Lost
“I think we missed the turn,” Yuki announced.
Lorona had been fantasizing again about what she would say if she ever met Amanda, and whether she'd bring pepper spray. Yuki's voice startled her. She hit the brakes more forcefully than necessary and almost ran off the road into the trees. Her stomach growled in hungry annoyance and a moment later an arm of lightning crackled across the sky.
“I think that mini-mart is open,” Yuki said, peering at a small barn structure. “I'll ask them if they know where the Everwood vineyard is.”
“Maybe it's a little farther ahead.” Lorona didn't want to get out of the car. She just wanted to see Kestrin and tell him what she needed to say. It felt a backpack was strapped to her chest with a rock added for each mile they drove. She kept one hand over her stomach and flinched as another bolt of lightning lit up the sky.
“Every mile is taking us farther away from civilization and humanity,” Yuki insisted. “I'm asking for directions while I've got the chance.”
Ten minutes later, Lorona had already played the entire Moonlight Sonata on the dashboard, something she did only when she was feeling particularly stressed. Whoever was running the mini-mart must have been male, single, and drop-dead gorgeous, because Yuki still hadn't come back. Lorona rolled down the window for some fresh air and stared at the woods. Maples lined its edge, waving bare branches that gradually gave way to ponderosa pines. The tips were silvery in the moonlight and cast shadows that faded from smoky blue to black as they stretched toward the parked car.
The night hung still for a moment, as if drawing a deep breath, and then piercing the quiet, Lorona distinctly heard the sound of a child crying. In two seconds she had the door open and was on her feet. A rumble of thunder pounded the sky.
Lorona's stomach growled again and she felt faint. She could hear people laughing and made out the glow of a bonfire a little ways in.
The baby wailed again. This time it was almost immediately followed by hoots from the bonfire kids. Were they hurting a small child?
She shook her head as the adrenaline shot into her system. This isn't happening. Who does that, anyway? This doesn't make sense. I must be imagining things because I'm freaked out and not eating properly. Lorona felt her forehead for a fever and steadied herself on the side of the car. I should tell Yuki.
The baby wailed a third time and Lorona couldn't stop herself. She plunged straight into the woods. She couldn't see a trail, but the brook sounded close enough that she could follow its sound back if she needed a landmark. As she walked, she glanced up and saw that the stars were twinkling so rapidly they seemed to shake.
The brook was further into the trees than she'd thought. This, she discovered, was because it was a river, not a brook, and she'd heard it from a distance. It wasn't until she'd caught her sandal on a large stone from the riverbed that she realized she was standing on the edge. The baby wailed again. This time, there was a chorus of animation from the bonfire. “Twist its leg!” she heard a boy shout.
Fury poured over Lorona. She had to cross the river to reach them, but it was so dark, she couldn't see the far bank to gauge its width. The water-cooled air felt fresh on her face. She kicked off her sandals, held them in one hand, and gripped the rocks with her toes as she waded out.
“Good grief! Is this thing bottomless?” Her toes plunged into deeper and deeper waters. She stepped wide, caught a mossy stone with her front foot, and tipped backward. In her surprise, she dropped her sandals and they drifted away faster than she could snatch them. The current wasn't violent, but enough to lift her further downstream. It couldn't have carried her more than a few hundred feet before she regained ground and staggered out, dripping and sputtering, but she when she stood, she knew she was in trouble.
Lorona wiped her eyes. Somewhere across the river was the way back to the road, but the spine of water had managed to twist and turn in the small time she'd crossed it. The sun had dipped behind a high hill and the shadows were massing together like black fog. When Lorona tried to apply her feeble sense of direction to this confusion, she knew she was lost. She reached for her cell phone, simultaneously remembering the nook in the car door where it was still nestled safe, dry, and out of reach.
She screamed, “Kestrin!” as if he would somehow hear her and help.
The baby wailed at a frantic pitch, followed again by more cheering and hooting.
“Help me save this baby. I don't know what they're doing to it,” she prayed.
