by DG SIDNA
EIGHTEEN
The first leg of our journey brings us back through the woodlands that Careena and I encountered earlier, before our ambush. Hagen keeps a quick pace, which I'm sure Careena appreciates. It's strange to see her like this. Being defrocked and powerless has made her irritable and anxious. For most of the hike, she does little more than grumble.
We reach the foothills of the mountain range by the end of the day. We hike up a small ridge and, ironically, Hagen stops us in the same high clearing where Careena and I had first arrived. I can still make out my footprints in the soil, perhaps the very first I made on this world. The universe has a funny way of bringing you full circle sometimes.
The redheaded boy leader addresses us. He points his spear upwards toward the jagged mountain peaks, which in the evening light of a setting sun appear more like the silhouettes of shark teeth.
"The pass starts right up there," he tells us. "But it's too dark now for us to follow. We'll camp here for the night and head up first thing in the morn."
"What's up there?" I ask.
He's much too young to be leading an expedition, but he hides it very well. "Stinging vines and skinroot for one. But what we really got to watch out for are the claw bush. That's why we got the spears. With any luck we'll avoid all of them."
"And beyond the mountains?"
"Beyond the mountains is the swamps," he says. "And beyond the swamps is the Lord's Sea. Ain't really nothing bad for us in the swamps. That's why the swampies live there. The sea is another matter, but I reckon we won't need to go that far."
My questions answered, I help Dinah clear a patch of ground for a fire. She tells me to make sure we clear all the hollow pebbles away. She calls them tree turds and apparently they have a habit of exploding when heated. Once we get the fire going, all four of us crowd around it.
For dinner Dinah shows me how to cut the native roots she brought and boil them. She also produces a clay jar of sugary jam, from the Shiva apples.
"Put the jam on the daggit roots," she tells me. "It's way better that way. Otherwise they taste like smelly cat butts."
I do as she suggests and sort of smile at myself; my first foray into extraterrestrial cuisine.
Careena has been mostly silent and brooding, but after our dinner of roots and jam, she asks a question that has been on her mind for a while. "Dinah, dear. Where is your ship? Where is the Star of David?"
"I ain't never seen it myself," the girl says. "Storms took it before I was born. As the story goes, our original settlement was on the Lord's Sea. But in winter the storms came. Nobody was ready for those. Folks had to run into the hills for shelter. Lasted a week, they say. When they came back down to Old Nyssa, the whole town was gone. Looked like it got clawed right out of the earth. Ship too. The Good Lord must have dragged it to the bottom of the sea. Anyway, if them storms was going to come every season, then they couldn't hardly stay there, so they packed what they had left and crossed the mountains and that's where we been ever since."
Careena still isn't satisfied. "So your ship is gone and your people have no electronics?"
"Nope. We live the simple life. Like the Good Lord intended."
I understand what she's getting at. Sapphira and her little highwayman cohort were both armed. "You're wondering about the tasers? Maybe they floated up from the wreck," I suggest.
It's Dinah that answers. "Well, I don't rightly know. But even if something did float up from that old ship, I was told we never brought no weapons here in the first place. That wasn't the type of community we were going to build. If you want my opinion, I think them gadgets you saw came from the other ship."
"Other ship?"
"Yeah. I seen it a month or so back. Mama says I just got an overactive imagination, probably saw a falling star or something. But I swear, it flew right over the clouds, clear as day can be. I thought maybe they was come to rescue us. I thought maybe you was from that ship."
"It wasn't us," I tell her before turning to Careena. "The Yamato maybe?"
Careena touches her nose. It's a habit I'm getting used to. "No, the records are pretty clear. The Yamato doesn't arrive for another few months. Besides, they'll want to get home as soon as possible. They'd have no reason to hide. If it is a ship, then it's something else. And what's more, it's something that's not in the history books. I don't like things that aren't in the history books."
That's all she has to say on the matter.
