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It’s been a while since my last update, mostly because I’ve been flat out working on the new novel. July has officially started, which means JulNoWriMo is officially underway. My fingers have been flying across the keys. My official JulNo word count was about 2500 words at the end of July 1st, but I actually started Eliza’s story two weeks early so I could finish the whole novel by the end of July.

My goal was to write the first 30,000 words before the WriMo started (which I did… just). That leaves me with 50,000 – 60,000 words to write this month to reach this novel’s dramatic conclusion. I gave you a sneak peek at the opening scene in one of my previous posts. Read on for the continuation of the first scene (still just an unedited draft at this point, warts and all.) Enjoy!

“All-Mother? Are you… all right?” Kenbo’s voice cracked, the sound echoing inside the chimney of stone that belched a faint plume of acrid smoke high into the sky above.
Her laughter subsided slowly. But the victorious feeling of being out under the open sky once more remained. “I’m fine Kenbo. Just fine. We made it!” She drummed her heels against the wind-sculpted stone behind her as she stared out over the unfamiliar dune scape of the northern desert. The sense of elation faded as she realized that she couldn’t recognize a single landmark. Every feature of the desert was foreign to her as far as the eye see. How far had they stumbled through those hellish tunnels? How long had it been since she had seen the sky? One night? Two?
“Mother Eliza?”
“I’m coming. Stay where you are. I’m climbing back up to the hole.” Weariness gripped her as she forced her leaden limbs into motion once more. Her legs protested, stiff and cramped with fatigue. Her palms stung from countless cuts inflicted by the sharp-edged stones and fractured crystals embedded inside the volcanic steam vent. Her borrowed ceremonial robes were torn in a dozen places, blackened with soot and smelled of burning sulfur. Throbbing blisters on the fingers of one hand summoned only a vague memory of searing heat.
She pushed the distractions aside, finding handhold after handhold and foothold after foothold. She reached the crumbling lip of the hole she had accidentally made in the wall of the stone chimney. She found broad ledge beside the hole and shifted her weight onto it, relaxing her body into the stone support with relief. Sasha had found her own path down onto the ledge and licked at Eliza’s face eagerly. Eliza threw her arms around the pack goat’s neck as Sasha wagged her stubby tail and nibbled at Eliza’s earlobe. “Good to see you too, love.”
Eliza looped the slack length of her tether over a small stone outcropping and leaned back into the ragged hole in the chimney wall. Noxious smoke swirled in her face, bringing stinging tears to her eyes. How had she ever managed to climb out of the caverns below while breathing such fumes?
A bout of coughing drifted up to her from the pitiful figures clinging weakly to the narrow ledge below where she had left them. “Kenbo, Kenji!”
A dark-skinned face turned upward at the sound of her voice. Only one feature reflected the weak light from above, the luminous whites of his eyes flashing in the tribesman’s dark silhouette. It was Kenji, the younger of the brothers, though Eliza couldn’t explain how she could distinguish the two young men in that darkness.
“All-Mother-” Kenji’s face disappeared as a rasping cough rattled through him.
“Are you two ready to get out of there?”
Kenji’s cough subsided slowly. “It’s Kenbo. He’s not… he’s shaking, All-Mother. He won’t stop.”
Eliza’s breath caught in her throat. “Kenbo! Kenbo, can you hear me?”
“He’s… he’s not answering All-Mother!”
Eliza wiped her hands across her streaming eyes and sent her fingers questing for the tether that snaked down into the darkness toward the tribesmen. “Kenji! We have to get him out of that smoke!”
“Help me All-Mother! I don’t know what to do!”
“Stay calm Kenji. Your brother needs you. Can you find his tether, the line tied to his harness?”
Eliza heard stones dislodge and skitter down the well as the tribesmen fumbled at his brother’s waist. What was taking him so long? “I have it!”
Eliza submerged her voice in calm, rational tones, ignoring her racing heart. “Good. There should be a loop tied in the line half a span above his waist. Can you find that?”
There was more fumbling in the darkness below as precious time slipped away. “Yes! I found it Mother Eliza!”
Eliza’s fingers closed around the slick tether that connected her harness to Kenbo’s. “Good. Now I need you to tuck Kenbo’s right hand through that loop for me. Tell me when you’ve done it, Kenji!”
She shimmied back out of the gap onto the ledge, holding the tether in her hand as she traced it back to the outcropping where she had secured it. She freed it with one hand. “Sasha, come!”
The mountain goat stepped nimbly across the ledge toward the gap in the chimney, then turned her back toward the hole as though already knowing what Eliza had in mind.
“All-Mother, it’s done!”
Eliza hauled up the tether quickly until she felt tension on the line. “All right Kenji. We need to get your brother out of there now. I need you to climb behind him and push, while I pull. Can you do that?”
“I’m… I don’t think I can…”
“Yes you can Kenji!” Time was running out. Kenji’s voice was getting weaker.