She couldn't see the glow from the fire anymore. The stars were mocking her and waggling their sparkling tongues. Lorona suddenly felt even more hungry and lightheaded. What about her own baby? Would Vivian suffer if her mother didn't feed her frequently? Lorona's hand massaged her stomach. The baby should be bigger, more tangible. She'd been thinking about Vivian for hours, and those hours might as well have been months.
“If you can hear me, come find me, Kestrin,” she called. Her mouth screamed for orange. Crazy or not, orange meant Kestrin. She'd followed a sound into a dark forest, got herself lost, and no longer had foot protection. She might as well start screaming for him. It made sense in an insane sort of way.
Lorona discovered the forest's wild blackberries the hard way. One misstep and the arch of her left foot erupted in a small fountain of blood and stabbing pain.
The baby screamed again.
“Kestrin!”
A pleasant buzz of purpose and urgency spurred Kestrin as thunder rumbled faintly in the distance. He turned onto the road and bright headlights from a parked car glittered at him. It was stopped near Brett's Barn, the local convenience store. Probably a customer forgot to turn off their lights. As he got closer, he saw the silhouette of a figure he recognized: black hair cropped to mid-neck and gangly but sweet proportions of arms and legs. He still remembered Yuki with her eager laugh and willingness to try new things. Her silhouette showed shoulders slouched with distress. Then she straightened, drew a deep breath, and shouted something into the darkness.
A knife of fear pierced his chest. She was screaming Lorona's name.
Kestrin dove into the headlights. Yuki jumped five feet and crouched to the ground, cussing at him. She'd punched him in the face before she could stop her reaction. Yuki gasped as she recognized him. “Kestrin! Jeez, I'm so sorry. You just came running at me and—”
“It's okay.” Kestrin rubbed his nose, and sniffed a few times. “Nice jab. Got any Kleenex?”
It was like she hadn't heard his question. “Lorona is out there!”
“Where?”
“Those dark, creepy woods! And do you hear that sound?”
“I heard thunder.” The storm was getting closer.
“No,” Yuki paused and he heard the squeal that sounded like a baby's cry. “That!”
Kestrin cocked his head and heard the teenagers chortling by the bonfire. The flames crackled deeper inside the trees. “Not again.” He grumbled and turned toward shadowed woods. “Kids are torturing crickets. There's a cricket in these parts that sounds just like a squealing baby.”
“I think that's what made Lorona go into the woods.” Yuki's voice shook.
“Are you sure she went in there?”
Yuki lifted a tiny anklet with green beads. “This is hers. The clasp is bad and she said it kept falling off, but it's from her dad. I found it up there between those trees.” Yuki pointed to two maple saplings at the edge of the forest. “She went in.”
Kestrin's heart sank.
In a voice that sounded embarrassingly akin to Yuki's desperate shrill, he shouted, “Lorona!”
The moon drifted down to look at him, implying that Kestrin would have to do more than shout if he wanted to see his wife.
“I'll go in and find her.”
A dagger of lightning tore upward.
“Fire!” a voice from inside the forest shouted in a pubescent, cracking voice. Sizzling pops whizzed into the air. It was the high schoolers again, but they weren't reacting to their own contained fire.
The lightning had struck the woods which were ready and waiting, chock full of dry underbrush.
Kestrin was already barreling into the forest as he yelled, “Yuki, call the fire department, now!”
Lorona heard the teenagers screaming immediately after the forest flashed like a huge camera. A crackle of flames responded to the lightning and she smelled burning grass and leaves. If she could get to the bonfire, she would likely find a way out, but a thick mass of ponderosa and a wall of blackberries blocked her way.
Flailing her hands in front of her, Lorona stumbled around the barrier. Going backward meant the river, which could easily carry her deeper into the forest. She could try hiding in the river if the fire came near, but if trees started to topple, this wouldn't protect her.
Lorona yelped and hopped on one foot. The forest floor was booby-trapped with thorny blackberry vines, all of which were eager to bite. Both feet were wounded now. The bleeding from her first foot had stopped, but that was because the gashes had smeared shut with dirt. She'd get a bad infection if it wasn't cleaned out soon.
