Into Eden: Pangaea - Book 1 (28 page)

Perez didn’t answer.

“Perez, what’s wrong?”

Still no answer, so Jesse shook Perez, but his brother still stared blankly at the globe. The globe seemed to be calling to him, begging Jesse to take a look. It didn’t look particularly menacing, but it did give off an eerie glow. Jesse looked at it just for a minute and then looked away. He didn’t want to get hypnotized like his brother. All he had seen was a large map of Pangaea. He looked back, but this time it was like looking into a mirror…except it wasn’t. What Jesse saw was himself. Some future self he supposed. The man in the mirror turned and began to run…in a moment he saw himself lying on the ground with a pack of the most hideous, almost deformed wolves that he had ever seen ripping at his throat. Jesse tried to turn away from the scene, but he could not. It was as if his feet had been glued to the floor and giant hands were forcing him to stare at the globe. He could not move his head from left to right, but was being forced to watch his own death play out on the globe before him. In a moment clouds covered the globe and then his face reappeared. This time he was sitting in a large, wooden hall with food before him and he was talking to dark people. Across from him was a young dark girl. Did he know her? The clouds swept over the scene again. This time he and Perez were walking through the jungle. They drew swords and Jesse ran his brother through. Jesse tried to cry out, “No!” but it was as if in some nightmare his tongue would not work either. Again clouds passed in front of the scene. This time the two boys were in the same place fighting with swords, but Perez ran his blade through Jesse. Jesse lay on the road in pain, dying. Again the clouds swept the scene away and Jesse saw himself riding in a chariot next to a man in Atlantan armor. Jesse again saw himself die, this time at the hands of an-nef in a pitched battle. Again the clouds dissipated the scene and Jesse saw himself back on his estate in the Foothills. In front of him was Meroni, beautiful Meroni, she was angry and yelling, but he could not make out what she was saying, he looked down and two little blond-haired children, a boy and a girl, hugged his legs. The clouds swept the scene away. Again he was home at his estate, but this time he was talking to a dark woman (was it the same girl that he had seen in the hall?) and two little brown children were hugging her legs. These scenes continued for what seemed to be an eternity. He watched as he died many times and many places. He saw himself at his estate with different wives and different children. Some of the last of these visions he could see himself as an old man riding in a long white coach that looked to be ten paces long. Impossible. Suddenly the visions stopped.

The black velvet hood was back on the globe and the Prophet stood before them. “Get out!” he ordered. He needed to say no more. Jesse and Perez left the room without saying another word and went up the stairs. Both boys decided that they would play a game of armies in the guest bedroom for a change.

That night at supper the conversation was limited to, “Can you pass me some more onions?” Neither Jesse nor Perez wanted to face the Prophet after their trespass. But after the meal it was Jesse who decided that he could stand the silence no longer.

“Prophet?”

“Yes?”

“I want to apologize. We were wrong. We shouldn’t have gone where we were not supposed to go.”

“Apology accepted,” the Prophet replied. “Now you must bear the burden of knowing what might be in your lives—both of you.”

“So that’s what it means to be a prophet?” Perez asked. “To know the possibilities in one’s life?”

“Fool!” Prophet shot back in an uncharacteristically sharp response. “To be a prophet is not to know what may become of us. To be a prophet is to know which of those possibilities will come to pass. Anyone can speculate on what the future may hold. There are many possibilities for each of us. But only God knows what will happen. That he reveals to me when he wishes. That’s what it means to be a prophet.”

Perez said nothing to the man’s rebuke. He had a feeling that old as he was Prophet could cut him to shreds with his tongue anytime that he felt like it.

The remaining months at the cabin went slowly. No longer did Jesse and Perez speculate at night about what might be in the secret room. Now Jesse fell asleep each night wondering which of the possibilities of his life would come true. Would he be eaten by wolves? But if he was, then how could he be married to Meroni or any of the other possible wives in his future? Why would he and Perez have a sword-fight to the death? That one bothered him most of all, because in each of the visions one of them died. He couldn’t kill his brother, could he? Jesse desperately wanted to talk about what he had seen in private with Enoch, but in this cabin there was no privacy. It would have to wait.

