by J. D. Lakey
Connor snored loudly from the next rock. She kicked him in the hip with her big toe.
“Wake up.”
Connor snorted but did not wake. Instead, he rolled over and continued sleeping.
This was all wrong, so very wrong. She was getting really, really scared. The mountain’s ambient fluttered inside her chest like a candle guttering in a strong wind. She closed her eyes and tasted things one by one. She tasted the spring, then the moss and the trees and the lizards. Her imagination filled in the gaps of her understanding. She was suddenly filled with an absolute certainty that they had overstayed their welcome upon the side of the great mountain bear and that the monster was about to shake them all off.
Terror filled her. She lifted her face to the sky and opened her eyes wide to see what the mountain wanted to tell her. She moaned as she realized what was wrong.
While they had been sleeping the sun had fallen out of zenith and was now nearly touching the tops of the tubegrass. Late! Night was coming and they were hours from Home Dome.
She grabbed Connor’s shoulder and shook him roughly. His head rolled drunkenly to the side as his eyes opened a crack and tried to focus on her.
“Get up! It’s time to go,” she yelled.
“Huh? What are you going on about?” Connor asked groggily. She grabbed his arm and rolled him off the rock into the soggy moss.
“Hey!” he yelled, getting annoyed. Annoyance was not enough, she realized. She needed him angry. She slapped him. Connor roared and sent a fist flying at her head. She dodged it, but just barely, leaping away when he tried to come after her.
“We slept too long!” she shouted at him, “Get dressed! Fast!”
Connor stared in horror at the pale sky.
“Where are the others? Why did they let us sleep so long?” he asked, fury warring with terror.
Cheobawn looked downstream, suddenly wondering the same thing. She pulled on her tunic and shorts, shoved her feet into her boot liners, slipped them into her boots without lacing them up and then scooped up her hook. She looked over at Connor. He had on his damp pants and shirt but he was struggling with his soggy boots.
“No time. Tie them later,” she hissed, gathering up what she could find of his equipment and shoving it into his hands. She pulled him to his feet and handed him his bladed stick. When she was sure he would follow her, she turned and raced through the trees, hunting for the rest of her friends.
Tam sat hunched over, his head in his hands. Alain was busy throwing up behind a boulder. Megan, thank the goddess, was on her feet, albeit looking a little unsteady. She was staring in horror at the sky, whimpering.
Cheobawn grabbed the older girl by the hand but Megan jerked away, a look of utter panic on her face. Cheobawn knew what lay behind that look. Megan was listening to her Luck and finding only darkness.
“We have to leave! You have to get us home,” Cheobawn said urgently, grabbing the older girl’s arms and shaking them roughly.
“There is no place to go. Do you feel it? The world has turned into ice. We are dead,” Megan whispered in panic. She spun around, a look of madness in her eyes as if she was trying to see through the walls of the grove.
Cheobawn wanted to weep in despair, but it was a luxury she could not afford. In the ambient, the great monster, Bear Under the Mountain, chased the clouds across her sky mind. Be fierce, little hopper, it whispered. Fierce was not kind, she thought back at her imaginary companion, nor was it nice. Amused, the mountain bear agreed. Blocking Megan’s feelings from her heart, she abandoned her friend and went looking for someone who would save them.
Tam was on his feet, now, but looking gray faced. She crossed to him and punched him in the thigh.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“Stick your fingers down your throat, if it will help,” Cheobawn growled without pity, “I need you to hear me. The mountain is in motion. The night hunters will move down the slopes at dusk and we cannot be outside when this happens.”
“I feel like I have been at the oldpa’s beer keg,” Tam groaned, leaning over. Cheobawn skipped out of the way as his stomach contents spattered over the moss. He straightened up, wiping his mouth, his eyes staring suspiciously from the disgusting heap of berry mash at his feet to the bushes around them.
