EarthUnder (The Meteorite Chronicles Book 1) (8 page)

Chapter Five

Simon’s Ride

W
aiting at the station for my ride I took a seat; before long my eyes were giving up the battle as I started to fall off to sleep. It’s all I could do to keep track of my departure. Suddenly, Jasmina was standing there in front of me. She reached out as she asked me to come with her. She was glowing with inexplicable beauty. She had matured into a figure of perfection that would stop the hearts of men. The symmetry of her face and the youthful glow of her flawless skin only served as the ideal frame for her hypnotic emerald eyes, eyes that burned into your soul. As a woman, she is her sister personified. In a whisper she beckoned me to come with her. She said that things had collapsed behind our plight and that our path had become one of destruction. She needed me to come to her home to help with problems that only I could resolve. And so as she stood there reaching out to me, I rose in response. People scurried by, horns honked, and dust filled my lungs as I awakened standing there in front of the station. I had fallen asleep and woke standing in place, looking into Jasmina’s eyes as she faded into obscurity.

There went my gut again. Ticket in hand, I conclude that my direction can wait a few days while I figure out a way to get back over to Jasmina. Wandering away from the bus station was not in the plan, but then again, neither was reaching out to Mina in a waking vision. Something was all wrong, and my gut was telling me to follow her plea. This was simple really; all I needed to do was hitch a ride with someone back across a span of barren ground without roads or maps, in or on any vehicle with a driver who could understand my request. And having given Ali most of the cash, I was going to need to use my limited charm and inept ability to speak the desert dialect to get my weary body on board for another bumpy leg to this journey. The message from Jasmina was so irresistibly compelling that I chucked caution to the wind and tried pretty much every approach I had ever used to get attention that might result in a ride. In this part of the world, there are fuel stops along the roads and highways where people will stand or sit and wait for the offer to join a ride. Cars rarely travel with empty seats, and the riders help pay for the fuel. It seems an honorable way to economize and conserve fuel. Holding out a hand full of cash can get one a ride quickly, and often times a better or longer distance transport.

The first opportunity offered would have been fine, but it was so full already that when it stopped and nobody got out, I figured I would pass on the offer. Next was a large truck that had just dropped riders and since he was stopped, I ran over to see if he needed replacements to ride with him. When I used my lame dialect to inquire, he yelled back at me loudly, but in fairly decent, heavily accented English. I didn’t quite catch what he said but I replied yes, regardless, and he waved me up to the seat next to him.

His truck had a lot of character. The interior of the cab looked like it was decorated for some type of holiday celebration, the kind of look that made you figure this truck must have a name. He talked to his truck more than he spoke to me. He was a colorful guy with a tremendous amount of energy. He drove his truck like a bicycle racer riding in a peloton. His hands and feet worked non-stop steering and shifting and never touching the brakes, but rather relying on the clutch and gears to slow down and speed up. His seat was only there for minor support and to hold him in place while he worked to keep us on the road. His face was pocked with deep sockets of missing subcutaneous flesh and his chin was littered with occasional heavy whiskers. Dark, black eyes peered out from beneath thick curly black brows.

The cab smelled of mint and the sun visors were lined with peppermint candy canes, one of them hanging from his mouth as if it were a toothpick. He asked me where I was going, but it was difficult for me to say since I had no name for Jasmina’s village. The cane in his mouth waved up and down as he spoke, and the protrusion only made his words more difficult to discern. So I started to tell him about our journey and where we had been and who I was going to see.

When I mentioned her amazing green eyes, he interrupted me, “Ah, you wish to visit princess Jasmina!” He laughed as if I had just finished a world-class joke. “That is where we are going; we take this load of freight to her village. We take right to her door.” When he said “we” it seemed that he was referring to himself and his truck. As I spent more time in his truck I began to think maybe “we” included the cane in his mouth. He would pull the sweet treat from his mouth and wave it around much like a professor, lecturing with a pointer in hand. He talked about everything he could think of while we rolled across the country. I liked this fellow more every minute we spent together. Something about his demeanor made me feel at home with a good old friend. He talked so much that I could just relax and listen. The rambling conversation and his proactive driving were a symphony of sound and movement. The surface of the road was only a random addition to the music and its rhythm. For the time I had no worries; I felt safe. It was simply a fun journey in the passenger seat much like sitting in a theater watching the scenes of a movie roll by.

