Page 58 of What Remains

“Ah!” He clapped a hand over his mouth.Shh, shh, quiet, quiet!That blast had been enormous, huge, a bellow of thunder rolling down the slope.

AnotherBOOM.The sound was enormous, the echoes rolling through the mountains like thunderclaps. This wasn’t a rocket or a bomb. He knew what those were like. This was somethingplucked from an old American western, a film with Clint Eastwood sighting down the long barrel of a shot?—

Another greatBOOM.

Then…pause.

Pause.

Nothing.

It’s over. You’re okay.His limbs loosened. Sagging back against a boulder, he worked at slowing his breathing. Who was shooting, and at what?Maybe a leopard?No, that made no sense. There had been two distinct sounds, which meant two different weapons and he could say, with absolute certainty, that no one was having it out with a snow leopard packing a shotgun.

The sequence made no sense either. While both came from the east, the shots were in different directions. The earlier, crisper, but more distant shots…those were rifles. Probably a Kalashnikov. He wasn’t a weapons expert, but he’d certainly heard enough rifle fire in his life to know that particular sound when he heard it.

And what were the odds of two hunters coming at a leopard from opposite directions? Close to zero because, well, there were close to zero people in the whole valley.

Which meant that this had been an exchange of gunfire betweenopponents: the sharp snaps of the rifle first, the shotgun booms second. Of the two, whoever had that shotgun was also closer.

Maybe I should go back.Just turn around, hoof it to the spring, fill his jugs…no, no, fill onlytwo, that would be best. Made for a better story, too:I got up early and went to fetch water, but then someone started shooting and I got scared and I ran before I could finish and…He might still face questions about why he hadn’t waited for the other children, but probably not. Better to beg forgiveness.

He rose, carefully, cautiously. He listened hard, but other than the wind and the soft hiss of snow over ice, nothing else stirred. Turning, he picked his way as fast as he could back the way he had trail. After a few moments, though, his pace slowed and when he came to large hummock of snow-covered rock and the marker which pointed the way to the valley, he stopped.

Wait. Think.If he went back now, he was throwing away precious time he would never regain. There weren’t many hours out of any given day when he was truly on his own. It was still early; he had time. Plus…he listened so hard his eyes rang.Nothing to hear.He knew from experience that if anyone was up, he would know. Animals bleated. Men shouted. But there was only the groan of the wind.

No one was up. No one was shooting anymore either.

Should he take the chance? Well, why not? He was nearly there. How many pleasures did he really have in this place? He could tick them all off on one hand and still have five fingers.

So, Poya turned and traced his steps. A little time stolen was better than no time at all.

There wasa movie he’d once seen, the one with Indiana Jones and his dad—and there was this line Poya and Baba would often throw at one another when someone did something incredibly dumb. Which, in about fifteen minutes, Poya would discover also applied to him.

Because he chose poorly.

6

After another tenminutes trudging uphill, Poya hooked left along a narrow switchback. This kinked around an enormous outcropping of rock. The wind died, almost instantly, to a thin whisper. The air was also a touch warmer here and held an odd scent. A stink, really, of boiled egg yolks.

He followed his nose until he spied a rocky point jutting from the mountain like the business end of a giant’s axe. The smell was even stronger here, riding on faint, gray steamy wisps emanating from a narrow cleft in the rock. There was a temperature gradient, too, that reminded him of frigid winter days in Kabul, when he could feel a cushion of cold air spilling over a windowsill in an invisible waterfall. It was the same here: warm air bathing his face and chest while denser, more frigid air swirled around his ankles. Today, there wasn’t any snow or ice at the entrance. Normally, there was. Not a lot, usually just a dusting. But today the rock was clear.

Pausing at the cleft, he listened. Habit, really. In all the weeks he’d been coming here, he’d heard nothing and seen no animals. The only sound reaching him now was a faint hiss.

Still. Slipping the hammer from his belt, he hefted that in his right hand and took up his flashlight in his left.Better safe than sorry.

Thumbing on his light, he followed the beam into the darkness.

After a few feet,the cave’s ceiling rose, and he could walk without stooping. The air was noticeably warmer and more humid. The smell of boiled egg was stronger, too. The only sounds were the crunch of his footsteps, that soft hiss, and a very faint, watery burble.

Out of habit, he fanned his flashlight’s beam right and left, checking the now-familiar nooks and crannies. The rock was covered with primitive figures, some chiseled into the stone and others painted with splashes of red and black and white, though the red was faded and the blacks beginning to grey. Some images were large, hairy horned animals, which he thought were meant to be yaks. Other smaller, four-legged creatures with pointed ears and mouths bristling with spiky teeth were likely to be wolves. Snow leopards were easy; those spots were dead giveaways.

To the right of these, an ancient artist had painted a line of stick-figure people, armed with bows, sending a barrage of arrows arcing toward a huge horned creature with long fangs and hairy arms and spiky claws for hands. So, a bear, maybe? Or a demon? A malevolent jinn?

A few inches below this was a handprint. Once red, the print now was a dull copper. A signature, Poya thought, of someone long ago. The first time he’d seen it, he’d spread his own handover the print, being careful not to touch the painted rock. The match wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough.

A long time ago, some prehistoric kid had used this place the same way Poya did now: as a hiding place where he could be himself.

Rounding the next bend,he stepped into an enormous room. The ceiling soared away, broadening into a craggy dome. At its center, a nearly perfect circular opening glowed like a milky white eye. To his left, a low arch led to another large room and more branching tunnels which he hadn’t explored. To his right, a narrow stream of steaming water dribbled over the lip of a white travertine limestone terrace, burbled across the cavern’s floor, and trickled into a rock pool about the size of a small tub. This emptied, slowly, through a much smaller channel which disappeared beneath a flat expanse of sparkling gray and white rock along the righthand wall.

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