Tree of Life

Time for a Snifter

Monty wedged his mechanical arm into the crumbling cleft of rock over their heads and shouted. “Forward! Advance or die!” Instinctively, he removed the cork in his bicep with his teeth and spat it out. The gracefully aged Kanyak brandy burned the back of his throat. “No time for fear!”

He shoved Earl through the shrinking gap in the tunnel, just to discover his arm had stuck.

“Brother!” Kered reached back for him.

“Don’t be daft!” Monty kicked his brother clear of the cave-in as the compromised tunnel released his arm and swallowed him whole.

*****

“Bloody hell. Who turned out the lights?” Monty breathed in an acrid mixture of carbon dioxide and dust. He coughed, causing his tomb to contract. “Oh right, the tunnels.” He spared a short moment to bar pain from his mind. His next thoughts were of the incantation he’d heard in Armenian the moment before an earthquake had shook them. His Armenian wasn’t automatic, not like his French, Arabic or Turkish.

He drummed his brain until the translation formed. It was an imperative—something resembling, God protect us from every evil. He finally dared believe it. Kered had been correct. She was the same little girl from the last time they came this close. If it hadn’t have been for the rampaging German-led pogrom against the remaining defenders of the tree—”

Another thought chilled him. The girl must have had a reason to invoke the spell that collapsed the tunnel. The evil she’d warned them of. Monty had never given such mythology any heed. Kered had always been the mystic. But whoever their enemy, he wasn’t about to lose the tree for a second time.

He flexed his mechanical arm. It responded.

If the entire weight of the earth above the tunnel had collapsed, he’d already be dead. If any sudden movement were to collapse the rest, he’d soon be dead. Destiny belongs to the bold.

After a wistful longing for a swallow from his brandy reservoir, he swept his arm upward and out.