It had seemed as normal a night as any other one when I had drifted off to sleep. Well, drifted is a delicate way of phrasing it. In reality, it was more like I totally blacked out the second my head hit the pillow. Spending all day hiking back and forth between two villages drained all of my energy, and I slept like a rock. Nothing could wake me up. Not nuclear war, or bombs…
Or an earthquake.
Apparently.
6:00 a.m.
"DIRK!"
"Wha-huh-wh-…" Startled, half-asleep, I struggled to sit upright in my bed. The sun was barely out, and someone was ramming on my door? That wasn't normal. Not at all. Especially since the voice was the high-pitched, uncharacteristically frantic tone of Rahi, the mayor's young son.
"This better be good." I grumbled the whole way to the door. It swung open by itself before I could even cross the floor. Rahi was on my porch, jumping up and down like a little Mexican jumping bean.
"Hurry! Hurry!" He began speaking fast, so fast and excited and jumbled that I couldn't make out half of what he was saying. I did, however, catch at least one word – "earthquake."
"What?!" At that point, I was fully awake. I grabbed my coat and my hat and ran out the door, Rahi right on my heels.
I barely made it to the main street before coming to almost a dead stop, heels screeching on the ground. My breath escaped me. Everywhere, trees were fallen. Fences were broken. Across the way, my neighbor, Kana, was trying to calm his frenzied horses, who had escaped from the stable that had partially collapsed.
"Oh no."
"It gets worse." I never thought a seven-year-old would be capable of speaking in such a grim voice. He grabbed my sleeve and pointed to the main part of town. His mom, the mayor, Ina, was waiting for him there.
We walked up, and Ina's tight-lipped, red-eyed face said enough. Behind her, all of the villagers of Konohana were gathered in a tight little beehive, buzzing and murmuring. Some were crying, others seemed almost dazed. Some were visibly angry.
They were in one of the only cleared areas in the whole square. Around them was all sorts of rubble. Gombe and Nori's crop field was entirely ruined, bits of wilted leaves and smashed fruits poking out under rows of stone and debris. The bridge between Mako's tree farm and Yun's tea house had collapsed into the river, and water was pooling up behind it, effectively cutting off the stream. Multiple buildings were damaged, fences broken, sidewalks cracked. The infrastructure of Konohana was designed to wait out our storms, like the blizzards and hurricanes that were part and parcel of farm life. Not to withstand something like this.
I hurried up to the small group of villagers. "Is everyone okay?" They nodded in unison. I did my own fast head count, making sure some of the elderly and kids were there. Yun was silently weeping on a bench, her young granddaughter handing her a cup of tea that someone had brought out. Yun's own teahouse, the one that she had built with her late husband from the ground up, was damaged severely. Gombe and Nori were quietly talking to the doctor.
"How's your house, Dirk?" Reina, a young girl with jet-black hair approached. Normally stoic and cold, her voice was thick and strained, and her eyes were red-rimmed.
If Reina is crying, this must be worse than it seems. …Is that even possible?
"I- I think it's okay. I mean. I didn't really get a chance to check it out, so I'm not sure…but I didn't wake up at all during the night. W-when…?"
"Around 4:00 this morning. Just a rumble. A groan, really. And then this huge, eerie cracking sound. The town hall shook, hard. Things were crashing inside and out. And then it just….stopped. As fast as it had started." She shook her head. "It's terrible. Sheng says it will take weeks to repair. Maybe multiple seasons. What are we going to do if our homes are still broken when winter comes?" It was mid-summer.
I looked off in the distance and sighed. "This is too much." The mountain range caught my eye. "Heh. Wonder if the big ol' mountain did any better than we did." And then- "Oh! Oh no. I wonder how Bluebell is doing!"
The other town lived on the opposite side of the mountain. For years, the two villages of Konohana and Bluebell had been fierce rivals, for reasons that I'm still not entirely sure of. When I got here, all I knew was that they hated each other. As the mail courier, I was required to carry letters between the two, so I tried to stay neutral. But living in Konohana, it was hard to ignore the obvious, concentrated distaste of the other town, and its people.
That was before Lillian.
Reina frowned, interrupting my train of thought. "However they're doing, I'm sure they're taking care of it. Right now, we have to take care of our own. We'll contact Bluebell later, I'm sure."
"Yeah. Yeah. You're probably right."
She looked like she was about to say something else, but suddenly, everyone was cut off by a loud, booming voice. "Listen up!" Mako shouted, standing up on a bench. He was a big, burly, tall, imposing guy, and he startled everyone into silence. Once he was sure of everyone's undivided attention, he started speaking in a normal volume.