Parched from a day in the dust and heat without a drink, when he offered me one of his precious mouthwatering suckers, I accepted without hesitation and took one from my visor. The flavor and scent brought back memories of wintertime fires in the fireplace at home and stockings hanging from the mantelpiece filled with nuts and fruits and one of these canes hooked over the edge of the knitted sock. I would never be able to decipher from our language barrier how he had discovered this favorite sweet of his but I would ponder this endlessly.

I smiled and chuckled to myself; how could anyone not find fun in this burly, serious guy who drove his truck around the country with a candy cane hanging out of his mouth? It’s an odd anomaly traveling in another land where you only know a limited amount of the local language. Over time one can listen to the dialogue and pick up the general message, but you miss a great deal of the detail in what is being said. Still the general idea is enough to get by. And so as my new friend and tour guide chiseled our route from the desert floor, I picked up his introduction and that his name was Simon. Simon seemed to me to be the kind of guy that anyone would want for a friend. It was obvious that he loved his work and that his life was complete sitting behind the wheel of his truck seeing the world go by. He was happy and his life was simple. There were pictures of his wife and children jammed into the edge of the windshield, and when I pointed and made a short comment, he went off on a lengthy introduction of every member of his pride and joy family. His young wife was home caring for a large number of children: three boys and the rest girls. Simon’s youngest girl was obviously his favorite; there were several pictures of her and I could see him glance at one of her photos often. He repeated her name, Meli, often and seemed to enjoy calling her “my Meli.” There was a perceptively, powerful, tactile bond between the two as though she was there in the truck with us. One could almost assume that she was his guardian angel. I could see the love and the longing in his eyes to be there with her rather than here driving his beloved truck.

On we rolled as Simon happily shifted through the gears while navigating the nearly nondescript roadway. The only indicator of correct direction was the occasional human walking along our path. Simon seemed so confident in our direction that I would forget to care about that which I could not see. It reminded me of riding my old mare Chex on the trails near home. At the end of a long-distance ride I could drop the reins and she would take us directly back to the barn and she would always find the shortest set of trails to get us there. Simon and his truck were headed for the barn to take a load off and he knew the way better than a GPS.

So on we rolled while I learned to decode his accent and helped him with his English. As we drove closer to our destination I had more visions of Jasmina; she was speaking to me and waving me in her direction. I could feel her sense of urgency and I could hear her telling me that we were getting closer to where we would see her. Simon began to sing to the rhythm of the road; if he didn’t talk he would sing. His singing voice was magical. These fluid, melodic, almost operatic tones came from the chest of this burly, bearded trucker of the sands as if in another life he had entertained millions with his voice. I was here alone gifted by his unbelievable talent. Time drifted by almost unnoticed as we logged the miles. I began to understand how Simon could love his work so much. His freight was the reason to be here, and his truck was his key to the doors of the outside world. He was a simple, happy man and he was living a full life doing what he could to care for his family.

While we rumbled along I thought about his family and what it would look like to see this great, happy man arrive home to his family with his booming voice and arms outstretched to catch the rush of children running and calling to greet their loving father. My impulse was to dig into my pocket to count how much money I had left that I could offer him for this ride. He glanced over to see me counting money and immediately he began to throw up a hand to block his view as he rattled off a blur of words all meaning that he would not take my money for this journey. I’ll never understand why he wouldn’t take payment for the fuel, but apparently he had made up his mind early on that this was how he would handle my effort to repay his kindness. I didn’t have much, but I was prepared to give all of it to this new friend, and his refusal to accept it only endeared his jovial nature more to me. His demeanor reminded me of so many of my closest friends back home. I knew the day would come when I might be able to repay him in another way. For now all I could do was settle in for the remainder of our rocky ride and of course enjoy Simon’s yammering and songs.

Clouds of red dust rose up from the horizon to our right, creating a wall of billowing flowerets of floating microscopic rocks that formed an impenetrable screen. In an hour we would be buried in this shroud of desert sand, but Simon seemed to have his own ideas of how this would all transpire. As if he had found another gear in the truck’s transmission, we began to race along at greater and greater speed. I could hear in his voice the grin on his face as he sang a song much like a battle hymn. We were either headed for cover or we were so close to our destination that he knew we could make it. Racing to nowhere it was impossible to keep from looking at the pending doom moving to cut off our passage. There was nothing on the horizon but this descending dust storm and yet Simon plodded on into the nothing as though he knew some secret way to beat this storm.

