“Look, Torkel,” she said in her best bracing tone. “If your dad survived the crash and the first blast, it’s likely he survived I he second one, as well. At any rate, we can’t do anything about it one way or the other unless we survive. Here, eat this so we do!” She thrust a battered ration pack at him, somewhat amazed that the wrapping was still intact. It seemed years ago that she had stuffed them in the front of her shirt.
She wasn’t sure when she slept, but she knew that sometime within that interminable period, the searing heat from the mud dissipated and the sunless air grew cold again. She and Torkel Fiske put the unconscious Giancarlo between them and hunched over him, sharing their warmth with him. In her sleep she dreamed that she was holding Scan rather than Torkel, and he was bathing her wounds with water from the hot springs, telling her, “I’m here, Yana. Trust me. Nothing of this world means you harm. Listen to its voice. Remember now …”
The dream and others like it repeated as she slept or half dozed, shivering, clinging to the warmth and life in the two other bodies for more time than she could count or was conscious of.
Then, without knowing how or when it happened, she woke from the dream of Scan, feeling warm again. She smelled a freshening in the air and realized that her hand was touching something cool, hard, and smooth; and, rousing, she found that she was touching the once scalding mud.
Torkel was still sleeping, and Giancarlo moaned in a fever. Yana sat up and placed both palms against the mud. The sensation wasn’t unpleasant. It still retained some warmth, but was otherwise hard and seemed stable. Standing, she tested other areas, pressing her fingers into the layer of ash overlying the previously steaming rivulet. It gave with a slight hiss and a hint of smokiness, but once the crust was broken, solid hard mud was only an inch or two down. She carefully hauled herself up on top of the flow and found that it held her weight.
The air was clearer. She could definitely smell and see the difference at this height. A strong wind whipped at her, blowing the ash back away from them and over to the north and east. Torkel sat up and blinked lashless eyes at the sudden change. Yana rubbed cautiously at her arms, avoiding the burn blisters but needing to increase blood circulation and reduce hypothermia. She was glad of the visibility, glad of the ability to travel again, if only they knew where they were going. Then she opened the remaining ration pack, twisted it into two more or less equal halves, and let him choose.
“We’ll have to drag Giancarlo,” she told Torkel when they had finished their scanty meal.
“He’ll slow us down,” Torkel said.
“You want to leave him?” she asked. She didn’t like being directly responsible for anyone’s death. On the other hand, if she was to be responsible for someone dying here, she wouldn’t much mind if it was Giancarlo.
Torkel looked down at the colonel, then shrugged and bent to hoist him by the arms up the wall of mud, where Yana helped support the unconscious man.
“We’d better get him back to where a copter can land, I hen.” Yana said.
But he shook his head stubbornly, unreasonably. “Dad may still be out here.”
“You can come back afterward,” she insisted.
But just then a fresh gust of wind from the west carried a raven toward them. The bird swooped, diving so low that its wing brushed Yana’s hair.
Its cry was no doubt only the usual raucous caw, but to her, wounded, shocked, and probably a little delirious, it seemed to be saying ” ‘ana, ‘ana,” or maybe it was “Sean, Sean.” Then it made an abrupt turn and flew back the way it came. Abruptly she recalled Sean’s dream message.
“Okay, you win,” she told Torkel. “But we spell each other dragging the son of a bitch and you get first shift.”
She was pleased when the crow’s west eventually turned out to be the right direction. Even so, both she and Torkel were at the end of their strength from dragging Giancarlo’s heavy and unresponsive body when she caught the first gleam of open water. She hadn’t realized how parched she was until that moment. Then her throat took over, reminding her that she was so dehydrated it didn’t know if it would ever come unstuck. Up closer, Yana saw that the water was a little stream, running from one edge of the mud and on into the side of a hill. Yana fully expected the water to be milky with ash and mud and clogged with debris, but in fact it was so clear she could see the stones at the bottom. Somehow this stretch had escaped all of the ravages of the volcano. Where the stream emerged from the hill, she could make out a deep, cavelike opening, into which her crow guide disappeared as she watched.