TC61

Three blocks east they walked, then two blocks south to the L Street bridge over the New River. Gabriel and Jael and Dory were chatting up how the show had gone but Ariel was stone quiet. She seemed to be distracted. Eleventh Street was the road that went halfway up Treehouse Hill to the Shybear home and there at the foot of the hill they split up, but splitting up took a little time to accomplish. By that time all four of them were on smooching terms.

The Zinter place was a few blocks east of the hospital at 13th and U. From a block away they could see the cars of strangers parked there and how the front door was propped open. On a premonition Ariel began to cry before she even got home.

The father of Doriel and Gabriel was at their house. This was Seer Jashen Shybear. With him was an older Kuwapi fellow the kids had sometimes seen riding with their own father before. Clara silently paced the room and when Jael saw her even he started crying. Ariel tearfully pleaded for her to say something. It took a long time before Clara could look directly at her children and blurt it out: their father was dead. Then they all cried until there was nothing more to give.

Jashen and Wakokiya respectfully commiserated, for that is why they had come. Even when the eyes of the children were bone dry they were was still wracked by sobs that trailed off at great length to a quieter grief.

Wakokiyah, the old Indian, took the pause as a signal to tell the children Erik was taken from them by an accident. Ariel raised her head and said her father never told her his work was so dangerous.

Jashen replied, “Even the Kuwapi men I sent to retrieve his body are doing so at great risk.”

“Coal mining always means deadly gases,” Wakokiyah said. “I carried a pole with a small cage on one end and a living canary inside. That was for the White Damp. If the canary died the shift was over. When that happened we quit digging at once and tried to get back out the way we came in. But your father was taken by the Black Damp. Wet shale gave way under his feet and he fell into a pit. He tried to climb back out but the walls were too soft. Soon he fainted. He didn’t even stir when the Shahar Haruach slipped out of his hand and took off his leg. I flipped the pole around to hold the safety candle near his face and it went out. That means the Black Damp. It’s heavy. It displaced all the breathable air in the pit. I don’t know if the Black Damp carried your father off before he bled to death, but I can tell you he did not feel any pain. And I can also tell you there was nothing I could do to save him without joining him in eternity. I’m so very sorry.”

Jael wanted Wakokiyah to go back to the part where he said some thing called the Shahar Haruach took off his father’s leg. Jashen weighed in here. “Shahar Haruach is translated Windgate. It was Sarah’s weapon in the Green Book. Clara grew very angry when I told her that because she always thought the Windgate was just a literary device to hurry the plot along, like the whale in the book of Jonah, but no, it was and is very, very real. I am telling you these things because I respected your father very much. A great burden was laid on him. I assure you that your father did not suffer. He simply fell asleep and never again woke. I will always praise the memory of Erik Zinter. What he and Wakokiyah did allowed all the people of Headwater to thrive for years through a very dark time. They never violated my trust.”

Wakokiyah told Seer Jashen the Kuwapi who were retrieving Erik’s body were also trusted men, and they would most certainly return the Windgate to him, but he warned the secret would get out. There was no avoiding that.