Keeping her focus on the ground, Lorona tried to slow her frantic inhalations. Then she saw the flaming furnace, dimmed by a roiling veil of smoke. The fire had spread like its nemesis, water, as if bursting from a dam. She had thought she could move beyond its reach, but it swelled toward her like a wave that she couldn't outrun. The flames wrapped themselves up and around a smaller maple, just in front of her, and choked it with a fiery stranglehold.
“Forest fire,” she breathed, as if she could only now acknowledge the nightmare as real.
From the heart of the furnace she heard groaning wood. A dead pine surrendered its hold on the earth and prepared for its final descent. As it keened, she analyzed its trajectory. Given the span of its large branches and the wind blowing in her direction, it would hit her if she didn't move. Wind. Fire. Bad luck. Everything was chasing her.
“Kestrin!” She broke into a limping run. Another spiny vine whipped up and caught her right forearm as she held it in front of her face. She ran, heaving, back to the river, finding one prayer in two words. Save me. Save me.
Kestrin heard her scream, but it wasn't until the second time Lorona wailed that he recognized his name.
Cursing the absence of a flashlight and his poor night-vision, Kestrin hurtled into the forest. If I have to be the one to find her body…
He strained to hear any other sound that might direct him to her. The hissing fire rushed into his ears, gobbling the bounty of a dry summer. The orange blaze tore across the sagebrush and heather, whipping sinuous tongues at the base of the trees. Occasionally he heard the creaking of an old giant giving up, and then the earth-shaking crash as the tree succumbed to the flame's voracious hunger.
Yuki would certainly have called 911 by now, but it didn't take long for a human to burn beyond the point you could save her. As divinely beautiful as his wife was, she was still made of carbon.
As he pounded up a root-strewn incline to get a vantage, his mind cleared. The dream, the other girls, Heidi, destiny—none of it mattered. Lorona was real and wonderful and had loved him enough to marry him. Her love in itself was enough.
A rush of bitterness followed the revelation. “And if Lorona dies tonight,” he whispered, “a curse upon the whole world.”
Lorona wheezed and coughed. The smoke attacked her lungs and blinded her stinging eyes. The fire was close enough to breathe down her back, and its hissing and popping sounded like jeering mockery.
Drawing another ragged lungful of smoke-laced air, she gathered strength to continue her run, reaching her arms in front of her. Her palms encountered something solid, and she faltered. With the smoke, seeing far ahead was impossible, but could she have missed something as massive as this? Lorona spread her palms outward as far as they would reach, heart rate tripling. All was solid earth. She saw a small patch of sky above her, bordered by a dark line of earth with tall grass fringe, the top of a cliff. She'd run straight into the side of a cliff.
The fire found another old growth snag and roared in triumph. A wave of vicious red heat rolled toward her, and she choked. She scrambled at the wall, finding no handhold and beating it until her hands felt numb.
A nearby tree offered a few low-hanging branches. Another tree fifty feet away from it was already singed and starting to smoke. Climbing the tree closest to her would buy no more than a minute of time, but it was close to the cliff and perhaps if she could pull herself within reach of some handhold, she could scramble out.
Lorona climbed until she knew she was held up more by hope than by the actual mass of wood. She reached for the cliff, fingers spread and shoulder aching, and felt the déjà vu of reaching for the fire escape. As air continued to gape beneath her fingers, Lorona's heart sank. She wasn't close enough. She strained with her toes and stretched her back and shoulders, but she was still a good three feet from the cliff and nearly fifteen feet from the top. The flames below had engulfed the underbrush directly beneath her tree. It felt like she was being roasted alive.
Still, she knew the smoke would likely take her before the flames could. She scrambled down and slid in shuffling hops through the burning brush along the side of the cliff. A few hot weeds and twigs stuck to her legs and she cried out, as if pleading with the fire to retreat. Some smoldering heather under her right hand gave way and Lorona saw a small cave that cracked into the cliff side. It was almost certainly a dead end, but it would buy her time.
As she crawled inside, the heather bush snapped back into place and whipped the small of her back. It wasn't until she was inside the cave and stumbling upward in the dark between two narrow stone walls that Lorona smelled her burning flesh and became conscious of the blisters on her back and legs.