Suddenly Simon turned his beloved beast of burden directly into the coming storm on a small dirt trail. Things were happening so quickly that there was no time to try to communicate my concern or ask any of the questions racing through my mind. I could only sit, hang on, and ride it out with my new guide and friend. Just then the road dropped into a narrow canyon carved out of solid stone and soon we were under the cover of a stone roof and driving through carved walls on a slick, clean, cobble floor. As I looked over at Simon in astonishment he looked at me and gleamed with a proud smile of someone who had just made the finish line ahead of the pack. We were in some kind of a warehouse below ground and were headed toward a loading dock. We wheeled around to back up to the dock, and as Simon happily shut her down and locked up the brakes, he leaned over toward me and smiled, saying, “Jasmina here!”

As I climbed out of the truck, my legs rebelled in a slow, painful reaction to the first movements. We had sat bouncing for so long that it seemed our legs had lost the strength to carry weight. While stretching and groaning, I looked around and overhead, recognizing that we had pulled into what must have been an old war bunker of some fashion. I couldn’t imagine anyone going to this much trouble to build this man-made cavern just to load and unload freight. The design made perfect sense in this part of the world, and the opening was deep enough that the wind and dust seemed far off. One could see the rain of grains falling into the ramped opening, but nothing made it to the solitude at our end of this well-engineered hole in the ground.

Simon smiled and chuckled in obvious satisfaction as he sat against the front bumper of his truck and rolled a cane in his mouth, joining me to look back at where we had just come from. He made a gesture with cane in hand and commented, “Much dust.”

We both grinned in knowing silence as we listened and watched. Then Simon pushed off from the bumper and fondly patted his truck on the fender as he walked to the back. He climbed up, pushed up the door on the back, and offered me a hand up.

In his broken words he said, “We stay here tonight, work comes tomorrow.” Then he threw a few heavy blankets towards me and began making his own bed in the back of the truck. When I peered into the dark backside of his truck there was little space left that wasn’t eyeball high with boxes and bags. I looked back at the loading platform. Simon saw my glance and spoke up immediately. Although his words were few and cane-garbled, his message was huge, “la, la, la, many bugs and snakes!” That was my cue to sleep standing up if need be. I hadn’t tested the option but figured I could sleep standing on my head if it meant dodging the odd snake or two. I found enough room to curl up under cover for the night.

As I lay there with mind whirling in thoughts of the day and what tomorrow might bring, my mind turned to thoughts of snakes curling up next to me in my sleep to warm themselves. It was never so much a fear of snakes, but rather a fear of karma. As a kid, I was fascinated by snakes and reptiles and went on daily adventures to regular haunts where I knew I would find them sunning themselves. I had caught literally thousands of beautiful, harmless snakes and after holding them and looking at them for a while I would let them go again. I did bring home a snake with two heads and a salamander with five legs. But just like all the others I had brought home in earlier years, someone would let them go after I went to sleep at night. There was this one time at summer camp when my older brother stayed in his own cabin. He was deathly afraid of all snakes and I had put several garden snakes in the refrigerator in his cabin. It wasn’t long before he came out like a flash, screaming, feet barely touching the ground as he ran. He yelled my name, but I stayed hidden.

Maybe it was that day that I changed from curious to afraid. I could feel my brother’s fear as if it were mine. In later years I too found my fear of snakes, and this has been an ongoing problem for someone who goes poking around in mountains and deserts looking for rocks. Oh yes, I have seen those people who show no fear of the deadly types like the snake charmers in the Souks. To me they are just like those who climb sheer rock cliffs for thousands of feet with nothing but a pouch of talc for their fingers; they are taunting fate to come take them away. I love my life and I don’t wish to lose it to a small meaningless bite or a slip of the hand. So I slip into slumber curled up in the back of Simon’s truck while he snores away the miles of today’s journey.

Only moments had passed when I awakened to the light of Jasmina’s eyes gazing into mine. My heart leapt into full beat and I was fully awake and rested. It was still night and Simon was sound asleep. Jasmina took my hand and led me to the wall at the edge of the dock where we appeared to walk through the stone. This had a strange “out of body” feeling to it as we walked through several feet of stone. It looked to be dense rock, but walking through it felt as though we were pushing through heavy mud. Was this a dream?

On the other side of the wall Jasmina turned to me and said, “No, not a dream, a security measure. At sunrise we will offload our friend’s truck and we will tell him that you are with me. He knows us and he will understand. You were fortunate to find yourself in the hands of such an honorable traveler as Simon. He has supported my village for many years and we trust him endlessly.”

