Masters of the Arches

"I was big afraid. Me thought Vincent dead."

The voice came loud and clear into his ears and he was able to tell -- even with his eyes closed -- that it belonged to Nika. He then remembered the raft, the rapids, and the falling sensation. How could they be still alive after that fall he thought? Was it possible to survive such an ordeal?

"What happened? Where are we?"

"We are on big, big river. I thought you dead."

He focussed his eyes on her then he slowly turned his head to look pass her, everywhere he looked there was water. They were on a large body of water either a lake or even a sea.

"Tell me, does the water taste salty?"

"Water is bad, not good for drinking. Nika did try and was sick."

"No, you mustn't drink that water, we are on a sea. Why didn't you push the raft toward the shore before we got so far out on the sea?"

But he didn't give her a chance to answer. He tried to move but he felt a jolt of pain in his right leg, which made him shout. Touching his leg, he asked her if it was broken.

"Yes, leg broken. Very bad". She went on to add. "But Nika fix it, you will be well soon."

With her help, he managed to get into a sitting position with his back resting against the rolled sleeping bags. The pain was almost unbearable. When he looked down at his right leg, he saw that it was broken indeed, the bone just below the knees must have pierced the skin since there was a long ugly gash there.

Nika had reset the bone and using half a dozen arrows around the broken part she had wrapped a section of rope over them and around the broken part of his leg. Of course, under the circumstance there was nothing else she could have done for his leg. It might heal properly given time, but he doubted very much that he would ever have enough strength in it for him to ever walk properly again.

With her limited vocabulary Nika tried explained to him what had happened after he had passed out. It seemed that both of them had fallen off the raft before they reached the bottom of the fall. It was probably because of this fact that they were both alive now. Otherwise they would have struck the logs of the raft and death would have been instantaneous.

When her head finally came out of the water, she was within arm reach of the raft, which had miraculously fallen right side up with their supplies still mostly intact on top of it.

She then noticed that their raft had partly broken in two parts and it had now only one rope holding it together as two of the five logs had opened up thus creating a wide separation. This created a real danger for their supplies since they risked falling through the opening thus created.

After a lot of effort and because of the fact that the water was now calm she was able to reach for the end of one of the logs and hold on to it. She rested for a minute while holding to the log and after realizing that she wasn't seriously hurt, she managed to pull herself onto the half-broken raft.

But while doing so, she felt the rope around her waist pulling on her. Remembering that he was still tied at the other end she immediately began pulling him toward her. Then at the expense of a lot of her energy, she was able to pull him partly onto the raft after many long minutes of great effort.

Their supplies were her next preoccupation. Since they had taken the precaution of tying them securely, everything seemed there but in great danger of falling through the ever-increasing crack caused by the separation of the two logs. It took her a while to tie both halves of the raft together and close the gap. When she checked to see if anything was missing, she discovered that all of their smoked meat was gone but everything else was there. Only then did she pay attention to Vincent's leg.

*************

Before she could do anything about it, the raft had emerged on the large body of water and the current quickly carried it further away. Having lost the two long poles to push it, she was helpless and gradually she lost sight of the shoreline. All this had happened a day and a half earlier.

It was now in the middle of the afternoon, and Vincent although in great pain, was still realistic enough to understand how precarious their situation was. There could be all sorts of danger on as well as in this sea, from high winds to underwater creatures. That was not taking into account the winged creatures such as the giant condors they had seen earlier.

It was clear that they were in great danger and the sooner they could get to land, the better their chances of survival would be.

Throughout the night, his fever was very high and he became delirious. The fever persisted for most of the following day also. When he became conscious again, it was dusk of their second day at sea. He noticed that Nika looked very tired and upon talking to her, he learned that she had been awake during all that time so as to keep an eye on him. She said that twice he had almost rolled overboard while being delirious with the fever. That is why she needed to keep a constant eye on him

As soon as he realized how exhausted she was, he told her that the fever was now gone and that he was much better, then he made her lie next to him. Barely a few minutes later she was sound asleep.

