Sky Jumpers Series, Book 1

by Peggy Eddleman

  I stumbled to a stop when Brock grabbed my shoulder. “I’ll take her for a bit.”

  I nodded and numbly handed Brenna to him. The helplessness in Aaren’s eyes as he looked at us was too much. “Don’t,” I said. “We’ve got her.”

  Brock studied me for a moment. “We should rest.”

  “I agree,” Aaren said.

  Nothing sounded better than curling up in the soft snow and sleeping until I was warm again. I pushed my schoolbag behind me now that Brenna wasn’t on my back and started walking before the idea of a rest settled in my mind. “We can’t,” I said, my lips feeling almost too numb to talk. “Only thing keeping our muscles warm is using them. We stop, our muscles freeze and we die.”

  No one questioned me—they just followed.

  We kept plodding ahead. My muscles were probably sore, so I was grateful my legs were numb. At least I had Brenna on my back again—it was nice to have her warmth and her chatter.

  I wished I had a free hand to rub the stone on my necklace. My birth parents came to White Rock during a snowstorm like this when my mom was pregnant with me. Their town had been attacked by bandits, and almost no one escaped. My birth dad knew the storm and the trip could kill them, but he wanted to get me to safety. The snow was deep, but the wind hadn’t blown many drifts yet, so they were able to make it through the tunnel. Their trip had been so hard that as soon as my dad got my mom to White Rock, he died. My mom went into labor soon after that and died moments after giving birth to me. Everyone was shocked that my birth parents had made it to White Rock during such a terrible storm. But they did. And their trip was a lot longer than our trip to Browning. If they could do it, I could, too.

  I concentrated on moving my feet. But in the back of my mind, I knew I’d forgotten something. Something I needed to pay attention to. Every time I tried to figure it out, I found myself looking down. It was mesmerizing to watch my feet move ahead, one right after another. Step, step.

  Step, step.

  Step, step.

  A gust of wind blew past us, causing my breath to catch in my throat. For a brief moment, the snow cleared and I saw farther than usual. In front of us rose cliffs, large boulders, and thick trees. A few hundred yards to the left, though, a treeless, boulderless path ran alongside a cliff face, like a safe passageway. Finally, we caught a break! I breathed a sigh of relief and led the way to the path down the mountain.

  Each time the snow cleared a bit, the way downhill looked as smooth as the snowy path we walked on. Cliffs rose on both sides of us, and the ground up there was uneven and covered in trees. I was grateful we traveled on this path instead of backtracking through either of those areas.

  Brenna shivered a lot, like the last time she was on my back, but she wasn’t as chatty. I squeezed her legs. “You okay?”

  “Isss sooo cooode,” she whispered.

  I knew that walking kept our muscles warm, but it hadn’t occurred to me until right then that Brenna wasn’t keeping her muscles warm. I wished we had snowshoes for her so she could walk. Her feet crossed at my stomach, so I pulled my coat up over them as much as possible, and covered her legs with my arms as much as I could.

  “She’s slurring her speech,” Aaren murmured. “Hypothermia. The brain’s sensitive to cold.” He gave her a drink of water, then adjusted her hood to cover her head better.

  I rubbed her legs, hoping the friction would help warm her. “We need to find trees close together, like the ones on our side of the mountain. Somewhere without much snow. There has to be a place where she can get down and walk a little.”

  Brock looked around. Our perfect pathway didn’t have many trees.

  “Soon, Brenna.” Aaren kissed her forehead. “Soon. You’ll be okay.”

  Except it didn’t seem soon. And she didn’t seem okay. It took an hour before we found a place where the cliff jutted out and had an overhang, blocking snow from falling and winds from blowing any snow. Before we reached it, Brenna stopped shivering. I knew she was in trouble. “Brenna?”

  No answer.

  Under the overhang, Aaren gasped in pain as he lifted her off my back. He tried to get her to stand up, but she was so sick. Her face was pale and her lips were blue. I looked to Aaren for reassurance, but I think he was even more scared than I was. He moved her limp arms around to try to get her muscles warm.

