The Shattered Mountain

11

AFTER a quick breakfast of cold bacon, Mara cleans Julio’s wound and gives him fresh bandages. Not clean bandages, alas. The best she can do is tear a strip from one of the blankets. After letting the wound drain all night, she really should stitch it now. But she has no needle. Tonight, if it has worsened, she’ll have to cauterize the whole thing.

With Reynaldo’s and Adán’s help, she gets Julio on one of the two packhorses. He can barely hold himself up, preferring to drape against the horse’s neck. They may have to tie him down soon.

The sun shines bright and warm as they set off, but smoke has diffused into the air, coating the earth with a brownish haze. The thin trickle of water winding through their ravine is nearly dry. It pools in occasional shady puddles, warm and brackish. Mara will let the children drink from the stagnant water as a last resort, but it’s bound to make their bellies ache.

After a few hours, the tiny girl says, “I’m hungry.”

At least she’s no longer coughing.

“Me too,” says one of the new boys.

Mara sighs. She knew it was coming. But their food is in such short supply that she can’t feed them until they make camp tonight. “Keep an eye out for greens,” she orders the children. “Winter cress, aloe, nopales. We might still find some juniper berries. If you get too hungry, you can chew on white-pine needles.”

At worst, the task will busy the children enough to keep them from complaining. At best, a few succulents might keep their thirst at bay. Once they leave the mountain to drop into the desert, food will be in even scarcer supply. She decides not to think about that just yet.

They travel in silence. Mara can’t remember ever seeing such a silent group of children. There is only the sound of their footfalls displacing pebbles, the clop-clop of hooves, the squeal of an occasional raptor. And farther away, hollow and distant, the clap of thunder.

“Stop! Everyone, stop.” Mara turns in place, neck craning to view the sky. There is not a cloud to be seen. The storm must be on the desert side of the mountain. If so, it would be a rarity. Something that only happens in late fall.

Of course, it is late fall.

The sky cracks again, closer this time.

“That was thunder,” Reynaldo says.

“I don’t see clouds,” says Adán.

“What is it?” calls Julio from his horse. “What’s going on?”

Mara eyes the ravine wall. Steep, but climbable. For her, at least. The littler ones might struggle.

“If we climb up to the ridge, anyone can see us,” Reynaldo says.

“If we don’t, we could be caught in a flood,” says Adán.

“Maybe the storm is far away.”

“What if it’s not?”

Mara looks back and forth between them. They’re both right. What should she do? She hates having to be the one to decide.

“We’ll go a little farther,” she says at last. “Look for a better place to climb up.” Julio and the horses might not make it up the side without an easier incline.

Thunder rolls again as she beckons them forward. The air temperature takes a sudden drop; it happens so fast that she looks up at the ridge, half expecting to see an animagus who has wrought the change through magic.

“Everyone look for a place to climb up,” she orders. The wind is gaining strength, and she must shout to be heard. She prays there are no enemy scouts nearby.

One of the little boys begins to cry. Carella’s daughter sidles over and grabs his hand, and together they wind down the ravine, Mara not far behind.

“The walls are getting steeper,” Reynaldo observes.

Her heart sinks. She was hoping that she was imagining it. “Keep moving,” she urges.

The wind lifts her hair from her neck, and she looks back toward the mountain peaks. Sure enough, blue-black clouds are rumbling toward them, shrouding the mountaintop in darkness. Lightning flashes somewhere inside the cloud bank, turning the edges a sickly green for the briefest moment.

“Hurry!” Mara says, sweeping up the tiny girl in her arms and darting forward. “Does anyone see a way up? Anything at all?”

But there is nothing. The walls are nearly sheer now, interrupted by clumps of mesquite. She could climb it. Reynaldo and Adán could too. But the little ones wouldn’t stand a chance, and Julio’s horse would never make it.

The ground trembles. A jackrabbit bounces across their path, then two more. They fly up the steep bank and disappear into a tiny hole.

“Did you see that?” Adán calls out.

Mara’s heart races with the implication. If the animals are fleeing . . .

“Run!” she screams. “Everybody run! Climb up as soon as you can.”

The trickle of water they’ve been following widens to a tiny stream, pushing detritus along with it. They splash through, always looking upward toward the ridge, and Mara dreads seeing one of them go down with a sprained ankle.

“There!” calls out the boy who had been crying only moments before. Mara follows the direction of his pointing finger and doesn’t see anything, but a few more steps forward and she does. It’s a drainage ditch, cutting through the hill—hardly more than a slight seam in the earth. Water pours down it already, into their ravine, but at a gentle enough slope that with some coaxing and pushing, the little ones might make it up.