“Oh, by the Goddess, we got drunk on berries. Why did you not stop me? What kind of Ear lets her Pack get all messed up?”
Cheobawn punched him again, in the other thigh, furious that he could not hear what she was trying to say.
“The lizards were the gift, not the berries,” Cheobawn said defensively. “We have no time. We have to go. Now!”
“Give me a minute. My head is spinning.”
“Listen!” she shouted, stamping her feet in frustration. “We are out of time!”
Tam turned, looking for something. He nearly fell but managed to save himself.
“Have you seen my blade? I need my blade.”
She thought better of hitting him again. He was in far worse shape than Connor. Looking around frantically for anyone or anything that might help her get them on their feet and out of this grove, she spotted Alain. He had collapsed to his knees, his vomiting having turned into continuous dry heaves. She turned to check on Megan. Overwhelmed, the older girl now crouched down with her face pressed against her knees.
Nothing in this grove would save them, it was certain. She cast her mind out into the forest beyond, seeking help. The Bear Under the Mountain laughed at her request for aid. Only the strong survive, it whispered to her, all else is eaten. Time is not your friend. Run, little hopper, run!
Despair knocked at the door of her heart again but she snarled fiercely at it and refused it entrance.
She was an Ear. What was an Ear supposed to do?
Cheobawn checked the ambient for traces of her future self. The future was in chaos.
Her brain scrambled to find a future timeline in which they all survived. She caught up the multiple threads of the Pack’s future, plucking them one by one. Options that included them living to see the end of the day were slipping rapidly through her fingers like sand. She stared at Tam. He was the key. She tried to see into his head and decipher what it would take to get him moving.
He was Alpha and male. This was his Pack. This was his first foray. He would argue with everything but what had been drilled into him as being right and dutiful. Arguing would waste time and wasting time would kill them.
She turned and ran through the grove, picking up weapons and packs and water skins. She returned, staggering under the load and handed them out.
“Hurry,” she said over and over again.
Alain struggled with the straps of his pack, his movements broken and uncoordinated.
Tam took his water skin and drank deeply, nearly draining it. Cheobawn wanted to scream in frustration at their unnecessary delays but she resisted the urge. Instead she helped Megan don her pack. She ran from Tam, to Alain, to Megan, shoving arms through shoulder straps, securing buckles, tightening laces and pressing weapons into loose fingered hands. She took pity on Alain, the sickest of them and tried to lighten his load. She took his water skin and gave it to Tam, then took the hunting knife from his belt and put it on her own.
Just when she thought she might get them all moving in the right direction, Connor stumbled into the clearing, barely dressed, one boot on, the other still in his hand, looking as scared as she felt.
Connor. She had forgotten Connor. The error shocked her to her core and left her shaking. She stopped and tried to calm the panic that was eating her mind. If she could forget one of her own, what else had she left undone? What else had she overlooked?
It was then that she noticed her badly secured boots. Too much, her mind whispered. You have forgotten everything that will keep you alive. It was no use rushing out, unprepared. The mountain would just kill them that much quicker. She stooped and laced up her boots properly, tying them snug to keep them from rubbing. Then she hunted down her own pa
ck where she had left it on the edge of the grove. Opening it, she pulled her leggings from its depths. She re-wrapped her calves and forearms just as Tam had done for her that morning, taking great care with cloth and laces. Snag bare skin on a thorn and the smell of blood would draw in the predators. It was the small things like this that killed people, the teaching stories said.
Terror washed over her. Not all of it was her own. She recited the mantra against fear, wishing calm upon the ambient.
“What is fear?” she breathed. “Fear is nothing. Fear is illusion. Pass through its fire. Truth lies at its core. What is truth?” She stood up, feeling calmer and glared up at the sinking sun. “I am Truth,” she whispered fiercely.
She checked the ambient of the mountain once more, breathing it in, letting it fill her before releasing it back to its place in the world. Things were not getting any better out there, beyond the limits of the grove but they still had a chance.
