THIRST

Victor and Corrie had made it around the first mountain and through the valley to the tallest peak. At the peak’s base, Victor had found an animal trail, and though they hadn’t been able to locate a spring in two days, he insisted they climb anyway.

“Ah know we’ll be thirsty, but we make it to the top in one night and back down, and then we’ll have an answer,” Victor said.

“What if another goat is protecting his territory?”

Victor didn’t like the only answer. “Ah guess we’d have to come down and look for a spring.”

All around them, the katydids sang a pulsing rhythm so loud it threatened to split holes in the sky. The mountain lay warm under the waning moon. It had soaked up the sun’s rays all day and retained the heat against the night’s chill. But this night had no chill, and the mountain radiated so much heat it felt like the sun blazed beneath their feet.

Thirst consumed Victor’s thoughts. Cool water, blue water, green water, warm water, tepid water, dirty water, running water, still water. Water.

It was hard for Victor to explain his jumbled feelings. How sad it was to trek and know that your family didn’t care if they ever saw you again. How you longed for your grandfather to be proud of you. How the curse ate at your insides until you longed with all your being to turn towards home, to ease the curse. And yet, how proud Victor was of himself for making it this far. How could you be sad and proud at the same time? And when the sadness was stronger than the pride, it was hard to care about finding a lousy eagle’s nest.  For El Julio’s sake, Victor knew he should look harder, commit deeper. He should search because of all it meant for their people. But Victor searched so he could please his grandfather, and grandfather would never be pleased with him. Why search? Victor couldn’t explain that the reason El Julio was a good leader was because he expected so much of each armadillo in his clan. El Julio’s expectations were what Victor loved most about his grandfather.

If he drank water now, it would be because they turned back, because they gave up, because they quit. And if he failed to find the Faralone Falls, he would die alone with no chance to return home. Eternally exiled—he wanted to go home. How much longer could he stave off the curse before he went mad? The eagle’s nest had to be at the top of this mountain.

His tongue was fuzzy, but he managed to ask Corrie, “Are you OK?”

“How much farther?”

He didn’t know; it could be an hour or all night. But he tried to encourage Corrie. “We’ll find the Faralone Falls soon.” It wasn’t a lie; it was a hope.

“Are you sure?” Corrie’s dry tongue licked the outside of her mouth, and she shrugged up her armor, as if she wished she could shuck it.

“Yes,” Victor said. It would be hard, but they could make it to the top in one night, and then they’d have an answer. He must have an answer!

Victor led the way up the sloping trail that led through a stand of oak and hickory. The under story was high, allowing moonlight to filter through easily. The minutest breath of wind sent the dry leaves rattling an accompaniment to the katydids’ racket. Moving through the leaf litter added to the noise. Victor had never heard such an uproar. The trail meandered up the south slope, rising higher and higher. As they made progress without encountering any problems, Victor’s hopes grew.

He stopped.

Corrie bumped into him. “What are you doing?” she asked crossly.

Victor had to listen carefully to hear Corrie over the katydids’ song. “Looking for the top of the hill, listening for a waterfall.”

Corrie sighed deeply. “The treetops hide the top, and with these katydids, we won’t hear a waterfall until we’re on top of it. Keep walking. Wait until we rest to look around.”

Victor whirled back to the trail and set a fast pace. If Corrie wanted speed, he could walk this fast all night. To his surprise, she stayed at his heels through the next hour.

The trail led up an outcropping of rock, and when they reached the top, Victor paused, finally, to rest.

Corrie’s mood was worse. “Victor, I’m so thirsty.” Her voice was indistinct, as if an unripe persimmon had puckered her mouth.

Because she left unspoken the real question—“How much longer?”—Victor knew she was getting angrier.                   

“Soon,” he murmured.

From their vantage point on the outcropping, he studied the panorama below. Fireflies blinked among the fallen leaves carpeting the forest floor. Ahead, the trail led through a steeper, rockier section.

“Soon,” he repeated and moved again with resignation, like he was moving through thick honey.

The evening was beginning to cool, but Victor’s throat was drier, his thirst more acute. Corrie’s distress made his own seem worse; he only wanted a single swallow of water, even if it was dirty water, just something wet to soothe this raw throat.

The trail wound upward through sparser growth and started to traverse the slope laterally, first right, then switching back to the left. The first switchbacks were short, but as the steepness increased, they had to be longer. More time was spent going across the slope and less making actual progress upward.

After a dozen long switchbacks, they followed one leftward that led around the curve of the slope, where Victor suddenly stopped. “Look.”

A tumble of boulders blocked their way. A rockslide had covered what trail there was, extending up and down the slope for several hundred feet. Twenty feet above them, almost straight up, lay the next switchback that led to the right. Victor realized they either had to climb almost straight up, or climb over and around boulders three times their height.

Corrie croaked, “Victor.”

He turned back. Her small ears lay flat on her head and her mouth was open, panting slightly.

“Stop,” Corrie said, and then stomped her forelegs. “I’ve tried to be loyal. I’ve tried to wait. But we have to go back and find water. Now.”

“We can do this.” He gestured to the rock pile. “We just take it one rock at a time.”

Corrie rose on her hind legs and clawed at the first rock. Even when she stood upright, the rock was twice her height. She dropped to all fours. “I need water, and I know where to find it. I’m going back,” she said flatly, then turned and started down.

“No!” Victor leaped around her. “I told you. We’ll only have this one bad night and then we’ll find water.”

“Water first.”

