Little Yokozuna (18 page)

"On," said Annie again, not to be denied.

The path went over the crown, but then began to descend steeply. The children ran downhill where they could, but in other places had to clamber down the steep faces of stones that filled the path. Down and down they went, racing through the pine grove shadows that crossed their path like cool currents in a warm lake, tumbling down steep places, pausing only for moments to catch their breath. Two or three times they surprised deer in the pathway, who leaped away at their coming. As the time passed they began to feel the muscles on the front of their thighs begin to cramp up, and

to tremble uncontrollably when they stopped. By this time Owen Greatheart had a weary Libby on his shoulders, and Annie and Q.J. were taking turns with the exhausted 'Siah.

"We can't stop," said Annie. "Something horrible is in motion, and we can't stop until Little Harriet is safe."

They plunged on down the mountainside, becoming more and more reckless in their haste. They began to find signs of human habitation, tiny shrines by the way or little uninhabited human shelters. The path was obviously carefully maintained, and even the larger evergreen trees along the lower slopes of the trail were pruned of their dead lower branches.

"Another time," said Owen Greatheart, "we'll have to do this climb more slowly, so we can appreciate it."

"Right," said Annie. "Another time."

The trail finally leveled out enough to have occasional flat stretches, which were better than rests for their weary legs. Still the tendency of the trail was always downhill, and though they could not see out away from the mountain, they could tell from occasional glimpses that they were still a good distance from the valley floor.

It was when they rounded a bend in the trail, a sharp turn marked by a tall thick pine that blocked the view beyond it, that they saw their first human in this windwashed land. Almost out of sight ahead of them, on the same trail, they glimpsed a patch of dark clothing and the unmistakable swing of a human stride. At this sight, they ran ahead shouting, but the person was invisible after the next bend. On they plunged, still shouting, until they could clearly see the dark form ahead, strangely far away but perhaps closer than at first. Down and down the trail they went, not really sure why it seemed so urgent to catch up to the person, but unwilling to give up the chase. Finally they bowled around another large pine tree and stopped so abruptly that they ended up in a heap. There was a dark-robed figure standing there in the pathway ahead of them.

"Oh," said Owen Greatheart, the disappointment deep in his voice. "It's you again."

It was indeed the old priest, dressed again in his former priest's robes. He also wore an extraordinary straw rain hat that came halfway down his back.

"Yes," he said. "You need me, so here I am."

He would say no more, but lifted Libby from Q.J.'s back onto his bent old shoulder, and set off again down the trail.

"A path without bypaths," he finally said, breaking a long silence that had fallen over the whole group. "Isn't it lovely to have only one choice? Enjoy it while you can."

It was after many more windings of the way that the old priest finally led the seven children to the bottom of the valley floor, across an arched stone bridge, and onto the stony rubble of the beach that they had first seen from thousands of feet overhead.

"Ah!" said the old priest, setting Libby down on the ground and rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. "Here we are, at last." He peered out into the ocean, as it came brawling its way again and again through the rocks onto the beach. He shaded his eyes and squinted far out to sea. "And there, at last," he said, "is your Little Harriet."

 

 

 

"Where!" cried Annie, thumping on the thin shoulder of the old priest. "Where is Little Harriet? Are you out of your mind?"

"Perhaps," said the old priest. "But there is Little Harriet."

No one could see anything in the raucous tumult of surf. Here and there they could see vertical stones standing out of the ocean, but there was no sign of any human life. Sea gulls dipped and sobbed on the sea breeze.

"She is beyond the sight of any of you," said the old priest. "But she is there, on the ancient stone of sacrifice. At the highest tide it is six feet under water. Many children died there in ancient times, sacrificed to the gods. It has been long since a child died there."

"How do you know this?" shouted Owen Greatheart.

"I was told it by the demon chief himself," said the old priest. "I am not omniscient. I know only what I am told."

"Why are you just telling us now?!" cried Annie. "Why didn't you tell us sooner?"

"This was the soonest you could have come here," said the old priest. "Knowing this would only have made you more reckless on the way, and may have thrown you into some other danger. It is not always best to know things."

Q.J. flung herself at the old priest. "Then why are you telling us now, at all?" she sobbed. "There's nothing we can do now. After all this, our Little Harriet will die anyway?"

"There is a boat," said the old priest, infuriatingly serene. "One boat, around that bend. It is an old boat, but there are no holes in it. It is in a calmer cove, away from this riot of waves, where you can pull out away from shore."

Before he had even finished, all seven children were running in that direction, stumbling over stones, falling, skinning their knees, getting up again, and running on. The old priest moved after them without apparent haste, and because he never stumbled he got to the boat at the same time the first of them reached it. It was an ancient flat-bottomed fishing boat, full of old nets, with two curiously shaped oars. The old priest and smaller children tumbled into the boat, while the older three pushed and shoved it off the shore, falling into it at the last moment.

"Tell us where to go," said Owen Greatheart roughly, taking one of the oars. Annie took the other, and they began to pull together.

"Three degrees north of that standing stone," said the old priest, pointing. "Many yards past it you will come to the stone of sacrifice."

"How much time do we have?" asked Q.J. "How much time till the rock is covered?"

The old priest considered, looking at the lowering sun and the shoreline. "Perhaps thirty minutes," said the old priest. "Perhaps a little more. It is more than enough time, even against the waves."

The two oldest children bowed their backs into their work.

"We'll get there faster than that," said 'Siah. "Owen lifts weights."

"But then we'll go in circles," said Knuckleball, who knew something about rowing. "Because Annie doesn't".