  He looked ahead, as if he could actually see through the storm, then bit his lip. “This isn’t enough—she’s getting bad. We have to find a way to keep her warmer!”

  “Think you’ll fit into my coat?” I asked.

  Aaren didn’t answer; he just took his off. I set my bag on the ground, then unbuttoned my coat and switched with him. His was a hand-me-down from Travin and was a little too big for him, which meant it was a lot too big for me. I shook some life back into my hands.

  “Do you want me to carry her?” Brock asked.

  My arms were so tired, but I had to have Brenna near me, to know she was okay. I shook my head no. “She’s like my sister. I have to carry her.”

  I expected Brock to argue, but instead he nodded like he understood completely. He took out the contents of his bag—a water skin, his bale-grabber invention, and the remnants of his lunch—and put them into mine; then he pulled out his knife and cut at his bag. I bent down and picked up Brenna, hugging her to the front of me with her legs wrapped around my back.

  “Wait,” Brock said. He stabbed his knife into the bag’s strap at one end, then pulled it all the way to the other end, turning it into two straps. He’d already cut the base of the bag enough that it could no longer be used as a bag.

  I stared at it, dumbfounded, even after Aaren said, “Good idea. That’ll work great.”

  Brock put one strap over each of my shoulders. The bottom of the bag—the part I thought was ruined—he slipped under Brenna’s behind. Like a sling, it transferred her weight from my arms to my shoulders. Now my exhausted arms wouldn’t have to work so hard, and I didn’t have to worry about dropping her. And I could scratch my nose if I needed to.

  “Wow, thanks,” I said. Having people around who could invent sure was handy. Aaren helped me put on his coat, and made sure the back of it covered Brenna’s legs. Brock buttoned it so that except for the top of her head, Brenna was completely inside the coat I wore. I felt her breath against my neck, barely there, and I looked at Aaren in alarm.

  Tears were forming in his eyes, and his forehead creased with worry.

  “How bad will she get if she’s not warm enough?” I asked. Aaren didn’t answer—he just swallowed hard. By the look on his face, I wasn’t sure I could handle hearing the answer anyway.

  We walked as fast as we could. We hadn’t been able to see the sun for—I had no idea how long, but it must have set, because the sky grew even darker. I hugged Brenna to me tighter.

  We couldn’t see far ahead, so I was shocked when our pathway ended at a thirty-foot drop-off. I stood on the edge of the cliff and looked down to where the path continued at the base of the cliff, with no trail leading to it.

  Brock looked behind us at the rock walls on both sides of the path we’d traveled. “It’ll take hours to walk back that entire distance, uphill, to find another way down. If there even is another way.”

  Aaren shook his head. “We don’t have hours!”

  I just stared at the drop-off and thought about how I never, not in a million years, imagined I’d be grateful for this storm. Until now.

  That was the thing that had been tickling the edges of my mind. The Bomb’s Breath.

  As I looked off the edge of the cliff, I could actually see it. The falling snowflakes slowed the moment they touched it. Almost like time had frozen just over the edge.

  My first thought was to jump off the cliff and continue walking down our path. It was just that Aaren hadn’t sky jumped since he’d cut his stomach. And I had never jumped with someone in my arms before. And Brenna had never jumped at all, and even if she was awake, she might be too sick to follow direct
ions. But I didn’t see another choice. I raised an eyebrow and looked to Aaren and Brock. “You guys up for a jump?”

  Brock shrugged. “We won’t be able to land standing up. The ground’s not flat.”

  “We could land on our backs and slide,” I said. “Think we can do it?”

  Aaren squinted over the edge. “I can’t see far enough to tell if the path is clear. That could be a problem.” He turned to look up the mountain. “But if it’s like the way we came, it might be fine. We could dig our snowshoes into the snow to stop ourselves from hitting a tree or going off another cliff. I think.” He looked at Brenna and bit his lip.

  “You hate that she has to do something dangerous when she’s so sick,” I whispered.

  He changed the subject. “Will you be able to see over Brenna to tell where you’re going when you’re on your back?”

  I shook my head.

  Brock stepped next to me. “Then we’ll go down together.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Together.”