Chapter 14
Southern Face

As winter turned into spring the cycle of snow turned into rain and the snow eventually began to melt. By late spring there was still a couple of paces of snow on the ground, but Jesse or Perez would borrow the Prophet’s snowshoes and walk to the summit and look for the snow receding on the mountain’s southern face. Finally, one day in early summer Perez came back excited.

“I can see the road, Jesse! The snow has melted on it not a couple of miles down! We need to leave!”

That night Perez told the Prophet of his plan for leaving the cabin in the morning, but the Prophet cautioned against it. “Two miles is still a long way in the snow. Even if you leave at sunrise it may slow you down enough to make getting off the mountain by nightfall an impossibility. Why don’t you wait another week or so? You’ve been here so long already. It would be terrible to have something happen to you when you’ve waited so long for the snow to melt. Remember what I said about the werewolves.”

Perez still didn’t believe in werewolves, but he had a vision similar to Jesse’s and the thought of just being chased by creatures like those made him shiver. Just the same, being cramped up in this cabin for eight months was more than he could stand. He intended to leave the next morning and he was going to, wolves or no wolves. Jesse or no Jesse. When he told his decision to Jesse, he was not supportive.

“The Prophet’s right. Just ask Enoch. We’ve been here so long another week or so won’t matter. What’s the hurry?”

“The
hurry
is, I’m sick and tired of being cooped up here for the past eight months and being locked up in a cell for a month before that. I’m leaving, Jesse, and I’m leaving in the morning. That is that.”

Having heard Perez eloquent rationale for the morning departure Jesse knew that there was no point in arguing his case any further. He decided to leave in the morning with his brother, and informed Enoch of his decision.

“Perez is a fool, Jesse,” Enoch told him, “and so are you if you follow him. But wherever you go, I’ll go with you.”

Jesse didn’t know whether to be angry for the insult, or happy for the loyalty.

“But Jesse, there is one thing that I need you to know,” Enoch continued. “I believe the Prophet when he says that there are werewolves on this mountain. Future has told me of them. She says that she has seen them, and fears them.”

“She
told
you?”

“As I explained to you earlier, Jesse, animals do not communicate with speech. Their language is more sophisticated than that. Just the same, Future warned me of them. She communicated to me that they come out at night and track in the fog. That is why humans, say, ‘fog kills.’ It is not the fog, Jesse, it’s what’s in it!”

Jesse didn’t like any of what he was hearing. He too, believed the Prophet that there were werewolves on the mountain, and he believed deep in his heart Perez believed it, too. Perez was just in such a hurry to leave the confines of this cabin that he would not listen to logic. But family is family, and if there were werewolves waiting for Perez he would not let him face them alone.

The next morning Perez and Jesse were up before dawn packing their backpacks. The Prophet had given them quantities of dried elk to take with them and had even cooked them some biscuits for the road once he saw that Perez was determined to go. By sunup they were ready to strike out, but a thick fog still lingered on the mountain.

“Let’s wait until the fog lifts,” Perez told Jesse.

Jesse couldn’t have agreed with him more.

The fog, however, did not lift quickly, but by ten bells it was starting to dissipate, so Perez announced, “Time to go! Thanks for all the help, Prophet! We’ll see you on our way back through!”

Jesse shook the Prophet’s hand, and then (without thinking of it) gave him a hug. He was not normally a huggy person, but over their months of shared captivity he had come to love the old man. He had found another friend that he would miss.

The three of them struck out across the snow with Perez leading the way. For the first one-hundred paces it seemed that Perez had been right. Walking on top of the snow’s hard crust was a snap. Then Perez put his foot through the crust and he sank all the way up to his knees. He was able to get back up, but within a few paces he—and Jesse—were both breaking through the brittle snow to the powder below. This proved to be a major inconvenience, and slowed their progress considerably. Still, Jesse trudged on through the snow behind him, Enoch still able to trot along on top of the crust. But by the time that they had cleared the snow patch it was now early afternoon, and they were facing another unforeseen problem.

From the summit looking down it was easy to see the road on the mountain, but once they were on the forest’s edge any one of several gaps between the trees could have been the road. The three of them had to check out several possible trails before they decided that they were actually on the Mountain Road and start the remainder of their descent. By late afternoon they were still high up on the mountain, but making better time because the road was clearer and more dry the further south that they went. That is when they came to the fork in the road.