His leg was still hurting him a lot and he thought that it was a good sign, had there been no pain it could have meant that there was gangrene developing.

The sea was calm and a very light wind was blowing from the west, it was just enough to cool them and make the raft move slowly over the water.

While Nika slept on the half-soaked sleeping bag, he examined her beautifully voluptuous breasts in the starlight. She would have been a beauty queen on his world and while she was breathing regularly next to him, he let his hand stroke her hair.

In the middle of the morning, they were both pulled out of their sleep by a spray of cold water over their half naked bodies. The wind had greatly increased and the sea was responding to it with five and six foot waves. They immediately set themselves to the task of securing all of their supplies. Vincent even used the remaining rope to tie the logs of the raft more securely.

By mid afternoon the wind got worse and he was no longer sure if the raft would remain in one piece for much longer. But it did, and all of that night the wind blew and the waves pounded the raft and sent showers of cold water over its two occupants.

On the morning of the fourth day, the wind died down completely. When the sun came out, they both fell into a deep sleep since they had been rocked by the sea and sprayed by the waves for nearly fifteen hours now and they were both exhausted. They slept until past noon and they felt much better after that.

They had been at sea for four and a half days now and their water supply consisted of only half of one of the transparent plastic bottles he had brought. Before leaving his cottage he had filled from his well a couple of half gallon bottles that used to contain soft drinks and just before they got on the turbulent waters of the river he had refilled them again from the river. If they were very careful, what was left of the water would last two more days but after that, they would suffer from thirst and dehydration of course.

Even though his leg was still very painful, it did seemed to be healing well. But whether he would walk again on it remained to be seen, Nika had done a superb job of resetting the bone and if he ever walked again it would be because of her fast intervention.

They watched the horizon for the following two days and there was always one of them awake during the night, but they did not see any sign of land. Then the last of the water was gone and they knew that the end would be near if they did not get to fresh water soon.

But that night it rained. The water came down in sheets and they were easily able to fill both bottles using a plastic gag as a collector. They remained on the raft for two more days before they finally saw land. Vincent figured that they had been at sea for nine days by then.

Judging by their rate of approach toward shore, the current was very fast, and it took them only an hour from the time they saw the land for the first time until they were able to set foot on solid ground with all of their possessions.

While they were approaching the land, Vincent noticed the numerous trees everywhere and even near the luxuriant vegetation grew everywhere. Far in the background, they could see a low range of mountains covered with trees. As for the growth near the shoreline, it consisted of completely unknown plants to him; even Nika didn't recognize most of them.

With the forward momentum of the raft, they came to rest on the white sand of the beach. The clear sea water was only a couple of feet deep there and it took Nika only a few minutes to carry all of their supplies on the splendid beach while Vincent got busy removing the ropes that were holding the logs together.

With Nika's help and while suffering much pain, he was able to reach the first of the trees where she had already deposited their supplies. When he looked back in the direction of the raft, he saw only five logs that were being scattered here and there on the beach by the movement of the waves. Anyone seeing them would only see a few tree trunks that had been washed ashore and would think nothing more of it, at least that was what he was hoping.

As soon as they were well under the cover of the trees, Nika went looking for a suitable place where they could spend the night. Neither of them had any idea as to what to expect in this land, and of course, they weren't willing to take the chance of remaining in the open during their first night in this strange place.

Even though Nika searched everywhere for a suitable place where they could lie down in relative safety for the night, she saw nothing but trees and rocks. After an hour of looking for a safer spot, the best she came up with was spot under a tree where there was a recently fallen tree trunk on one side and a small stream on the other side.

It was very painful for Vincent to walk there but he did, and he even carried his knapsack too. As soon as they were seated on the ground, they ate the last of the canned meat and soon then both fell in a deep sleep, being too exhausted to be on their guard for predators.

The following morning Nika went looking further away for a better place where they could wait for Vincent's leg to heal. She seemed very confident that his leg would soon be better and she did insist that he would be able to walk on it again. She came back in mid-afternoon carrying a big bird that she had killed with an arrow.