Eliza pulled the tether tight and lashed it to a eyelet on Sasha’s pack harness. She scratched her faithful companion’s black face, rubbing the sensitive spot between her curving horns gently. “Just a little help here girl. You know what to do.”
Eliza turned back and leaned into the ragged hole. The two figures below her had changed position. Kenbo’s lanky frame was stretched upward by the hand tied into the climbing loop above him. His head lolled back limply as the smaller shadow struggled to hold him upright. Eliza swallowed her fear as the red-rimmed whites of Kenbo’s eyes rolled into the weak light, blind and senseless. “Kenji! I’m right above you! It’s not far. We can do this. Are you ready?”
A spasm of coughing wracked the younger tribesman again. “Hurry Mother Eliza.”
That was all the signal Eliza needed. She gripped the tether in hands already blistered and bloodied. She pulled upward with all the strength she could muster as Kenji pushed feebly from below. Even their combined effort probably would not have been enough to lift Kenbo far. Kenji, as weak as he currently was, normally towered over Eliza’s diminutive stature, and Kenbo was a head again taller than his brother. Fortunately, Eliza had some help. She turned her head back over her shoulder and shouted. “Hya!”
Sasha strained forward as Eliza pulled up. The tether surged upward and Eliza heard the cascade of dislodged stones ricochet down through the vent into the depths. She walked her hand back down the line to get a new grip. She cried out a second time. “Hya!”
Once more the tether surged upward under their combined efforts. The repeated the process, hauling the line up span by span until Kenbo’s dark skinned hand rose like a dark ghost into the sunlight streaming in from the desert sky.
Eliza grabbed the tribesman’s wrist, reassured to feel Kenbo’s hand squeeze weakly as his fingers encircled her pale forearm. With the next pull she looped her hand through his harness. She dragged Kenbo upward toward the lip of the opening, watching now as Kenji’s soot-stained face broke into the light. Misfortune struck just as she was preparing to breath a sigh of relief.
Kenji squinted up into Eliza’s face for a moment and she heard a splintering crack. The younger tribesman’s eyes opened in shock as one of his footholds sheared away under his weight. Eliza watched his face drop back into the inky darkness beneath the sun’s reach. One of his hands scrabbled and clawed for purchase as his arm was pulled into the darkness after him.
“Sasha! Pull now! Go!” Eliza didn’t have time to think. With her right hand still entwined in Kenbo’s harness, Eliza bent her knees, dug in her heels and slapped her left hand into Kenji’s palm. Galvanized by fear, Kenji crushed her small hand in his grip. The contact stunned her and darkness swept across her vision. She felt a brief flash of unfamiliar flames dancing along her skin. One in her left hand. One in her right. One burned hot and bright. The other smoldered cold and dark. They were heavy, so incredibly heavy. She jerked back, her hands clenching the two ethereal flames that were so alike yet so different.
Sasha charged to the far end of the ledge as Eliza threw herself backward in shock. She felt a tug on the harness in her right hand as she fell backward onto the ledge, senseless. A heavy weight fall across her legs as her head bounced painfully against the rough stone. Stars danced in her eyes and then receded. Eliza blinked as the blue sky bled back into view above her. Sasha’s face swam into focus slowly as she lay on the stone ledge, winded.
She heard a rattling cough and felt the weight on her legs shift. She looked down to see Kenji crawl as far back from the ledge as he could to retch. Kenbo was stretched full length on the stone at her side, panting erratically. Eliza sat up and peered at his face. The midnight black of his skin was scored with pale swirls of white, the ritual tattoos of one destined to be Shaman of Kilns. His bloodshot eyes, rich brown laced with streaks of purple, stared sightlessly. White salt caked on cracked lips that trembled faintly with is troubled breathing.
As Eliza watched, his breathing slowed and the lanky tribesman blinked. She retrieved a waterskin from Sasha’s pack and soaked the hem of her sleeve with it. She carefully wiped away the salt that had dried on Kenbo’s skin and moistened his cracked lips. His eyes finally focused on the petite healer as the water touched his lips.
“Moth… Mother Eliza?”
“Easy Kenbo, easy now. Can you sit up?”
“I think so… yes.”
Eliza helped Kenbo sit up and slide back against the wall. She left him with the waterskin while she checked on his brother.
“Kenji?”
The younger tribesman peered at Eliza uncertainly. The ragged red bands of his once golden ceremonial robes, were torn and stained, much like hers. “All-Mother… I don’t know what… your strength humbles us. Thank you.”
Eliza summoned a lopsided grin for the strange young man, much too earnest for his scant twenty-odd seasonturns. The likeness to his older brother was uncanny, though the ritual tattoos that lined Kenji’s clean-shaven head were much simpler. Unlike Kenbo, Kenji would never rise above the rank of Acolyte among the Stoneburner Tribe. “Are you all right?”
Kenji bowed his head. “I’ll live Mother Eliza.”
Eliza nodded. “Good. We should catch our breath here before climbing down.”

Filed under: Journal, Novel