Bertan`s quest - Michelle Tarynne (best beach reads of all time txt) 📗

"Will you be able to…" she choked out.

"He won't be alone for Gods' sakes, Cressy!" A stiff and old lady interrupted their conversation.

"High Vaala, I wasn’t expecting you now," the mother stuttered and bowed.

"Stop with the formalities Cressy," the old lady sniffed with a great displeasure, "I don’t understand why you are so fearful. The children will be in good hands."

"You call this old fool 'good hands'! Spare me. We both know he is the only one crazy enough to listen to your plan," the mother whispered with anger so powerful it could ignite a paper, was it somewhere near her.

"He is old and wise, Cressy. Just because he is a bit odd in his ways, doesn’t mean he isn't trustworthy," High Vaala's whisper held a tone of a warning directed at the much younger female that had the gall to point out the weakness of the only 'alternative plan' they could come up with.

"He eats sand and dust, and he swims in water! How can you trust him to feed and not drown our kids during their journey?"

"Get a grip, Cressy!" the older woman scolded, the younger.

"You know that I want to go with them," Cressy confronted the elder once again.

"And you know that you can't," the old lady said pointing her finger at the female bold enough to argue with her, "Once any of the adults is unaccounted for, the search will be started and everyone will realize that most of the children are gone. This won't ever be accepted. You know it, Cressy. You know as well, what happens when our tribe doesn’t accept something or someone."

"I know," Cressy's face distorted in pain, "Are you sure it's a good plan?" she ceased to argue.

"No. It's not possible to know everything. The Duchess of Old had been so sure that we shouldn't go on with the original Plan, it moved my core. She said so many times that we should never go back there that I had to work on something else. This is the only thing I could come up with, considering the very limited resources I had," she sighed, "We have to protect the children, even if it means letting them forget of their origins."

"We don’t have time for that argument now," Brine interrupted the conversation between the two women that was getting louder and louder, "The boats are waiting. My unit will protect the children, I promise, mom," he hugged Cressy, "It's you I'm worried about."

"My oldest, I love you, but you forget who trained you into who you are now," she said.

"You, mom," he smiled in answer.

"Yes. So, don’t worry about me then," she hugged him tightly to whisper into his ear, "I will find a way to join you."

He nodded in answer and left her embrace to collect his little brother and sister.

Cressy froze in a mute goodbye as she watched him carry out Pam and Coope out of their home, "I hate to see them leave," she said to High Vaala.

"I know what you feel. There is not a moment that I don’t regret sending out Genes, my great grandson," High Vaala seemed smaller, "I sent him straight to the roots of the coming war."

"High Vaala, Genes is accompanied by the greatest warriors of our times. Surely nothing bad can happen when he is around Vlad."

"The Fates like to play tricks with us, and that evil Red Axe as a King will kill us all when he gets a chance…" High Vaala said worriedly.

"I know, Auntie, so you decided to help the Fates with the tricks part. You arranged for our youth to be guided by that lunatic giant to the place that belongs to or other enemies. The place we know only from myths."

"Just as we know about the Other Homeland Stronghold, Cressy. We know it only from myths too. It has never been seen by any of us, and we are aware of it only as a place our ancestors were exiled from."

"Why are we doing it, then? Why are we going back Why?" Cressy frowned.

" The Oracle," High Vaala said without any further explanation.

"Gods damn that damn thing!" Cressy shrieked, "We can't put our lives in the care of the prophets just like that!"

"It's our way. We don’t have to like it, but it's our way," the older woman said the thing she no longer believed in, and it was easy to notice, for the ones who knew what to listen for.

"It's the way of our past, and you well know it," Cressy cut right through the old crap she heard all her life.

"It's the only way, to be in the past, just because it says foresees our extinction if we do otherwise."

"I don’t buy it," Cressy said through gritted teeth.

"Nobody asks you to." High Vaala said stiffly, "Just get prepared, we are leaving in two cycles," she snapped, "The only thing you have to buy now is some time, so the children have a chance to get to safety."

Cressy watched the old female leave her home. She stood completely still, taking in the emptiness her house now represented. A mother left alone by the Fates had only one true goal in her life. She would do as she promised. She would do everything to unite with her children. But first, she needed to pack and pray for the Fates to help her, for she didn’t intend to breach that damn Wall in the first place.

Brine ran with the two children in his arms. They were nervous, but quiet, just as they promised. When it felt safe enough, he stopped and put them on the ground.

"Pam, Coope, I need you to do something that you might not like," he whispered.

"What?" Coope asked.

