Heart of Danger (23 page)

‘Go ahead, Juno,’ Elden urged me, but I couldn’t. I had no strength left. The ship would be gone, I was sure. We had dragged Vima up the mountain for nothing.

But ahead of me Oban shouted, ‘Wait! We’re here! We’re coming!’

We’d done it! We would live.

I ran on up to the docking gates at the top of the mountain with a new burst of energy. Oban grabbed me, tugging me through the gates.

‘Down you go, Juno!’

For the first time in my life I stepped outside the dome of Taris. There was no time to savour the moment. Wind thumped at me as I scrambled down the metal steps set into the dome. How would they get Vima down? No time to wonder. A small boat waited on the bucking waves below. Willem was standing at the front, shading his eyes to watch me. Two other men reached up their arms.

‘Jump now!’ the taller one shouted. 

I jumped, and even as he caught and steadied me I was gabbling about Vima, the labour and the stretcher.

Willem frowned and rapped out an order. ‘Hank, get the cradle.’

The tall man bent down to a locker, pulled out a sling affair made of rope, then with the rise of the next wave he leapt, seized the bottom rung of the steps and began climbing. Marba met him halfway, then passed the sling on up to Yin, then Fortun, who passed it to Jidda, who climbed with it to where Oban, Paz and the others waited at the top. We could hear them shouting at Vima to hold tight even as they tied the stretcher into the sling and lowered it towards us.

Inva climbed down beside his sister, shielding her as best he could from thumping against the wall of the dome. At the bottom, he leaned far out to keep her steady as she swung over the little boat that was careening wildly in the wind. Her hands were bleeding from gripping the sharp trellis, but she let go and instead pressed them over her mouth.

‘Hold on. Hold the ropes!’ I bellowed. ‘You’re nearly there.’ She couldn’t give up, not now. ‘Vima! Grab the ropes!’

She didn’t seem to hear. The men reached up. Hank, the tallest of them, snatched at a trailing rope and guided her down until Willem and the other man could reach her.

I huddled out of their way.

‘Steady, lass, we’ve got you.’ Their voices were kind as they settled her into the boat.

I shuffled over to sit beside her. There was blood on Vima’s face from where she’d bitten through her lip. ‘It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.’ She didn’t seem to hear. If only Galla would hurry.

I looked up at the dome. Elden was almost down now, and as he came he kept his eyes on Galla just above him. ‘Nearly there. Just a few more steps.’

She said nothing, her face grey with the effort of scaling the mountain and now this perilous drop down to the boat.

Following her, the boys and Oban shimmied down one after the other. Oban was last, and the sudden surge of the boat accelerating as he landed sent him tumbling. He lay in the bottom, laughing. ‘We did it!’ He sat up and spoke to Willem and the others. ‘Thank you. We thank you.’

‘From the depths of our hearts, we thank you,’ Galla whispered.

The rest of us nodded our agreement, but we were subdued. It seemed our actions had endangered us all, for Willem’s face was set.

Vima let out a muffled shriek.

We still had to get her on board the ship. I caught glimpses of it growing bigger and bigger as we bucketed towards it. The waves belted us, spray drenched us, and we could see the ship fully only when we crested the huge swells. Vima’s family and I did our best to stop her sliding around. The boys slithered over to add their strength and we managed to keep her more or less stable.

She looked ghastly. Galla gave up trying to hold her and concentrated on talking to her, soothing and encouraging her. I hoped the ship would be steadier than the boat. It was closer now and didn’t seem to be bucking around the way we were.

In the next few minutes we came close enough for the ship to loom as a great wall in front of us, then we were alongside, ropes swinging down towards us. Tiredness swamped me – I couldn’t climb up that far. Galla couldn’t. Vima …

But it turned out to be easy, for they simply left us all in the boat while they hoisted it onto the ship with ropes and pulleys.

I looked up at the sky as they lifted us. It was grey, not blue as I had dreamed. Grey and full of turbulent clouds. But there was no time to stare. Even as the boat settled on the deck, hands were lifting Vima. Trebe, our physician, aided by Creen, her apprentice and Vima’s friend, were waiting to whisk Vima away on a wheeled stretcher to somewhere within the ship.

I climbed out of the boat, bracing myself for the reproaches of my parents. They ran to me, tears streaming, and hugged me. ‘Oh, Juno – how could you frighten us like that?’

But they said no more. They would have done the same, and was I not their daughter? Hera and I weren’t their genetic children, but in every way that mattered we were their daughters. A memory of Fisa, my genetic mother, hovered in my mind. She, too, would have done as I had.

I huddled into my parents’ arms, suddenly aware of how inadequately dressed I was. I’d never felt such cold before. The climate under our dome had been balmy and mild.

‘Come on,’ Mother said. ‘Come inside before you freeze.’

 

Fleur Beale is the author of many award-winning books — she has had more than 30 books published in New Zealand, the US and the UK. Fleur has won the Storylines Gaelyn Gordon Award for a Much-Loved Book twice, with
Slide the Corner
in 2007, and
I am not Esther
in 2009. The first book in the Juno series,
Juno of Taris
, won the Esther Glen Award in the 2009 LIANZA Children’s Book Awards, and the second book,
Fierce September
, won the prize for Young Adult Fiction in the 2011 New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards.