by E L Stricker
Then the answer came to him. No Terrors had descended on them out of the darkness because they were the ones making the sounds. They were the Terrors, and he had driven them away by throwing a single rock. All this time, his people had lived in fear of nothing but a pack of coyotes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
WITH ONLY HIMSELF to feed, there was little to occupy his time. Illya knew that he should be preparing for winter; gathering food and finding ways to store it, maybe even finding a better place to stay. But the idea of surviving an entire winter on his own, outside the village, seemed so impossible that he could barely comprehend trying it. He avoided thinking about the future as much as possible and instead found his thoughts drifting to the past.
He was free, but he had not escaped what he had done. More and more, as he sat alone in his camp with nothing but the fire for company, Illya sank into guilt. He missed his family. He wondered what they were all doing now and worried about how the villagers were treating them. He worried that he was wrong in assuming Conna would not make an example of them, though they'd had nothing to do with his crimes.
He wondered if the plants had died from the disease yet or if any had lived. Most of all, he wondered if the villagers had found a way to survive the winter.
He tried not to think of Sabelle, but inevitably there were moments when his thoughts went back to that morning: the last time he had seen her. A whiff of campfire smoke and dew, or the flash of the color of her eyes in a bluebird's wing, and he would be back with her under the maple. The way she smelled and the smile on her face as she had looked up at him would flood in on him. She had liked him, despite everything.
She probably hated him now. He wondered if she was with Conna, now that he had taken over.
Whenever he could pull himself out of his gloom, Illya did his best to turn his camp into a home. He discovered another ruin nearby. This one was so far off the broad path that none of the villagers could have ever been to it.
The building was in shambles, so much that his cave was a better shelter, but he scavenged a good bit of cloth and even found some empty metal cans that had not completely rusted through. With these additions, his little cave was outfitted nicely.
He set traps and had more success than he had ever had closer to the village. Soon he had some furs tanning. For the moment, survival was not the hardest thing about being away from home.
He sat by the stream one morning and thought of Molly drawing the lumpy potato on the floor. He was suddenly so lonely he had to close his eyes against tears. She was being courted by that boy, Dianthe's son. He had never gotten the chance to ask her if she even liked him.
His belly twisted with an absurd surge of new guilt. Compared to everything else that had happened, telling Dianthe to look for a girl with black eyes for her son to marry had to be the least of it. There weren't many girls with black eyes in the village. If he had thought it through at all, he could have predicted that it would happen.
He hoped that Molly liked the boy or that she knew how to tell him no if she didn't. They could even be married by now, he realized. Sometimes marriages came fast once young people started courting, especially in uncertain times like these.
He swallowed.
He didn't know anything. He didn't even know if they were alright.
Of course, to find any answers, he would have to go back, and he had no doubt that the lynching he had fled would resume right where it had left off.
He tried to put it all out of his mind and went out to check his traps. But things that Conna had said, which had once seemed innocent and well-meaning, kept popping into his head.
We have to do whatever it takes.
With each memory, it got harder and harder to keep from worrying. Conna had always been ruthless. At the time, it had seemed excusable. Illya had overlooked it because he thought that it served the plan. But if the pattern held, Conna was probably capable of anything.
He shook the thought away.
He tried to remember another side of Conna, the one that had reached out and supported him in the first place, the one that had been his friend when everyone else had deserted him. Conna had always been there, no matter what.
Until he had betrayed the knowledge of the plant disease to all the villagers and nearly gotten Illya killed.
Illya drove his fist into a nearby tree.
Pain shot through him, and he doubled over around his hand. He curled around his arm, smelling tree sap as hot lances throbbed from his knuckles.
***
Two of the traps were empty, although one had paw prints on the ground nearby. He adjusted it and went on. His third trap had been sprung but was empty too. The fourth had a rabbit.
Alone by his fire, he sat back and worked on scraping the new hide. He tried to concentrate on the work, but his hand throbbed, and the memories were pounding against his mind like river water against a runoff dam. He couldn't help but think of how he would have been with them all now, eating beside the central fire. Carefully, he dragged a sharp stone back and forth across the underside of the skin, ignoring the pain in his hand. It made him feel better to hurt, almost as if it was a piece of justice for what he had done. He worked until the hide was perfectly clean.
Holding it under the running water of the stream, he rubbed it with sand, cleaning it as well as he could. The pebbles on the riverbank dug into his knees as he worked, and he shifted his weight before rinsing the sand free of the fur.
He went back to his fire, shivering. It was not very cold, but there was the hint of a chill in the air.
He spread the hide out on the ground in front of him and crouched beside it to bore holes along the edge with his knife. His knee itched, and he rubbed it absently, feeling the indentations the river pebbles had left where he had kneeled in them.
Another memory flooded into his mind. On the night the first shoots had come months before, another set of pebbles had pressed a pattern into his calf as he had watched the dancing. He remembered Sabelle's timid smile at him across the circle. It was a point of such sweetness that it hurt to think of it.
The people who had made that mosaic would have no idea of the hardship that would follow for their people.
He made holes around the edge of the skin and cut strips of the leather to tie it across a frame to dry. This part of the process would take a week, and it would take another few days to treat the hide with brains, soften it, and set it all in with smoke from the fire. He wondered which one of their ancestors had known how to tan a hide. Perhaps the same one who could heat and pound metal into a shape, who had saved a picture of a Noria wheel. Someone in Ban's family, no doubt. Maybe that ancestor had been the only one who had brought anything useful out of the world of the Olders.
There were some things, though, that the settlers had known well. How was it that there were such massive gaps when all of it mattered to survive? Someone had known enough about medicines to give Samuel's forerunners the knowledge that had been passed to him.
Edible foods, though, which should have been the most basic information, had to be discovered almost entirely by trial and error. Jones Ph.D., legend told, had only known about a handful of plants, barely enough to get them through the first season.
The mosaic would have been made long after that. It was of all the plants they had gathered. A celebration of all they had learned.
Illya stopped, remembering that night at the fire again—and something that didn't quite fit. The pattern of pebble leaves had still been outlined on his calf after he had gotten home that night. He had barely moved the whole evening because he had been so distracted by Sabelle. There had been something strange about those leaves. He touched his calf with his fingertips, imagining that the ghost of their imprint remained, though it was long gone.
He frowned then shook his head. The memory was wrong; that must be it.
He turned back to the rabbit skin, tying it tightly to its frame. He would never be back in the village to look at the stup
id mosaic again anyway.
***
The morning dawned with frost on the ground. When Illya came out of his cave, he stared around in disbelief. Every blade of grass and rock was silver. The river steamed slightly. The air was sharp. The wind had shifted direction, now coming out of the north.
First frost.
It was too soon. There should be more time left. But Illya had lost track of the days out here. Going listlessly from day to day, seeing no one but himself; he couldn't be sure if it had been two weeks, or less, or even more.
The big stream slowed and turned beside his cave, gathering into a pool before flowing on. In the cold air, the water seemed still, almost as smooth as glass as it reflected the dawn sky. It reminded him of the mirror they had found on the day he had gone into the old city with Benja.
His hair was longer than it had been then. It was wild around his head. The water blurred his features in a way that the mirror hadn't. It was appropriate, he thought, as if the blurring had not come from the motion of the water, or the occasional wisps of steam drifting across it, but from himself. He was distorted: a guilty man weighed down with mistakes. None of the clear innocence remained of the day he had laughed with his cousin.
Now it was the face of a coward.
Illya stared himself down in the water.
This was the face of a guy who would leave his best friend in prison and run away to save his skin. A lot of things could hide behind a face.
The old, sick feeling rose in his throat. Samuel had said he could be the master of himself, but he hadn't done anything like that. He had run away.
The air bit his nose; he breathed it in deeply, feeling the cold of the morning penetrate into his lungs. It woke him, jolting him out of his gloom, clearing his mind.
He remembered Conna drinking the brew, telling Illya that he had hit his brother when he was small because it was good for him.
He had gone in front of the village to own up to what he had done, but he hadn't owned up at all. He had run away like the worst kind of coward. But not before he had let Conna manipulate him then handed the village to him on a platter.
Conna who would hit Aaro, who would arrest his own father; Conna who was capable of anything.
Illya's breath came out in pants, hot against the frosty air.
Maybe there was still something he could do. He couldn't fix everything, but maybe he could make accounting for a little of what he had done. He took a step, then another. He would find them. This place had been kind to him, although he didn't deserve it. There was still game here and plants too. It wasn’t enough for everyone, but his ma, Molly, Benja and his parents ... they could have a chance.
He was going back for his family.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
IF HE TOOK the safer route through the forest, it would be a journey of several days to the village. If he went north and met the path, he might make it all the way in a day or two if he moved quickly.
But it was much more likely that he would meet Patrollers on the path. Approaching the village unseen would be nearly impossible.
He thought about Conna and how the skin of brew had seemed stuck to his hand every evening. If he could hit his brother, what would stop him from hitting someone else? Illya's mother, his little sister; all of them were defenseless. Conna was the Leader, with all the Enforcers behind him and much less of a conscience to stop him than Illya had ever had. Anything could be happening in the village now.
He knew how the brew made you feel; how easy it was to make bad choices seem justified. Conna would be desperate to solidify his position. He would want to make examples, to distance himself from Illya and the plan that had failed.
That would be more than enough of a reason to imprison Illya's entire family, or worse. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that they were in real danger. It had been weeks. Conna could have locked them up without food. They could have been starving all this time.
Illya made straight for the waterfall and the more dangerous path. He had not retraced his steps since he had made his cave camp, preferring to range farther out in his explorations. The way back was unfamiliar, but he knew that he could not go wrong if he followed the watercourse.
