Week Six Blog One Layla: The Portal

 

Layla was running now, pulling Lillian dangerously.  Ashe squeezed his arms around her neck so tightly she could scarcely breathe.  Jack would be behind her, but she could not stop to look for him.  Layla put as much distance as she could between them and the boy-soldier with the bayonet and the invisible companion in green uniforms.  The other recruit might not be as generous. The woods were coming to an end.  The woods around the village were filled with caves disguised by underbrush.  If someone heard them coming, surely they would peer out to see who was coming.  The men and boys from the village would recognize her and pull her into their hiding places.  Layla did feel something pulling her, but it was not the hands of one of the villagers. In front of her, she saw the air move in whirls.  The green of the trees was brilliant, the leaves floated as if they were in the water.  The white mountain face was just beyond these trees and Layla glimpsed the white in between the floating green leaves. It was the white mountain face that pulled at her.  The whirling air that looked like the ripples of the stream when she dropped something small onto the surface of the slow-moving water.  The undulating air pulled at her legs, she felt the sinking feeling in her stomach that came over her when she jumped off the rocks into the lake in the valley, plummeting down into the cold green-blue pool below. Lillian's delicate hand slipped away from her for a moment and Layla grabbed her wrist, while pinching her arm so tightly around Ashe that he cried, just as she felt the cold air rush over them like water, followed by a gust of dry heat.  Layla gasped for breath. The cold air surprised her, and she was lifted off her feet, her legs uselessly milling in the air as if she were still running.  She Lillian and Ashe hung suspended in the air before they spilled onto the grass in a valley.  Where was Jack? Layla looked behind her.  There were no woods, no spindly oak trees and chestnut trees with their damp leaves sending up the smell of rotting foliage from the wet ground.  She did not hear shooting and did not see the red blaze from the church. Jack was not there. The fall to the ground knocked the wind out of Layla, Ashe fell on top of her chest and stomach.  Lillian lay a few feet away, on her face, immobile.  Jack had the book. It was safer with him. Layla could only do so much.  If she was to carry the two children, she could not worry about the book as well.  That she had tasked to Jack. He knew where their father kept the book tucked behind the kitchen cupboard and had cinched it in his belt when the soldiers arrived yelling for everyone to go into the church. Their father had gone out the night before to see what the other men were talking about as they gathered around the fountain.  Just before he left, he put the book in its place and looked directly at Jack as he did it. Layla had not thought anything of it then, but when she saw Jack reach for the book as they peeled out of the back door of their home, she realized that they had silently communicated something that she did not understand then or now.  Just like she did not understand where Jack had gone.  He was a faster runner than she was, although he was younger and he was not carrying anyone else.  He should have been right next to her, if not in front.  Layla reached out to Lillian, touching the sleeve of the pink and white shirt she wore.  Lillian did not move, her face was turned away from Layla. She did not call out to Lillian or Jack until she knew if they were safe from the soldiers.  If they were lucky enough to be in a cave in the underbrush, she did not want to reveal that to the boy-soldiers roaming the woods with their bayonets. This did not look like the woods.  The sky was open and fat cumulus clouds floated over Layla as she lay still assessing her surroundings. There was grass, instead of leaves and a bird flew overhead.  The air was entirely silent, no wind, no movement. They were not in the woods and they were not in a cave.  This did not look like the valley below the village at the end of the long and winding road the truck had climbed that morning, slick with dew.