  Brenna slept on my shoulder, so I gave her a squeeze to wake her up. I knew if I covered her mouth and nose while she was asleep, instinct would make her fight to breathe, and that would be deadly in the Bomb’s Breath. I told her what we were about to do, unbuttoned my coat and shifted her in the sling so that her back was against my left arm and her legs were curled up on my stomach instead of around my waist, then buttoned my coat again. “Are you excited you didn’t have to wait until you were ten for your first jump?”

  Her eyes were barely open, but she nodded. I hoped she was alert enough.

  Aaren linked arms on my left and Brock on my right. We stepped up to the edge of the cliff and took a deep breath. I covered Brenna’s mouth and nose; then we jumped into the sky. We fell at least ten feet before we hit the Bomb’s Breath, and Brenna’s eyes were wide open in fear the whole time.

  And then we hit the Bomb’s Breath and everything slowed. Every bit of worry and exhaustion left my body. I just floated on an invisible cloud. My worries felt as weightless as my body. Snowflakes lazily drifted all around me as excitement flurried in my stomach. Brenna was snuggled into me, Aaren’s and Brock’s shoulders rested against mine, and for that moment, everything was right. My smile must have looked downright blissful to Brenna, because she relaxed as she looked into my eyes. I could think of nothing I’d rather do than spend the day sky jumping.

  Except, of course, saving my town and saving Brenna. We kicked our legs to move to a lying-down position. I soaked in the feeling of weightlessness for another moment before we touched down on the sloped ground at the base of the cliff as gently as the snowflakes did.

  We slid slowly at first, but when we went downhill enough to exit the Bomb’s Breath, we slid really fast. I took a deep breath and just trusted Aaren and Brock to guide us, and told Brenna how good she did on her first jump. She gave me a weak smile that I think meant she loved it.

  The hood of Aaren’s coat didn’t fit me well, so after only a moment, it blew off my head. The snow and wind from going so fast blew through my hair and bit into my scalp, freezing my skull. I wondered if the massive pain in my head was from my brain itself shivering.

  I tried not to flinch every time Aaren and Brock yelled to one another right before one of them kicked to change our direction. Instead, I ignored the snow blowing into my face and told Brenna that this was the world’s best sledding run because we didn’t have to climb back up—we just got to keep going down. But the thought that we wouldn’t be able to stay in Browning long before we’d have to go back into this cold wasn’t far from my mind. “Just enjoy the ride,” I said, as much to myself as to Brenna.

  Brenna didn’t enjoy the ride. Her eyes closed and her breathing was either shaky or shallow. I didn’t know much about hypothermia, but the color of her face wasn’t normal. I was grateful we were moving so fast.

  About the time the pain from the snow inside my coat and the wind on my bare head became worse than I could handle, we reached the bottom of the mountain and slid to a stop halfway up a hill.

  Brock and Aaren brushed the snow out of the inside of my coat, scooped as much snow out of my hood as they could, then put my hood back on. It didn’t feel any warmer. I looked at Aaren. My coat wasn’t big enough for him, so the hood didn’t cover him well, either. I bet his head was just as cold as mine. Brenna seemed comfortable enough curled into a ball at my stomach, so I didn’t move her. I didn’t have the energy to do it anyway.

  We climbed to the top of the hill just to see another one waiting.

  “There’s more?” Aaren asked, his voice desperate.

  “A lot more,” Brock said. “The bomb left hills circling the crater that White Rock is in. Kind of like the ripples you get when you drop a rock in the lake. The hills get smaller as we get farther away from the mountain, though.”

  “You’ve been here?” I asked through frozen lips that could barely move.

  He nodded.

  “I have, too,” I said. “Well, not here, of course. But on the road from White Rock to Browning. I think I was asleep the whole time, though—I don’t remember it at all.”

  “Think we’re close?” Aaren asked, slurring his words.

  Brock squinted into the distance. “I’m guessing we’re not.”

  I lost control of my legs. Or maybe I’d walked so much my legs forgot how to do anything else. Just like I forgot what being warm felt like. And the sky forgot how to do anything other than dump snow.

