down here?"

  "I don't know." I fell to my knees at the river's edge and tried to resist the urge to plunge in. "I want to go this way."

  Jalya looked at me like I was a stupid child. "Well, we can't go that way, Emerin. You see there's this huge body of water in the way."

  "Well, I can see that, Jalya!" I screamed at her, desperation clawing at my throat. I scanned the shoreline on the other side of the river and saw nothing but trees. My head throbbed and I wanted to cry. "He's over there.....on the other side." Cut off again. Another barrier. It wasn't fair.

  "Are you sure? Come on, I'm sure the path turns back around again." Jalya peered up the river and I heard her take in a sharp breath.

  "Look, look," she said excitedly. "Emerin, stop looking over there and look this way." I ignored her, and instead tried in vain to distinguish some movement from amongst the darkening trees across the river.

  "Emerin, look!" She squatted next to me, grabbed my head and turned it to the right, exacerbating the ever increasing pain. Furious, I slapped her hands away, but not before I noticed what she was yelling about. We were on a little outcropping of land next to a large bay. On the other side of the bay, the shoreline jutted out again and was covered in lights. Music reverberated across the water and I could see silhouettes of people walking across the rocks near the shore. The village. I wanted to be more excited about it, but that wasn't the way I wanted to go.

  Jalya rose to her feet and grabbed my arm. "Come on, come on, let’s go." She tugged at me impatiently. I sat motionless like a heavy rock, barely moved by her nudges. "Let's go. We're almost there and it's almost dark." She was right. The sun had almost disappeared behind the lights of the village, its last few rays fluttering through the tree branches. Yet I could not move.

  "I can't Jalya," I whimpered. "That's not the right way."

  Jalya let out a heavy sigh. "Oh Emerin, don't do this now. We can't get over there and you know it. If he were over there, would he not have come to the shore by now looking for you? But nobody's there. Maybe he's in the village."

  "No, no, the village is that way and I need to go this way!" I gestured wildly with my hands. This could not be happening again. How could she not understand?

  "Okay look, if we go to the village maybe they know a way to get across," Jalya said sympathetically. "There's nothing we can do here and you know it. Let's just go now....please."

  Reluctantly, I let her help me to my feet and lead me back through the bushes. We went around them this time, rather than through them as I had on the way down. It was only now that I realized that I'd scratched up my legs pretty badly on the thorny stalks. But I barely even noticed my legs for the growing ache in my chest. Tears now fell freely from my cheeks and I clung tightly to Jalya for support. I could barely move forward in this inappropriate direction. An internal force tugged me to the left and I fought the urge to pull away from Jalya and run back down to the water's edge. Maybe I should go for it again. And then this time I wouldn't stop; I would just keep going into the water. Even if I died I would at least have the chance of relieving this all-encompassing desire.

  But that was a ridiculous idea. I knew that much even in my delirious state. I just needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other until we reached the village. They would know how to get over there; they had to. There didn't seem to be a bridge nearby, but maybe they had a boat. I could beg someone to take me across. Hope filled my exhausted body and gave me enough energy to keep going. Step by step, we conquered the rocky path in the fading light. As the last of the sun's rays disappeared from our view, we staggered around the final bend and found ourselves overlooking the village.

  The people of Sandoff's Village were farmers, as we were; we had always been told this while we were growing up. Therefore, I had always assumed that their village would be much like ours, and in truth, it did look somewhat the same. As we came out of the cover of trees and emerged into the large clearing, my bleary eyes tried to take in everything at once. There were vast fields of crops, and little wooden houses arranged in rows along pathways, much like Carper's Village, but this is where the similarity ended. There were poles scattered along the pathways at intervals with flames encased at the top of them, which lit up the whole area. The light flooded between the homes and across the fields and came to rest at the three walls of forest that surrounded the community. Back home, sunset had always meant darkness, so we mostly stayed inside during the evening hours. I marvelled at this incredible light which spilled over our toes as we stepped from the shadow of the trees.

  The villagers took advantage of this unnatural light and moved about the village, talking loudly to each person that they passed. The main action seemed to be happening in the very center of the cluster of houses, and it was from here that the music pumped, its reverberations too loud for my ears, even at this distance. A huge congregation of people thronged in this town center, singing and moving their bodies to the rhythm.

  "Are they.....dancing?" Jalya asked. We had heard of this before, but had never seen it. No one in Carper's Village ever danced. We sang church songs at our festivals, sometimes even loudly with jubilation, but dancing...never. Dancing was something that little kids did, when caught up in the gaiety of the singing, but never anyone even approaching adulthood. Yet these strange people in front of us, most of them adults, were dancing with fervor. Men and women touching hands, pressing their bodies together, laughing raucously. I had to shake my head to make sure I was seeing this properly.

  "Is that dancing?" I mumbled. "My goodness..."

  "Reverend Grell would be appalled," Jalya laughed.

  It was true. There was no way I could even imagine this kind of behaviour happening back home. How could a village so close to us be so different? I was actually getting a little afraid to approach, afraid of what other strange things we might be subjected to. Yet there was nothing else that we could do.

 
"Come on, Emerin. Let's just get this over with." Jalya grabbed my arm and gently urged me in the direction of the festivities. I reluctantly followed the pressure of her fingers and we descended the small hill in front of us, following the pathway that led toward the village.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a piercing sound shattered the air, like a high pitched whistle. I looked around to find the origin of the sound, but I barely had the chance to turn my head before someone grabbed me from behind.