I sleep that night better than expected, despite the fact that Careena and I have only a single handmade blanket to share between us. But there are no dreams. No haunting revelations from my subconscious. And fortunately, nothing ate me while I was sleeping.
As soon as there's enough morning light, we trek up a ridge that cuts through the aptly named Spine of the World. At their highest peaks, the mountains are silver with snow and ice. Here along the pass the vegetation is sparse, mostly bushes and strange stalks of grass.
By midday the forest and steppes of Nyssa are gone from view completely. From here on, in all directions, there are only unending rows of rock and peaks, the rivets between colliding tectonic plates. Though we're heading east, I have the feeling the mountains likely go on for hundreds of miles north to south. I'm worried how long it will take to bisect such a formidable mountain range.
"How many days to cross?" I ask our guide Hagen.
"Two," he says, before adding, "If we're lucky."
The march quickly becomes tedious and punishing. The air is light and difficult to breathe, despite the nanites supposedly aiding my lungs. Hopefully Hagen and Dinah, having been born on this strange world, have adjusted better than I have. Our direction seems to be ever upward, which tests the limits of my thighs. My left leg begins to itch at the ankle. My footwear maybe? I'm not sure if Chelsea boots are the best shoes for mountaineering.
As the hours pass, little changes to denote our progress. That's the most frustrating part of the journey. I keep having the dreadful feeling that no progress is being made at all. I must not be the only one who feels this way; conversation has fallen to a minimum. No one has the strength to keep up a dialog, not even young Dinah who is ordinarily as chipper as a songbird.
Night comes for us on the second day and we make camp in a rocky clearing surrounded by small shrubs. They are twisted, old, and sparse of leaves. Hagen breaks their limbs to set a fire. Everyone is glad to have the crackle of flames to stare into.
The stars come out and greet us one by one until there are too many in the sky to count. We cook more daggit roots and divvy them up more conservatively this time, hoping to make our rations last until we reach the swamps.
Dinah comes to sit next to me. At first I don't even realize she's there. Some combination of exhaustion and wayward thought has me lost in the dancing flames of our fire. She joins me in silence for as long as she can, but finally she has to fill the void. It's simply her nature.
"You're very pretty," she tells me—like it's a fact, a simple expression of admiration, but I feel it’s hiding an insecurity, as if she's making a comment more on herself than on me.
"Thank you, Dinah, you're very pretty too."
She places her chin on her knees and stares into the flames. "No, I don't think so. Some of the other daughters make fun of me. They say my face is too round and my chest is too small and my nose is too flat."
It seems like teenage girls are the same everywhere in the universe. "People used to make fun of me too," I tell her. "I had braces, like, practically my whole life. And crazy hair. But you know what? Those other daughters, they're just jealous. You're smarter and have more potential in your little toe than any of them have put together. There's a reason that you're here and they're not. Putting you down is the only way they can feel good about themselves."
"Maybe you're right. I mean, it's got to really be tugging on their skirts they weren't invited." She changes the topic, but only slightly. "Do you think you'll get married one day?"
"I don't know,
it's a bit early to think about that. I'm only seventeen."
"Why, Miss Isabel, that's so old! But I think you're right. I was already married, like I told you. I don't think I want it again. Truth is, if we see the Lord's Sea, I'm going to throw my ring in there. The Good Lord can have his stupid sacrament back if it means so much to him."
I put a hand on her arm. "Don't write off falling in love too soon. Some boys, they can surprise you."
"I reckon they can."
Her gaze has drifted over to Hagen and I smile to myself. He's busy setting a pot of water over the fire. I yell out, "Hagen, come join us. We're bored."
Dinah blushes with anxiety and terror, but also a little excitement.
Hagen joins us. He's a bit awkward, it's true, but there's no denying the honesty in his eyes. He was exiled very young, lived a hard life in the swamps, and returned to Nyssa not long after the Great Father had died. It was obvious that he still felt adrift between these two very different worlds. A child of both, a child of neither.
"Dinah and I want to hear more about the swamps," I coax him.