"Everyone's checked in now. We've done a damage assessment and Sheng here-" he motioned with a swipe of his hand at the short, stocky man standing next to him "-has given us a pretty thorough idea of what he'll need to start repairs. We all have to work together to rebuild our town!"
Sheng cleared his throat. An odd man, the local blacksmith was. Liked pandas and talked too loudly. But he was good at what he did. He made tools, but he knew how to use them, as well. "We'd like to start with doing basic repairs to the homes." Most people in Konohana lived in rooms that were attached to their businesses. "Once everyone has a stable roof over their heads, we'll begin repairing bridges and sidewalks." He tapped his fingers together. "If we work together, and if I have enough supplies, and perhaps a bit of help from Eileen, the carpenter from Bluebell, I may be able to complete sufficient repairs by autumn so we will not be suffering in the winter."
Mako spoke again. "That means we're all going to have to go to the mountain to gather supplies." A ripple ran through the crowd; most people did not like venturing up into the peaks, except to attend cooking festivals from time to time. Many were weary of the wild animals and multiple cliffs. Reina and I cast sideways glances at each other. Both of us were frequent travelers in the mountains; she collected rocks there, and I passed through on my way to Bluebell every day.
Knowing this, he locked eyes with us. "Reina, Dirk. You know these mountains better than any of us. Can you help?"
We nodded in unison.
"Great. I'd like to go ahead and start looking at the mountain. If you guys can come with me, to tell me where I can find valuable supplies, we'll do a damage report and start scouting. Okay?"
An hour later, equipped with a hammer and a backpack full of food, water, and first-aid supplies, the three of us trekked up into the mountain.
12:00 p.m.
"Found some more lumber over here." I lugged some of the branches over into a pile. There were tons of little treasure troves within the mountains, some I had never even seen before. Not only was there stone and wood and scrap metal to be found, but there was leaves of mint, chamomile, and things like mushrooms and flowers, as well. They were hidden away, probably by the wild animals, in places like logs and cracks in the mountain walls.
"This is great," Mako said, nodding approvingly. "We'll carry this all back and Sheng can get started!"
There were obstacles to overcome in the mountain, to be sure. The bridge connecting the middle part of our mountain range was unstable, so we had to climb down and cross the river by stepping stones, instead. We also had to cross unconnected peaks by things like ziplines. Finally, we were close to the peak.
The sun was high in the sky at that point. "Whew," Mako said, wiping sweat off of his thick brow with the back of a hand. "This is hard work. How about we go up to the peak and have some of that food before moving on?"
Reina and I quickly agreed. There was a marked difference between walking from town to town, or collecting stones, and doing hard physical labor. We were tired.
"This way," I said, motioning.
And turned back around just in time to just barely miss taking a step into a gigantic crevice.
"Ahhhhhhh!"
I jumped back, falling hard on my backside. Reina gasped. Mako's face went ashen.
The peak of the mountain was split in two. A gigantic crack, maybe twenty-five feet wide, separated the Konohana side of the mountain from the Bluebell side.
"Oh…" Reina stuttered. "Oh my."
"This changes things," Mako said bluntly. We squinted into the crevice. Hundreds of yards down, there was a big pile of rubble on the mountain floor. There was a tunnel down there, one that had been blocked off for ages, one that nobody had used in forever. Now maybe nobody ever would.
When we looked back up, we could see figures approaching, fast, on the other side. Bluebell villagers were running up.
"Hey! Hey, be careful!" I screamed, jumping up and down to get their attention. "There's a big crack! We don't know how stable-"
They slowed down once they reached the crevice. There were six of them. I recognized Ash, Cam, Grady, Laney, Eileen, and, bringing up the rear, a panting Rutger, the elderly mayor. They had the same visceral reaction that we had experienced when they saw the damage to our mountain. Laney looked like she would be physically ill.
"How are you guys doing?" Mako called.
"We're fine!" Ash yelled back. "Everyone over there okay?"
"Shaken up, but okay. No pun intended."
"Is Lillian doing alright?"
Silence.
The three of us looked slowly at each other. "She's not with you?" The farmer lived in Bluebell.
The six of them froze. "No. We thought she was with you." Lillian ran over to Konohana every day to tend to the open crop field that we had.
"Oh, Goddess."
The small exclamation came from Eileen, whose face we could see the color drain from, even from far away.
"She's in the tunnel."