She tried to think of a complete course of action but she could not see her way clear to the end. Too much uncertainty lay between this moment and the act of walking up to the gate and handing over their red tag. There were things out there that she could not control. Too many threads wanted to unravel. Too many obstacles needed to be overcome. Each plan fell apart in her mind long before the end.
But there were certainties. Places that beckoned like lights in the dark. Goals. Reach one at the right time and the next one became possible. Their path would not be a straight line from here to there but a zigzag trail that might add another click in distance to a journey that was already too far for five sick children with very little time left to them. If she thought they could survive the night in this grove she would stay and try going home in the morning but the grove shivered in the ambient with catastrophic changes.
She found her Pack standing where she had left them, angry looks on their faces, color bright in their cheeks. They had been arguing. Connor had his boots on, at least.
She slid her pack off one arm and opened it, pulling out a ration tin. She squatted down on the moss between Tam and Connor and looked over at Alain and Megan. Their circle was complete.
Breaking the seal on the tin, Cheobawn removed the lid and examined the contents. She took her time picking out the right morsel, but eventually she popped a nutpaste bit into her mouth and chewed it slowly, taking a moment to appreciate its sweet saltiness. She looked up. All eyes were on her. Good. She had their attention. Without thinking, she let the words fall out of her mouth as needed.
“We have not eaten anything but berries since breakfast and here it is, nearly supper time,” she said calmly. “Eat something. Not much. We must run home and you will not run well on a full stomach. Put some of the bits in your pockets to eat as you run.”
She waited, holding her breath. Connor squatted, hesitantly following her lead. Alain and Megan did not need any more of an invitation to sit, both still wobbly on their feet. Tam was the last. Cheobawn did not have to look into his face to know he was angry. The emotion bled off him like a wind, whipping around her, eroding her calm.
“We have a problem. More than a few, to be truthful,” Cheobawn said evenly, nibbling on a piece of smoked dried meat. She looked into Megan’s face. The older girl’s eyes were two dark holes in a pale and frozen mask. It was taking everything in their Alpha Ear’s power to maintain control. “Megan knows. The ambient is telling her things. She knows that we will die if we stay here much longer. She knows that we will die if we try to take the same route back up the ridge line to the North Fork Trail. She also knows that what I am about to suggest leads to almost certain death. But she also knows something else. She knows that I am her only hope. Is that not right, Little Mother?”
“You are the only light in the darkness,” Megan said, her voice a strangled whisper.
Cheobawn smiled at her reassuringly and then she turned to Tam.
“I shall not tell you what waits for us out there. You would not follow me if I did. But Megan knows. She only sees it as a shadow where I see it clearly. She will not go lightly into the jaws of the mountain. It is a terrible thing that I am asking her to do. She needs your help. I need your help. I need you to keep her calm. I need you to keep her sane. This is the game of Battle Trail, only this time, it is deadly serious.”
“We need to know what is coming at us so that we can fight it,” Tam said, shaking his head stubbornly.
“When and if we must fight, I will give you ample warning,” Cheobawn said firmly. “If I fall, keep going west.” Cheobawn’s mind shied away from that possibility, refusing to curse her Luck by dwelling on the worst outcome. She had plucked the thread where she died out here on the mountain and ugly things happened to her Pack at its end. If she could get Megan closer to Home Dome, perhaps the shadows in the older girl’s mind would lift and she could take control of the Pack if Cheobawn fell. Otherwise they were all going to die. “Head west until you hit a road or trail and follow it home,” she repeated.
“Why can’t we take the North Fork Trail?” Alain whined desperately.
Cheobawn looked at him sadly. She understood his desperation. She could feel the nut paste sitting uneasily on his stomach. She could feel his weak and watery muscles. She could feel his exhaustion bleeding out from around his internal walls. She did not have the heart to tell him about the mass of glasslizards streaming up the ridge-line in search of summer dens, their numbers their only defense against the battalions of predators, large and small, coming down the mountain to graze on their bounty, effectively cutting off the Pack’s retreat.