"Ha!" said Annie, taking this personally. She hauled away on her oar with such fury that the boat began to curve in Owen Greatheart's direction, and he had to catch up. There was no conversation for a long space, as the boat began to make progress out toward the stone of sacrifice and Little Harriet.

"Ha!" said Annie, taking this personally. She hauled away on her oar with such fury that the boat began to curve in Owen Greatheart's direction, and he had to catch up. There was no conversation for a long space, as the boat began to make progress out toward the stone of sacrifice and Little Harriet.

"What could be more horrible than what they've already done?" asked Owen Greatheart through his teeth. "You talk, we'll row."

"If you look to the north," said the old priest, as if a great weight were on him, "you will see a railroad cutting in the mountainside, beyond this bay, and a bridge spanning the end of the bay itself."

"I see it," said 'Siah, squinting in that direction.

"Me, too," said Libby, competitively, perhaps a second before she really had.

"Me, too," said Knuckleball and Kiyoshi-chan, almost in unison.

Q.J. just looked hard in that direction. "So what?" she asked.

"When the demons set your Little Harriet on the rock," said the priest, "they set a trap for you that could only have been conceived in Hell."

Annie and Owen Greatheart kept pulling on their oars, but something in the voice of the old priest cast a dreadful suspense over the boat.

"What do you mean?" asked Q.J., in a cold voice. "And make it quick."

"When they placed her on the rock," said the old priest, "at the same time the demon chief had other demons unbolt one of the rails of that bridge. When a train passes over that bridge at high speed, it will surely be derailed."

There was total silence in the boat. Annie and Owen Greatheart kept rowing.

"It will plunge into the ravine," said the old priest. "Everyone on the train will die."

Annie and Owen Greatheart still pulled at their oars, but more slowly.

"So what?" said Q.J. "Tell us everything"

The words seemed to have to be pulled by force from the mouth of the old priest. "There is a train," he said, "an express, due to cross that bridge. Soon."

"How soon?" asked Q.J.

"In about thirty minutes," said the old priest.

"So," said Q.J. slowly, "we would have time to go and signal that train before it crosses the bridge?"

"Yes," said the old priest. "A little more than enough."

"Or," said Q.J., "we would have time to reach Little Harriet and rescue her."

"Yes," said the old priest.

"But not both," said Q.J.

"Not both," said the old priest.

A deeper darkness than ever seemed to rise up in every heart, a hopelessness before impossible choices.

"Will all the people on the train die?" asked Libby.

"Surely so," said the old priest. "The bridge is high, and there are great rocks below it."

"How many people will be on that train?" asked Knuckleball.

"Many hundreds," said the old priest. "Many hundreds."

Q.J. broke into sobs, as if she had been holding out against them for days. She buried her face in her arms and rocked back and forth, back and forth, her body shaking.

"Why did you have to tell us?" Owen Greatheart lashed out at the old priest. "Why couldn't you have made the choice, and just not told us the alternative?"

"It was not my choice to make," said the old priest. "Because Little Harriet is not my Little Harriet, nor are any of the people on the train mine."

"I don't know whether to love you or hate you," said Annie. "Who are you, anyway?"

The old priest made no answer.

All rowing had stopped, and precious minutes were passing.

"Do we have a choice?" said Annie. "It's a choice between hundreds of lives, or just...." She couldn't finish.

Everyone was crying, from oldest to youngest.

"But it's Little Harriet out there on the stone!" wailed Libby. "She's not just anybody!"

Owen Greatheart took the sobbing little girl onto his lap and buried his face in her hair. "But nobody's just anybody," he said unsteadily. "Every one of those people is a Little Harriet to someone."

There was no answer to this, no possible answer.

Annie lifted her face from her hands and tried to speak clearly. "Everyone will die if we don't decide quickcly," she said. "Including Little Harriet. How would we ever live with that?"

"Should we vote?" asked Owen Greatheart.

"Quickly," said Annie. "Time is running out. Youngest to oldest, not counting Kiyoshi-chan. None of these people are his, either. 'Siah?"

Kiyoshi-chan fell back against the side of the boat in a wave of relief at this, feeling the burden of decision roll away from him. 'Siah held his head, shaking it, crying and unable to speak.

"What about you, Squib?" asked Annie.

"I choose Little Harriet," said the little girl stoutly, simply. "I love her."

Knuckleball was crying, too, but there was anger in his tears, anger against the choices of life, falling on him so young. "Little Harriet," he said. "Little Harriet. We have to save Little Harriet. That's what we're here for."

"Q?"

Q.J. sat very still, unable to control the sobs that rocked her body. She raised her tear-soaked face and looked from Owen Greatheart to Annie. They looked back at her for a long moment, then all three nodded. The two oars began to pull again, out into the darkening sea. Stroke by stroke the four strong arms pulled the boat through the water, as swells swept the boat upward toward the sky and then dropped it again. They passed the standing stone pointed to by the old priest, and pulled for what seemed like an eternity away from the setting sun.

Finally the old priest said, "We are very close. Go carefully."

The two oldest children pulled more slowly, while everyone else strained their eyes to see the stone of sacrifice standing up out of the sea. For several awful moments they thought that they were too late, and that the stone was already underwater. But Q.J. was the one to shout the news.

"I see her!" she cried. "There she is! Little Harriet!"

They rowed according to her directions, until they were close to the stone of sacrifice, and could see their little sister standing and reaching out to them, and could even hear her small voice calling across the water. The light of the setting sun fell directly on her, so that her face seemed to shine against the darkness of the dusky ocean. They were in great danger for a few minutes, as they tried to maneuver in closely enough to reach her without smashing the boat on the stone. She reached out to them, almost wild with terror.