Chapter 10 - Fire Beneath the Spring
They rode the final mile at a gallop.
Smoke poured from cracks in Red Mesa.
Aayoka reached the spring first.
The water had turned cloudy.
“No.”
She dismounted and ran into the shallows.
Elias followed.
“What happened?”
A deep rumble answered.
One of Creed's abandoned dynamite charges had ignited.
Perhaps slowly burning material had finally reached it.
Perhaps one of Harcourt's remaining men had returned.
Either way, the underground chambers were collapsing.
Aayoka ran toward the hidden entrance.
Elias caught her.
“You can't go inside.”
“The records!”
“The mountain is coming down.”
“My people's history is in there.”
Another tremor shook the canyon.
Elias looked at the smoke.
Then at Aayoka.
“Wait here.”
“No.”
“This time you really need to.”
He entered the cavern.
Aayoka followed anyway.
Of course she did.
Inside, smoke thickened.
Part of the chamber had collapsed.
The modern weapons crates burned.
Elias kicked one aside.
Aayoka found the sacred records.
Some were carved stone.
Others were wrapped bundles.
They could not save everything.
“Take what matters most!”
Aayoka stared around.
“How do I choose?”
Elias understood.
How did a person choose which memories deserved survival?
“You don't.”
He grabbed a wooden sled used for moving crates.
“Load everything we can.”
They worked.
Smoke burned their eyes.
A beam fell.
Elias pushed Aayoka aside.
The timber struck his old shoulder.
He collapsed.
“Elias!”
“I'm fine.”
“You are not.”
“Later.”
They dragged the sled.
The cavern groaned.
Water surged.
The spring's underground channel had broken through.
Suddenly a wall of cold water rushed toward them.
“RUN!”
They reached the tunnel.
Water struck.
Elias lost his footing.
Aayoka grabbed him.
For a terrifying second he was underwater.
Then her hand pulled him upward.
Together they stumbled into daylight.
Behind them the entrance collapsed.
The spring surged violently.
Then slowly settled.
They lay on the bank.
Alive.
Aayoka began laughing.
Elias stared.
“What?”
“You.”
“What about me?”
“You found the spring dying of thirst.”
“Yes.”
“Now it nearly drowned you.”
He considered that.
“Seems ungrateful.”
She laughed harder.
Elias joined her.
It was the first uncomplicated laughter either had shared since meeting.
Then Aayoka looked at the recovered records.
Her smile faded into something softer.
“Thank you.”
Elias nodded.
“No need.”
“There is.”
She reached for his hand.
This time no whisper came.
No supernatural command.
Only water.
Wind.
Two people sitting beside something both had nearly lost.
Elias realized he preferred it that way.
The land didn't need to command him.
He had made his choice.
But rebuilding would prove harder than surviving.
Because the spring had been saved.
The people who once protected it had not.
And Aayoka now faced the most painful question of all:
May you like
What did home mean when everyone who had made it home was gone?
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