She fixed Alex with a look of such sorrow that his heart sank. “Your path is the most difficult, Manta-ak.”
Alex didn’t like predictions of inevitable doom. As long as he had his strength and vitality and Senta-eh by his side, he felt he could change anything.
“I’m going to show our workers how I want to prepare our logs,” he said abruptly and hurried away.
“He would do anything for us,” Senta-eh said.
“Having to learn that there will be some things he cannot change will be the harshest of lessons for him,” Lanta-eh agreed.
Chapter FourteenMissing
Alex Hawk’s response to uncertainty had always been to lower his shoulder and focus on things he could influence. So it was with building their new home.
His dream was to build a simple home—no stama needed—but one that would last for many years. To that end, he elected to both strip the bark and hand-hew the trees. That process, especially hewing each log on two sides, was time consuming. In the end, Alex knew it would also make him happy as the winds of Kragdon-ah whipped across his sturdy walls and the rain and wind did their worst with no real effect.
Alex eventually felt the three Winten-ah men knew what kind of logs he wanted brought back to camp. They worked hard in the forest all day and Reggie worked tirelessly to haul the logs back to the field. Once there, Senta-eh and Kanda-eh, the lone woman assigned to the work crew, took off the branches and bark. Alex and Harta-ak hewed the logs using the superior tools. Harta-ak was used to building rafts that would withstand a windstorm on a river, so prepping the logs for the cabin came naturally to him. It was a good balance of work, with the four of them mostly able to keep up with the fresh logs brought from the forest every day.
There was no way in this section of Kragdon-ah to produce glass, but Alex wanted windows, anyway. He didn’t want the interior to be unbearably stuffy and filled with still air year-round. So, he chopped windows-sized holes in the logs that allowed for a nice cross-breeze, then built shutters that fit tightly on the exterior. To stop drafts in the winter, he built wooden blinds.
It took them several weeks to get the basics of the frame up, but when it was mostly complete, everyone in the tribe agreed it was not the horrible eyesore they had feared it would be. Sekun-ak even said that several other tribe members had asked if Alex might help them build their own version.
“I don’t want to change the way we live,” Alex answered, “but I will always help anyone who needs it.”
“I’m not worried about changing the way we live,” Sekun-ak answered. “The first time we fall under attack, our cliffside will look very attractive. Caves do not burn.”
One evening, Alex took inventory of their remaining logs, and measured how many would be needed for his roof. He told his work team they would only need a little over half the logs they had been bringing in every day.
He was surprised, then, when the shadows grew long and the work crew had not returned.
Reggie had taken his horse on what he thought would be the final log retrieval of the day, but came back empty-handed, hurrying his shaggy horse along as fast as it would go.
In his excitement, he shouted, “Alex!” then remembered himself and said, “Manta-ak!”
Alex abandoned the log he was working on and ran to meet him in the field.
“They’re gone. They’re all gone. They were working on the last logs we would need when I left them, but when I got back, they had disappeared. I looked around for them, but they are just gone.”
Alex sprinted toward the caves and ran up the zig-zag path, looking for Sekun-ak. He found him at the uppermost cave, looking out over the horizon.
“We need to go look for my workers. They went out this morning, but when Untrin-ak went to bring back the last of the logs, they were gone. Their tools are there, but they are gone.”
Sekun-ak didn’t hesitate. He called for six warriors to arm themselves. Alex, Reggie, Harta-ak and Senta-eh did the same.
The team had originally taken logs close to the cliffs, but had slowly moved away in search of the perfect trees. When they approached the first guard in the tree, Sekun-ak hailed them. “Did the workers go by this morning?”
“Yes,” the guard answered.
“Have you seen them since?”
“No.”
They hurried on in the fading light. They arrived in a small clearing where unnatural silence reigned. A tree was down, and another had an axe buried in an open cut. Tools were scattered on the ground. Beyond that, there was no sign of life. Sekun-ak, Alex, and Senta-eh scattered around the clearing, looking for signs of an attack by man or beast. The light in the glade was filtered in the glade, even at apex. Now, the darkness was closing in.
Monda-ak put his nose to the ground and followed half a dozen different trails, but always came back to the clearing.
Alex put a hand on Monda-ak’s head to settle him, then looked up into the near-dark sky. “Should we send runners back for torches?”
Sekun-ak considered. “This is not natural. It looks like they went for a drink of water and never came back.” He picked up