“This is how it must be,” she said, rising to her feet and slinging her pack onto her back, then sliding her stick into the loop on her belt. “I will take point. Connor will take rear guard. He is the least sick, having eaten the fewest berries. You will do everything I do, run when I run, step where I step. Hang on to your weapons, no matter what. I cannot guarantee that you will not have to fight your way clear, somewhere down this road. To tell you the truth, I cannot care. All of my mind will be focused on staying alive. If you stay at my back, perhaps you too will live. Trust in your own Luck, if you cannot trust in mine. Make no sound until we are safe inside the dome. Is that clear?”
Tam wanted to argue. He looked to Megan for support, but Megan could only look at the sky and shudder.
Cheobawn moved closer to her alpha male, touching his hand to gain his attention.
“You must trust me,” she said softly, for his ears only. “But more importantly, you must trust yourself. It was you who walked into the playground this morning and chose Megan and me. Trust in that.”
Tam nodded, looking sick, grim, and very frightened.
Cheobawn spun around and headed for the tunnel through the giant grass. She gave the glen one last check as she passed through it, looking for stray pieces of equipment. They would leave nothing, for they had very little and any of that might save their lives before the day was done.
Chapter Eight
The tunnel through the grass, cleared that morning, made her passage out of the grove much faster than the passage in. Cheobawn broke free of the confining stalks and splashed across the deep pool up onto dry ground. Waiting for her Pack, she paused on the bank and listened to the movement of life on the mountain. The map in Tam’s pocket burned brightly in her head.
A gang of fuzzies fed upon the hapless laggards of the glasslizard flock not far behind them. It was the way of things out in the world, that so much excess life would attract the predators. Without the intoxication of the berries, she would have remembered that.
No Pack purposefully confronted a fuzzy gang. They might be able to kill a few but the fuzzies had the advantage of numbers. How many, she could not tell. Fuzzies presented themselves upon the ambient as a single organism. Unable to count the individuals in this gang, she had to guess by the size of their psi footprint. More than twenty. Less than a hundred.
Cheobawn did not mention the fuzzies to her friends, the tiny carnivores not b
eing the biggest threat to them at that moment. The band of tiny predators would ignore them with easier prey at hand, at least for now, but she had no wish to test that hypothesis.
Tam came out of the tunnel first, pulling Megan behind him. Alain came next, Connor close behind, watching him. Alain’s feet slipped on the stones in the pool. Connor’s hand was there, on his elbow, steadying him. Cheobawn flinched away from the sight, not wanting to see how desperate their plight was, right from the start.
She turned and tested the ambient, clearing her mind of all else.
The Pack could not return the way they had come so they must find a new path. She lifted her face and felt the wind on her cheek. Using that to set a heading that would leave a scent trail least likely to attract fuzzy attention, she ran.
The place of the first bright beacon in the ambient was time sensitive and time was slipping away from her. She needed to be fast but she needed to be silent and this hampered her speed. They had to be as invisible as possible. A startled flight of birds, the warning scream of a treehopper, any alarm in the forest at all would bring them to the notice of the larger predators.
The thick brush around the tubegrass grove opened up and became a longpine forest. The grassy understory was easy to navigate. All you had to do was watch for deadfalls and other random tree debris that might trip up an already wobbly child. Cheobawn planned every footfall with care, scanning the visible terrain and mapping their path. The ambient told her of hidden animals and their nests and burrows. All of this affected her route forward. Hundreds of paths, thousands of threads, all of them streaming through her mind at once. It came close to overwhelming her. She drank the energy of the mountain and used it to reinforce her link to the ambient. The world became bright and sharply focused.
Then, between one step and the next, Bear Under the Mountain took her into his great jaws and made her his own. The line that separated child from mountain disappeared.