Her footsteps echoed in the damp tomb. This would become her last resting place. Lorona's prayer came again. Save me. Please, please, save me. Her words seemed to hit the low ceiling of the cave and fall flat on the stones, broken at her feet. She continued to climb in the darkness, feeling the slope rise under her feet until it brushed against her kneecaps.
The flames slithered outside. They couldn't enter without fuel, but smoke chugged steadily through the opening and rushed toward her. Lorona removed her shirt, tore it in two, and tied a long strip under her eyes, covering her nose and mouth. She turned back to look at the cave's opening. A bouquet of bright orange erupted as the heather bush succumbed.
Lorona's prayer morphed to the plural as her despair multiplied. She grabbed her stomach, the blood from her thorn-torn forearm causing her flesh to stick to it. Save us. Send Kestrin to save us.
As she crept forward, the slope leveled to a flat surface, still covered with chunks of broken rock. Lorona sank to her hands and knees. The thought of dying didn't disturb her as much as she'd thought it would. Suffocating in a lightless cave was pretty close to hell, if Lorona really had to think about it, but it wasn't death or the afterlife that worried her. A mew and then a whimper grew in her throat. The worst thought was the baby dying. Lorona drew breath in short painful wheezes. She felt an alien sensation in her eyes, wetness.
Vivian would die. The only thing that could embody her union with Kestrin, their daughter, would die before she had been born. A forest fire would take her life before anyone knew it existed. No one would examine Lorona's charred corpse closely enough to know, and the only other evidence was in the trash at McDonald's.
“Vivian,” Lorona's throat was thick and raspy like an old man's. Something dripped down her nose, a pathetic attempt to quench the fire, one tear to ward off the furnace of their destruction. She was moments from death with her daughter, and she'd discovered how to cry again.
Lorona thought of her mother, the last person who had seen her cry, on the day that she'd left them and never looked back. Lorona's 10-year-old vow seemed even sillier now, as the tears flowed inside the stone cave.
Better for me to die than make a hereditary repetition.
Lorona screamed into the smoke, “What more could I ask for, with a role model like you?” The smoke must have filtered into her brain. It was as if she expected to see Mariana Connelly appear in the fumes. Lorona knew she'd reached the last moments. Her vision clouded and she freed the remaining words. “I cut up every one of my drawings when you left!” she screamed. “I told Dad they were ugly, that they were like me!” Lorona gulped down air, hacking and retching in the smoke. “I didn't want him to hurt any more. Only I needed to hurt. And now look at me!”
Lorona smashed her hands onto the floor of the cave. A pointed stone lodged between her ring finger and pinky. Her thin silver ring buckled in the impact. Sobs rippled through her with an uneven lope as she relearned how to grieve.
“You are why I'm here! It's better that we both die now than for me to raise her!” The tears took over completely. Lorona rolled onto her side and buried her face under one arm. The smoke was thick, almost thick enough for her to feel it pressing her skin with hungry fingers.
And then, as if the echoes of the cave were whispering in her ears, she heard the spirit of a voice, like a voice might sound if it didn't have a body.
I'm so sorry she left. I love you.
It was probably her mind short-circuiting. But while she was crazy, Lorona decided she might as well talk to God.
“Then why aren't you saving me and my baby? Is this my punishment for hating my mom?”
I love you.
It wasn't the answer she was looking for. It made about as much sense as Lorona screaming into the smoke at her mother, but she still answered. “Then save me!”
A wild thought struck her. Until I can trust people, I'll never give them a chance. I can't let Mom shape everything else for me. She coughed again and prepared to bargain.
“I'll trust Kestrin. For whatever it's worth.” She buried her face tighter in her arm and began crying again.
“Lorona!”
The world stopped. The smoke was still there, sucking at her life, but her lungs didn't sting anymore. She heard his voice like an angelic symphony serenading her on the threshold of death.
“Kestrin! Thank God!”
