Twisted Heart

  ‘Hey, you guys!’ Regan called to Marta, Blake and Jarrold. ‘We have a problem.’

  His voice was muffled. I was deep underground, cut off from the light. I felt suffocated, as if the breath was being squeezed out of my lungs.

  Soon I heard other voices.

  ‘Tania, can you hear me? Hold on, we’ll get you out …’

  And other long-lost voices whispering down the years.

  Men with crows’ feathers in their black, braided hair, they speak to me. ‘We are with you. We are part of this land.’

  I am in their underground world. Above our heads horses thunder by, gunfire rattles and echoes down the valley.

  ‘They drive us from our hunting grounds, from our homes. But we will never leave.’

  I hear the dead men’s sighs, the ghostly laments in my crumbling chasm. Earth falls on my face. Down below my wolf man silently waits.

  ‘Tania, listen. Regan and the others will lower me on a rope.’ This was Jarrold’s voice, issuing orders, taking the lead. ‘Don’t try to move. Just call out and let us know where you are.’

  My mouth was filled with soot and ash, there was still a sharp smell of smoke.

  ‘Be quick,’ I pleaded. ‘The ground is giving way under me.’ The soft mud crumbled each time I shifted my weight. How much further could I fall before Jarrold got to me?

  It seemed like an age. More earth fell from above. Jarrold descended. I made out his shape, abseiling down, legs braced against the soft sides of the chasm, dislodging dirt and ash. Too soon I reached towards his outstretched hand and fell another two metres, groaning and slipping out of his grasp.

  ‘Don’t move!’ he insisted. ‘Wait for me.’

  Another age passed. They lowered him further into the darkness until his body swung into mine and he put one arm around my waist and took my weight.

  ‘Pull!’ he yelled to Regan, Marta and Blake.

  They inched us up. Still I didn’t think we would make it. I thought the walls of the sink hole would collapse in on us and we’d be buried together, like Red Cloud and Little Wound, like a thousand slaughtered warriors.

  At last I saw daylight and the faces of my rescuers peering down. I clung to Jarrold as they raised us, buried my head against his chest when the sun dazzled me.

  ‘Lift her,’ I heard him say. ‘Lay her on her side, make sure she doesn’t choke.’

  Hands raised me to safety and lay me down, covered me in a blanket. Jarrold untied the rope from around his waist. He was covered in soot and ash, gasping for breath, his hands burned by the rope as he’d descended too quickly in his rush to save me.

  ‘Don’t do that again,’ he gasped, sinking on to his knees next to where I lay. ‘You hear me, Tania? Don’t disappear on me.’

  After that, Jarrold never let me out of his sight. Instead of striding ahead, he slowed his pace to walk by my side, helping me over creeks and around rocks, taking me by the hand and leading me.

  He made me feel safe.

  But my thoughts were chaotic. Don’t fall for this, I told myself. This is exactly what happened with Holly – she joined the Hawk Above Our Heads band and immediately fell under Channing’s spell. And look what happened – within forty-eight hours he made his dark-angel move on her.

  Another part of my brain was saying, it’s more complicated. Jarrold is a rebel, an Outsider – he doesn’t belong with Antony Amos at New Dawn. And lowering himself down the sink hole to rescue me proves that he really cares.

  So maybe Jarrold is on the side of light. The thought pierced the dark chaos of my mind like a burning arrow. He’s Zenaida’s secret spy, he’s my hero!

  He walked beside me towards the meeting place with Ziegler. ‘You OK?’ he asked.

  I nodded, smiled back and tried not to betray my new feeling for him. ‘What are your plans when you get out of here?’

  ‘No plans.’

  ‘Will you go back to Denver?’

  ‘No. Maybe California – San Diego. I don’t know. How about you?’

  ‘Back to Paris,’ I said with a frown. ‘When Mom gets out of hospital.’

  He asked me for details, told me about his dad, who died of liver failure. ‘I was eleven. They didn’t let me visit.’

  ‘That sucks. I’m sorry.’

  After that, we were silent for a while, until we reached an overlook that gave us a view of Turner Lake. This was where Jarrold lined up behind me and pointed over my shoulder to a landmark finger of rock on the horizon. ‘Spider Rock,’ he told me.