"Oh, I don't know if I'm good with the storytelling."
"Try us," I say, while scratching my ankle again.
"Alright. It's really quite lovely once you get used to it. There's plenty of fruits and nuts. Shade too when it's hot. We built a little village actually, out of leaves and such. Was kind of fun now that I think back to it, making something with all your friends. The only thing you got to watch out for is Dave—" He's noticed my scratching. "Are you sure you're alright, miss?"
"I'm fine," I tell him. "Probably just a shin splint. Though it feels sort of hot, now that you mention it."
I don't like the worry on his face.
"Might I see?" he asks.
"Sure."
I pull up my pants to the knee, which requires some work. That's when I see the grey lines under my skin, slightly raised. They start at my ankle and crawl up my shin, looking like the branches of a tree. Or roots, I realize in horror. Now that I see them, the burning sensation intensifies.
"What the fuck is that?" I shout.
"Skinroot," he tells me calmly. "We must have walked by some earlier. It's quite far along. I'm very sorry."
I look at him with suspicion. "Sorry? Sorry for what?"
Without answering, he takes the pot of boiling water off the fire and pours it on my shin. I scream as the scalding liquid turns my leg red and tender. I'm about two moments away from punching this kid in the face, but I end up biting down on my lip instead.
"That'll kill it, miss," he tells me as if it was just a pesky weed in the garden, no big deal. As opposed to what it really was, a freaky alien root monster trying to eat me from the inside out!
"I'll go dig up some wetroot," he says. "Good for healing."
I let out a breath. "Alright, but hey. Take Dinah with you."
No reason to let a romantic opportunity go to waste.
"Are you sure?" Dinah asks.
I wink. "Don't rush back on my account."
They leave the camp, using the moonlight as a guide.
I hobble over to sit next to Careena.
"Time travel is fricken dangerous," I tell her.
The old woman doesn't respond. Her thoughts are lost in the flames of the fire. She's not the same without Hecate.
"We'll get her back, Careena."
Dinah and Hagen return sometime later and stay up late chatting. I hope I haven't altered the timeline too much by prompting the two, but I really don't care if I have. After all, what has stupid history ever done for me? I curl up to sleep, my leg still smarting but feeling a little better with Hagen's root to chew on. Like Careena, I worry.
I worry what awaits us on the other side of these mountains.
On the other side of time.
NINETEEN
The following morning a greyness takes to the skies and it doesn't let go. A light drizzle sets in, making our trek all the more unpleasant. We pass through canyons and dried river beds, occasionally forced to skirt around large boulders that have fallen from their perches ages ago.
By midday we reach a sweeping valley nestled between two tracts of mountains. The valley floor is flat like a meadow and not without its beauty; I could almost imagine a small moon like a bowling ball having rolled across the mountains eons ago, creating this wide and open place. I'm happy to see something, anything, other than more narrow ravines and outcroppings of rock.
"The Valley of Flowers," Hagen tells us.
Dinah lights up. "Really? Everyone talks about them, but I've never seen the flowers before!"
As we enter the valley, I see no flowers, only leafy balls, not unlike heads of lettuce. They're everywhere, each spaced a foot or two from their neighbor. They fill the length and breadth of the valley.
"We have to cross to the other side," Hagen says. "From there it's only a short hike through those hills opposite, and then we're at the foot of the swamp."
I'm pleased to hear our journey is almost complete.
We're halfway across the valley when the horizon to our north flashes brightly. Strangely colored lightning jumps and bounds between the clouds, never touching the earth. The clouds darken, bringing with them crashes of thunder. A storm is barreling toward us with astonishing speed. Already the wind is picking up as the hairs on my arm rise.
"We need to hurry," Hagen tells us stoically.
We push on as quickly as we can, knowing that we're exposed, hoping to reach the cover of the foothills ahead, but they're half a mile away. We don't make it. Those ominous clouds roll overhead and blot out the sun, turning the world to night. They bring with them such heavy rains that I can barely see Careena a foot or two ahead of me.