“The eagle’s nest first.”

“What else will block our way? More rockslides? Goats?”

“We can do this,” Victor tried to say. Instead, the words tangled up on his thick tongue. He sucked the sides of his mouth, trying to get more saliva, but his mouth was dusty dry. It was curse against curse: they were both beset with the desire to go home.

Stars reflected from Corrie’s dark eyes. She stared at him, then slowly shook her head. “When we started this trek, I thought I would give my life so El Garro’s dream could be realized before he died. I’ve pushed hard for weeks, but this is wrong. The closeness of my father’s death—” Her voice wavered, but she continued. “—makes me more aware of how precious life is.”

She was wrong. It was the curse making her go back; he had to believe that. “We must go on,” Victor insisted. He needed her to fight the curse with him, to help him succeed.

“You’re obsessed,” Corrie said. “This lack of water is making you sick in the head. We have to find water. It won’t do you any good to find the eagle’s nest if you go to the Father of Souls. Come down the hill with me.”

Victor looked from Corrie to the rockslide. She didn’t understand; how could she? He had to make El Julio proud; he had to be a hero. It was the only way he could go home. He backed away and to the side, so he no longer blocked her path.

“Come with me,” she repeated.

Victor shook his head.

“I’m going,” she said.

“Then don’t bother to come back. Go to Galen and Rafael.”

“Fine. I’ll do that,” she said.

Victor said nothing. She had made her choice. To himself, he imagined the scene where he told her he’d found the Turi’s Cave and saw her regret. He imagined telling El Julio of his success, and he heard the ballad the old one would sing. The vision was so real that he almost sang the song, too. Was this the curse’s effect, too? he wondered. Was he having hallucinations now? Either way, he would not go back. He would do this, even if he had to do it alone.

“I’ll wait for you at the den where we left Galen and Rafael. If we move on, we’ll leave you a map rock.”

Victor said nothing. She was relenting and would soon change her mind.

“Do you hear me?”

Victor didn’t move.

Corrie pleaded, “I need water. You do understand?”

Of course, he understood. Of course, he needed water, too. But he would not give in. Victor said nothing, and Corrie started down. Once, twice, she looked back at Victor, but he refused to acknowledge the plea in her stance. She disappeared around the curve in the mountain.

Resolutely, Victor turned to the boulders and searched for a way through. The irregular shape of one tan rock made him think he could find toeholds. It was a start. He reached as high as possible and found a place to hold with his fore claws. One at a time, he pulled his hind legs up. Hanging on the boulder’s side, he felt like a fool, but he had to continue.

Laboriously, he climbed to the top. From here, he could leap to the next rock. What if he fell? Could his armor protect him from a crash? He looked back at the trail, but Corrie was gone. Turning back to the rock, he took a deep breath—like he was going to walk under water—and leaped. He landed squarely on the rock, but even this impact knocked the extra air from his mouth in a loud belch.

Victor continued to climb up and down, and leap from rock to rock, until he finally reached the trail. Now that the suspense of climbing was over, Victor’s body suddenly reminded him it needed water. Or was it something else he needed? Yes, he needed to go home. No! Water was all he needed.

Victor mastered the longing for a moment, and then raced upward, from switchback to switchback. The night was nearly spent, but Victor knew the dawning wouldn’t matter to him. He would continue upward. He wondered if he was getting delirious, since he no longer felt pain, no longer felt hunger, no longer felt even the thirst. There was only the path beneath him and his feet moving.

When he emerged on top of the peak, it was still the dark right before dawn. Forest lay before him in every direction, a mass of green that swayed with the morning breeze. A silver stripe split the woods and the backbone of the hills, indicating the distant river. Several hills below had clear plateaus near the middle of the slope, before rounding off at the top with either a fur of trees or a display of bare armor. One hill in particular looked like a furry armadillo that was sleeping.

At the cliff’s edge, cedars clung to the mountain. Behind one, Victor saw a mass of sticks. Silently, he slipped around the shrubs until he had a good view. It was a nest: a jumble of sticks were piled into a mound four or five times Victor’s height.

His heart hammered. He had found the eagle’s nest. Now what?

Something was wrong, though. Gray droppings dotted the rock around the nest, but it didn’t smell right. And there was no activity. No adult birds, no sounds of hungry chicks.

Uneasy, Victor crept closer. Still, all was quiet. A bit bolder now, he darted forward until he was hidden in the nest’s shadow. Still, no movement. With a growing dismay, Victor clawed his way to the top of the nest.

It was empty. Abandoned.

He lay in the nest like he was a baby eaglet and watched the constellations above him fade away, one by one. The waterfall constellation went first, followed by the Jaguar, until only the morning star, the star of hope, was left. Then, even that star faded. And Victor’s sanity quietly cracked. He had failed.

With a desperate madness, he scrambled to the nest’s edge. The sun broke the horizon in the east, blinding him with its hard, shifting light. Turning west, away from the sun, he saw the Ozarks laid out below. He blinked to get rid of the last colorful spots that resulted from looking at the sun. Carefully, Victor scanned the sky. Where were the eagles? His heart thumped so hard it ached. He had made it to the top just as Blaze had suggested and he should be seeing eagles hunting in the early morning, soaring on the thermals. But there was nothing.

Suddenly, a movement caught his attention. There. A big bird flying. His heart pounded harder. Then, he stumbled backward into the nest, aware of his thirst again. He was very tired, very thirsty. And flying below, searching for its breakfast, was a vulture.

.