  No traces of daylight remained, but because of the moonlight and the fact that everything around us was white, we could see.

  I was exhausted and my head hurt so much from the cold, I didn’t think I could go any farther. Every time I wanted to quit, I’d focus on something in the distance. A tree. The top of a hill. A big lump of snow. And then I’d say to myself, I can make it that far. And when I got there, Brock or Aaren would put a hand on my back, or we’d go downhill—something that felt like a little push, and I’d keep going. And going. And going.

  When the urge to stop got really bad, I chanted with each step. Save Brenna, step. Save my dad, step. Save White Rock, step.

  Aaren grabbed hold of my shoulder, so I stopped for him to check on Brenna. “Sheanybetter?” I asked, my words not coming out right.

  “No. Maybe when she fell, snow got under her coat and melted against her body and made her clothes wet. That’d keep her from getting warm. Or maybe you aren’t warm enough to warm her. Or maybe isss just too cold out here.”

  “Are we even going the right direction?” I asked. “What if Browning’s that way, or that way, and we just pass it by?” I wanted to give up. I didn’t know what made me think I could hike over a mountain I had never traveled on before, and find a city covered in snow that I’d only been to one time nine years ago when I was too young to remember anything. And I’d brought Aaren and Brenna and Brock with me, endangering us all.

  Aaren’s shoulders slumped. “What are we going to do?”

  “Look!” Brock pointed into the distance. “There it is!”

  “See those white lumps?” Brock asked. I squinted into the distance and could kind of see two hills through the falling snow, right next to each other. “Those are the greenhouses where Browning grows the cotton. So the farmlands must be just beyond this next hill.”

  “Maybe iss just hills.” I thought of the two greenhouses we had in White Rock between the orchard and the cattle. These were huge, easily ten times the size of ours.

  “It has to be them,” Brock said.

  “Thass good,” Aaren said, “ ’cause you’re slurring your words, Hope.”

  “So are you, Aaren,” Brock said.

  Aaren pulled the too-small hood of my coat tighter. “Brains can’t handle cold. Muddles your thinking.”

  With my brain working so slowly, I didn’t remember about Browning’s dirt walls in the shape of a square until we were most of the way across the farmlands. Something looked like another hill, except that it wasn’t long and
spread out like the ripples from the crater or in lumps like the greenhouses. We might have totally missed it if Brock hadn’t reminded us what we were looking for. I was glad at least one of our brains worked. My sense of time was off, too, but Brock said it was about ten p.m., which meant we’d been traveling for seventeen hours.

  The fifteen-foot-high snow-covered wall around Browning was sloped on the outside. I looked down at Brenna, asleep in the sling. I wished she was awake to see it.

  “Iss so short,” Aaren slurred. “Don’t you think it’s short?”

  I nodded yes. We had mountains as our city walls. This definitely felt short.

  “I heard that before the bombs, no one had city walls,” Aaren said.

  “Yeah, well, they didn’t have bandits back then,” Brock said as he grabbed my shoulders and directed me alongside the dirt wall instead of over it like I was trying. “This way. You’ll break a leg if you go over here—we have to get to the gate.”

  I followed Brock as he muttered something about Aaren’s and my brains being frozen solid. After ten minutes, we reached a locked gate but no guards manned it. Brock guessed they might be rotating guards or covering a larger than normal area because of the snow. Someone would probably be back soon, but we had to get Brenna by a warm fire quickly. My mind was so tired and cloudy, though, I couldn’t figure out what we should do.

  Just beside the gate, Brock had us climb up the dirt wall. At the top, a wooden guard platform sat slightly lower than the wall, with the edge two feet away and a fifteen-foot drop-off between it and the dirt wall. Only a couple of inches of snow covered the platform, so it must have been shoveled, and footprints showed someone had been there not long before. Brock jumped to the platform and slid on the snow a bit, then held out his hand for me. It was a big step between the wall and the platform, and with Brenna strapped to me, I didn’t want to take any chances. I reached forward and grabbed his hand with my right, then reached back for Aaren’s hand with my left. Brock pulled me across, then Aaren joined us and we climbed down the ladder.