  Again I felt the beat of his heart, the strength and heat of his body, the warmth of his breath.

  ‘Jarrold!’ Marta called from the edge of the overlook.

  We looked round to see that Regan had got himself wedged in a narrow gap between a tree trunk and a rock, with a drop of five metres below.

  ‘What the … ?’ Jarrold ran to grab him. ‘Throw me the camera. Use both hands. Don’t talk, just do.’

  I joined Blake in the shadow of the rock. ‘Don’t even ask,’ she muttered before I could open my mouth.

  ‘Regan was climbing the tree for the best shot of the lake,’ Marta explained. ‘He fell from the second branch – see?’

  Slowly Jarrold encouraged Regan to place his feet on the safe ledges and to catch hold of his hand. ‘To your right. Don’t let go with your left hand. Take it easy.’

  Regan’s arms were grazed and cut. A trickle of blood ran from his forehead. ‘This is taking up too much time’ was my selfish thought, and I decided to start making my own way towards my destination.

  I’d made it from the overlook down into a gully, where I lost sight of Spider Rock, though I still knew which direction to follow. It meant a tough, almost vertical climb of about twenty metres, out of the gully on to a stretch of flat rock that sloped down again at an angle of about thirty degrees. I made it to the top of the cliff then took the slope slowly, making sure with each step that my boots had a good grip on the wet granite before I shifted my weight. Every so often I glanced up to check that Spider Rock was still in sight.

  ‘The four winds are blowing,’ a spirit voice tells me. A soft, reassuring presence guides me towards the tall red rock. ‘Call for the spirit of the hawk to guide you, for he is the surest bird of prey. Call for the deer, who can endure thirst in the desert, or for the crow, who is swift in flight.’

  I look up and see a flock of doves, speckled grey and white in the sunlight. They are high overhead, borne by the wind, brilliant and free.

  ‘I choose Zenaida,’ I say. My mourning dove – without a shadow of a doubt.

  I was across the smooth slope, crunching through a snowdrift that still lingered in the shadow of an overhang. Spider Rock was to my left, Turner Lake straight ahead.

  The lake was still, smooth as a mirror reflecting wispy white clouds. I could make out the straight wall of the dam, even the row of New Dawn cabins and the social centre by the shore.

  A cold wind blows. It carries ice and snow. ‘Bring me the gift of courage,’ I say to my spirit ally, my Zenaida. ‘The courage to stand in the blizzard and not to turn back and run from the wolf, or the monster rising from the lake amid the lost and drifting skulls.’

  All of a sudden the surface of the frozen lake erupts. The creature’s snake-head appears through the splintering ice, then his massive shoulders. Filthy, weed-strewn water spills from him. In his strong arms he carries a corpse.

  He rises from the deep, this unnatural creature. He spreads his dripping wings, offering up the body, raising it over his black, scaly head.

  It is Conner.

  ‘He is gone, yet he remains.’ Amos’s voice rises above the wind, reminding me.

  Conner is an offering. A sacrifice. He lies limp in the monster’s outstretched arms.

  Ice cracks again and a hundred double-headed serpents appear. They slither towards me.

  ‘Give me the courage to stand fast!’

  But no – the serpents swarm out of the lake, they grow huge and tower over m
e. I am not strong enough.

  Crushed, breathless I turned and ran towards Spider Rock. I heard members of the Wolf in the Snow band call after me – first Marta, then Jarrold.

  Painfully I dragged air into my lungs, forced my tired legs onwards over the rough ground scattered with thorn bushes and yucca.

  ‘Tania, wait!’ Jarrold yelled.

  I ran. I stumbled towards the tower of pink rock. The distance was too great, the fear too strong. I stumbled again, sank to my knees, forced myself up on to my feet and carried on.

  ‘Stop, Tania. Wait for me.’

  I looked over my shoulder and saw that Jarrold was gaining on me. He was crashing through willow bushes, leaping across the creek. Soon now he would catch me.

  I sobbed; I sucked in air. I was on my hands and knees, crawling towards Spider Rock, out of the sun into dark shadow. Jarrold’s footsteps were near but I was still ahead when strong hands lifted me.

  I looked up and groaned.

  The dark brim of a black hat cast a shadow across a stern face, and eyes the colour of columbines – a beautiful cobalt blue – stared down at me.