We don't stop; we march on, hunching our shoulders in a vain attempt to protect ourselves from the heavy droplets that beat on our backs like stones. With each bolt of lighting hurled from one cloud to the next, the world is lit up in reds and purples and yellows. It's a thunderous battle being waged by warring gods in the heavens. I can't say that it doesn't fill some part of me with awe.
Despite the danger, I feel so very alive in this moment. Perhaps I should feel insignificant in the face of nature's raw power as she tries to pound us out of existence—but the harsh rain beating on my face, the claps of thunder sending shudders down my spine, my legs fighting against the mud trying to foil our escape, I love every second of it. To test my mettle, to brush up against my limits, to know who I am and what I can accomplish—I was born for this.
Dinah slips in the mud and I help her up. Her laughter, louder than the rain, louder than the storm, drowning out the gods themselves above, tells me she feels exactly the way I do. It's a moment of camaraderie shared between us. Two girls against the fucking world. We laugh together.
I'm almost saddened when, as quickly as it had arrived, the storm breaks and almost biblically the heavens open, casting down the gold rays of the sun. We've crossed maybe three-fourths of the valley. The smaller mountain range is just ahead. Hagen brings us to a halt. There's something he wants us to see. No, I realize with a smile. There's something he wants Dinah to see.
It starts as a small vibration in the ground. At first I can't place the source, then I realize it's those strange heads of lettuce; they're shaking in response to the fresh rainwater and bright sun. It's as if, after years of imprisonment, they're ready to explode; as if, having survived the destruction of the storm, something deep inside them is ready to break free. To be reborn.
With furious explosions, they burst open.
They eject handfuls of butterflies high into the air, a confetti of tiny wings, some blue, some green, others yellow, others red; until the entire valley is filled with these fluttering colors catching the light of the sun.
I pluck one from the air, only to find that they're not butterflies at all. They have no heads, no legs, no eyes, no antennae. They're simple, like colorful string beans with maple leaf wings. They're flowers, I gasp in surprise.
"We shouldn't linger," Hagen says after allowing all of us our moment of amazement. "The claw bush likes to roam the valley after a storm."
Having already encountered the skinroot, I'm fine with skipping the part of the tour where we discover just what exactly a claw bush is. So we continue our hike and exit the valley, entering a pass of low hills. There's more flora on this side of the mountains and already I taste a wetness in the air.
By nightfall we make camp under a cliff wall. There are hand prints here, child sized, made with ochre pigments, no doubt the playful markings of the swampies. In ten thousand years archaeologists from other civilizations will find these stampings. What will they make of them, I wonder? Religious art? Sacred ceremony? Or just boys being boys?
The next morning we clear the mountains at last. We arrive at a ledge overlooking a vast world that rolls out before us like a green carpet, a foreign jungle. An alien swamp. To either side of us are waterfalls flowing out of the rocks, feeding rivers that bisect the swamplands, making the lands below look like a scattering of puzzle pieces. Far beyond, on the horizon, is a strange blue sea.
Careena is all business.
"The swampies are down there, I take it?" she asks.
"Yes," Hagen tells her. He points to a stretch of forest halfway between the mountains and the sea. "In the drier parts over yonder."
We follow a trail down into the swamps. As we enter this new wetland forests, the world shrinks under dense canopies. Trees grow from standing water. Vines dangle everywhere, connecting everything. To me the swamps look impassable, but Hagen knows paths that link together like a labyrinth.
Without birds and without insects, it's an eerily silent sort of jungle. After an hour of hiking, Hagen lifts his hand for us to stop. He looks worried. He's put a finger to his lips. My pulse quickens.
I want to shake the boy. What is it! What's out there? Claw bush? Spear trees? Face eating orchids that slurp down your intestines like spaghetti noodles? Who knew the idea of a vegetable world could be so terrifying. I'll never look at a carrot the same way again.