Jesse and Perez walked a few feet in each direction, but it was impossible for them to determine which of the trails was the Mountain Road. So Jesse called Enoch.

“Enoch, do you smell anything that can help us? Any scent of humans or an-nef?”

Enoch put his nose to the ground on the right fork. “I smell deer…and elk,” he said.

They walked to the left fork, “I smell deer…and elk…and wolves.”

By unanimous decision they decided to take the right fork. A half mile down the trail, however, what they thought was a road shrunk to a path as trees closed in of every side and then the trail stopped abruptly. They were forced to double-back to the left fork and proceed down the trail where Enoch had smelled wolves. This, it turned out, was the Mountain Road and they were beginning to make good time again, but it was now late afternoon and the sun was getting low in the western sky. In the forest shadow brings on nightfall early. It probably wasn’t much after seven bells, but the approaching darkness made it feel like it was nine or ten bells in the evening. Now it was getting impossible to follow the road or risk the possibility of getting lost in the dark, and the foot of the mountain was still several miles below them.

“Perez,” Jesse said at last, “we can’t go on. We have to make camp for the night.”

“But we can’t stop! We have to keep going!”

“Why?”

“Because of…because of the wolves.”

“So you do believe in werewolves?” Jesse asked.

“No. Just wolves.”

“If we get lost in the forest,” Jesse continued, “we’ll be spending more than one night on the mountain. Better to chance camping by the road than to wander off in the woods. We make no noise. We light no fires. Just find a spot to bed down beside some rock or tree until the sun comes up. Then we finish our descent.”

“I don’t know…” Perez started to say.

“AND WHY NOT?” Jesse yelled. “YOU insisted on leaving before the snow melted. YOU insisted on not waiting another week or so, and now YOU don’t know what to do when you’ve got us stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by packs of who-knows-what!”

“LISTEN!” Perez yelled back. “IT WAS YOUR IDEA TO HEAD FOR EDEN IN THE FIRST PLACE! SO DON’T TRY TO BLAME ME FOR GETTING US UP HERE! I WOULDN’T HAVE SET FOOT ON THE MOUNTAIN UNTIL SPRING BUT YOOOOU JUST COULDN’T WAIT!”

Before Perez could say more, Jesse had given him a vicious push and he went tumbling over into the bushes, and came back up with sword drawn. Jesse drew his as well and the two of them stood facing each other.

“Listen, can’t the two of you as least wait until we get to Eden before you run each other through? It’s not time for that yet.”

Jesse and Perez looked at Enoch.

“How did you know about that?” Jesse asked.

“The Prophet told me. He told me that I’d need to keep an eye out for you boys, but he didn’t say anything about the two of you slashing at each other until you got to Eden. Guess he’s not such a great prophet after all, huh?”

“What do you think, Enoch?” Perez asked. “Should we spend the night on the mountain or keep on going?”

“Thought you’d never ask. Actually, I’ve given it some thought. I’ve got pretty good night-vision and an enviable sniffer. If you let me lead the way I believe that we can successfully navigate the mountain in the dark.”

Jesse sheathed his sword. “Sorry,” he said. “Guess that I overreacted.”

Perez sheathed his sword. “Yeah. Me too. Had no business drawing the sword.”

“Okay,” Enoch said. “Now give him a kiss!”

“You like your tail?” Perez asked, brandishing his sword again.

Enoch just smiled his pointy grin and then began to trot down the Mountain Road in the dark.

It wasn’t long before full dark. The moon had risen over the horizon and could be seen from time to time through the trees. As it rose, the three could see a foggy mist in the air as the night fog began to settle. Jesse looked around him at the fog that now was starting to settle in dips of the road, and inside of him a fear was starting to well up that he had not felt since the night that the way-station burned. He knew what was in that fog, and he had seen the future, he knew that it could kill him. It seemed that every hoot of an owl or scurrying of some animal that they startled in the night sent him into panic. Still, up ahead, Enoch continued to trot down the Mountain Road with Perez right behind him. Then the night was shattered by the howl of a wolf.