  12

  ‘Drink. Eat,’ my dad ordered as soon as Ziegler had driven me home. It’s his way of taking care of me.

  He fed me and put me to bed under my dreamcatcher, took my ash-covered clothes and threw them into the washing machine. He asked me hardly any questions.

  ‘Angelica is on plane home,’ he told me in his gruff, deep voice.

  ‘Good?’ I asked from between the sheets.

  He nodded. ‘That woman.’

  ‘I know. So how’s Mom?’

  ‘You know. Hating the hospital, giving nurses hard time.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Good,’ he insisted. ‘Everyone, everything good now you come back safe.’

  I tried to sleep but Ziegler’s intense blue stare kept getting in the way.

  He’d stooped and picked me up from the ground in the shadow of Spider Rock. He’d led me to his Jeep, instructing Jarrold and Marta to regroup with Blake and Regan and to carry on with their wilderness walk.

  ‘You get no further contact with anyone until midday on Friday,’ he’d warned. ‘Follow the guiding principles. If you hit any problems, solve them together. You know how it works.’

  Maybe I’d expected an argument from Jarrold along the lines of wanting to come back to New Dawn with me the way Channing had done with Holly. But no, he hadn’t said a word, just turned and strode away.

  Marta had been the one who’d helped me into the Jeep. ‘Jeez, Tania,’ she’d sighed. ‘Are you always this much trouble?’ And she’d promised to look me up after her time with the community was over. ‘That is, if you want me to.’

  ‘Sure,’ I’d said. And I’d given her my phone number.

  Ziegler had driven away from the rock and Marta had waved.

  ‘She’s a cool kid, considering what she’s been through,’ Ziegler had commented, glancing in his mirror to check that Jarrold was following orders. But he’d blocked my questions, hadn’t given any more Marta facts because of course it was one of the guiding principles not to divulge this stuff.

  He did let me see Holly though.

  ‘Your friend is totally fine, recuperating faster than you’d believe,’ he’d reassured me as we drove into the parking lot and he opened the passenger door to let me out. ‘Come and see for yourself.’

  Holly was in the social centre with Channing, Kaylee and Ava. They were playing pool. I’ll say that again – Holly, who had been in stage three hypothermia last time I saw her, was smacking the red ball into the corner pocket. There was a log fire blazing in the hearth. Flames reflected in the glass eyes of the bear-rug made him seem alive.

  ‘Hey, Tania!’ she greeted me with her old energy, invited me to grab a cue and join in.

  ‘How come you’re here? Why aren’t you at home?’ I asked, under a hostile stare from Kaylee – a look that warned ‘Keep your dirty hands off Jarrold – he’s mine!’

  ‘Holly didn’t want to leave right away,’ Channing explained, sticking close to her side. ‘She knew we’d take good care of her.’

  ‘And you did.’ Holly smiled and planted a kiss on his cheek. She stood with an arm around his waist as Ava played the next shot.

  The same old warning siren blared inside my brain: Grace-and-Ezra, Grace-and-Ezra! Holly’s jacket and T-shirt had been torn and there was a wall of silence. ‘Did you speak with Aaron?’

  ‘Not yet.’ She brushed the question aside, smiled up at Channing, who looped his arm around her shoulder.

  Click. Ava’s cue ball hit another red, which missed the pocket by a mile.

  ‘Maybe you should,’ I suggested.

  Holly shrugged. ‘Why? No one’s expecting to hear from me for a couple of days. Meanwhile, chill.’

  ‘Holly!’ I couldn’t stop myself. I grabbed her by the hand and tugged her to the far side of the hearth. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What’s it look like? I’m playing pool.’ Irritated, she shook herself free.

  ‘No!’ I grabbed her a second time. ‘This isn’t what’s meant to happen. They were supposed to drive you home, inform your parents, get you checked out at the hospital or something!’

  ‘They didn’t. They took care of me here and I’m fine,’ she retorted.

  ‘And what’s this thing with Channing?’ I hissed. He was watching us from a distance, probably trying to lip-read our conversation. Dressed in jeans and a white T, with his close-cropped black hair and amazingly fine North African features, I had to admit that he did fit the babe-magnet picture that Blake and the others had painted.