"I need you to wear a kind of covering bands on your mouths. It's so you don’t scream when you get scared, or if you hurt yourself when you kick a stone," he explained patiently.

"Brine, we don’t do that anymore," Coope scoffed his older brother.

"I know Coope, it’s just a precaution, just in case."

"For how long?" Coope asked.

"Till we get to the river and board the boats."

"We will do it then," Pam whispered.

"Sure Brine," Coope agreed because he didn’t want to be the weak one.

Brine tied bands of fabric that covered their mouths and noses. The real purpose of it was to protect their lungs from the poisonous air they were going to meet soon enough.

Half a cycle into their journey, they met the other small groups of children accompanied by their young guides. No word was spoken, and the river was still many cycles away. They didn’t have to hurry, knowing that their Tribe would be heading in the almost opposite direction.

When they reached the river, not a very big one, just a bit of water flowing inside a crack in the ground, a lone man of a great size awaited their arrival. The children got so used to the covering bands that they forgot to take them off even then.

Brine silently greeted that waiting man. He noticed small boats lying on the shore. They would be launched into the water only after the children were safely sitting in them. Twenty-eight boats, each carried six children and one young adult that steered it. The big man had no boat of his own, he held the rope that linked the boats so that not one of them could go astray and led them into the deep waters. He would be swimming next to the vessels. He was the weird one, the only water worshipping Seekinglander of Old, and surface rivers and underground waters held no secrets for him.

He knew the surface river they took had no real beginning and no real end on the surface. Water just came up to the place where any crack in the ground started, and it went down in the place where it ended. The place where it went once it disappeared beneath the surface, was his own secret, he never intended to share. The giant just hoped that children wouldn't make much noise on the way, for he hated it more than the fire.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Crossing the reflective Wall proved to be tricky. Bertan and Genes had no chance of reaching the height required for a safe pass. She noticed that when they were still approaching it. They would have to touch the apex of that Wall and it wouldn't be just a mere brush either, she thought, when she rammed straight into the hard mirror surface. At the same moment Genes and the kite above her had a safe passage. That could mean only one thing. Genes would never be able to control the situation.

The front of the kite already pointed down to the ground, and Bertan did her best to quickly climb to at least stand on the Wall with her feet for a moment. She had no time to do that because the frame with Genes attached to it slid over and went down like a stone from the huge structure, dragging her down. Without much time and space to maneuver, Bertan was helpless to prevent their crash-landing into the sandy dunes that came up to the wall on the other side.

Truth-be-told she had hoped, for more of an airborne shortcut to at least get past that wasteland of sand, wind, and hopelessness. It was a place of sorrow with its past darker than the night, which never passed into the glorious, suns-lighted day. It seemed that all of her plans were changed by the Fates the moment she felt the Anaerther's Call.

"Are you alive?" Bertan asked worriedly the unmoving and silent crumpled heap of a body still attached to the kite.

"I think so. Did we fell all the way down?" a muffled voice asked with a tinge of groan and embarrassment.

"Apparently, we did! I haven't really thought it through, as far as the calculations went. I thought the winds would bring us higher, but our combined weight held us down too much." She smiled at him cutting all of his bindings with a large knife. "I'm actually glad we only missed by a tiny bit. Otherwise, we would go down on the wrong side of the Wall and be in much bigger trouble than now. We were blessed with a very soft crash-landing instead." She visibly perked up. "Nothing is broken!"

"I guess I should be thankful for getting through the Wall in one piece." He tried very much not to sound too brusque as he stretched up. If he were to be honest with himself, he would have to admit he was comforted to have his feet on the ground and be outside the Axe territory. "Why did you take me with you… and who are you, really?" Genes asked somberly.

"All in the right time boy, all in time. Right now, we have to get going, and we have to get going really fast. Those sands hold too much sorrow for us not to remain unaffected." She already left him behind so he had to run to keep up with her pace

"Why? What is this place? I don't feel anything." He looked around to notice the big emptiness over huge dunes. "It looks pretty normal to me."

"Just how much do you know about the history?" she asked after a long, lingering and silent pause.

"Not much, I don't like to dwell on the past, now is more important, the future is important. The past is just dust on my shoes," he reflected youthfully.

"Surprisingly, you are right. We are walking in the dust and ashes of uncountable beings here." She scoffed at him. "It's typical for the youth not to think about the past and never take it for a lesson learned well," she paused, waiting for him to argue, but he said nothing. "Before the fire from the sky changed the world into what it is now, the Swords had the reigns over the lands inside and outside the Wall. The Northern Gates erected to adjoin the Wall melted