THE CHASE: ARIELLE
WHEN ARIELLE BURST into the sunshine on the green hillside, she felt sheer joy. No sound of bullets or voices had reached her ears, and now it was she, she alone, who had come through the darkness into the open world. She alone would execute her father’s plan to summon help. She imagined a small platoon of gendarmes or even military police arriving by helicopter. Perhaps a fleet of helicopters would drop down between the mountains.
Quickly she surveyed the sunny slope and its innocent grass. In case someone had followed through the cave close behind her, a stand of yew trees a fourth of the way down the mountainside would provide concealing cover. She would sprint for the grove. And there were other groups of trees dotting the long flank of the grassy mountain. Far away, across the bottom of the valley and the little creek, partway up the opposing slope, there was a stone farmhouse with a red tile roof. While she praised Allah and implored him to protect her father and friends, she freed her legs for running by unzipping her pants legs above her knees. Then she sprang forward as from a starting block.
Running downhill was almost like flying. With the help of gravity, her speed accelerated, and she had only to be sure her feet, well housed within her trusted shoes, kept up with her descent. Half leaping and springing, she felt as though she were moving with the ease of flight. Like a robin she skimmed close to the contours of the slope; sometimes she held out her arms to the sides, like wings.
When she got to the first grove of trees, she braked, slowed to a walk, and looked back. No one stood near the place she took to be the opening behind the holly shrubs. She wasn’t sure she could tell where the opening was. Arielle flew, her inner voice sang. Not the least tired, she felt only exhilarated. She began again the controlled downhill mixture of giddy falling and running.
There should be a sport called “downhill running” to encourage such ecstasy. Had there really been danger? Of course there had; of course there had. How could she exult when those she loved most were inside a mountain? She could not remember the intruders distinctly, only the man who spoke British English, whom her father seemed to know.
And what of her grandfather? The sound of remembered gunfire tore through her brain. She gasped and leaped downward. She became a bird again, a goat; an ibex from the cave wall leaped within her legs. Finally, near the bottom of the slope, she tired. Her mood shifted utterly, and a terrible fear came upon her.
What of Adam? What of his perfect form? She imagined them living in Paris; she saw him sitting outdoors at a café with her, people slowing down to look, wondering if such handsomeness were a matter of misperception. Who would not lust for his beauty? Yet these were the thoughts of a fool, she knew. Her artist’s eye had betrayed her into foolishness.
Here was the stream, and she would take care to keep her feet dry, would cross on that line of rocks arranged as though stepping-stones. A bird like an Egyptian ibis rose up from near the water. Progressing uphill would be harder and slower, but she was in splendid condition. I flew, I flew. Nonetheless, mounting the incline was much slower work, and she disliked getting hot and beginning to sweat. She unbuttoned the top button of her orange shirt as she tried to run uphill.
At the farmhouse a hunched old woman was in the yard, watering cornflowers with a large green plastic watering can. “Why, what’s the matter, my dear?”
“I need help.”
They spoke in rapid French.
Once inside, Arielle stood panting. Her explanation was quick, and the woman used an ancient dial telephone to call for help—the phone functioned—and then woke her husband from his nap.
They would all take café au lait at the table while they waited, the old man insisted. While they sipped the hot drink, cats emerged from hiding, more and more cats, as though there were dozens, maybe hundreds of all stripes and colors, brindled and spotted. One, the obvious favorite, with six toes, was bold enough to leap into the old woman’s lap and purr like a contented motor. Arielle was surprised that this antique Frenchwoman called him “Calcifer,” the name of a Japanese cartoon character.
Across from Arielle the old couple sat side by side on a bench, their brown faces like twin maps with wrinkles for roads and rivers. They communed. Sometimes they spoke. Yes, they, too, had seen the paintings and drawings, the incised animals hidden in the slope across the valley, the spotted horses wreathed by human handprints. No, they had never told. Well, a few cousins, close neighbors who could be trusted.
Arielle’s vision of a helicopter proved prescient, for soon it hovered in a cloud of noise near the low stone barn.
Insisting that she ride back with the police, Arielle instructed them to look for the legs of her pants, which she had unzipped and discarded near the exit of the cave, but her explanation was unnecessary. From high in the air Arielle saw them coming down the mountain—her father and Lucy, hand in hand, her father carrying the codex in the black case. But where was Adam?
When Pierre and Lucy saw the copter and Arielle’s smiling wave through its glass bubble (but not the tears that had filled her eyes), they reversed their direction and began to climb back toward the cave.