"Nika find place to stay, we go there." She was pointing in the direction she had just come.

"Yes we will, but first we will cook that bird and eat, if someone detects the smoke of our fire, we will be gone by the time they get here, I hope."

For the first time in a dozen days, they ate a warm meal and Vincent was able to make himself a cup of hot coffee something he had missed a lot in the last week. As soon as they were finished eating they threw sand on the fire and they then undertook the long walk to the place that Nika had discovered.

It was a couple of miles deeper into the dense jungle-like forest and it took them a few hours for them to make it there. Vincent had to stop often to rest his leg and whenever they had to climb over dead trees or pass around other obstacles Nika had to drop their baggage and help him over or around the obstacle. Then while he rested she had to return and get their backpacks. By the time they finally arrived there Vincent's leg was extremely painful. He had made use of a stick to help him support his weight but the repeated stress on his healing leg was not exactly helping it heal and he had to stretch himself on one of the sleeping bag as soon as they arrived.

The hideaway that Nika had found was a small space between two large rocks with a couple of trees growing closely on one of the open sides. On the other open side there was a fallen tree with dense bushes growing there. He wondered how she could have discovered that place in the first place since it was completely hidden from all sides.

Once he was stretched and had rested a while he began paying attention to his surrounding. He was stretched in-between two large boulder with one of them, the largest and highest one, having a deep dent on the side facing him. He then knew why Nika had chosen that particular place; the dent in the rock could act as a sort of roof over their head if it should rain. He knew that he was going to spent a lot of time in this place, until his leg healed well enough for him to walk on it and not be a constant burden to Nika as they move on.

Nika went hunting every other day while they remained there. After 12 days, Vincent's leg was able to support his full weight for a short while and he could walk around without much pain. Even the scar where the skin of his leg had been punctured was completely healed and there were no longer any marks to indicate that the bone had perforated the skin. This fact Vincent couldn't accept, he knew that no herbs, no medications and no treatments whatsoever, could erase all the traces of a skin scar and do it so short a time at that.

It then occurred to him that there was something strange about this world. In the last couple of days, he had also noticed a bothering pain in his mouth. When he passed his tongue over his gums where he had a missing tooth at the back of his mouth, he discovered that there was the point of a new tooth sticking out. It was in the process of piercing his gum, just like it would happen to toddler. He had to know more about what was happening to him and since they had plenty of time to talk he began to ask Nika questions about her world.

It became plain to Vincent, after asking her questions for a short time, that she couldn't understand the concept of getting old. To listen to her, one would think that she had never seen anyone older than he was. At first, he thought that her relatives as well as the people she knew must have died before they had had the chance to get old and that was why she wasn't very familiar with old age, but even then she was bound to know or have heard of her grand parents.

He next tried to make her express how old she was. But he soon discovered that the concept of the time lap of a year was completely unknown to her. So far he had seen no indication that there were seasons in this place, therefore she was certainly not familiar with the length of time that a year represented. Furthermore he had never seen a moon at night in the heaven; thus, this method of measuring time was out of the question too. The only length of time that she knew was the day, so he got an idea. The ground where they were sitting was covered with big grains of sand, so taking single sand grain; he placed it in his opened hand he indicated to Nika to look at it.

"Each day that Nika has ever lived is a grain of sand. Now take some sand and place it in my hand so that there are the same number of grains as the number of days you have lived."

She looked at him for a few seconds, then she took a handful of sand and she let some of it slip through her fingers into his hand. She examined what was in his hand and again she let some escape. Vincent could see that she was trying to evaluate what he had in his hand. Again she did release more sand. Finally she looked at him and she pointed to his hand.

"There, Nika live one day for each grain."

When he looked in his hand he knew that there was a mistake. There were much too many grains of sands there; judging by what he had in his hand, she must have been a few hundreds Earth-years old. But worse still, he was tempted to believe her.

(to be continued)