“Shhhh . . . Wake up, little boy. It’s all right now. Wake up, Ariel.”
“Huh? What?”
I had fallen asleep in the shade beneath the rear gate of the truck. Thaddeus leaned over me. He was shaking me by the shoulder.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “I felt so terrible. You were crying in your sleep. I decided to wake you up. I’m sorry. It was awful.”
In my grogginess, I remembered that I had been dreaming about my family. I had come into the kitchen, and everyone was seated around bowls of food. But when I came into the room, my uncle, aunt, and cousins all stood and left the kitchen without saying a word to me. And every time I followed them into a different room of the house, they would leave and go into another and another room. Room after room after room, without saying anything to me.
I sat up and rubbed my face. It was wet.
“It was a bad dream,” I said.
“You shouldn’t be sad,” Thaddeus said.
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
Thaddeus shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess there’s nothing we can do about those things.”
“I want to go back home,” I said.
You know how these things are, Max. It was terribly sad—so sad I could hardly think about what was happening to me. It seems so hard to remember at times.
Over the course of the three weeks I rode with them, I became a sort of mascot—a good luck charm dressed as a little white clown—to the soldiers of the Republican Guard. They believed I’d kept them safe.
“You can’t go home. How would you go home?” Thaddeus said.
I pointed down the rocky road behind us. “Walk back that way.”
“But there isn’t anyone left,” he argued. “Besides, what would we do without you? Look at how much good fortune you have brought to us! Three weeks with no losses and no skirmishes. You’re our blessing. The men would not allow you to leave now.”
“So I’m a prisoner?”
Thaddeus thought for a moment. “No! Of course not.”
“But you said they won’t let me go.”
“I didn’t mean to make it sound as though you have no choice. It’s just . . . the men have grown accustomed to sharing what we have with you. We saved you, didn’t we? You owe us something, after all, and you’ve been very lucky for us.”
And as though to punctuate Thaddeus’s conviction that I was some sort of good luck charm for the soldiers, at precisely that moment a rocket, streaming white-hot vapor, corkscrewed out of the sky and slammed into the lead vehicle of our convoy.
Then two more came in, roaring, screaming. The explosions were louder than anything I’d ever heard. I could feel them in the ground, vibrating through my body like electricity. In seconds, everything became chaos—shouting, hurrying for any cover, gunfire from every direction.
What could I do?
I was frozen there, sitting cross-legged beneath the open gate on the transport truck I’d been riding in since I came out of my refrigerator.
“Move!”
Thaddeus grabbed the back of my tunic and pulled me out from beneath the truck. We scrambled into an irrigation canal that ran along the roadway. The trucks were easy targets, sitting there pinned down on the road in the heat of the day. We were being fired upon from multiple directions. The rebels had divided and were attacking from the cover of the tangerine groves on both sides of the convoy.
I was up to my chest in water; could feel my feet slipping and sinking into the warm mud on the steep banks of the canal, and I put my face down into the grass of the bank with my hands pressed over my ears and the back of my head.
I did not look up.
If I could pray—and I’d stopped doing that nonsense long before the miracle of the refrigerator—I imagined praying, but I didn’t know who to direct it to.
The gunfire and explosions seemed to expand through time. Although the fighting was over in a matter of minutes, it felt as though I’d been sinking in the mud of the canal for hours. It may have been—how can I tell? My ears rang until the following day. But when Thaddeus and I, soaked and muddy, came up out of the water, I could see the damage that had been done. More than half of the convoy ahead of us had been destroyed, and seven soldiers needed to be buried in the tangerine orchard before we could move on.
So much for good luck!
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1880—ALEX CROW
Luck is with us, and it has turned on us as well.
One more crewman succumbed to the elements during the night. The dead man was the naturalist, Mr. Jason Foster, from Napa, in California.
Several hours after daybreak, Captain Hansen and Mr. Piedmont managed to find a safe beach on which to land our boat, but there is nothing visible in the way of shelter or settlements. And the fog is so thick and heavy! The day appears to have a promise of yet more snow. Three more of the men had to remain behind with the boat and provisions, because they are so sick, and unable to join an expedition to search for relief.
With the three sick men sheltered at the boat, the nine of us who can manage work are preparing to split into two groups in order to explore the island in opposite directions. I will go with Piedmont, Mr. Warren, and Murdoch—Captain Hansen will lead the second party eastward.
We are armed with rifles in the hopes we may find a bear or seal. Our food supply is nearly exhausted.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1880—LENA RIVER DELTA
It is remarkable to note how the human spirit can swing so rapidly from despair to ecstasy. One hour into our expedition out of the landing on the beach, Mr. Piedmont spotted a cluster of native huts and fish houses.
The tiny village was evidently occupied, for we could see black smoke rising from the stovepipes on each of the huts, which appeared to be pyramids of ice. We could smell the odor of food on the fire.
Upon realizing our discovery, Mr. Murdoch fell to his knees and wept.
“We will be warm! We will be warm!” Murdoch cried.
Mr. Piedmont and I had to restrain the man from running wildly into the small settlement, for who could guess what manner of society would exist in such a place as this?
After some discussion on the matter, we came to a consensus that the four of us should make ourselves known to the inhabitants of the dwellings before turning back to reunite with Captain Hansen’s party and reclaim our sick crewmen.
The village here consists of six native huts and two communal fish houses, in which the residents store meat—primarily fish, but also some whale and seal. It was our great fortune to meet a Mr. Katkov, an exile from western Russia, who could speak several languages, notably the native dialect as well as French, in which Mr. Warren and Mr. Piedmont were both capably versed.
Mr. Katkov and two of the native men from the village have consented to return to the beach where we landed, and help us bring the remains of our expedition into their shelters.
This is truly a gift from God.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1880—LENA RIVER DELTA
On the way back to the beach we encountered a brutal snowstorm that would have swallowed us all if not for the skilled guidance of Katkov and the native villagers.
There was little we could do, though. Our progress was so hindered by the weather, and by the time we arrived at our boat the three men we had left behind had all succumbed to the conditions and had frozen to death.
Captain Hansen’s party was nowhere to be found.
Fate presented no choice for us but to return to the safety of the village’s shelters and pray for the others. As for now, I fear there are only four souls who have survived the terrible fate of the Alex Crow.
Murdoch has resumed his incessant repetitions: “Why bother?”