Andre Norton - The Key of the Keplian

Outside, the car was silenced as it reached the gate. A voice called as the gate was rattled. Eleeri seized the pack and other items laid out waiting. She had no time to look them over. She must trust that her great-grandfather had known what she would need. She stooped to kiss the withered cheek, adding the map to her possessions as she did so. Outside, the voice called again, more urgently. The girl smiled bitterly. Far Traveler had been right about that one. She would not leave without something.

Silently the girl drifted to the back door and opened it. Never settle for one exit, her great-grandfather had always said. And better if the other is hidden. A wicked smile lit Eleeri’s face for a moment. She could hear the rattling of the gate as it was climbed, then the voice again, louder, nearer. The front door, too, was locked; that would slow the pack rat. She slipped around the edge of the house using the tumbledown outbuildings as cover. A section of fence lifted aside once two iron pegs were removed. Quietly she replaced it, ramming the pegs home again. That would puzzle the white-eyes. The voice rose urgently, followed soon after by the sounds of a breaking window.

Screams followed, interspersed by cries of Eleeri’s name. Feet ran to and fro, the repetitions of the girl’s name become almost frantic. Eleeri was sorry for the distress; she supposed the woman meant well. But she would not allow herself to be returned to a home where she was despised. If only Far Traveler had not insisted on helping her work about the house the previous day. Not only had he aided her, he had also been in a shed several hours doing something with the door shut against her. She guessed now that he had felt his death close, and it must have been the pack she carried that he was preparing. The social worker came only once a week. Up until then they had managed to hide Far Traveler’s growing weakness from the woman.

They had hoped that his strength would last another few weeks, just until her sixteenth birthday. Then she might have been permitted to live on the few remaining acres in the house the old man had built. She grinned fiercely. Her aunt and uncle would find little of benefit remaining. The land that had once belonged to the Two Feathers family was sold long ago. The personal possessions, the tiny house, and a few acres of waterless land were all that remained. Eleeri could have made a living there. She could hunt, break horses, keep alive a tiny vegetable garden, and thus survive. But to an outsider the inheritance was worthless.

She peered around a tree, eyes searching the yard below her. The figure of the woman emerged, running clumsily from building to building. Eleeri nodded to herself. It would be hours before searchers could arrive. She knew they would come. The social worker was not one to let her go in peace.

She shouldered her pack and checked her weapons. The map hung limply over her belt, ready to hand, as she leaned into the long climb. She moved with a slow confidence. She must not wind herself in the climb. If she was followed, she might have to use all her strength to escape. Better that she did not waste too soon what strength she had. According to the map there was far to go and all of it through rough country. If they had a helicopter out looking, it would be her skill that saved her, not her strength or speed.

Below, the red car was fleeing down the mountain road. The woman who drove it was equally determined. The child must have taken to the hills. She must be found, taken to a place of safety. Her superior had been a fool to allow the girl to live with that old man. She might have known this would happen. Furthermore, typical man, her supervisor was away from the office when things occurred. She bit her lip thoughtfully: it did leave her in charge. He wouldn’t be back for almost a week, and she would have the girl back by then. No matter what he said, the child was under sixteen, and her aunt had always said they would take her back. She ignored the report on file that described the treatment meted out to Eleeri under the guardianship of that same family six years earlier.

So the girl had been punished a time or two. Children needed a firm hand. She drove faster, eager to reach her office and call out those who would find the girl for her. It would take some time, but she was sure she could convince those in authority that the child was in danger. She could lay it on thick: A young girl lost in the mountains, mad with grief. A real suicide risk. If they didn’t find her, it might not look good in the papers. She never looked into her own mind, never knew that she had hated a young girl and an old man for their pride, for the dislike they showed when they faced her intrusions.

There had been something in the poise of the girl that had sent a shiver down the social worker’s spine. In a land where the deaths of settlers were still remembered, she had not been the right woman to work where she did. Her family remembered even as Eleeri’s uncle remembered and recounted the massacre of kin. The woman despised those under her care. That she was despised in turn infuriated her. She would find the girl, give her to a decent civilized family. They’d tame the child.

Far above her now, the “child” climbed beside the stream. Behind her the ancient weathered stump of the tree showed clear in the bright sun. Ahead she could glimpse the scars of the slide that had occurred some one hundred years earlier. They overlay others. For some reason this part of the cliff always slid every century or so. Eleeri gazed up as she neared the base of it. She was still wearing the clothes she had donned on rising. They were her oldest and almost in rags, as she had intended to clean out the rusty iron guttering. She could spare them, and she should rest for a while, too.

She dropped her pack well up the stream, returning toward the landslide to climb higher. Soon she was at the top, surveying the fragile crumbling rock at her feet. She smiled a little. Far Traveler had always said that a trick was worth miles to the pursued. Some time later a long rumbling roar of sound echoed around the nearby hills. A scrap of shirt showed at the edge of the new mounds of scree. If they dug, they would find more scraps deeper in. She had placed them there before she started the slide. From then on she took to the stream itself. Let them try to track in the water; she knew a place she could emerge without leaving scent easily found. She hurried now; the water was freezing.

Farther along her trail, she rested and ate some of the food Far Traveler had provided in the pack. As she did so, she explored the pack’s contents with interest. Clothing, a complete case of stainless steel needles in all sizes, thread, fish hooks, the list appeared endless. But then the pack was no mere rucksack, but one of the large, framed type which could carry a hundred pounds weight of supplies at need—and if the wearer could bear the weight. It appeared to be empty now, and she lifted it to begin the repacking. That was odd, there was still weight. She delved, turning the pack inside out to find that under a layer of cloth, there was a leather belt finely carved with a line of running horses. It bore a bone buckle, engraved with tiny prancing horses, their eyes inlaid in jet. The weight as she held it up explained the still heavy pack which might now be light enough to be truly empty. Fascinated, she turned the belt over, examining the back.

Ah! It was laced with a long sinew. She pulled that out partway and peered inside the overlapping edges. Then she sat back. How long had Far Traveler planned her escape, had he always feared his life would be ended too soon for her safety? Within the belt lay treasure. Gold, melted and cast into thin disks from the pinches of gold dust he had panned for years from this stream. It had never been worth the work to others. A week’s hard labor would produce less than a fifth of one of these disks. A man could work in a better job for far better wages any day. Yet for years her great-grandfather must have toiled to gather the yellow grains and melt them into this.