It was still early when he reached the falls. They were taller than he remembered, at least thirty feet high, and surrounded by wet rocks and sheer cliffs. He had climbed right up them to reach the safer refuge above. It had not seemed like a difficult feat then. That day, he had faced death many times over and accepted it.
The mob of villagers, the Terrors; all of it had made the climb seem like nothing in comparison. Perhaps it had been nothing. The way up from the bottom had seemed simple, with obvious handgrips and footrests.
Now, looking over the edge, he could see none of the friendly grips. The rocks were steep, slippery, impossible. Flanking the falls on either side, an accompaniment of cliffs dropped as abruptly as if the earth had been sliced off with a knife. It was as if the gods had decided that this was where the world would end, and the water and anything else that didn't realize it in time to stop its forward momentum could just go ahead and drop right off.
Low clouds had settled down over the mountains over the course of the morning and now obscured the earth below the falls almost entirely. Illya stood on the edge of the world and looked out over a sea of boiling gray vapor. The water that roared past him fell to unimaginable depths. Tiny flecks of spray hit his face in a desperate attempt to throw themselves back up to the land of the living.
Illya sat down on the edge of the cliff, thinking back to the route he had taken up it, trying not to think of his family back in the village at Conna's mercy.
After some time, with no success, he walked to the right then to the left in hopes of finding an easier way down.
The cliff was impassible.
To the right, the cliffs ended where the mountain went up. If he were to find a passage in that direction, he would have to climb it. It would take a day and take him far out of his way. Even then, there was a chance he wouldn't find a way around.
The left ended in yet another cliff, which dropped down abruptly, leaving no possibility of going forward.
Discouraged, he returned to the falls. The sun was already at height, and the low clouds had cleared away. Now he could see that it wasn't as far down as it had seemed, perhaps the height of five men.
He stared over the edge into the pool. He had already lost a full morning. As the sun moved across the sky, his mind ran away from him. While he was stuck here, anything could be happening to his family. There could be riots. His family would be a target. They could even get killed.
He remembered the plunge into that pool on the hot day of his flight, how the water had folded around him, embracing him, and he knew the answer.
He felt like his blood had turned to fire. It was one thing to remember the smooth dive into the pool. It was quite another to stand at the edge, hearing the roar of the water as it crashed on the rocks below.
The wind pushed him forward, and, by reflex, he pushed back against it, resisting what he knew he had to do. He looked over the edge and watched the spray disappearing into the air. His head spun.
This was crazy.
But he couldn't just sit there.
Try or die.
You had to try because trying meant you still had hope.
He had to do it because without hope there was nothing. With no hope, he would live out the rest of his short days alone in the little cave, ignoring the world, fading away in shame.
The fire flared high in his blood. He had not gone to the full depths of that pool. There was no guarantee that there would only be smooth blue water to meet him at the bottom.
It was best not to think about it too much. He could spend hours gazing into the pool, and it would make no difference in the end. All there was left was to jump, or not.
He ran, heart pounding, thinking of a million things at once: the angle of his jump, the speed of his leg
s, the launch needed to clear the protruding rocks, the force of his feet against the edge as they pushed off. Then he was flying into the air with the wind rushing past his sun-heated cheeks. He gasped. Blue rushed up to meet him.
He hit the water, and it knocked out all of the breath he had taken in. His legs slammed into the pebbled bottom of the pool, but the blue darkness surrounded him just as it had before. It cradled his body, slowing his descent just enough that the clash did not break him after all.
Illya pushed his way up toward the wavering blue light above his head. Then his face broke the surface, and fresh air flooded into his lungs.
He had done it. He felt as if he had crossed over a portal into another world as he pulled himself up onto the bank and breathed in deep, full breaths.
There was no time to lose now. Even if he moved as fast as he could, it would still take at least whole day to get back to the village. He wouldn't make it by nightfall, not with the day half-gone.
He had barely allowed himself to catch his breath when he kept going. Looking up at the sun often to keep his bearings, he scrambled down hillsides and through brush. He was slowed down by his soaked clothes, and whenever he stopped for more than a moment, he began to shiver. The day went on, and he could only hope that he was going in the right direction. When he had first come off the path, he had been too distracted to look for landmarks.
After a while, he remembered the spring that met the path before the third ruin and followed the stream, hoping that it was the same one.
It was dusk when the stream finally crossed the path. The journey to the path had taken an entire day when it should have only taken half. He stopped to drink and splash water on his face. He dried his face off on his shirt, then saw something on the ground.
There were footprints. Not animal tracks, human footprints, but nothing like the prints his feet made in the mud. Everyone in the village had boots made from stitched animal hides. In the summer, they went barefoot as often as not. All of their footprints were smooth, sometimes large, sometimes small, but all with soft edges.