Kestrin wasn't close to thanking God when he heard her weak response. His wife was still wrapped in a cloud of smoke and death; thanks were not yet in order. The cave's acoustics magnified her echoing shout. As he stepped inside, a massive tree groaned, tipped, and fell across the entrance, sealing it. He turned immediately and kicked against it. The thing was huge, like a stubborn boulder. His knee tingled from impact and the tree didn't budge. He turned away.
“Come on!” he shouted into the smoke. “You have to get out of there!” He still couldn't see her. Could she walk?
“He sent you!” Lorona sounded hysterical.
“No, I came here myself. Yuki sent me. Come on.”
Lorona coughed frantically and still didn't appear.
The chorus burst inside his head: This is your fault. She's here because of you.
“I'll come get you. Just hang on.” He could grope his way to her, but the trunk across the cave entrance still blocked their escape. He'd find her and hold her and perhaps the end would be less painful if they were together.
I can masquerade as the knight, even if I'm not victorious.
“Kestrin!” she screamed again. “Where are you?” He could hear her wheezing as she tried to get more air, but the smoke only made her cough harder.
Kestrin felt bitterness rising in his throat. Or maybe it would be more painful if they were together. He'd have to watch her die.
Because of you! Because of you! The chorus in his head wailed in a high-pitched frenzy.
Is this fate's final joke? We're supposed to be together and now we'll die once we reunite?
Kestrin scrambled up, holding his breath and squeezing the burning tears out of his eyes. For the first time in his adult life, Kestrin prayed.
God God God God God God God…don't let her die. This is my fault. I ran away. I'm the idiot. I'm the crazy one. She's innocent! Aren't you supposed to be all about justice? She's innocent. Don't let her die. If I have to die to save her, then do it.
He still couldn't see her.
Dying wasn't nearly as awful as Lorona had thought it would be. The pain was present, distant and confusing, like a knock on the door of your house when you're several rooms away. She remembered covering her face. The pain was everywhere, starting inside her lungs and flowing out through her polluted bloodstream to everywhere else. She couldn't hear Kestrin anymore and she wondered if he'd found some offshoot tunnel and gotten lost on his way to her. She coughed, drew a breath of liquid agony, and curled tightly into a ball. She wrapped her arms around her knees and prayed,
If he lives, help him find someone else. Someone who loves him deeply and can comfort him.
She thought, in her smoke-filled head, that she saw one of the mocking stars twinkle above her head as if to have its last laugh.
When Kestrin found her body, it was curled up and completely still. His fingers shakily grazed her bare shoulders and ribs. She didn't react.
The chorus inside his head became a wild mob. All your fault!
Kestrin wasted no time. He tried to lift her, but the smoke had already sapped his strength. He dragged her body toward the cave mouth. His lungs were on fire and he coughed with a fury. She still made no sound or gesture, even as the rocks tore at her legs. These were the same legs that moved so gracefully beneath a skirt, with skin the texture of fresh cotton sheets. He couldn't stop staring at her. She wasn't a child anymore. There was nothing puppy-like about her, as there had been the day after their wedding. She was a woman. She'd made hard decisions and overcome obstacles that had exacted a painful price in order to come here. And now his wife and lover was bleeding all over his hands. Kestrin gently set her down, and pressed her blank face into his shoulder. He laid her head as carefully as he could on the cave floor, then mustered his strength against the pounding in his skull, and kicked the tree again.
He could see the roaring inferno beyond through the cracks of hot light, and a few sparks flew in response to his effort, but the trunk still wouldn't budge.
Can you hear me? You can't do this! Please!
He kicked again. Nothing. His foot slipped and his ankle folded under him as he crashed against chipped rocks. When he tried to straighten, the sprain shot all the way up to his hip. He'd tweaked the soccer injury. His scarred ligaments wailed silently.
Kestrin prepared his dying curse and his eyes fell again on Lorona. She looked like she was just asleep. He swallowed, crawled toward her, and pulled her head to his chest.
If all of this happened just so she wouldn't die alone, then so be it. His lungs felt close to giving up entirely. He prayed, Make it quick for her.
“Kestrin?”
She stirred. Her face was lit eerily by the orange glow and smudged with soot and dirt like a chimney sweep. She blinked several times and looked up at him. She broke into a delirious smile and touched her bare stomach. “I kept her safe.”
