Daydreams. Once upon a time she’d daydreamed of Andre, too. But not anymore.
* * *
The helicopter hovered over the site of the landslide for a moment as Andre stared at the shocking devastation below. “Take her down,” he called to the pilot through the headsets they both wore, the noise of the rotors making headsets a necessity. The pilot nodded acknowledgment, his eyes searching for a good spot for the helicopter to land. Andre spotted it first. He touched the pilot’s arm to draw his attention, then pointed silently, and the pilot nodded again.
Once down, Andre wasted no time. He jumped out, followed by his bodyguard, but Andre didn’t wait for him. Both men bent over until they were out of range of the still-whirling rotors, then picked their way over the rough ground from the landing site to the houses that had been hardest hit. A fire-and-rescue crew was already there, frantically digging through the rubble, searching for survivors. Other crews, including teams from the Zakharian National Forces, were working on other houses. Andre saw them helping the surviving victims, sorting through those who were injured and those who were merely badly shaken when half the mountainside had unexpectedly come down upon this tiny village, nearly wiping it out.
There were other victims, too, he saw, his brows twitching together. Bodies laid out side by side in the sunlight, blankets drawn over them to give them a measure of dignity in death. Six of the blanket-covered mounds were much smaller than the rest, and Andre felt a pang in the region of his heart. Children. Six of the known dead were children. How many more?
A bell tolled frantically from the church tower of Taryna. The church itself had suffered extensive damage, but the bell tower was miraculously still standing with no apparent structural damage amid the rest of the devastation, and Andre hoped that sound would carry through the mountain passes and call the men back from the mountain meadows. Most of the villagers were sheepherders, making their livelihood from the mountain the way their ancestors had for centuries. But even in this day and age of cell phones, coverage in these mountains was spotty at best, and the bells were still the best way to send an urgent message.
Water mains and sewer systems hadn’t been affected—anything below ground was apparently still intact—but electricity was out because the power lines had come down. And natural gas had been shut off at the pumping station to prevent fires from breaking out through the ruptured gas lines in the destroyed buildings.
A sudden wailing drew Andre’s attention to a dust-covered woman picking up a small body that had just been pulled from under a beam that had once held up a roof. A body that didn’t move, even though she clutched at it and begged it to answer her. Before he knew it he was there beside her. “Let me take him,” he told the woman kindly, lifting the slight weight into his own arms, quickly feeling for the pulse he knew wasn’t there.
Pity swept through him. Pity for the child, whose eyes were half open but would never see again. And pity for the mother, whose child was forever lost to her. With one hand he closed the eyelids so the child appeared merely to be sleeping. Then he stroked the tousled hair into a semblance of order and brushed the dirt away. “Come,” he said, walking toward the tent the Zakharian Red Cross was already setting up over the bodies laid out in what had once been the town square.
He surrendered his precious burden to a Red Cross aide, then turned to the silently weeping woman behind him. In that moment they weren’t king and subject. They were just two people in the midst of tragedy, and Andre held her for long moments as she wept her heart out in his arms. Finally, when the first torrent of tears abated, he asked her, “What was his name, madam?”
The woman raised her head. “Stepan,” she said brokenly, then dissolved into tears again. “Stepan.”
“A good name for a son,” he told her, wishing there was something more he could do other than hold her. Wishing he had the words to comfort her.
A group of men rushed down the road just then, returning from where they’d been tending their flocks of sheep in the high mountain meadows, obviously starting their return when they’d heard the mountain rumble ominously, followed by the frantic tolling of the bells. A man with a dazed look about him broke away from the others and rushed to where Andre stood with the grieving mother. “Katia?” he asked anxiously. “Katia? Where is Stepan? Where is our son?”
The woman turned from Andre and threw herself into her husband’s arms, weeping anew. Muffled words answered him, and the man’s face contracted over his wife’s head on his shoulder as he grasped the truth he didn’t want to hear. His eyes met Andre’s.