  ‘Isn’t he totally cool?’ Holly breathed. A coy smile played on her lips. ‘Tania, did you ever see anyone so beautiful?’

  ‘La-la, not interested,’ I snapped. ‘Listen. Tell me how come Channing let you try out the zip-wire? I thought he was there to take care of everyone in the Hawk band.’

  A frown flitted across Holly’s face and for the first time I saw her falter.

  Click, click. Channing leaned over the table and pocketed a yellow, hardly taking his eyes off us.

  ‘I don’t remember exactly,’ she murmured. ‘I guess I thought it would be fun.’

  ‘Yeah, fun to almost get yourself killed. Think harder. Concentrate. Was Channing involved?’

  The frown turned into a bright, superficial smile. ‘Let’s ask him. Hey, Channing, Tania wants to know what happened with the zip-wire!’

  He leaned his cue against the green baize table and came across, stepping right over the bear’s stuffed head.

  It morphs. It rises to its feet with a terrific snarl, lips drawn back and fangs exposed. It swipes out with curved claws. I duck sideways. It falls on to all fours, fixes me with its fire-glint eyes.

  ‘Sure, I’m happy to share with you,’ Channing explained, calm as anything. ‘Tania, you know better than anyone that no one tells Holly what to do. And she has more energy than anyone I know. So she was up yesterday morning before any of the band, taking pictures on her cell phone camera, getting the idea into her head that if she used the zip-wire to reach the island, she could get some super-cool shots.’

  ‘Not knowing that no one used the wire for years.’ Kaylee had come across and joined in the conversation uninvited. ‘It was rusted to hell, totally unsafe.’

  ‘Trust me to jump in with my two big feet!’ Holly laughed and gave a goofy shrug.

  I was short of breath, feeling the pressure and not able to ask her in front of the others if she knew how come her clothes were torn.

  ‘Anyhow, Tania, look at you,’ Kaylee mocked. ‘You look like you got run over by a truck.’

  It was true – I was covered from head to toe in soot, my clothes were wrecked, my arms and hands scratched.

  ‘She fell down a sink hole,’ Channing told her.

  I shot him a glance. How did he know? Had Ziegler told him? ‘Come home with me,’ I appealed to Holly.

  She
sidled closer to Channing, who locked his arm around her waist. ‘Not yet,’ she murmured. ‘You go if you want to, Tania, but I’m staying right here!’

  What happened to surge power girl? Where was the strong, independent Holly I knew and loved?

  ‘She’s changed,’ I told Aaron when we met on Main Street for coffee. Surrounded by everyday sounds – the clatter of coffee cups, the hiss of the espresso machine, I’d had time to fill him in on the latest developments and asked Jude and Grace to join us. ‘The same way you did, Grace, when … you know.’

  ‘When Zoran’s guys did their brainwashing thing on you.’ Jude stepped in, knowing how painful it was for her to talk about it. ‘They dragged your head into a different space. Nobody could reach you.’

  ‘I guess,’ she murmured. She still carried a heavy load of guilt towards Jude because of what she’d put him through.

  He held her hand across the table.

  ‘It was so not your fault,’ I insisted. ‘You have to believe it’s all-out war – good versus bad. Evil for its own sake. You and Holly are just collateral damage.’

  Grace smiled bravely. ‘So what do we do about Holly? We’re not the cavalry. We can’t just ride in there and rescue her.’

  ‘And in my opinion she’s not totally fallen for it – not yet.’ Trying to put an optimistic gloss on things, I told them that Holly had pulled through the dazed and confused stage and was halfway back to normal. It was just that I didn’t trust Channing, and I especially didn’t trust Antony Amos and the whole ethos at New Dawn. ‘I had a dream,’ I explained. ‘You know – a vision. My dark angel appeared.’

  ‘As Amos?’ Grace asked. ‘But I thought you’d decided against that idea.’

  ‘I was wrong,’ I said, pushing away my half-full coffee cup. ‘I was so dumb I can’t tell you. And he’s clever, twisted, really hard to read. I was thinking maybe Ziegler, maybe Jarrold, but definitely not Amos.’

  ‘Let me get this straight.’ Aaron hadn’t spoken for a while, but he’d been thinking plenty. ‘We’re into Black Rock territory. Tania, you’re psychic so you see this stuff before any of the rest of us?’