“Julio, you go first,” she orders. “Quickly!” It’s steep and uneven, but a good mountain pony should be able to make it.

Julio clucks to the mare, and she plods forward into the adjoining ravine. His body lists to the right; he’s barely holding his seat. Mara almost steps forward to help him, but she can’t leave the little ones.

The earth trembles again. “Go! Hurry!” she yells, gesturing the others to follow Julio. Which is when she sees her mistake. By insisting that Julio get to safety first, she has blocked their narrow path. No one can pass the careful mountain pony. No one can hurry.

“You!” she yells to the nearest boy. “Go whack that horse on the rump. Now!” As he scrambles up the drainage ditch after Julio, Mara looks for a place to deposit the tiny girl—a ledge, a bush with a big enough trunk, anything that might be high enough to avoid the quickly rising water. But there is nothing.

Mara’s feet are ankle-deep now, and the gusting wind kicks up spray and dust, making it hard to see. Carella’s daughter stands at Mara’s side, helping her direct the others.

“Now you!” the little girl yells to a much older boy. “Careful of that branch. All right, your turn.” One by one the children climb up into the ditch, until only Mara, Carella’s daughter, and the tiny girl remain. The water reaches Mara’s knees, which means it’s to the girl’s waist. They won’t be able to stand against the current much longer.

“Go now,” Mara says to Carella’s daughter. “I’ll be right behind you.” Mara hitches the tiny girl higher on her hip. Somehow, she’ll have to make the climb one-handed.

The girl has barely started to climb when a rumbling noise makes her pause. She and Mara look toward the sound. It’s a wall of churning, muddy water, tumbling down the mountain toward them.

Mara launches past Carella’s daughter up into the ditch. She scrambles over mud and stones, through skin-ripping branches, still looking for a place to tuck the tiny girl.

A head peeks down from around a boulder. It’s Reynaldo. “Hand her to me!” he hollers, reaching for her. Mara braces against the side of the ditch so she can lift the tiny girl with both hands. Reynaldo plucks her from Mara’s grasp, and Mara darts back down the way she came.

“Mara!” Reynaldo calls.

Below her, Carella’s daughter has slipped in the mud to her belly, arms and legs splayed. Her wide eyes are a startling white contrast to her muddy face and hair. “Help!” she cries.

The wall of water is upon them, and Mara has no time to be gentle. She grabs a nearby manzanita branch with one hand; with the other she lunges down, grabs the girl’s cold, slick arm, and gives it a tremendous yank.

The girl screams, but the sound is cut off by water filling her mouth and nose.

Mara’s arms threaten to rip from her sockets as water sucks the girl down, but she refuses to let go, pulling with all her might. Gradually, the girl’s soaked head breaks through the whitewater, then her shoulders. One final tug, and the girl’s body is more on the bank than in the water. She lies perfectly still. Blood pours from a gash on the side of her head.

The water level is still rising. Mara stretches farther, hooks the girl’s armpit, and drags her up even higher, until only her toes trail in the water. One foot is now bare.

Mara collapses on her back. Her arms are rubbery, and her temples have a sharp, squeezed pain from so much effort. She turns her head to regard the girl beside her, half expecting her to be limp and dead.

The girl convulses once, hard. Then she coughs, and something that is half floodwater, half vomit dribbles from her mouth.

Joy surges in Mara’s chest, as brilliant as a rising summer sun. She digs her heels into the mud bank for leverage, then helps the girl sit up. “That’s it,” she murmurs as the girl continues to heave. “Just cough it all out.”

“Is she all right?” It’s Reynaldo. He lowers himself to their position, using rocks and scrub for purchase.

“I think so. She has a bad gash on her head. And I may have hurt her when I pulled her out. But . . . I think so.” I saved her. The truth of this marvelous fact fills her limbs with tingling warmth. Maybe she can save them all.

“We should get moving,” Reynaldo warns. “The water is still rising.”

The sky chooses that moment to dump vicious streamers of rain, and Mara blinks water from her eyes. “The others? Did they . . .”

“All safe on the ridge.”

She breathes relief. “Let’s go, then.” To Carella’s daughter, she says, “Can you climb?”

The girl coughs one more time, but she nods, and Mara marvels at her bravery. She can’t be more than five or six, but she stayed behind to help everyone else. Now her lungs must be on fire, her head pounding, her shoulder stinging, but instead of fear or pain in her eyes, Mara sees only determination.

“What’s your name?” Mara asks.

“Teena.”

“All right, Teena. Let’s get up on that ridge, then we’ll let you rest.”