As she turned to guide me away, she asked if I was well rested. I told her that it seemed very strange just how well rested I did feel considering the circumstances. She simply smiled. She seemed so much more composed and eloquent than the young rebel girl I remember from years before. People do change, but this was far more than that which most would expect. I could still feel her strength and confidence, but it was tempered with composure and control. Her voice exuded power and calm. Her posture was stoic yet supple. And her beauty could truly stop a heart from beating. One look into Jasmina’s deep, brilliant green eyes and the brain went numb. I thought to myself that she must get tired of men not finishing sentences.

We walked along a corridor for a time and emerged into daylight as the early dawn grew brighter, then stepped out into the Medina in the midst of her village. It seemed strange that I couldn’t see this village on the horizon yesterday as we approached the storm, but maybe it was already obscured by the darkness. After all, we did turn directly into the approaching storm before dropping out of sight. I had countless questions for Jasmina. First on my list was how did she appear to me in my sleep at the bus station, or was that just me dreaming? It is pretty hard to consider something is real when you only see it in a dream. But the dream felt so real, real enough to get me to drop everything and change the direction of my journey to come here. She spoke before I had a chance to begin my line of questions.

Jasmina inquired with hope in her voice, “You saw my sister; how is she? I trust you have come to help me; I have been calling to you for help. The problems we have are very difficult and urgent, and I feel that you are the only one who can help me bring the solution. There is no time for making this easy for you to understand. You will need to put a great deal of trust in me.”

“Whoa, wait, Jasmina, are you sure you’ve got the right guy here?” I unloaded on her. “As I remember, you never really liked me as a kid. I haven’t seen you in ten years, and you and I hardly know each other. That said, what makes you think I am qualified for whatever this thing is? I don’t mean to overreact, but you will need to give me some information first. So far this trip, I have been shot, chased, followed, tracked, lost and visited by you in my sleep. Where is this going to go from here?”

We stopped in a cobbled street near the middle of her village. When I turned to face her I could see worry and sadness in her eyes. I felt the sense of urgency that she was trying to convey and asked if there was a good place to talk. The heat of the day would begin to soar soon, and it felt like this was going to take some time. She nodded yes and led me away to her home.

It wasn’t long before we were walking through the gates of her garden and into the house, which was large and nicely situated on a small hillside overlooking the village. As we walked into her home, everything changed. It was cool and quiet with the sound of streaming liquid from a water feature in the courtyard. There were birds singing in the garden and shades that prevented the sun from shining into the rooms. The house and garden smelled of jasmine, which grew throughout her garden, the tiny white flowers in full bloom. Jasmina offered me water and directed me into a large room off of the entry where we could sit and talk.

She returned to the room with water in hand and we sat to speak. This moment felt like those few seconds before being launched on a first-time roller coaster ride. I had no idea what to expect, but I could already see that it was going to be something really big. Maybe huge was a better word. We sat in massive carved hardwood chairs much like I have seen in the castles of Ireland. We sat a few feet apart and faced each other. She began by saying thank you for coming. Then she went on to talk about our past. She explained that when we were younger she was only ten years old. It wasn’t that she didn’t like me; it was that she was jealous of her older sister for our relationship. It bothered her that her sister was able to break with tradition to have a friendship with me. She explained that she felt put out by the growing intensity of the bond between Kadishya and me. It seemed there was no room for her in our friendship.

I sat listening, bursting with the urge to speak. She went on to say that they had both fought over this many times when younger. It had all turned into a great misunderstanding that caused a rift between them. I could tell there was a great deal more to hear so I sat quietly in the massive chair, pressing my fingers into the griffin’s heads carved into the arms of the chair. Jasmina admitted that she had only recently realized the dynamics of what this all meant for the three of us. She confided that she needed to speak with Kadishya about this as soon as could be done. Jasmina said that this must wait for there were much greater issues to deal with in a timely manner. There were things that she said must be spoken, but also other things that could only be shown. There seemed to be concern that she do things in the right order as she began to talk about my work. She explained that she had been watching me all of these years tracking down fallen rocks from space. I didn’t quite get what she was trying to tell me, but part of me took this at face value based on the visions of her in my dreams. She had spoken to me directly in my dreams more than once. That was weird and something I could not deny, nor could I admit it to anyone else. So her saying she had been watching me all these years somehow seemed plausible. I wanted to ask her why, but sat quietly hoping she would lead to that. Then it came out, the stone I had gotten from Sharif, a piece of which was still in my pocket. She told me that she had sent it to me with her father, Sharif.