Lorona was talking about herself in the third person. He kissed her singed hairline.
“I saw light,” she whispered.
Kestrin closed his eyes. His nose began to bleed again. “Yes, honey. Go toward it and I'll be with you soon.”
“That's not what I mean!” Lorona coughed for a long time before she could speak again. “Up there. I think we can climb out.”
“What?” Kestrin grabbed her wrist. “Where did you see it?”
Lorona pointed and he led her, both of them stumbling and hacking in the smoke. They both lost their balance several times and Kestrin ground his teeth against the stabbing pain in each step.
High above their heads, a pinprick of light twinkled through smoke clumps like a morning star. The cave surged upward like a narrow mine shaft, affording a few hand and footholds.
“We might have a chance,” he rasped.
“I love you,” she said.
He stopped for a moment, wondering how she'd managed to say it first. “Love you too, babe. Hold your breath for me, okay?”
“We'll try.”
We'll try? Who was she talking about?
When he looked back at the light, the despair that had weighted his arms and legs fell away. He climbed as if he'd climbed rocks his whole life.
It was like watching someone else perform an Olympian feat. Kestrin saw his hand reach for the small hole of bright moonlight and form a fist to punch it through. The skin over his knuckles peeled away. He wriggled his forearm and widened the opening. A tiny shaft of light fell to rest on Lorona's head.
Thank you.
A tunnel opened into a funnel of light, followed by a slackened feeling of letting go of everything: life, the cave, the rocks of their smoky prison, the flames, Lorona. Everything drifted into a buoyant void and was still. The only thing that existed was dirt falling away and the larger space beyond. Then, bit by bit, he felt sweet cold air in his lungs and the comforting thought that dying like this would be less painful than being poisoned by the smoke. Although Lorona was lying several feet below him on the cave floor, he could have sworn she was right beside him, her hand on his shoulder; her gentle, intelligent voice in his ear.
He was only vaguely aware of climbing into the ambulance and seeing the doors shut out the faces of Carlina, Kahlil, and Yuki, who had miraculously appeared, as if summoned by the ambulance sirens. The ambulance felt less real than the cave and the fire. Kestrin sat on the cold floor and wanted to bathe his throat with water. He wanted to be swaddled in millions of clean towels.
Someone pried his fingers away from Lorona's. He woke up in the hospital sometime later with a trail of dried tears on his nose. Thoughts and memories sharpened. He recalled crimson and gold flames swallowing Lorona's fire-colored hair, and then in the dark despair of the cave how he'd looked up and seen the promise of escape high above their heads. His arms ached as if he still carried the weight of her body in them.
He sat up and squinted at his bound ankle and bandaged hand. He sat in a waiting room full of sleeping and anxious people. It smelled like lemon soap. In a row of chairs across from Kestrin, Kahlil was curled up beside a softly snoring Yuki. To his right, Carlina sat reading a magazine. Kestrin tapped her shoulder. She smiled at him as if they were having sangria on her back porch and nothing was the matter. Then she nodded at the bandages. “You limped your way to the ambulance. They found the sprain in your ankle and set it.”
“I want to see my wife.” As he tried to stand, Carlina pointed quickly to a pair of crutches on the floor by his feet. A spasm through his leg reminded Kestrin that the crutches were more than a good recommendation. As he wrestled himself into a supported stance, he heard a voice behind him say, “Kestrin, baby.”
An iridescent blue and purple skirt rippled as his mother raised herself from her reclining stance across four of the waiting room chairs. She yawned luxuriantly.
Kestrin lobbed an accusatory glare at Carlina.
“She called me when she heard about the fire near my house,” Carlina easily defended. “She was worried about you. You were unconscious for several hours.”
Amanda rose to her feet, balanced perfectly like a crane on her three-inch heels. Kestrin was a decently tall man, but today his mother towered over him. For some reason this made him angry. As he moved to leave the waiting room, Amanda stepped directly in front of him.
“Let's cut right to the chase,” she said sweetly.
Kestrin glared at her.
“I came here for more reasons than your well-being. I came because of that girl.”
